City and TTC staff say they won’t support Councillor Michael Ford’s request to study whether buses would operate more effectively than streetcars on Queen St., after concluding that the exercise would be costly, logistically difficult, and unlikely to yield usable data.

“Due to TTC scheduling constraints, it is not recommended that this study be carried out,” said a transportation department report that was made public Tuesday and is expected to be debated at this week’s council meeting, already in progress.

A spokesperson for the councillor said that Ford (Ward 2 Etobicoke North) would still urge his colleagues to vote for the study, which the report estimated would cost at least $681,100.

“He wants to make sure that this is being looked at in a wholesome light,” said Dan Jacobs, Ford’s chief of staff. He argued that the city routinely spends millions of dollars to study issues like the proposed Rail Deck Park and the King St. pilot project.

“This is just one more study, and it’s for hard data. So he doesn’t understand why anyone would want to make a decision without having hard data.”

The TTC normally operates streetcars on Queen St. But in May the agency replaced them with buses due to a series of construction projects along Queen this summer. Streetcars are scheduled to return to most of the line by September 3.

Last month Councillor Ford sent a letter to a meeting of the public works committee requesting that the TTC keep running buses for two weeks after the road work was finished, so that the city could conduct a study to evaluate whether the vehicles perform better than streetcars under normal operating conditions. The committee approved his request.

The report published Tuesday detailed numerous logistical challenges to implementing Ford’s proposal however, including the fact that TTC service and employee schedules for September were finalized months ago.

For the period in question, all 1,575 TTC buses have already been assigned, and roughly 33 of the vehicles would need to be redeployed to Queen for the purpose of the study, meaning less service on other routes.

Because TTC operators have already been assigned for the period, the additional workers to operate Queen bus service for longer than planned would have to be paid overtime, meaning higher labour costs.

And while most construction will be wrapped up by the end of the summer, some road work on Queen will continue through the fall. Combined with the scheduled closure in September of a portion of King St. for the Toronto International Film Festival, transit operations downtown will continue to be disrupted through Ford’s proposed study period, meaning it would be difficult to get an accurate picture of how efficiently buses were operating.

The estimated $681,100 cost of the study includes $191,500 to hire a consultant to collect traffic data, $51,600 for TTC staff to conduct the comparison, and $438,000 to operate the extra bus service.

Taking into account $279,000 in already scheduled streetcar service that the TTC says can’t be reallocated, the total cost of the study would be close to $1 million.

“I think the cost of doing this work should be alarming for anyone who wants to make sure that we’re spending money on transit, and not just seat-of-our-pants studies,” said TTC chair Josh Colle.

TTC officials have previously asserted that they’re confident streetcars are the more efficient option. The vehicles can carry more people than buses, and the agency estimates it’s costing an additional $1 million a month to replace the 45 streetcars that normally run on Queen with 65 buses.

Colle said there was little chance the TTC would permanently replace Queen streetcars with buses, but he said he feared Ford’s motion would “lead to a really long, probably unnecessary debate both at council and within the city itself.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Ford’s motion asked staff to compare streetcars and buses in terms of reliability, collisions, rider satisfaction, and “delays to other users of the road.”

Many saw his request as following the well-worn political path set out by his uncles, Rob and Doug Ford, who during their time at city hall relentlessly disparaged streetcars as outmoded, inefficient, and obstructive to drivers.