TTC: Other Items (catch all)

[Amare]

I don't agree with targeted fare concessions.

I think they:

a) make the fare process and distribution system more complex, more difficult to enforce and more expensive.

b) the concession fares targeted by income require the City to know your income. It has no means, currently, to know that directly, meaning you have now have to submit proof of income, bring ID, sign an attestation, probably during office hours M-F....
Sounds painful, and unlikely to reach those who need it.

It wouldnt be really difficult for the city to administer a fare policy for lower income riders. The city already has programs such as the Welcome Policy which allows lower income brackers to use community centres at a reduced charge, and as part of that program they require annual income reviews through Notice of Assessments.

That program has been working pretty well, but as you mention it does require proof of income with ID verification. Mailing in that information is always an option or one can submit that information online.

 

[drum118]

????? There is certainly MX work planned on the rail bridge but that should hardly stop ALL 512 service and I also see no connection between St Clair and KQQR unless Sanscon are somehow involved.

I am taking the east end, not the west.

If ML smart which they aren't, Bridge work can take place will St Clair West is out of service.

Only streetcars are effected by the 2 stations projects with riders using St Clair Ave W for drop off/pickup and the bus terminal at Yonge.

 

[drum118]

I don't believe you. There's no way that the almost-finished KQQR construction near the lake, is going to cause years of 512 closures on St. Clair

You never know what will happen until it happens these days.

 

[T3G]

The 1980s has the fix as well. Here's how:

1) Everyone pays their fare. Back in the 1980s there was no POP, rear door entry, honour system or free rides for students. If you didn't pay your fare at the front doors, you weren't getting on the bus or streetcar.
2) No vagrants, no loitering. Today when you go down the stairs at College Stn. there's always some wigged out beggar between the doors of College Park and the station. In the 1980s those were told to move it. And no we didn't GAF where they went, just be gone. No tolerance for crazies and junkies. Bring back 1980's law and bylaw enforcement.
3) Affordable Fares. Bring back 1980's Provincial funding for the TTC.

That's it. Fare compliance, safety, affordability. 1980's style.

10 signs you rode the TTC in the 1980s

The TTC can be a storehouse of nostalgia for people who grew up in Toronto. Given that this particular brand of longing isn't necessarily related to …

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That's a very oversimplified take and one that I would argue would not really improve the actual quality of service offered.

Sure, you reinstate order on an increasingly lawless system. Now what? The quality of the service offered is still garbage, there's slow orders everywhere, surface transit has to mix with personal automobiles because the spineless politicians can't fathom the idea of upsetting the car lobby even a little bit, and thanks to nanny state tier "safety" rules such as stop/check/go or having to slow down from an already slow speed when passing through intersections, it takes an age to get anywhere.

No, if we want transit in Toronto to be good, we need to immediately abandon all the ideas we presently have about how transit should work, and look at other cities and how they do things. I say without any exaggeration, the only good things I can name about the TTC system is that service on line 2 is still pretty fast (the same cannot be said for line 1, which has gotten slower and shittier the more investments are made into it), and that the theoretical coverage of the system is very good (though whether you have an eternity to wait or not is a separate issue).

I was just in Prague recently and I was absolutely stunned by how much better it's transit system is than Toronto's. I stayed in a hotel right by Karlovo námestí, within a 1 minute walk of my hotel were 9 tram lines and a metro line. They have an app, offered in English too, where you can buy transit tickets right through your phone, sparing you the agony of running around trying to take cash out or worry if you'll be able to use your foreign credit card to buy a ticket at a ticket vending machine (I was not able to in Bratislava); the trams are frequent, reliable even though - shock and horror - they are not grade separated; they are well maintained and clean, they offer you many different routes so that you don't have to stop and transfer in every hole on your journey, the level of information offered is high, and they do ALL of this while also maintaining one of the largest historical transit vehicle collections in Europe, something the TTC has always claimed they cannot do due to how underfunded they are.

I think we should be aiming a lot higher than just asking not to get stabbed on the TTC.

 

[Northern Light]

That's a very oversimplified take and one that I would argue would not really improve the actual quality of service offered.

Sure, you reinstate order on an increasingly lawless system. Now what? The quality of the service offered is still garbage, there's slow orders everywhere, surface transit has to mix with personal automobiles because the spineless politicians can't fathom the idea of upsetting the car lobby even a little bit, and thanks to nanny state tier "safety" rules such as stop/check/go or having to slow down from an already slow speed, it takes an age to get anywhere.

No, if we want transit in Toronto to be good, we need to immediately abandon all the ideas we presently have about how transit should work, and look at other cities and how they do things. I say without any exaggeration, the only good things I can name about the TTC system is that service on line 2 is still pretty fast (the same cannot be said for line 1, which has gotten slower and shittier the more investments are made into it), and that the theoretical coverage of the system is very good (though whether you have an eternity to wait or not is a separate issue).

I was just in Prague recently and I was absolutely stunned by how much better it's transit system is than Toronto's. I stayed in a hotel right by Karlovo námestí, within a 1 minute walk of my hotel were 9 tram lines and a metro line. They have an app, offered in English too, where you can buy transit tickets right through your phone, sparing you the agony of running around trying to take cash out or worry if you'll be able to use your foreign credit card to buy a ticket (I was not able to in Bratislava); the trams are frequent, reliable even though - shock and horror - they are not grade separated; they are well maintained and clean, they offer you many different routes so that you don't have to stop and transfer in every hole on your journey, the level of information offered is high, and they do ALL of this while also maintaining one of the largest historical transit vehicle collections in Europe, something the TTC has always claimed they cannot do due to how underfunded they are.

I think we should be aiming a lot higher than just asking not to get stabbed on the TTC.

Taken together, the above is just a bit too much.

There is lots wrong w/the TTC and lots it could do better, no issue w/that whatsoever. But while also having an under-sized rapid transit system relative to City size, there's actually alot that's pretty good about the TTC.

Notably, the TTC remains among the most seemlessly integrated systems between modes anywhere. I always find foreign visitors impressed by the idea that most subway stops have an integrated terminal for bus/streetcar, and that they are in the same fare zone.

Span of service: TTC's routine service past 1:30am is more than many systems and its 24-hour coverage is relatively deep too.

The Tube in London wraps most services by midnight on weekdays.

****

The TTC is not as reliable as it needs to be; and headways are too unevenly spaced, especially on surface routes. The TTC needs to renovate more stations, add more washrooms expand rapid transit, offer more retail and vending machines, and platform-edge doors. Additionally it should have an expanded 24-hour route system and Line 1 should be running 24/7 from Friday-Sunday; or least to 3AM.

But for all its shortcomings, when compared to a host of systems its not horrifically bad. Just not as good as it can/should be.

 

[T3G]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. I do not think the things you mentioned constitute enough of a feature to be in the same discussion as the TTC's notably shortcomings.

The late ending of daytime service is a good thing, yes, and it's something other cities can do better, but I would argue that it's a relatively fringe feature. The amount of people who make use of daytime service running in the hour and a half between midnight and 1:30 is not nearly as much as the people who use it to get to daytime appointments, and if you told someone who has to rot in traffic on an Etobicoke bus route for an age that it's not so bad because that bus is going to go back to the garage after 1:30, I don't think they'd be quite so appreciative.

The integrated bus terminals are nice, but their niceness is based on our outdated approach to fare collection. Prague does not have fare gates, but because one ticket can be used on multiple journeys it's no problem at all to change from a tram to the metro right on the street.

The TTC is good when compared to the majority of North American transit systems less New York, but after visiting a city that clearly cares so much more about making it's transit system as convenient and user friendly as possible, having to get back to using a sloppy service like the TTC is going to be a very difficult adjustment.

 

[Admiral Beez]

That's a very oversimplified take and one that I would argue would not really improve the actual quality of service offered.

Sure, you reinstate order on an increasingly lawless system. Now what? The quality of the service offered is still garbage, there's slow orders everywhere, surface transit has to mix.

Point three, 3) Bring back 1980's Provincial funding for the TTC. would help to address the poor service.

 

[turbanplanner]

That's a very oversimplified take and one that I would argue would not really improve the actual quality of service offered.

Sure, you reinstate order on an increasingly lawless system. Now what? The quality of the service offered is still garbage, there's slow orders everywhere, surface transit has to mix with personal automobiles because the spineless politicians can't fathom the idea of upsetting the car lobby even a little bit, and thanks to nanny state tier "safety" rules such as stop/check/go or having to slow down from an already slow speed when passing through intersections, it takes an age to get anywhere.

No, if we want transit in Toronto to be good, we need to immediately abandon all the ideas we presently have about how transit should work, and look at other cities and how they do things. I say without any exaggeration, the only good things I can name about the TTC system is that service on line 2 is still pretty fast (the same cannot be said for line 1, which has gotten slower and shittier the more investments are made into it), and that the theoretical coverage of the system is very good (though whether you have an eternity to wait or not is a separate issue).

I was just in Prague recently and I was absolutely stunned by how much better it's transit system is than Toronto's. I stayed in a hotel right by Karlovo námestí, within a 1 minute walk of my hotel were 9 tram lines and a metro line. They have an app, offered in English too, where you can buy transit tickets right through your phone, sparing you the agony of running around trying to take cash out or worry if you'll be able to use your foreign credit card to buy a ticket at a ticket vending machine (I was not able to in Bratislava); the trams are frequent, reliable even though - shock and horror - they are not grade separated; they are well maintained and clean, they offer you many different routes so that you don't have to stop and transfer in every hole on your journey, the level of information offered is high, and they do ALL of this while also maintaining one of the largest historical transit vehicle collections in Europe, something the TTC has always claimed they cannot do due to how underfunded they are.

I think we should be aiming a lot higher than just asking not to get stabbed on the TTC.

It was funny visiting Warsaw years ago with like 5 different fleets of rolling stock and the TTC was crying how 2 would be too many.

 

[T3G]

There is a lot wrong here that merely restoring the provincial subsidy would not correct. The TTC doesn't need extra funds to implement line management, bus lanes, or to abandon pointless "safety" rules.

What is needed is a complete reimagining of our concept of transit, and what role the present TTC management has to play in that future of transit (it's none). Throwing more money at the organization without fixing what's wrong with it would be akin to setting that money on fire.

 

[T3G]

It was funny visiting Warsaw years ago with like 5 different fleets of rolling stock and the TTC was crying how 2 would be too many.

Europeans don't really seem to care as much about that sort of thing as they do here. When Prague found the Škoda 14 T Porsche trams unsatisfactory they wasted no time in contracting with Škoda for different cars, the 15 Ts, while the 14 Ts were being delivered, and without getting rid of them. They also took delivery of second hand KT8D5 cars from Germany and Hungary and are receiving new low floor T3 cars for lower ridership routes.

And most bus operators have a variety of different models in their fleets.

 

[DSCToronto]

There is a lot wrong here that merely restoring the provincial subsidy would not correct. The TTC doesn't need extra funds to implement line management, bus lanes, or to abandon pointless "safety" rules.

What is needed is a complete reimagining of our concept of transit, and what role the present TTC management has to play in that future of transit (it's none). Throwing more money at the organization without fixing what's wrong with it would be akin to setting that money on fire.

Though the TTC clearly does need more funding, as an observer and customer I must agree that the current 'management' of the TTC is not likely to make good use of more money. They seem incapable of coordinating the silos in their own organisation and the 'route management' of surface routes is virtually invisible - though the metrics they use to measure this are, to be kind, 'lax'.

 

[picard102]

Sure, you reinstate order on an increasingly lawless system. Now what?

People have confidence in the safety of the system and don't need to calculate if getting stabbed on the train is worth it? That would increase ridership.

 

[T3G]

People have confidence in the safety of the system and don't need to calculate if getting stabbed on the train is worth it? That would increase ridership.

I never said that it wasn't worth cleaning up the system, but the discussion is about how to make the TTC one of the best transit systems in the world again.

Cleaning up the riff raff will leave the TTC safe, but still overcrowded and horrifically unreliable (to that end, we don't need to promote ridership increases, before covid many routes were at the breaking point). The 1980s don't have the "answer", they have a very small part of it only.

 

[picard102]

I never said that it wasn't worth cleaning up the system, but the discussion is about how to make the TTC one of the best transit systems in the world again.

Cleaning up the riff raff will leave the TTC safe, but still overcrowded and horrifically unreliable (to that end, we don't need to promote ridership increases, before covid many routes were at the breaking point). The 1980s don't have the "answer", they have a very small part of it only.

Ridership has still not recovered from the pandemic afaik. Which tracks with the times I've taken the TTC since, far less people than usual. Reliability has never been a strong point for surface transit, not sure it's any worse than before.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Ridership has still not recovered from the pandemic afaik. Which tracks with the times I've taken the TTC since, far less people than usual.

Last Sunday night my daughter took the subway from Vaughan to Queens Park. She sent me a photo of the station in Vaughan and there wasn’t another person anywhere. Just a hugely massive, expensive station with nobody.