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York Region Transit: Viva service thread

MafaldaBoy said:
Council presentation following approval of the fare increase: http://www.york.ca/NR/rdonlyres/lst...3vhollqjkl2zk7ia7o3vazcob/sep+12+TSC+fare.pdf

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There is some serious number fudging there. Yes YRT has a service area of nearly 2000 km2, but they aren't providing service to much of that area. The only rural municipality with a substantial amount of service is Georgina, and that is because GO downloaded their service in the area to the region.

Likewise compare this to HSR. The City of Hamilton is much larger than the City of Toronto in area, but only shows up at a third of its size. Same goes for Durham Region.

According to Wikipedia, Hamilton is 1100 km2 and Durham is 2500 km2.
 
Electrify said:
There is some serious number fudging there. Yes YRT has a service area of nearly 2000 km2, but they aren't providing service to much of that area. The only rural municipality with a substantial amount of service is Georgina, and that is because GO downloaded their service in the area to the region.

Likewise compare this to HSR. The City of Hamilton is much larger than the City of Toronto in area, but only shows up at a third of its size. Same goes for Durham Region.

According to Wikipedia, Hamilton is 1100 km2 and Durham is 2500 km2.
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Yeah, it's probably 400 sqkm for YRT. Service area population is too high also (should be around 900k?). No wonder YRT has trouble attracting riders. They don't even know who their customers are.

Mississauga service area number is way too small also. Should be over 300 sqkm. The revenue/cost ratio should be 45%.

Notice how it is sorted by revenue/cost ratio instead of ridership? YRT need to rethink their priorities.
 
Electrify said:
There is some serious number fudging there. Yes YRT has a service area of nearly 2000 km2, but they aren't providing service to much of that area. The only rural municipality with a substantial amount of service is Georgina, and that is because GO downloaded their service in the area to the region.

Likewise compare this to HSR. The City of Hamilton is much larger than the City of Toronto in area, but only shows up at a third of its size. Same goes for Durham Region.

According to Wikipedia, Hamilton is 1100 km2 and Durham is 2500 km2.
Click to expand...

Yep, the service areas (for Hamilton and Durham) are exaggerated if based on jurisdictional boundaries. Durham Region Transit serves each municipality within it, even if it is just an intermittent shuttle.

Toronto is 632 square kilometres, but the City of Hamilton is 431 square kilometres. The HSR serves the old City of Hamilton well (enough) with daily services in Ancaster, Dundas and Stoney Creek and rush-hour and/or trans-cab services in former Glanbrook and Flamborough Townships. The service to Waterdown is crappy. Like York and Durham Regions, there are lots of large rural areas without transit service in Hamilton.
 
doady said:
I think YRT itself is ultimately to blame for all this. The politicians are just doing what YRT wants. And that's probably the way it should be. YRT should know better.
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It's the other way around.

The Region is holding YRT's feet to the fire, and want them to bring their farebox recovery level down to 50% (it's currently a shade over 40%). YRT has never been able to get their services to the point where they can start planning for the future, so now they are in the position of having to cut services that are being used.

Of course, the fact that they continue to use private contractors also handicaps them both from a financial and service planning standpoint. I suspect that until they bring things in-house that they will never really be able to improve their bottom line.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
denfromoakvillemilton said:
So lets assume the Subway goes to RHC.


That's 7.25 for one way trip.
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innsertnamehere said:
yep.. we can only hope they hold the fare at that price for the next decade at least to allow for inflation to catch up a little..
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It's ugly. You can get around most of NYC for less.
ShonTron said:
Yep, the service areas (for Hamilton and Durham) are exaggerated if based on jurisdictional boundaries. Durham Region Transit serves each municipality within it, even if it is just an intermittent shuttle.

Toronto is 632 square kilometres, but the City of Hamilton is 431 square kilometres. The HSR serves the old City of Hamilton well (enough) with daily services in Ancaster, Dundas and Stoney Creek and rush-hour and/or trans-cab services in former Glanbrook and Flamborough Townships. The service to Waterdown is crappy. Like York and Durham Regions, there are lots of large rural areas without transit service in Hamilton.
Click to expand...


Waterdown is served by Burlington Transit.
 
smallspy said:
It's the other way around.

The Region is holding YRT's feet to the fire, and want them to bring their farebox recovery level down to 50% (it's currently a shade over 40%). YRT has never been able to get their services to the point where they can start planning for the future, so now they are in the position of having to cut services that are being used.

Of course, the fact that they continue to use private contractors also handicaps them both from a financial and service planning standpoint. I suspect that until they bring things in-house that they will never really be able to improve their bottom line.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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The politicians tell YRT what to do, they don't tell YRT how to do it. Ultimately it's YRT that manages YRT. YRT has been increasing fares and cutting service for how many consecutive years now? And cost recovery has remained the same, and ridership is falling now, which will hurt the cost recovery even more. That's not the politicians' fault, that was YRT's choice. As you said yourself, they are other ways to improve cost recovery.
 
doady said:
The politicians tell YRT what to do, they don't tell YRT how to do it. Ultimately it's YRT that manages YRT. YRT has been increasing fares and cutting service for how many consecutive years now? And cost recovery has remained the same, and ridership is falling now, which will hurt the cost recovery even more. That's not the politicians' fault, that was YRT's choice. As you said yourself, they are other ways to improve cost recovery.
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YRT manages the day-to-day operation of the system. Funding, fares, even service planning - all of the more long-term stuff that we all like to argue about - that all gets approved by the Region. And like I said before, the Region has been pushing YRT to improve their bottom line for several years now.

Do you honestly think that if the Region had continued to increase and increase and increase their share to YRT over the past several years that we'd even be having this discussion?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
For those interested, a little chart someone made up and I found online:

*YRT Since 2001
*"YRT/VIVA" SINCE September 2005
*1 ZONE ADULT CASH FARE (CASH FARE STANDARDIZED [Elimination of Student/Senior/Child Cash fares] in 2005)


2014 - $4.00
2013 - $3.75
2012 - $3.50
2011 - $3.25
2010 - $3.25
2009 - $3.25
2008 - $3.00
2007 - $2.75
2006 - $2.50
2005 - $2.25 - CASH FARE STANDARDIZED
2004 - $2.25
2003 - $2.25
2002 - $2.00
2001 - $1.60-$2.25 dependent on municipality.

*NOTE - Between 2001-2005 (PRE-VIVA) Increases totalled just 25% and maintained a fairly high recovery ratio up to 50%.
*Between 2005-2014 (Upon Viva Introduction) Cash Fare increased 77.8% and as of 2014 recovery will only be around 42%.
*Recovery dropped from 50% since Viva's introduction and has never recovered from this slump.

Sources: York.Ca website.
 
I'm currently doing an internship at CUTA, and was able to look at the transit system numbers. Apparently the numbers in the chart above are accurate. The area served represents places within walking distance to a transit stop. In York Region's case, about 1 million of 1.1 million people are served by transit.

This is pretty good coverage for a region which lots of rural areas. Perhaps too good. Perhaps YRT should identify routes which serve and connect primarily rural areas and charge a premium fare for them, also focus them to rush hour only. Yes much of York's urban area is low density sprawl, but it isn't any worse than other GTA suburbs. In fact in many ways it is better.
 
1776 sqkm is even larger than York Region itself. Even with an cursorary glance at the system map it is obvious that not the entire region is in walking distance of transit. They just put the entire region side and population numbers there. It has nothing to do with service area or population.

smallspy said:
Do you honestly think that if the Region had continued to increase and increase and increase their share to YRT over the past several years that we'd even be having this discussion?

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
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Do you think if YRT had been successful at increasing ridership since VIVA that we'd be even having this discussion? These funding shortfalls was the result of lack of ridership growth after a HUGE service increase. The region gave YRT the money, LOTS of money, and YRT failed to increase the ridership. This problem is the result of poor planning and mismanagement on the part of YRT, simple as that.
 
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