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

TheTigerMaster said:
This is ridiculous. I say shut the thing down until we figure out how to better use it, or until Metrolinx demonstates a plan to get that subsidy down to something reasonable. $86 subsidy per passenger! What an incredible waste of money.
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Wow. That's a bizarre thought. What else in the city would you like to shut down?
 
doady said:
The page says $52.26 subsidy per passenger, not $86. But revenue is a whopping $31.84 per passenger. Wow. That's great, right?

I think all this really tells us is there aren't a lot of passengers. I don't see the point of using this stat to complain about subsidies.

Government subsidies for transit have been increased massively for over 10 years now. During the Mike Harris Era, the TTC had 80% cost recovery ratio, but now it's closer to 70%. GO had 85% in 2004, but now its 75%. Mississauga Transit had 62% cost recovery in 2003, but cost recovery ratio fell to 45% in 2013 - a whopping 17% decline in the cost recovery ratio in just 10 years. All because of Mike Harris' absence. UPX just seems like a scapegoat here.

I don't even like the UPX, I never supported it, but that blog post by Steve Munro is still irritating to me. I don't understand how someone who claims to be a transit advocate can write such garbage. UPX is bad because it won't "break even". The other GO lines were "drained" of $39 million this past year. Do people actually agree with this?
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I'm okay with transit subsidies. I am not okay with a $52 subsidy per ride for any transit service (excluding wheel trans). Whatever value the UPX provides the people of Ontario is not worth $52
 
doady said:
The page says $52.26 subsidy per passenger, not $86. But revenue is a whopping $31.84 per passenger. Wow. That's great, right?
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There's something a bit bizarre in this post. How can the mean revenue per passenger be higher than the maximum fare that was ever charged?

I'm also sincerely worried about their high operating costs. 63 million per year is $172,602 per day. There are 78 trips in each direction per day for a total of 156 trips per day.

That means each trip costs about $1,100. Let's say there's an engineer and 2 conductors on every single trip working for half an hour and let's pay them each $70 per hour including benefits...that only works out to $105 in labor costs. What's the other $1,000. Diesel fuel can't be that expensive for just one run. There can't be that much overhead elsewhere. What am I missing?
 
Tulse said:
That seems insane to me, especially as the market they were aiming for was rather upscale (and that for that amount of money you could simply hand out limo vouchers).
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I see a path to seeing UPX having similar subsidy as the rest of GO. Pre-farecut, this was abysmal -- missed the park

Currently, at 10,000 riders a day (which it sometimes achieves on certain days), it seems to be doing better cost recovery that day (~$10 subsidy) than the historic Sheppard subway average. Those abysmal subsidy numbers only show up when you include pre-fare-cut ridership.

And the plateau isnt reached yet. Even today not all peak trains are as sardined on *every* train as the subway -- and seats are still available earlier/later than on the subway. Still room to pack peak period via peak extension and a little aisle sardining,

Steps during electrification (which may or may not include train capacity and lengths, and possible frequency upon properly tendered USRC redo) will be needed to mitigate the design mistakes made under mistaken high-fare assumptions.

It is here, it has mitigatable potential, let's fix it...
 
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LNahid2000 said:
The difference is that the UP Express was pitched with the idea that it would break even within a few years. When you set such high expectations, you will be criticized more.
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Sure....but the plan was to continue to charge "premium fares" and when ridership grew to the expected levels at those fares there would be a break even situation....but no, a few months into the operation and under public criticism the politicians did what politicians do...they told the operators to cut the fares and now the thing has no hope of breaking even.

Metrolinx makes mistakes all the time but i have a lot of sympathy for them here....they were told to operate an airport line at breakeven...came up with a multi year plan (and fare structure that could do that)....after a few months they were told to cut the fares....now people are up in arms criticizing them that they are using too much of their subsidy on this line.....all seems like political mistakes more than anything.
 
The Province subsidize the TTC an average of $75,000,000 per year. UPX's subsidy is $40,000,000 per year. I find this really hard to defend, and as a transit user, it upsets me that this boutique service for airport travellers is getting 53% of the subsidy that the third largest transit system in North America receives.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
Are you talking cost recovery or ridership recovery?
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Per-rider operating subsidy.

It falls to roughly 10 dollars per rider on the highest traffic days UPX is now experiencing. Still high, but Sheppard has seen worse in many earlier years. Room to improve, as unlike Sheppard, demand has not yet plateaued.

Simplified round math for readers, trunctated to easy numbers:
80 dollar operating cost per rider for 2500 daily riders (pre-farecut)
20 dollars operating cost per rider for 10000 daily riders (their current best days): 1/4 cost for 4x
Then subtract 10 dollar average fare payment, you get 10 dollar subsidy.

Soon, the 8200/day will be 10000/day average, as the graph momentum suggest plateau will occur above 10,000 riders a day.

Agreed -- Not good enough for 2025, but I can live with that for 2017 "on the journey" of fixing UPX economics. 2017 will be the first full year that matters going forward, more GO management operating structure (fewer UPX executives), the ridership increase, and the low fares.

A very valuable ridership lesson for Metrolinx, which must be applied during their Fare Integration Study.
 
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How do we get to such a high operating cost?

Twelve crews per day x 2 people x 8 hours x 1600 hours/year/worker - about 44 RTE's. At $150K per person (not their take-home wage, I'm 'burdening' it to reflect overheads eg pension benefits training sickness) that's about $6.57M in labour costs

Same number of off-train staff (gulp, there's a problem) at $100K/year - $4.4M

156 daily runs times 30 km times 4L fuel per km times 365 days - 6.8M litres of fuel, or about $8M

Presto surcharge on fares - 5% - $2M

Where is the rest going?

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
How do we get to such a high operating cost?

Twelve crews per day x 2 people x 8 hours x 1600 hours/year/worker - about 44 RTE's. At $150K per person (not their take-home wage, I'm 'burdening' it to reflect overheads eg pension benefits training sickness) that's about $6.57M in labour costs

Same number of off-train staff (gulp, there's a problem) at $100K/year - $4.4M

156 daily runs times 30 km times 4L fuel per km times 365 days - 6.8M litres of fuel, or about $8M

Presto surcharge on fares - 5% - $2M

Where is the rest going?

- Paul
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From my years of experiance in doing hourly rate, you need to include everything that is needed to run a company from maintance, buying things, insurance, wages, hydro, gas, phone and the list goes on. Once you have that cost, you break it down by the number of days you operate and then the hours you operate. Then you need to figure out the manpower to cover the hourly cost. For business that operate 24hr, they are already pickup up the full cost based on an 12hr day in the first place since they have to pay hydro, gas, insurance and taxes for the other 12hrs or days close in the first place. The only extra cost to remain open the extra 12hr is wages only.

You are missing a number of things, but $2,100 qouted above is out of line and the $600 I use is about nornal using APTA break down. Where is your overhead cost as everything has one regardless how you break cost down?

One can't take the cost of building a line in a lump sum to arrive at a number, but one that is spread over X years depending on what being used since they all have different life cycle. Metrolinx has to pay running right to use CP/CN tracks, there is a cost to do so that has to be added, but not for UPX line.
 
mdrejhon said:
I see a path to seeing UPX having similar subsidy as the rest of GO. Pre-farecut, this was abysmal -- missed the park

Currently, at 10,000 riders a day (which it sometimes achieves on certain days), it seems to be doing better cost recovery that day (~$10 subsidy) than the historic Sheppard subway average.
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It's tough to get an accurate estimate of operating subsidies per line, due to the TTC's integrated multimodal system. But we can estimate Sheppard Line's operating costs

We know that the TTC's subway annual operating and capital expenditures are $505 Million per year. Sheppard Line is approximately 7.7% of the total length of the Subway/RT system, so lets attribute 7.7% of subway annual expenditures to Sheppard Line: that would be $38.8 Million/year in annual expenditures of the Sheppard Line.

Sheppard Line carries 15 Million riders per year. This breaks down to an operating cost of $2.53 per rider. I'm not going to bother trying to estimate subsidy, because I can't think of a reasonable way to divide fare revenue among individual lines for trips with multiple transfers. But note that $2.53 is less than the TTC's flat $3.25 fare; meaning that Sheppard Line should actually generate profit on trips without transfers. But even if we assume the Sheppard Line costs twice of $2.53 to operate (so $5.06), in every case (regardless of the amount of transfers taken on a Sheppard Line trip), the average operating subsidy of the UPX will literally be an order of magnitude greater than Sheppard Line's.

mdrejhon said:
Those abysmal subsidy numbers only show up when you include pre-fare-cut ridership.
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That's only with the assumption that the fare cut added enough trips to UPX to decrease the operating subsidy. That's not a safe assumption to make. The fare cut could have very well increased the required subsidy. We really don't know at this point.
 
TheTigerMaster said:
... But note that $2.53 is less than the TTC's flat $3.25 fare;...
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Very few pay the $3.25 fare. The average fare collected for a TTC trip is closer to $2 ($1.1B Revenue in 2015 / 545M trips).

But yes, Sheppard's ridership in 2015 doesn't have nearly the subsidy as UPX in 2015. I'm expecting a much better situation to be reported at end of 2016; still plenty of room for improvement, but much better.
 
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