Everything is faster than the TTC
by graeme
So, I rode my bike to work for the first time today. Frakkin’ awesome. Beautiful weather, beautiful lake shore and that great feeling you get while doing something that might actually be extending your life, as opposed to hastening your journey to the grave.
But here’s the thing: it took me 30 minutes, door to door. It takes me about 20 minutes to drive, given decent traffic. But if I were to take the subway, which I do frequently, it would take me 45 minutes on a good day. That is, if the subway isn’t inexplicably delayed, doesn’t break down, or the $%#^#& union goes on strike.
Which leaves me to wonder. Why the hell does our transit system suck so bad? If we’re serious about getting cars of the street, we need to deliver some real value through the TTC. Like it needs to be faster. Or cheaper. Or somehow better. People seldom engage in society-wide changes in behaviour out of the goodness of their hearts. Social change is driven by better alternatives.
So, what to do? From my way of thinking, the idea of transit as a public utility has had its day. Sure, we could make it work, but that requires money. And to get more money, we need more taxes. None of the pantywaists who run the show seem willing to take that particular political hit, so we as citizens are forced to find our own solutions. I say privatize the sucker. Let’s get some competition going in the transit world to improve efficiency, increase capacity and control cost. To preserve equity in the system, the government can provide subsidies or even free passes to kids, students, low income individuals and seniors. Simple.
But in the end, I’ll probably still just take my bike. Let’s face it: I need the exercise.
Re: TTC — Hear hear.
Re: the bike — I don’t even know who you are anymore.
There is no private enterprise who would buy up the TTC or run it without significant government subsidy. Back in 1945, most public transit agencies in North America were privately run. By 1965, almost none of them were. This wasn’t a case of socialist fervour, this was a case of public transit succumbing to competition from the private automobile. Municipalities had little choice but to buy up the bankrupt systems and run them a social services, because the alternative was to do away with public transit altogether.
And it’s worth noting that the TTC requires the least amount of public transit subsidy per rider. Their farebox recovery ratio of 75% is the highest on the continent. Even New York City only recovers 62% of its operating costs from the farebox. And there isn’t a single municipal public transit agency in North America whose capital expenditures aren’t subsidized.
The TTC needs a lot of improvement. It’s about to carry 463 million passengers this year — the same number as it carried in its record-breaking year in 1988 — but it’s about to do so with 300 fewer surface vehicles. So, there’s no rocket science involved. We want better service? We want faster service? We’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and pay for it more out of our taxes. Because it’s not an operation that can pay for itself. But it is a benefit to city taxpayers at large. It pulls tens of thousands of automobiles off the road already each day (at least half of all TTC passengers have access to a car but choose not to use it) and it is giving access to the city for people who wouldn’t have such access otherwise.
These changes are slowly happening. After years of underfunding, the various levels of government are restoring subsidies and we are adding more buses and streetcars and subways, but fixing 20 years of underfunding isn’t going to happen overnight.
Hey, Mr Political Scientist: are there studies that relate a country’s geography to its success in implementing federal socially-funded programs, such as public transit, healthcare, etc?
Do small European countries have better train systems because every town in the country can be reached from every other town by rail? France has strikes every other day, maybe because Parisians and Provencals don’t see eye-to-eye?
I think many of Canada’s socially-funded ventures have problems due to our country’s small population spread over such a large, diverse area. Sure, we may both live in Ontario, but I doubt my daily concerns are the same as a person in Moose Factory. Why would someone up north want to pay taxes so I can ride a subway to work in Toronto?
I like to slag off the Tories for downloading costs onto the cities, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t have to upload all our tax revenue! I vote for a congestion tax similar to London’s, which would go toward public transit and bike lanes, and not to funding highway repair around Hudson Bay.
“Their farebox recovery ratio of 75% is the highest on the continent. Even New York City only recovers 62% of its operating costs from the farebox.”
I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that it’s so bloody expensive to ride the TTC. Buying a MetroPass is prohibitive unless you actually ride every single day in the month. I’d argue that if they could reduce that cost, they’d make it back on the sheer number of people buying them for convenience (I would buy a $60, maybe even $70 MetroPass even if I only rode a few times a week).
I’m sure you’ll have all kinds of economic refutations for this, but it’s a model adopted by several European cities (even New York has a more affordable, not to mention more convenient system) and it seems to work for them.
Dropping fares would be a good idea, but it won’t come free. We know this because the TTC did do this back in 2006, essentially, when they made the monthly pass transferrable. That provoked a buying spree among patrons which the TTC could not keep up with for the next three months.
Revenues did not tank as the sceptics had feared, but the TTC did not make back its costs in terms of additional sales. It costs a fair chunk of change to move people, and the only real way to save money is to pack more people onto the vehicles, which of course makes the service less comfortable.
However, lowering the cost of public transit has been identified as a Good Thing ™ if we want to encourage more people to take public transit. It’s just that it’s going to come at a cost. Right now, the TTC has been trying to follow a Ridership Growth Strategy, which bulks up ridership by following some simple, common-sense ideas: put more buses and streetcars on the streets, run them at more hours of the day. Lower fares is part of that. The Commission has not been able to follow the lower fares part of the RGS because government support hasn’t been there, but we added more buses this past February and, this November, all bus and streetcar routes will run whenever the subway is open (instead of cutting out after rush hour or during the early evening, or whathaveyou), at 20 minute intervals or better. If more money becomes available, I expect we will look at some reduction in Metropass pricing, to the levels that you would like (a $70 Metropass was mentioned as a goal).
“Revenues did not tank as the sceptics had feared, but the TTC did not make back its costs in terms of additional sales.”
To clarify: there WERE plenty of additional sales. But the added revenues did not keep up with the additional costs of ridership, so the TTC definitely lost money on the deal. Riders won, though, and that’s the important thing.
One last thing, Matej: you are right to say that the TTC’s high farebox recovery is a sign of underfunding more than it is a sign of capitalist efficiency. It means, as you say, that buses are more crowded, and people are paying too much for the privilege, and it’s not really a thing to be proud of. It’s worth noting that the TTC’s farebox recovery used to be even higher. Back 1997, the agency reached an astonishing high of 82%. Since then, the commission has been able to add more service between rush hours.
But in making my point about Toronto’s farebox recovery being higher than New York, I was pointing out to Nunc why privatization isn’t the solution — at least, not in terms of selling the whole thing off and expecting some private business to provide some innovative service without subsidy. No business would do that, because it’s a fallacy to suggest that public transit doesn’t have competition. It does: it’s called the private automobile. And that’s been kicking public transit’s ass up and down the continent since the end of the Second World War. What we have left is being run not as a business, but as a means of augmenting the capacity of our road networks, and to provide mobility for those who do not have access to cars.
James, thanks so much for your responses. That definitely sheds some more light on the situation for me.
But I can’t say I completely disagree with Nunc. Sure, if a business were to step in and run transit the way it’s running now, it probably wouldn’t work. It’s an outdated model. What we need is someone to step in and completely rethink transit: what it does, what it should do, how it runs, everything. And the only way to achieve that, in my mind, is to privatize.
It won’t happen quickly, or maybe even smoothly, but I think change for the better is possible and don’t think keeping it public is the answer.
The benefits of municipal transit are primarily social (providing mobility, augmenting road capacity, reducing emissions), and are associated with the same sort of public support municipalities and other levels of government are giving to roads (again, providing mobility). Most of our roads are paid for out of our taxes — in Canada, primarily our property taxes. A private company could find little, I think, to derive a profitable benefit from that without government subsidy.
There have been experiments in privatization of municipal transit agencies before, in the United Kingdom, and the companies were unable to find a model that could work without government subsidy, or provide a useful service. Instead, what happened was that there were so many agencies competing for rush hour service that there was a lot of capacity but very little profit, and nobody wanted to take up the task of unprofitable late night services, so service wasn’t provided.
So I have to say that I’m quite skeptical of that private enterprise could be innovative enough to find a whole new market reason for transit to exist here in North America where transit is at an even further disadvantage against the car. Transit is something that, if we want it, we’re simply just going to have to pay for, just like sidewalks.
Of course, I don’t happen to believe that sidewalks — or roads, for that matter — should be owned and operated by the government either (especially given the state of them most of the time), but that’s another debate for another day.
But back to transit, I don’t think the argument that just because it failed in the past it’s doomed to fail in the future is a very strong one.
You also say that the benefits of transit are primarily social, and I have a big problem with someone else deciding what’s best for me, especially when lumping everyone together and assuming the same things are best for all people. I don’t, for example, think there’s anything wrong with cars or with people driving. We just need better roads (and better cars), but the government doesn’t seem to be stepping up (on either account).
As this debate gets closer to first principles, I’m starting to see that we’re ultimately doomed to disagree. But I’m enjoying the discourse nonetheless.
Good point. I’ll close with my last point, then, that when Nunc asks for a privatized alternative to transit in Toronto, he does already have it. It’s the private automobile. Public transit exists to fill in the gaps among people for whom this isn’t a realistic option.
Here’s another alternative; move to the ‘burbs and take the Go train. I can’t get out of this dysfuntional, backwards logic city fast enough.
Thanks all, for this excellent debate. Great thoughts all around
There is a huge lack of creative thinking at the TTC, because it is run as an extractive “charity” for the poor – the young, the old, the car-less, cleaning-ladies, etc, and to be sure, some of the middle-class as well – by self-important suits who probably never take the TTC themselves, driving or chauffeur- driven wherever they go.
I would also like to point out that every car driver should be happy to support the TTC because every passenger on the bus is not in another car in front of him on the road.
I have a few goofy ideas of my own, and I’m sure some more grounded individuals can add more and better -
A big problem is the totally underpopulated vehicles away from rush hours. We could try something like making every two tickets – there and back – be a day pass, so that people are encouraged to keep on taking the bus all day, not just the trip to work, because all the rest is free.
Change the crazy, subjective system of transfers to a fixed time ticket, two or three hours, so people could make a round trip, including some shopping or whatever and return home on one fare.
My favourite: a turnstile lottery. At random times someone pushes through, the gong sounds, and a pile of loonies spills into their lap. Make the system fun.
A bar car on the subway. Make it a happier system – within limits.
I like some of these ideas. And, you’re right: TTC management is sometimes too conservative for its own good.
As to a couple of your points: Time Transfers are an idea whose time has come, and the TTC is testing them out on the St. Clair route. We should all nudge them to make this system wide. One thing it _could_ do is save money in transfer production (one transfer for the whole city), and could help cut down on illegal use of older transfers to get a free ride on the bus.
And eventually, the TTC should adopt a smart card system. Given the particulars of the TTC, it should probably be a swipe-on, swipe-off affair, where your card is charged $X for every hour on the system, up to a daily maximum, after which point your card would be a day pass.