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TTC: Other Items (catch all)

APTA-2048 said:
Anyone have any insight on the transit situation in really dense Asian cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong? What’s the risk of transmission on their systems?

I have a feeling mask wearing plays a huge part. While I say mask compliance has been pretty good in my experience on the TTC (in Scarborough), I think it’s time they start enforcing it. Physical distancing on public transit was never truly possible—even during the height of the pandemic.
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Mask wearing - and they had fewer cases floating around in the first place.

Where possible TTC should open the windows on vehicles as well. I know some riders will absolutely hate it (especially in winter, for obvious reasons) but ventilation matters.

AoD
 
APTA-2048 said:
Anyone have any insight on the transit situation in really dense Asian cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong? What’s the risk of transmission on their systems?

I have a feeling mask wearing plays a huge part. While I say mask compliance has been pretty good in my experience on the TTC (in Scarborough), I think it’s time they start enforcing it. Physical distancing on public transit was never truly possible—even during the height of the pandemic.
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Important to note here how various factors associated with transmission overlap.

1) Social Distancing is helpful but the rules aren't absolute; they are on a continuum..........because
2) Duration of exposure matters
3) Risk of exposure (statistical liklihood of someone being contagious in your proximity)
4) Talking/singing/shouting matters. Mask or no. The more and louder you vocalize the greater the risk of transmission. Wearing a mask reduces the risk, to near zero if you're sitting quietly and shallow breathing. If your yelling at someone on your phone, the mask is considerably less effective.

Put another way.

If one is 1M from another passenger who is masked, not talking, and you're off that vehicle in under 15M you're statistically very safe.

If you're 2M from another passenger who is unmasked for the same time, much less so, and for more than 15M less again.

More distance, less risk, masks, less risk, shorter duration, less risk, more ventilation, less risk, everybody hush, less risk.

The art here is to minimize risk as much as is practical; while allowing society to function as much as possible.

No one is suggesting, I don't think, that the TTC will run enough service, if everyone is back at work, to socially distance. That literally can't be done.

But it can be done for now.

So why not?

Sure, there's a cost.

But in so far as that reduces transmission rates, which in turn may allow the economy to reopen further, it would likely pay off in spades.

Then, while we're doing that, we need to properly encourage good behaviors, discourage bad ones, and look at issues like having some WFH, and some flex time, and some remote schooling (one day at home per week (different day for each school) that reduces peak-transit load and maintains an improved outcome even as crowding does creep up a bit.
 
So, I read the Ben Spurr piece.............

There's hyperbole...........and then there's this:

TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said there are now 700,000 bus boardings every day and with that many riders it’s impossible to enable social distancing on all vehicles, which the agency has said would require capping passenger loads at five people per bus.

“We would need 100,000 buses on the road,” Green said. The TTC’s bus fleet consists of about 2,000 vehicles.

Uhh........can you give me the names of your math teachers sir? Because I need to report them to the College for having passed you in suspicious circumstances!

Lets, for one moment, take the 5 people per bus at face value (just for a moment), lets assume a peak-load is normally 50.

That would imply that you require 10x the amount of service, which, if you had every single bus in service would be 20,000, not 100,000, off by a factor of 5!

Now, let me suggest, that if you have a bus whose dimensions are roughly 12 x 2.6M ( I shaved off 1M for the driver)

You get a capacity of 10 seated persons based on 2M distancing.

Which would make Mr. Green off by a factor of 10x.

** note that I did not even factor in the capacity of the Artics...... which would make his exaggeration worse.
 
DKsan said:
When you sit in the Customer Service Centre at the TTC, where the position that handles the Twitter account and other things (I know, I did it for the majority of 2017), you have to be emotionally-detached when responding to every customer complaint (and we did have to respond to everything unless it was blatantly abusive), otherwise it bleeds into your sanity.

It's not a PR position, and it's not intended to be (like other similar "Helps" type accounts that people love to complain about). Objectively, that advice works in a customer service context (especially now that the TTC grudgingly joined the 2 hour transfer system). It seems cruel and uncaring, but what else can they respond? It's not like they can detach extra buses. I guess one could suggest the feedback link but those complaints will just end up in the inboxes of people who have made this situation appear.
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Some of the paid employees at Facebook developed PTSD just from going through Facebook groups reported for abuse (and there's no shortage of them and requires quite an army of full-time super moderators), many of which contain all sorts of unmentionables.

Whoever is behind the screen for TTCHelps deserves some paid vacation.

Antisocial media is very antisocial these days.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
It's only some rider that seems to have a problem with it if you really have aproblem with it being crowdeed then find another way to get around the city or just suck it up and put on a mask and don't complain on social media about it. I honestly think that it's the same people who complain about it being crowded on any other day before Covid and it has nothing to do with it.
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“Just suck it up and put on a mask”

Masks don’t work that way. They’re to help reduce *your* potential spread. They don’t necessarily protect you from others unless it’s a medical grade respirator.
 
The TTC should stop putting the blame on riders and their own lack of resources, and start using the resources that they already have in a better manner (ie: proper line management).

I cant tell you the number of times i've seen poor vehicle spacing on various routes in the city, due to the TTC's inept management who are not capable of doing quick spacial analysis (ie: at a Grade 5 level). There have been times i've seen 4-5 streetcars running back-to-back for who knows what reason, while in other cases I see buses running ~10 mins behind schedules despite the significantly reduced traffic on the streets.

The TTC can continue to cry wolf all they want, but many people (including myself) will never sympathize with them because of their antics in operating various routes.
 
Amare said:
The TTC should stop putting the blame on riders and their own lack of resources, and start using the resources that they already have in a better manner (ie: proper line management).

I cant tell you the number of times i've seen poor vehicle spacing on various routes in the city, due to the TTC's inept management who are not capable of doing quick spacial analysis (ie: at a Grade 5 level). There have been times i've seen 4-5 streetcars running back-to-back for who knows what reason, while in other cases I see buses running ~10 mins behind schedules despite the significantly reduced traffic on the streets.

The TTC can continue to cry wolf all they want, but many people (including myself) will never sympathize with them because of their antics in operating various routes.
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The problem lies at all sorts of levels, from the bus having mechanical difficulties (e.g. door problems), operator driving fasters, uneven boarding pattern, people asking questions and stopping the bus, people running for the bus and the operator waiting so they don't complain, etc etc etc.

So is the line manager suppose to discipline the operator for waiting for a senior that caused a 2 minute delay? That 2 minute delay would lead to 10 minute delay by the end of the line hence the bus behind would catch up.

I agree that operator constantly leaving early or driving excessively fast or slow should be discipline. The union would stand behind them making it difficult. Then there are delay like riders asking questions or seniors taking their time is much more difficult to control unless the operator says "I'm behind, if you can't get on/off within 10 seconds, get lost" or simply not allowing a wheelchair on. I'm sure that'll make the news the next day if that happened.

So they took another approach and added way too much time to the schedule. Now we see buses crawling at snail pace and by mid route the catch up as their pace are different.

There are plenty of places line management can improve the routes but it won't solve everything, especially when some idiots decide to hold up the bus cause it's Toronto. More resources and gap buses should be inserted on a route to help any hotspots. The bus network itself would need a major reorganization. Some routes are just too long or have too many branches for buses to be able to maintain proper spacing.
 
The other issue now is the TTC's newfound reluctance to short-turn any vehicle to get them back on schedule. Riders, quite understandably, hate unscheduled short-turns, while the TTC management used them more to keep drivers and vehicles on time, rather than maintain real-world consistency.

Instead of short-turns, we get more and more schedule padding, and without additional vehicles assigned to each route, longer waits between buses and streetcars. The pandemic has changed traffic patterns, with a lot less traffic in some cases, but the schedules do not match the new conditions.

So you get a lot of empty vehicles spending lots of time at end points, buses running especially slow, while other buses are packed.
 
ShonTron said:
The other issue now is the TTC's newfound reluctance to short-turn any vehicle to get them back on schedule. Riders, quite understandably, hate unscheduled short-turns, while the TTC management used them more to keep drivers and vehicles on time, rather than maintain real-world consistency.

Instead of short-turns, we get more and more schedule padding, and without additional vehicles assigned to each route, longer waits between buses and streetcars. The pandemic has changed traffic patterns, with a lot less traffic in some cases, but the schedules do not match the new conditions.

So you get a lot of empty vehicles spending lots of time at end points, buses running especially slow, while other buses are packed.
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I think with short-turns, there are a few issues.

1) The TTC often used these to manage its overtime budget, keeping drivers on schedule, rather than to address headway management from a customer-facing perspective.

2) Making adjustments at the end of the line can be done in many cases w/o causing a hassle.

If a bus/streetcar is clearly well behind, it can drop the last passenger off and express, non-stop to a point 10 stops ahead recapturing proper headway before going all-stop again.

There is some value to fixing a problem at an earlier point; but that does have to be weighed against not just the passenger hassle, but the time spend de-boarding a vehicle and fully boarding and likely overcrowding and delaying the next.

3) Aside from the above, there are other ways to better manage spacing. These include breaking up super long routes as the TTC did with King, to create 2 overlapping ones of more manageable size.

Also possible is to create 1-4 fixed points along a route where a vehicle will be held hard if its way ahead of the vehicle behind it, or too close to the one in front. This point could also be used to have vehicles leapfrog each other or to otherwise make adjustments to even out headways and crowding.
 
Gonna throw in here, that the TTC's concept of schedule management is also silly +1, -5 (up to 1 minute early and 5 minutes late) reads as acceptable performance.

On routes with sub 10M headways, it may be possible for 2 buses to operate as a pair and the TTC would see nothing wrong w/that.

+1 is fine; but historically the TTC had used +3/-3.

Byford rightly noted there is no excuse for leaving a stop that early.

But apparently felt an obligation (contractual or otherwise) to retain 6 total minutes of flex.

The standard, IF one is using schedule to measure against should be +1/-3

That would allow for better service reliability, and less bunching.

Providing it were enforced.

But, really, on most busier routes, they need to shift to headway management, rather than schedule adherence.
 
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