News   Apr 01, 2026
UrbanToronto Explores the State of Environment with Special Features Throughout April
 129     0 
News   Apr 01, 2026
UTPro Crane Report Q1 2026: Year-to-Year Dip, But Quarterly Rise
 369     0 
News   Apr 01, 2026
Transit Progress and Tall Towers Made Headlines in March, 2026
 637     0 

TTC: Other Items (catch all)

Yeah, you see this kind of thing in private sector retail all the time. The stores are dolled up (read: bandaids are put on flesh wounds) when corporate come to visit, giving the impression of a clean, functional store instead of one that is understaffed and collapsing in real time.

If a problem is not observed, it cannot be corrected. Being a frequent user of the TTC should be a prerequisite for being on the TTC board. And while the subway may experience occasional bunching and other operational issues, as a whole the quality of service offered is head and shoulders above the surface network.
 
Undead said:
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.
Click to expand...
I think the original comment is referring to the TTC board members and your comment is about general ridership?
 
Northern Light said:
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.
Click to expand...
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
 
smallspy said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
TRONto said:
I think the original comment is referring to the TTC board members and your comment is about general ridership?
Click to expand...
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.
 
Undead said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
https://torontolife.com/city/denzil-minnan-wong-the-list/

Ten things Denzil Minnan-Wong can’t live without​

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.
Click to expand...
 
Northern Light said:
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.
Click to expand...
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
 
smallspy said:
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
Click to expand...

Helpful answer; thanks, Dan!
 
W. K. Lis said:
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?
Click to expand...
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 what I've seen of Burnside at Council... not really a transit fan! 😕

From Steve Munro...
Oddly enough, none of the existing Councillor/Commissioners has asked to be reappointed. This could lead to turnover (good, maybe) but also the loss of institutional memory at the Board level. That works to management’s advantage, but an organization as large as the TTC needs experience at the top for policy and oversight, not just ribbon cutting.
Click to expand...
 
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.
 
allengeorge said:
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.
Click to expand...
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'.
 
DSC said:
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'.
Click to expand...
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.

A number of of the Commissioner including the chair have never ridden TTC and are lost as to what takes place in the system other than by reports. One councilors only rode his bike to work, yet he was the leader to get subways built regardless of the extra cost over streetcars when reports call for the SRT to be replace by LRT, the Sheppard LRT and a few other things.

There was a lot of councilors who wanted X for their Ward considering they had no idea how it would work for the surrounding Wards or the system itself. A lot of dumb question has been asked for both TTC Staff/CEO and the city operation.

Commissioners thinks TTC is the end all and should be an example for other systems, when its only partly true.
 
From link.

Board Meeting - December 8, 2022​




Meeting Info​


Date:Thursday, December 08, 2022

Start Time:10:00 a.m. – Public Session
Location:Council Chamber, 100 Queen Street West & Virtual Meeting (Hybrid)
Meeting No:2067
Live Stream:Official TTC Youtube channel


Presentations/Reports/Other Business​



No error, it's blank.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top