Toronto Union Pearson Express | ?m | ?s | Metrolinx | MMM Group Limited

ssiguy2 said:
But would you have to build a whole new station? Could they not move some of the track over and lengthen the current platform?
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even if GTAA gave them more room.......not sure how/where in its current location that would work/fit.......and if the goal is to fit GO trains the expansion you are talking about is very large.
 
ssiguy2 said:
When it comes to white elephants, Mirabel hasn't got anything on the UPX.
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That's a rather silly assertion - Mirabel cost $2B adjusted, and it would not have been such a white elephant if they had closed YUL. That is a clear instance of doing something half-baked and expecting full results.

On another note - the rationale for running GO as it is directly into the airport is kind of questionable - as mentioned, you'd have to scale everything to accordingly, and that from a bunch complaining about the high cost and low ridership of UPX? Let's get real here.

AoD
 
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APTA-2048 said:
Something as unscientific as spotting one day between 7.30am to 9.30am is getting way too much attention.
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Seems that Metrolinx echoed this.

Metrolinx not worried about UP Express ridership

Metrolinx is maintaining confidence in its new Union to Pearson Express, calling a count of empty seats by a TTC users’ advocacy group during rush hour “faulty”.

TTCRiders says its members tracked how many people got on and off the UP Express at Pearson Airport between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. By the group’s count, there were 14 riders per train, about 8% of their capacity.

Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins stressed Friday that the count came from one of the service’s four stations over a two hour period in a nearly 20-hour operating day.

While the window of time chosen may be a busy one on roads, highways, and commuter transit, Aikins says it is a “low period” for air travel. The peak period for flyers, she says is 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
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nfitz said:
Pearson only has about 85,000 passengers a day. Many, if not most aren't heading to downtown Toronto. What would you expect the ridership would be?
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That's a sensible way of looking at the issue. It would help to have some data on how many of those 85,000 passengers are travelling to/from the downtown to get a sense for what a reasonable market share would be.

Back before the opening, UPE was making claims about taxing X cars per hour off the highways. I don't know if there was hard analysis behind those numbers, but one good question would be - are they meeting that claim? ML's argument that mornings aren't peak times for air travel suggests that the billion spent hasn't impacted Toronto's morning commute - westbound Gardiner to 427 northbound is at a standstill most mornings.

Another reference point would be the anticipated ridership for any of the LRT projects under way in the GTA. All will have peaks and valleys, and empty seats at some hours. All cost about the same amount as UPE (give or take). OK, give UPE a handicap on the premise that Toronto needs the cachet of transit linking downtown to airport. In the end - are we moving as many people on UPE as if we'd spent the money on any of these lines first? Does 3250-5000 riders a day look promising compared to if we'd spent the money on some of the yet-to-be-launched LRT lines (e.g. Jane Street) instead?

Lastly, since the absolute fare may be creating needless annoyance, let's talk cost recovery instead of ridership. How close are we to the intended break even point? What's the per-passenger subsidy - how does it compare to say the Sheppard Subway? What if we cancelled service on the light hours and just gave every customer in that period a free limo ride to the airport ?

FWIW I was researching Heathrow Express for an upcoming trip, and discovered that they have cut back to a 30-minute headway after 10PM. They don't have any reluctance to save a buck when ridership is lighter.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
That's a sensible way of looking at the issue. It would help to have some data on how many of those 85,000 passengers are travelling to/from the downtown to get a sense for what a reasonable market share would be.

Back before the opening, UPE was making claims about taxing X cars per hour off the highways. I don't know if there was hard analysis behind those numbers, but one good question would be - are they meeting that claim? ML's argument that mornings aren't peak times for air travel suggests that the billion spent hasn't impacted Toronto's morning commute - westbound Gardiner to 427 northbound is at a standstill most mornings.

Another reference point would be the anticipated ridership for any of the LRT projects under way in the GTA. All will have peaks and valleys, and empty seats at some hours. All cost about the same amount as UPE (give or take). OK, give UPE a handicap on the premise that Toronto needs the cachet of transit linking downtown to airport. In the end - are we moving as many people on UPE as if we'd spent the money on any of these lines first? Does 3250-5000 riders a day look promising compared to if we'd spent the money on some of the yet-to-be-launched LRT lines (e.g. Jane Street) instead?

Lastly, since the absolute fare may be creating needless annoyance, let's talk cost recovery instead of ridership. How close are we to the intended break even point? What's the per-passenger subsidy - how does it compare to say the Sheppard Subway? What if we cancelled service on the light hours and just gave every customer in that period a free limo ride to the airport ?

FWIW I was researching Heathrow Express for an upcoming trip, and discovered that they have cut back to a 30-minute headway after 10PM. They don't have any reluctance to save a buck when ridership is lighter.

- Paul
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It was silly to premise UPX on anything but what it is - express service from YYZ to Union/Downtown. Everything else is fluff. Now having said that, comparing it to local transit is also kind of pointless in that context. You may find other uses for that 500M, of course, but at this point I don't think one need to provide any apologies for having built it.

To put it bluntly - this could very well be an instance of not all riders are equal.

AoD
 
crs1026 said:
Back before the opening, UPE was making claims about taxing X cars per hour off the highways. I don't know if there was hard analysis behind those numbers, but one good question would be - are they meeting that claim? ML's argument that mornings aren't peak times for air travel suggests that the billion spent hasn't impacted Toronto's morning commute - westbound Gardiner to 427 northbound is at a standstill most mornings.
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Their claim about taking 1.2 million cars off the road in its first year was just based on how many riders they projected. They (as far as I know) have never stated publicly how many riders they projected in year one.....just that it would grow to 5k a day over a few years. If they are already at 3,250 riders a day that projects to 1.2 million over a year....even if you assumed that each of those people would otherwise travel as pairs that is already 600k "trips".....so well on their way. (using real simple, unofficial math)
 
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rbt said:
This was a long time ago and obviously both very anecdotal and with an incomplete picture.

My employer was acquired by SBC about 14 months prior to this.

A few SBC executives (before they bought AT&T) took a trip up from Dallas and Virgina on company jets to Pearson to give us (and Amdocs) a rah-rah speech. They returned back same day as expected, though much later than anticipated. We were expecting expansion due to recently leasing ~3x additional space and ramping up HR at their direction about 2 months before their visit, this was mentioned during their speech. In a more private setting traffic was discussed at some length.

Within 3 weeks of the visit many employees began receiving offers to relocate to US locations, and the recently acquired space was put up to sublet. So, they kept the important staff, with increased pay, and the technology. They ditched Toronto/Canada at a loss of ~$2B due to the rapid exit from both my employer (since defunct having moved most operations to Virginia) and Amdocs.

I truly believe that a helicopter service from Pearson, similar to Hong Kong Sky Shuttle, to a downtown location would have had a very different outcome, though I can't know that for certain obviously. UPX is our bare minimum premium transportation option.

What I do know is Toronto regularly tops the "great cities to invest in" lists (excluding the transportation category) but we don't actually get a ton of foreign companies setting up shop here in a big way. I've not seen a public study on why Toronto isn't getting large-scale foreign investment, but I don't doubt that transportation is a big and highly visible part of the problem.

It's going to take several TTC, GO, and other options at Pearson to approach the modal splits we see at Domodedovo or Heathrow; and those options collectively need to cater to both the floor cleaning people and satisfy the people who chartered/owns a private jet.
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Sorry, but that's ridiculous. There's absolutely no way, at the beginning of a major Canadian recession and major meltdown in equities on both side of the border, that not having a helipad in downtown Toronto was the reason for shutting down the operations of a tiny (for SBC) newly-acquired division and moving the parts/people they wanted to the good ol' US of A. There were several hundred other reasons ahead of that one, and the fact that American executives were not... completely truthful... with staff before the cuts started is evidence of nothing more than the two-faced character of most publicly-owned company executives.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Sorry, but that's ridiculous. There's absolutely no way, at the beginning of a major Canadian recession and major meltdown in equities on both side of the border, that not having a helipad in downtown Toronto was the reason for shutting down the operations of a tiny (for SBC) newly-acquired division and moving the parts/people they wanted to the good ol' US of A. There were several hundred other reasons ahead of that one, and the fact that American executives were not... completely truthful... with staff before the cuts started is evidence of nothing more than the two-faced character of most publicly-owned company executives.
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seriously the real reasons were 1) no NFL team, 2) curling on the sports channels and then, and only then, 3) no helipad ;)
 
Just for curiosity's sake, I wanted to figure out how I would get to the airport right now. My office is on the U of T campus. The options:
  1. UPX will take 52 minutes. I would take the 510 to the Bloor Line to the UPX at Dundas West Station. So that's 2 transfers including the complicated one at Bloor. I have a Presto card so it's $15.20 for the UPX and $3 for the TTC, or a total of $18.20 per person.
  2. Pure TTC. I take the 510 to the Bloor Line to the 192. The TTC trip planner says it would take 58 minutes and again require 2 transfers. Total fare $3 per person.
  3. Uber: I just did the fare estimate, it's $28-$34 and will take 29 minutes with traffic (or 24 minutes in an ideal world). No transfers, door-to-door.
  4. Taxi: should take 29 minutes as well. With the traffic it's somewhere in the $55-$60 range plus tip.
The decision process is pretty obvious here. If it's just me travelling alone, and I'm paying on my own dime, I'll just take the TTC. $3, under an hour, done. Now, I have no love of the 192 bus, and I find the drivers tend to take breaks when I'm cutting it close, so if the UPX were say, half the price, I would probably take that instead. I'd get to the airport for around $10, which seems perfectly reasonable. If I'm travelling with someone, it's cheaper, faster, and more comfortable to take Uber. If I'm on an expense account, I'll choose Uber or a taxi every time…even with moderately heavy traffic, it's probably still faster than UPX or TTC. Just as a note, I take the TTC even when I travel for work, because while it's not my money, it's my budget as an academic, so I want to make it go as far as possible.

Here's where the UPX has a real potential though, if they halved the fares and doubled ridership, not only would they not lose any money, they'd also be doing a public good. I wish they'd experiment a bit more with the pricing. And the non-presto pricing is just predatory and silly.
 
Napoleon said:
Just for curiosity's sake, I wanted to figure out how I would get to the airport right now. My office is on the U of T campus. The options:
  1. UPX will take 52 minutes. I would take the 510 to the Bloor Line to the UPX at Dundas West Station. So that's 2 transfers including the complicated one at Bloor. I have a Presto card so it's $15.20 for the UPX and $3 for the TTC, or a total of $18.20 per person.
  2. Pure TTC. I take the 510 to the Bloor Line to the 192. The TTC trip planner says it would take 58 minutes and again require 2 transfers. Total fare $3 per person.
  3. Uber: I just did the fare estimate, it's $28-$34 and will take 29 minutes with traffic (or 24 minutes in an ideal world). No transfers, door-to-door.
  4. Taxi: should take 29 minutes as well. With the traffic it's somewhere in the $55-$60 range plus tip.
The decision process is pretty obvious here. If it's just me travelling alone, and I'm paying on my own dime, I'll just take the TTC. $3, under an hour, done. Now, I have no love of the 192 bus, and I find the drivers tend to take breaks when I'm cutting it close, so if the UPX were say, half the price, I would probably take that instead. I'd get to the airport for around $10, which seems perfectly reasonable. If I'm travelling with someone, it's cheaper, faster, and more comfortable to take Uber. If I'm on an expense account, I'll choose Uber or a taxi every time…even with moderately heavy traffic, it's probably still faster than UPX or TTC. Just as a note, I take the TTC even when I travel for work, because while it's not my money, it's my budget as an academic, so I want to make it go as far as possible.

Here's where the UPX has a real potential though, if they halved the fares and doubled ridership, not only would they not lose any money, they'd also be doing a public good. I wish they'd experiment a bit more with the pricing. And the non-presto pricing is just predatory and silly.
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Well, that only goes so far. So, what you're saying is that they should cut the fares to attract riders, then raise them again once they're at full capacity, right?

But no, no you're not. You're saying at that point they should continue to subsidize you (oh, and the rest of the public) because... why?

Or, they could ramp up slowly, giving them some time for teething problems with low capacity, build up to full capacity after a year instead of a month, and make twice as much money than lowering the fare now, permanently. It seems pretty obvious which way to go for me.

Also, because of the huge numbers of people that seem to not want to pay for any transit, anywhere, in the GTA, the raising of fares once they get to capacity would probably face an even higher level of pitchforks & torches. Metrolinx probably thought that through, too, and decided to go with the current fare policy.
 
Why the focus on "trains empty during pan am games" wouldn't the expectation be that the majority of people visiting the city due to the Pan Am games would arrive somewhere close to the opening ceremonies and leave somewhere close to the end of the games? Why are we expecting high demand when we are mid games?

Second ttcriders methodology: they did their count from 7:30 am to 9:30 am. Were they all inbound trains, all outbound trains, some inbound some outbound??? Were the counts done at the boarding station, or the deboarding station.
  • Let's assume for a moment that they did their count at Union of riders getting off the train (first issue is that the count excludes the Bloor and Weston stations.) and backtracking the 25 min UP ride, + time to disembark your flight, claim luggage, get through customs and walk to (find) the UPX station lets estimate another hour plus (I'm just pulling numbers from my head).
  • That would mean a passenger getting off at Union at 7:30 am would have been on a flight that arrived around 6 am, so our 2 hr window now becomes 6 - 8am flight arrivals.
  • Taking a look at Pearsons Flight Schedule page here about 45 flights were scheduled to arrive between 6 am and 7 am, another 45 between 7 and 8 am for a total of 90 flights
  • At an average plane capacity of 110 seats and a load factor of 85% (again numbers just pulled from my head) is 8415 potential passengers during that period.
  • Assume 30% of passengers at pearson are bound for downtown, that's 2524 potential UP riders
  • it's the 1pm and 3pm hours where arrivals begin to pick up.
 
TTCriders methodology does seem suspect. Not only did they chose a non-peak period for airport travel. They chose a period when there is also frequent GO Trains coming from Weston and Bloor stations, so there'd be little to no travellers coming from those locations (though probably few at the best of times).

I'd generally assume that there's no conspiracy, and that it's simply ignorance and incompetence - though it wouldn't be the first time that TTCriders have cherry picked; that group doesn't seems for more reactionary than progressive.
 
Japan have had half-price promos for their expensive airport express. Perhaps Metrolinx could experiment with that, as a marketing thing.

In retrospect -- they probably could have gone with ree UPX rides during the PanAm time though -- given the complaint that occured by a visitor that the PanAM free transit didn't include UPX. It would have been great word-of-mouth advertising if an airplane ticket with Pan Am dates would have been a free UPX ride.

Earlier posts indicate that the UPX breakeven point seems to be closer to ~7000 people a day. Which is still something like slightly above quarter-full trains average. So we may have recurring complaints about empty trains. But they do seem a bit more empty in the mornings than I'd expected. It looks more 'normal' during Pearson peak.
 
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My analysis some time ago suggested that a $20 average fare should just about cover capital and operations cost at 5000 daily riders. I can't imagine that Metrolinx would set a goal of 5000, knowing that would be operating at a loss, given that they've always been very vocal that this was to be a service that paid for itself.
 
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