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A Trash Bin Quandary
Introducing Ask Torontoist
On Monday, the TTC unveiled a survey that, in lieu of other public consultation, would be used to help the organization determine what cuts it may need to make this year. (For more on the TTC's potential budget shortfall, see our interview with Adam Giambrone, the TTC's documentation included with the survey, and Steve Munro's excellent summary of the situation.) The problem is, the survey really isn't that great: it's too vague, too incomplete, and a little bit biased. In short, it's not enough.
So, on the brilliant suggestion of reader Cy Goldsbie, we've decided to tweak the TTC's survey to make it better, and re-release it to the public––not as an attempt to one-up the organization but as a way to help it out. Our reinvented survey has two pages: the first features the same questions as the TTC's own survey, though they have all been tweaked; and the second page features a handful of questions that the TTC left off of its survey altogether. We've assembled it with the help of transit advocates Steve Munro and Joe Clark, as well as Torontoist staffers Chris Tindal, Jonathan Goldsbie, and Val Dodge. The survey is entirely anonymous, and all twenty-seven questions are optional. All told, completing it should take less than five minutes.
Launch the improved TTC survey.
After the TTC ends its official survey on September 10, we'll send them the complete data set from ours––plus, we'll publish an entry with some of the most significant findings, and a complete summary of the whole thing. Until then, you can view the summarized set results here. It goes without saying, but the more people that fill out this survey the better, so please do spread the word.
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It's interesting that out of all of the possible answers for what taxes should be raised to fund the TTC, the ones that lead the pack are the ones that bike-riding college-aged renters wouldn't have to pay, and the one that would affect college-aged people the most is the least popular.
Maybe you could have saved a few seconds per survey by replacing that question with:
21. If you believe that the city of Toronto should raise taxes, who should pay them? (check one)
* Me
* Someone else
Bike-riding college-aged renters probably don't have as much income from which to draw taxes as car-driving middle-aged homeowners. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think we'd be in a much deeper financial hole if we were relying on OSAP to fund the TTC.
brilliant, love it. i saw the ttc survey and was more than a little unimpressed. will definitely send this around to many people to complete... thanks for the initiative.
Yet again, the public has to do something because the TTC is completely, utterly incompetent.
Actually renters pay property tax at a higher rate than homeowners, it's just hidden in our rent.
There are definitely a few areas where the TTC survey was weak but I don't think this one is great either. With Joe Clark on board I'm surprised there were no questions about signage: "what is your preferred kerning for TTC fonts?"
Guest 1: I agree with Guest 5 that renters pay property tax, but also note that the survey included a fairly strong call for support from federal and provincial governments (mostly income and sales tax which we all pay) and acceptance of increased fares.
Here are four comments I have about the survey design. Some are shared with the TTC's survey; some pertain only to the Torontoist survey.
1. Be consistant! You are very clear about the tradeoff for municipal funding (higher property taxes). You're not clear about the tradeoffs involved in provincial and federal funding. This makes it much easier to answer 'yes' to the latter two options, and harder to answer 'yes' to the former option.
2. Don't throw away data! Why have age-based cutpoints? People will give their actual age if you ask for it.
3. Ask one question at a time! Right now, answers to #11 are practically uninterpretable. Which elements of your laundry list (from cleanliness to websites) are driving riders' willingness to pay? Which are necessary? Which are sufficient? (#15 does a better job at this.)
4. Who are you asking? Okay, naturally it's not a random sampling. But to figure out how close it is, you're going to need to gather more demographic information than you've got. The big missing ones are occupation and gender, in my view. If you collect those kind of data, you can then adjust your dataset using oversampling techniques to more closely approximate the characteristics of a truly random sample.
I suspect that if this or any survey were distributed during the colder winter months there would be varied results. I personally bike to work during the warmer months and rarely use public transit. That said, for the 3 coldest months of the year I buy a metropass and use the TTC at least twice/day.
HTML comes with form elements, you know.
Well, Guest, we took out all the ringers.
This is great! It should really help undermine the TTC!
#7: I appreciate your suggestions; I don't pretend that this survey is flawless––it was hastily put together over the course of twenty-four hours. But it was also done for pretty much no money and with the work of no more than a few people acting as informal (and very much unpaid) consultants as I worked on it, and I think it does––easily––trump the TTC's own survey.
Guys, I think you are missing some options in the TTC alternatives.
There is the GO Train. From where I live (walking distance to Danforth & Main), the TTC and GO are both viable options.
Also, some people drive motorcycles & scooters. They aren't environmentally perfect, but its better than single passenger in a 4-seater+.
Nice work!
Guest #1: You are paying either way.
Good work, guys. I've just linked to you from the Transit Toronto front page.
Re Taxes: I think the guest's point was that the three leading taxes are car-related, and the vast majority of survey respondents don't or rarely use a car, so it is very much a "let someone else pay" problem.
If I was a TTC Commish reading this, the logical inference would be to raise fares. There is no leverage in saying "the Province should pay" if you are willing, as are the majority of survey respondents, to fund a $0.25 fare increase. My view is - the rider pays enough already.
Also, while the survey is a marked improvement over the TTCs, there still is some weird exclusion of options - one would have thought that a trade-off to shutting or reducing service would be cost rationalization, but that option isn't there.
I hope this circulates beyone this page - the responses so far are clearly bent towards the youngish urbanite (look at avg age of respondent and avg distance travelled on TTC trip, as well as the high proportion of people without cars or who would use walking or biking as an alternative). These aren't families or middle aged commuters we are talking about.
As displayed by the answers to the survey, respondents are much more able to absorb increased transit costs and much less likely to pay the taxes recommended to fund service improvements than the average, which really reduces the value of the data.
Great work on this. While it's not perfect, it's still telling that you were able to build a better, more nuanced survey than the salaried bureaucrats. Too bad the limited demographic of the blogosphere will cut into the results' credibility a bit, as the people who will find this are only one of the TTC's constituent groups.
x_the_x and guest #17–-I really do hope that it circulates beyond the local blogs, and it was certainly designed to be answerable by everyone. I really want the demographics to include families, older people, and so on, because for it to be taken seriously that's what it needs to have. I should point out, as well, that our readership is probably not as limited (demographic-wise) as you'd expect, but it could certainly be broader.
Even if this survey may not be perfect or comprehensive, it's certainly interesting looking at what type of people use the TTC (and read Torontoist) and what their relationship with the TTC is like.
TTC fares are a bit all over the place. Here's some suggestions:
x_the_x, unless you have a degree in statistics and can really back it up, from casual observation I don’t see how one can arrive at an “average” without collecting data first, hence I don’t see how what Torontoist is doing here “reduces the value” of anything.
Do you mean Torontosist survey respondents do not exactly match your impression of TTC riders? I’ll alert the media.
Does anyone else notice in the survey at http://www.toronto.ca/ttc/myttc.html that question #6 does NOT have the option "Layoff TTC employees".
Or are we left to assume that if routes are cut jobs will be cut as well? It's not specifically stated. But the only options we are given are NOT all the options available.
Yes, only an expert could question the value of the rigorous emprical data displayed here.
I am assuming you, like me, can apply some common sense.
To turn it around, if the survey data is representative, 70% of transit users are between the ages of 18 and 34 and 69% do not own a car. Sound like your morning commute?
80% would continue to use the TTC with a 0.25% fare increase, which pretty much obliterates the argument for funding any shortfall out of taxes on "access" grounds.
For the record, I didn't say the data was valueless, I merely suggested that getting a more representative slice of users would increase the value of the data. If I'm in charge, for instance, I'm thinking that those who do not own cars are not the best people to ask whether it is fair to tax car users to fund transit (or at very least the answer you get is not exactly representative of broader opinion).
it is funny how council won't cut back their 8.9% pay hike they gave themselves.
I was the one who suggested this parallel survey (to Jonathan Goldsbie, yes, related) in the first place. I only bring that up because I'm not representative of the 25-34 year old/blogger demographic. I'm 55, have been paying property taxes for longer then I care to remember, own (but rarely drive) a car... and subscribe to the National Post. However, like many, I believe that the official TTC survey was one-dimensional, asked leading questions with loaded answers and neglected to take into account other legitimate alternatives. I feel that Torontoist has put together a more comprehensive survey that addresses many of the issues and nuances lacking in the official survey. The real challenge, now that the Torontoist survey is 'live', is to spread the word and 'call to action' the only demographic that matters, TTC riders. And that's a different can of worms altogether...so to speak.
Glavic, I think it's funny that anyone thinks that underpaying our elected officials would be good for the city. We have enough trouble already finding good people to run against nimrods like Denzil & Rob Ford. Wasting time on symbolic cuts is not going to help make up the budget deficit.
In my former life I was a market research analyst working with surveys and interpreting data on a daily basis...that said, this survey isn't all that bad!
If nothing else, it does give us a good idea of what the average TOist reader thinks of the TTC.
Would this data stand up to rigorous testing? Prolly not, but I don't think that's the point.
Cheers,
Andrew
I am always intrigued by the TTC men who stand on street corners to count streetcars. Also fascinated by the number of managers on the $100k + salary list.
In a nutshell, is there any way the TTC could improve the efficiency of its operations from the top down?
It seems like many Scandinavian cities subcontract the operation of individual transit routes (not the planning itself). Could it be that they could be onto something? Isn't VIVA successful? Can we talk about this?
kollektivtrafik: "It seems like many Scandinavian cities subcontract the operation of individual transit routes (not the planning itself). Could it be that they could be onto something? Isn't VIVA successful? Can we talk about this?"
No we can't. Stop your heretic nonsense. All private sector involvement in transit is inherently evil and will lead to route cuts, crying babies and dead bunny rabbits. The end.
[By the way, the answer to your VIVA question is - depends who you ask!]
Questions 4 and 5 may yield different interpretations than you might think on first reading.
4. If the TTC were forced to cut service on the route(s) that you currently use [...]: currently about 50% selected "continue to use TTC"
5. If the TTC were forced to raise fares by 10¢ to 25¢ per ride [...]: currently about 80% selected "continue to use TTC"
A casual glance would say, well, obviously the more palatable alternative would be to raise fares, since that's less likely to drive riders away than a service cut.
A closer look, though, indicates that Question 4 would only apply to riders whose service was cut, whereas Question 5 would apply to all riders. So, if even as many as 1 in 4 (25% of) riders had their route cut back, only 12.5% would give up on the TTC, suggesting that service cuts would actually result in lower ridership impacts.
Obviously things would be more nuanced than this, but you can see that the interpretation of the findings may be different than you might infer.
The question about being too crowded to get on was interesting because it doesn't address a common problem at the other end of the trip: Sometimes the TTC is so crowded, it's impossible to make your way to the doors and get off the vehicle before the doors close and it continues on its way, and you end up missing your stop.
Are the authors of the Torontoist, alternative survey, going to publish a comment summary of the written responses?
There may be some interesting and creative ideas provided by the respondents that should be of interest to all, not the least being the TTC.
Yes—as mentioned at the end of the article, Torontoist will publish the results and a writeup of the findings.
I do not really see any future for the TTC as itis
presently structured. Its only hope is to be managed by a body completely free of political control/inteference. This will never happen.
As a system it has always been behind the the times and has regularly made huge blunders. I can remember the hugely expensive U-turn at Bloor/ Yonge, built and discarded. The original Union -
Eglinton line was built with a decor resembling
public toilets. The Light Rail system in the East
End - who ever heard of changing trains just to continue in the same direction?
Typical of the antiquated system it has become is typified by the line-ups at Union ticket booths -
often 10, 15, 20 persons waiting at eacg window.
Vist London, Washington DC or BART in San Francisco and see the automated ticket machines. Easy to operate, change given, fast. In Toronto, the same old line-ups.
The only way the TTC can be brought into the 21st century is to privatize it. Capital markets would find the $1-$2 billion needed to update the system
The unions would not like it, so it will never happen. Toronto has no hope of getting a winning EXPO bid with such an inadequate outdated transport system.
Henry Walters
Well with respect to the TTC survey, I think there are alot of unanswered questions. I also believe there are a few questions that were never asked. I believe there is a desperate call for redesign of TTC brand through a suitable design consultancy, and TTC needs to jump into the hearts of their stakeholders to consider bringing stronger value and community. TTC would love to argue otherwise in effect to defend their position and mistakes made in the past, yet that is over now. We can only move forward. For TTC to become what it needs to be and wants to be, it will be up need to really address what the future holds for this city by having the foresight to offer new strategic opportunities to the 10's of thousands of people who will be moving into Toronto over the next 3 years.