Undead
Senior Member
Yeah, exactly. Nothing to do with who supposedly takes or doesn't take transit.
Well it kind of does. If the board members don’t experience these problems on the TTC, they think all is well and good. There’s no pressure on the CEO or management to make changes to improve things.Yeah, exactly. Nothing to do with who supposedly takes or doesn't take transit.
I think the original comment is referring to the TTC board members and your comment is about general ridership?This is misleading and needlessly libelous. The TTC is well used by middle and upper middle class people in significant contrast to many/most American transit properties.
In fairness......that is only about half of the supervisory staff.Roads (City Transportation) mostly causes issues by how it manages left-hand turns and transit priority where offered.
The TTC (insert a very large eye roll here) refuses to equip its staff (inspectors/supervisors) with the means to actually know where the buses are. They would have to use their own personal phones and an app.
Watch the next time you see an inspector.......say during a subway interruption, notice the absence of tablets and the presence of a old-school notepad.
The TTC has the ability to real-time track vehicle and headway using Vision (software installed at no small expense); it can even track how crowded vehicles are in real time.
But since the staff charged with managing the system can't generally see that data............... Sigh.
In fairness......that is only about half of the supervisory staff.
The other half are located in offices, and sit behind computers that are displaying that information.
Of course, that half also can't see what the actual situation is on the ground (traffic, weather, crowding outside of vehicles), and so they're just as blind as the on-street staff. It's just a different sort of blind.
Dan
No, because I'm not sure it's ever been documented that TTC board members don't take transit (we're not including the Fords here). We hear this claim often on this board, but is it actually true? I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge/retract if it can be demonstrated to be true.I think the original comment is referring to the TTC board members and your comment is about general ridership?
A good bad example with the previous TTC board is former-Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong from this article from 2015, at this link. Especially, his #1.No, because I'm not sure it's ever been documented that TTC board members don't take transit (we're not including the Fords here). We hear this claim often on this board, but is it actually true? I'm perfectly happy to acknowledge/retract if it can be demonstrated to be true.
1
My car
I’m a car guy. I used to have a Porsche 928 S4 and a BMW 328. Those days are gone (I’m a family man now), but I love driving alone in my Subaru Forester. I come into the city from North York every morning and watch the sun glint off the towers.
It's not configured for notifications to supervisory staff to best of my knowledge, no.I had an exchange w/someone who should know....... about how supervisors are notified of vehicles being off-headway/schedule. The impression I was given is that VISION is not currently enabled to do automatic notifications to staff.
I was told this would have staff running off their feet. I cannot personally attest to how the system is or is not being used in 'offices'; but perhaps you can shed light.
It strikes me that there are nowhere near enough supervisors to have each stare at buses on maps all-shift. As such, I assume VISION can and should be used to identify bunching, highly irregular headway (not +/- one or two minutes) etc, so a supervisor would know where intervention is required.
It's not configured for notifications to supervisory staff to best of my knowledge, no.
But the staff at the desks will have multiple lines arranged in front of them with the various runs shown on the line - and there is colour-coding to the state of each vehicle vis-a-vis the schedule (as well as several other states that the driver can activate).
The system does also show each driver where their location/time is compared to the vehicle ahead and behind, as well as a delta to the schedule. It does allow the supervisors to send messages to individual vehicles, to all vehicles on a single line, or apparently to vehicles in a specific geographic region - these were not something that was capable with CIS.
VISION is incredibly powerful, but much like you I feel that it isn't close to being used to its full potential.
Dan
Oh dear, that's not good if ALL councillors are new to the board - complete loss of knowledge! Bradford was pretty good, I thought.From http://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2023.ST1.1
Just wondering what sort of public transit background they have. Like do they actually use the TTC on a regular basis before today?
There have certainly been TTC Commissioners (usually NOT the Councillors) who have known what questions to ask and kept the staff focused but I think most of them have little idea of what is happening and how best to improve things. Now Council is so small and because Councillors have never really looked at all the things they 'should' do and made serious efforts to prune back their responsibilities to match the available time: they are REALLY busy. Being on the TTC Board is just another 'job'.Steve Munro hasn’t been a fan of the board, and not once has he lauded their institutional knowledge, so I’m unsure what he thinks we’re losing.
Separately, I do agree that management needs a swift kick in the pants and a heads-down focus on operations.
There has been a number of councilors who have asked the tough questions, requesting reports including non councilors. A number of chairs had TTC foot in the fire for various things, but never keep those feet in the fire like it should happen.There have certainly been TTC Commissioners (usually NOT the Councillors) who have known what questions to ask and kept the staff focused but I think most of them have little idea of what is happening and how best to improve things. Now Council is so small and because Councillors have never really looked at all the things they 'should' do and made serious efforts to prune back their responsibilities to match the available time: they are REALLY busy. Being on the TTC Board is just another 'job'.