Three Views of TTC Growth
Growth of transit ridership is a subject often discussed in the abstract, but rarely with specifics and particularly with no thought to the financial implications for Toronto and supporting “partners” in other governments. Transit is one of those “good things” we will support at least with fantasy maps of future networks and even billions here and there for construction. Actual transit service is quite another matter.
This issue surfaces again with two 5-year plans at the TTC Board meeting of May 16, 2024:
2024-2028 Corporate Plan 5-Year Service and Customer Experience Action PlanBoth plans talk about many things other than ridership, and I will leave a wider review for another day. The Corporate Plan includes one of those great time-wasters of management navel-gazing, new vision and mission statements.
The new vision statement: Moving Toronto towards a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous future.
The new mission statement: To serve the needs of transit riders by providing a safe, reliable, efficient, and accessible mass public transit service through a seamless integrated network to create access to opportunity for everyone.
The concept of actual growth is buried in five “strategic directions” rather than being the one overarching goal.
Build a Future-Ready Workforce. Attract New Riders, Retain Customer Loyalty. Place Transit at the Centre of Toronto’s Future Mobility. Transform and Modernize for a Changing Environment. Address the Structural Fiscal Imbalance.In simpler days, this was expressed by the motto still found on the TTC coat of arms:
“Service Courtesy Safety”
The Service and Customer Experience Plan, true to its name, actually focuses on service although one might hope it would aim higher if only to inform debate on possible futures for Toronto. It does include a number of options including costs projected out five years. This is a welcome reminder of the 2003 Ridership Growth Strategy that started from the premise “here is what we could achieve” rather than “we cannot afford to even talk about improvements”.
Not mentioned in either of these is the TransformTO scheme for massive increase in transit service and ridership. TTC staff included this in a December 2023 update on their Electric Bus Plan. There has been some confusion about whether this is actually an approved Council policy, and I understand that it is not. In any event, it is another vision of the future, and it would incur very high costs for additional fleet, infrastructure and service.
A vital point about service plans is that rapid transit construction alone will not achieve high growth both because trains must run in those tunnels to carry riders, but also because those riders do not all live and work at stations. The service to and between the rapid transit lines is as important as the shiny new stations and tunnels.
Both the 5-Year and Corporate Plans foresee about 480 million rides per year by 2028, although this depends on implementation of all of the options in the 5-Year Plan. Without them, ridership is forecast to rise only to 447 million over a base of 396 million in 2023. That is a 21.2% increase with the investment in service options or 12.9% as a “do nothing path. For reference, the ridership in 2019, the last full pre-covid year, was 525 million, and so we will still not be back to that level almost a decade later in spite of population growth.
The Corporate Plan looks out to 2041 with projections subdivided by network segment. Ridership for new LRT lines is not mentioned in the Plan and it is unclear where this fits in the total. The figures for Line 1 are particularly troubling by contrast to Line 2. I have included comparisons both with pre-pandemic levels (2041:2019) and current (2041:2024) to illustrate the changes from the system as it once was, and from current experience.
The TTC is still catching up from Covid-era losses, and so the amount of service to be added to reach projected 2041 levels is quite considerable. Although there are some capital costs for fleet and maintenance facilities, the effect will primarily be on operating costs, the very part of ongoing transit funding that is routinely ignored in one grand announcement after another.
Daily Boardings (k)2019March 2024Recovery vs 20192041Growth vs 2019Growth vs 2024Line 1 Subway (YUS)85857667.1%1,32854.8%131%Line 2 Subway (BD)55941975.0%66118.2%57.8%Streetcar35024269.1%46031%90.0%Bus1,3811,23189.1%1,72224.7%39.9%Adapted from 2024 Corporate Plan (various tables)The TransformTO proposal is for massive transit service expansion to shift travel away from cars. It includes:
70% more frequent bus service than in 2016 50% more frequent streetcar service than in 2016 Subway off-peak service frequency of 3 minutes or better Exclusive bus lanes on all arterials No transit fares Expanded work-from-home for those workers who can do soTTC estimates that the bus service increase would require a 47% larger fleet than would otherwise be the case by 2040, and this assumes exclusive bus lanes were actually implemented. In turn this would require additional garages, operating and maintenance staff. No cost projection, let alone an implementation plan, has been provided, and it is extremely unlikely that Council would pursue this option. However, it is in limbo neither adopted nor explicitly rejected.
This is only an overview of some of the service-related parts of the Service Plan. The key point is that the expected increase in riding depends on implementation of many aspects of this plan. Not only will a “do nothing” approach lower potential growth, it will make the improvement needed to reach hoped-for 2041 goals even more difficult.
Riders are not happy with transit service, and this is reflected in the trend of customer satisfaction scores. This has to be turned around if the TTC hopes to achieve large ridership growth in coming years.
As a starting point, Toronto has a fairly dense network of frequent services. In the map below, the lines shown in green (express routes) are also part of the 10-minute network. There are obvious gaps, and every rider does no start or end their journey at a stop with a bus, streetcar or subway train every few minutes. This map shows the AM peak period, but it thins out when one considers midday, evening and weekend periods. That is an important factor because changing demand patterns see better recovery of demand outside of the peak and in areas where work-from-home is less of an option.
From a financial point of view, the peak period commuters provided a large revenue stream, but their lower numbers hamper the transit system’s ability to fund itself from fares. This affects not just downtown but the entire city.
The map below shows bus routes that have high ridership as well as locations where there are high numbers of boardings. Note that the streetcar routes, several of which have more than 30,000 daily boardings (King, Queen, Dundas, Spadina), are not shown here. This is at current demand levels, and we can expect to see the map fill in as ridership builds. The routes mostly serve travel that will not shift onto new rapid transit lines which do not serve these corridors.
Projected population and employment growth in the city does not generally match the areas where the network is expanding. With many years’ lag in rapid transit construction, the TTC (and Metrolinx) are playing catch-up to older growth patterns. The surface network will have to absorb increased demand and respond with better capacity and reliability.
Ridership patterns show the effect of shifting commuting patterns as well as fundamental differences in the types of demand each network serves. The streetcar and subway networks serve the core area where work-from-home has the effect of lowering demand on Mondays and Fridays. There is a much smaller effect on the bus network that mainly serves areas of in-person work. Streetcar boardings on Saturday are strong because these are mainly non-work trips.
Many options are under consideration to rebuild ridership of which restoration of the board-approved Service Standards is important on two counts. First, TTC management now acknowledge that the 2023 budget included changes that the Board did not approve, but which were implemented as a temporary measure to save money. Second, it will be key going forward that the standards be respected and that staff report regularly on situations where service falls short.
A planned “Action 2.6. Restore and enhance service standards” will require resources (operators, vehicles, funding) to:
Other Standards could be introduced or modified to provide for:
Expansion of the Express Bus network, Early Sunday service, Creation of a 15-minute network as a second tier under the existing 10-minute net, Expanded overnight service to support shift workers, and More frequent service on the streetcar routes moving from a 10 minute to a 6 minute maximum headway.The cost of these changes and an implicit schedule for implementation is shown in the table below. Note that the dollars are not trivial, but also are not so onerous the City should ignore these options. Moreover, the projected ridership recovery depends on providing more and better service.
Options
Fleet Requirements
More service requires more vehicles, but that is not actually a problem for a few reasons:
Historically the TTC’s spare ratio was above the industry average. Covid-era cutbacks freed up additional vehicles. The refreshed streetcar and bus fleets are or soon will be in much better average condition than the situation five years ago. At that time service was limited by the number of working streetcars, and many buses were redeployed to supplement or cover streetcar service.The table below shows the planned restoration of service based on peak vehicle needs. This should be read in the context of actual peak requirements in February 2020 just before the pandemic:
Bus routes: 1,555 Buses Streetcar routes: 160 Flexitys + 58 Buses Line 1 Trains: 65 Line 2 Trains: 46 Line 4 Trains: 4In short, subway and streetcar service will not return fully to pre-covid levels until 2027, and if TTC runs true to form that will be Fall 2027, not at the start of the year. Any move to implement the TransformTO scheme would have a cumulative effect over future years as service ramps up on top of fleet sizes and costs shown here.
Capital Requirements
Many proposed improvements require capital dollars, although the amounts involved would be considered as rounding errors in the larger projects. The grand total of $214 million would not build one underground subway station.
Fleet costs are substantial. For rail modes, the spending is “lumpy” as substantial parts of the fleet are replaced (for example, all trains on Line 2), whereas bus replacement is an ongoing cost. The table below shows only five years’ proposed spending.
Service Quality
The TTC measures service quality based on on time performance leaving terminals with a 6-minute window (1 minute early to 5 minutes late) qualifying as “on time”. This has three major problems:
At the frequency of service TTC operates, the 6-minute window can allow two, or even three, vehicles to leave the terminal in a pack but be counted as “on time”. There is no measure of performance as vehicles move along their route. Stats are average on an all-day basis so that periods where service is more stressed (typically peaks) is counted together with off-peak periods.The map below shows the on-time performance for bus routes based on the TTC metric. A few of these were modified in May 2024.
Addressing some reliability problems will be a challenge because there is an interaction between schedules, day-by-day route conditions, the availability of locations enroute to space service, supervision efforts, and what can only be described as “TTC culture” about line management. One key problem is that “on time” has no meaning to a typical rider whose service is (or should be) frequent enough that they do not have to plan arriving at a stop for an infrequent scheduled trip.
TTC manages to the schedule, not to headways, and this can be counterproductive when conditions make operating to schedule impractical. This can include several scenarios including:
The general level of congestion will make all vehicles late, and the best one can hope for is fairly even spacing of vehicles. A section of a route is affected by congestion, but running early to make provision for being caught there risks a reprimand because being “on time” is key. One or more vehicles is missing on a route, but those remaining do not alter their spacing lest they fail to be “on time”. For example, if buses are supposed to arrive every 10 minutes, but one is missing, a service of two 15-minute gaps is better than one 20-minute gap.The focus on being “on time” and producing good stats can get in the way of providing better service.
Transit Priority
There are many routes flagged for possible priority treatment as shown below. Considering that almost none of this has been implemented or even studied, it is difficult to believe that we will see much of it implemented. Giving transit priority on this scale will have a major effect on other road users and on those with homes and businesses along the corridors.
Equally important is the question of whether the benefits in travel time savings and service reliability can justify the implementation of full-time priority. Some benefits could be more in avoidance of future congestion buildup, rather than immediately visible savings, but these will be even harder to achieve if the immediate effect is mainly to delay and annoy motorists.
