The TTC Board met on March 23. In earlier articles, I have already reviewed the agenda, and discussed ridership statistics.

Arising from the debate on ridership, the Board passed a motion to revisit the whole issue of actively pursuing ridership growth. The motion by Commissioner Shelley Carroll reads:

That TTC staff report back to the Commission by the third quarter of 2016 with a development plan for a comprehensive multi-year strategy to address current ridership stagnation and to achieve a steady rate of ridership growth annually thereafter.

This is particularly important going into the 2017 budget year when there will be pressure to accommodate both the start of new expenses for the Spadina subway extension (TYSSE) and strong growth in the Wheel-Trans budget. Debates and decisions about which options might be pursued to improve transit and attract riders need to have more background than the annual need for politicians to have something to announce. At the very least, changes should be thought out with specific benefits beyond the photo ops.

Emerging Transit Plans and the Scarborough Subway

The Board passed several motions arising from discussion of Toronto’s proposed new transit plan:

Moved by: Chair Colle

That staff report back to the Board in Q2 on: a) The roles and responsibilities of TTC and the City as it relates to transit expansion projects including the three phases of Planning, the Environmental Assessment/Transit Project Assessment Process and; Design & Construction;

b) mechanisms in place to ensure proper administrative governance of decision making; and

c) recommendations for improving the process.

Moved by: Chair Colle

Request the TTC CEO, Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planner review the feasibility of connecting the Eglinton Crosstown West LRT to Finch LRT through the Toronto Pearson Airport campus, and report to the June 28, 2016 meeting of the Executive Committee and the June 29th meeting of the TTC Board.

Moved by: Commissioner Carroll

Request the TTC CEO, Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planner review the feasibility of connecting the Eglinton Crosstown West LRT to Finch LRT through the Toronto Pearson Airport campus, on the understanding that further study would require an upfront contribution from other levels of government and the Airport Authority.

Moved by: Commissioner Mihevc

The TTC report separately ASAP on the issue of the connection between Queen’s Quay/Union Station, specifically addressing the state of the issue and possible strategies for effective connectivity.

Moved by: Commissioner Mihevc

That the TTC Commission support in principle the following motion: a. the TTC assert its desire to undertake the role of overall project manager for the Eglinton Crosstown East and West;

b. the TTC immediately undertake the work to amend the Environmental Assessments for the Eglinton Crosstown East and West;

c. the TTC develop a schedule for the delivery of the two projects for 2021, consistent with the opening of the Eglinton Crosstown; and further request TTC staff to report back on this motion at the TTC Commission following Council’s decision on Eglinton Crosstown East and West.

Moved by: Commissioner Mihevc

Endorse the direction recommended by the Chief Planner Subject to the following: that SOGR and base capital funding occur as a first priority including: – Additional buses and garages

– ATC on the Bloor/Danforth line

– Platform edge doors (to be evaluated first)

– Additional LRVs as required

– Elevators in all subways as per AODA requirements

Several of these overlap each other, but a clear thread through three of them was that work on the Eglinton Crosstown extensions should begin as soon as possible, preferably under the TTC’s direction. CEO Andy Byford was a tad reticent to take on the projects without investigating what his staff can add to their workload, and the Deputy City Manager, John Livey, echoed this with a concern that the City has no capacity for additional work on studies.

This raises two obvious questions. First, is it Byford’s intent that the TTC get out of a primary role for project advocacy and management; and second, if more money is about to shower down on Toronto from Ottawa, how can we start projects if we claim that we have no staff time available?

The connection through Pearson Airport has become more of an issue recently because the Airport Authority and other groups such as businesses and labour unions in the airport district are now actively pressing for better transit service to that centre as an economic hub, not just as a destination for air travel.

Mihevc’s query about the Union Station connection arises from proposals in some quarters that the Bay Street LRT tunnel be repurposed as a moving walkway from Union to Queens Quay. Imagine having everyone who transfers from the BD subway to the YUS do so through a moving walkway to Wellesley Station. That is roughly the distance involved and this could hardly be called an encouragement to take transit to the waterfront. The motives behind this are a combination of a desire to avoid the cost of expanding Union Station (although the cost of the enlarged loop is trivial compared to many other rapid transit projects), and to placate some who feel a through east-west route on Queens Quay would be preferable.

My hope is that this scheme is put to rest as soon as possible because it would represent a serious degradation of service to the waterfront.

With respect to “State of Good Repair”, the items in Mihevc’s list are major capital improvements, not strictly “SOGR”. Mihevc, along with Mayor Tory, seems to be unaware that the subway elevators project was moved “above the line” in the capital budget during the 2016 round, and as such is already funded within the City’s spending priorities. I will turn to the question of a “shopping list” for potential use of new federal transit monies in a future article.

Discussion of the Scarborough Subway took an intriguing turn when it was revealed that staff are still reviewing multiple possible routes from Kennedy to STC even though the plan appears to favour the McCowan alignment with a single station. This triggered a debate about the “surface” option using the SRT right-of-way and various tidbits fell out of that thread:

Realignment of Kennedy Station to directly feed into an SRT corridor alignment is too expensive and is not considered a practical alternative.

If the subway line were going up the RT corridor, it would have to make a wide turn from eastbound on Eglinton back to the northwest to reach the corridor and then surface somewhere between Kennedy and Lawrence East Stations. The line would descend again south of Ellesmere Station to make the turn under the GO Stouffville corridor and continue in a tunnel through to STC. Less than 2km of the alignment would actually be on “the surface”.

Other considerations that were not discussed included the length of time for an SRT shutdown during subway construction, and the limitations on co-existence of both the subway line and GO/RER in the same corridor allowing for the extra track GO requires and the space needed for any new GO stations.

The whole idea that this alignment still receives serious consideration is rather strange, and if the “SSE” is going to use the RT alignment, we may as well revisit the Scarborough LRT proposal while we are at it. It appears that this work is primarily to reinforce previous reviews concluding that an RT alignment for the subway is not practical or cost-effective.

New Streetcars

Andy Byford reported that Bombardier intends to ramp up to four new streetcars per month beginning in April 2016, and he seemed a bit more hopeful than usual that this delivery schedule would actually be met.

The Board approved proceeding with reconstruction of more of the old cars to tide the system over until Flexitys arrive with the presumed funding for this work coming from damage claims against Bombardier.