Trippin IV

So of course, as soon as I get accepted on Progressive Bloggers, my real life makes me so busy that I don't post for a week and a half. (Thanks, PB, for the welcome!) The next two weeks aren't looking promising either, since I've got two final essays, two exams, and a huge conference I'm organizing for work.

But that has nothing to do with transit! Back to transit!

Nothing terribly exciting to report, really. Mississauga transit fares for the GO shuttles have gone up by five cents, I noticed this evening. Are you yawning yet?

Good, let me bore you further with some whining about the Dundas streetcars being rerouted to College Street. I catch the College streetcar to work from Dufferin Street. I've gotten on Dundas cars three times. Once because it was the beginning of the reroute and the driver didn't bother telling people boarding that they were on a Dundas car until he turned down Ossington to go to Dundas. Second time because I was running for the streetcar and didn't look. The third time because after I got off the Dundas streetcar from the second time, I got on the very next streetcar (which was labeled "Parliament") and that driver didn't bother saying anything about being a Dundas car either. And the driver kept telling people who got on and asked whether he was a College car, "Yes, I'm a College car." Then they'd get on, and he'd tell them, "I'm turning to Dundas at Spadina, though. But I'm a College car until then!" Cripes, dude, when someone asks you whether you're a Dundas car, they want to frigging know if you're going to be turning down Dundas! Many of us go further than Spadina!

I am going to be very happy when whatever they're doing on Dundas gets done, and all the College streetcars ARE College streetcars.

So, some people are happy about the Spadina extension and others are peeved because they think it's a useless waste of money in comparison to the downtown routes that need more attention. I'm starting to feel a little out of it because I am still excited about subway extensions. I know we need those rapid transit lines throughout the city more. But I want both, and if the feds are willing to fund one of them in order to suck up to the 905, I'll take it. Now to get on them for the rest of it, too.

Oh, and speaking of streetcars (as I was earlier - sorry for jumping back and forth - I guess this is a stream-of-consciousness post), I meant to post a week ago about the proposal to make King Street streetcar only. Works for me! Hell, make the whole city streetcar only. Or at least make every streetcar route a right-of-way. After having just finished essay about the Save Our St. Clair group for my municipal politics course, I can just hear the screams now.

Don't harass your sick employees on my account.

This burns me up.

Absenteeism among its 8,000 unionized employees has been costing the TTC about $20 million annually for the past few years, according to a human resources report before the commission on Wednesday.

The report recommends the TTC spend $300,000 to test and evaluate an "early contact" system it hopes will get staff back to work sooner and potentially save about $2.4 million a year in absence-related costs.

Injured or ill employees would get a call at home in the first couple of days of sick leave to see when they might be able to return to work, said Kirsten Watson, senior director of human resources.

This ranks right up there with getting harassed by the HR department or your manager (in the guise of "trying to help" or "see if there's any way we can assist you") if you actually USE more than half of your allotted sick days in a year. I worked briefly for an HR department that had this sort of practice - if an employee used more than 10 of their allotted 15 sick days per year, they had one of those nice little meetings.

You know what? If you have a contract or collective agreement that says you get x number of days per year of sick and personal leave time, and spells out what kind of short-term and long-term disability you can take, then you are entitled to that time if you're sick or injured. Period.

I'd just love to get a call from an employer on the second day home with the flu.

"When do you think you'll be back to work?"
"Um, I guess when I'm no longer COUGHING UP A LUNG and running a fever of 102. It's hard to say."
"I see. Well, thanks!"

Here's a clue, TTC: when you have a huge workforce, many of whom are doing physically demanding jobs, you're going to have illness and injury expenses. So how about instead of harassing your employees, you find other ways of keeping your budget in the black, okay? Like, say, harassing the feds and provincial politicians for more funding.

Trippin' III

If I ever win the lottery (which will never happen, because I practically never pay idiot surtax), I'm going to self-publish a booklet and hire people to hand it out at every subway station and GO terminal. It will be called, "Transit Etiquette: Grab a fucking clue". I know, ranting about other passengers is old news, but I've had a few too many "hell is other passengers" experiences lately. Besides, what transit blog would be complete without at least one post about breaches of transit etiquette?

Personal Space!
On my way to Mississauga last Saturday, I got onto the GO bus. As it was an odd time, there were hardly any other people on the bus. Tons of seats. And there were no elderly or disabled people in line, so I sat in the front seat because I like the view. (I'd have moved if I'd seen anyone having trouble moving up the steps.) Just before we were about to leave, a woman came running up to the bus, and made it just in time. I smiled, having been there before. So what does she do? She perches on the seat next to me, ON MY BAG which had a couple of crushable things in it while fishing for her ticket. Okay, fine, she's just looking for her stuff. So I move my bag. Then after she pays, she settles in for the trip. There are tons of empty double seats - the bus is practically empty, but no, she needs to sit next to me. So I fumed for a few minutes, and then I finally got up, and grabbed another seat, and spent half the trip thinking about all the rude things I should have said to her. Now, I hate it when people hog seats when there are lots of people on the bus or train or streetcar. But when there is no one on the bus, no, you DON'T need to crowd me on the same seat. Personal space, people!

Move back, and don't block the doorways!
I'm riding the bus home last night, and it's more egregious than usual. Four perfectly able-bodied adult men are completely blocking the entranceway of the bus by standing right at the front on one of those new buses where the passageway between the front wheel and the driver is narrow. And there's a ton of room behind them - even seats in the back of the bus! And the idiot driver is driving past bus stops instead of telling them to move back. Geez.

Don't hog the seats on full vehicles!
Can we just talk about people who sit on the outside of seats and stick a small bag on the inside seat and stare sullenly at the people standing up? Okay, lots of people want to get off soon and they want the outside seat. Fair enough. But quite a few times I have gone to sit next to someone trapping an empty seat, and they move to the inside seat. Which makes it obvious that the only reason they were sitting in the outside seat to begin with was to discourage anyone from sitting next to them, on a bus where a bunch of people are standing. I always make a special effort to sit next to people who trap a seat, even if there is an empty aisle seat near them. I leave those aisle seats for people who are too shy to tell rude idiots to move their stuff.

Don't even get me started on rude drivers! I'll save that for another post sometime.

Reaction to TTC spending announcements

Over the last week or so, there have been mixed reactions to recent announcements by various levels of government about transit funding in the GTA.

I was thrilled when they announced the Spadina subway extension to York, and figured it was a victory for those of us who want to see subways all over the place. Then I saw reactions by other progressives who were less than enthusiastic about spending so much money on this extension, because they feel the priority should be on overloaded downtown routes. Another criticism is that Harper is focusing spending on the 905 region and Toronto areas on the border (e.g. York University and Vaughan) in order to pander to the swing voters in the 905, when it's the downtown routes that really need help.

I can completely understand this reaction. It made me really think twice about my original enthusiastic response.

But as talk talk talk was saying in one of my blog post comments, that's always the dilemma, isn't it? Do we want to demand the stuff that costs so much that we think we'll never get it but that will actually be a long-term solution (like subway lines across the city on Eglinton and Queen and Sheppard, and to York University), or do we ask for lots of cheap stuff like more buses and streetcars on the busy routes, knowing that it's only a stopgap measure but more likely to get funding?

Being a long-term planning kind of person myself, I tend to go for the former. I think that if we invest heavily in strategically placed subway routes across the city, it will go a long way towards dealing with the overcrowding on the surface routes.

So, this announcement made me feel somewhat better. It's not my dream of subways criss-crossing the city, but it's also not just sticking a couple of extra buses on the Dufferin route.

The mayor's campaign document promised to consider dedicated rapid transit bus or streetcar lanes on the following routes, some of which are already under study:

Yonge Street from Finch to Steeles;

Kingston Road from Victoria Park;

from Downsview to York University, until the subway is built;

Don Mills from Steeles to the city centre.

The mayor also pledged to consider, if more funding from Ottawa in the form of a “national transit strategy” is forthcoming, to consider:

a dedicated transit corridor along Finch Avenue connecting North Etobicoke and North Scarborough to the subway;

a west waterfront rapid transit line that connects Etobicoke to Union Station;

expanding the Scarborough RT to Malvern and beyond

a rapid transit line along Eglinton that connects the St. Clair line to Pearson Airport

a rapid transit connection between the Sheppard subway and Scarborough Town Centre.

I think rights-of-way are the way to go with streetcar routes. Laying a bunch more light rail tracks and giving them dedicated lanes will add some serious capacity to the transit system here. As long as they do this in conjunction with slowly adding subway lines when they can get funding for them, I think this is a good thing.

I'm feeling more optimistic about transit in this city now than I have in a long time.

Flaherty: Durham's ready for highways, but not transit

Durham region applied for $150 million in transit funding from the Federal government. What they got was $5 million to do a "study" on rapid transit.

According to Jim Flaherty, former Harrisite thug during the disasterous Tory years in Ontario of the late 90's and early 2000's, Durham isn't ready for transit funding. Why?

"Durham Region Transit is behind our neighbouring regions," he said. "They are behind because amalgamation didn't happen until January of 2006."

Interesting. Now, during the amalgamation fights in Ontario, when Flaherty and the rest of the provincial repugnican-wannabes were forcing amalgamations on unwilling municipalities and destroying services across the province, I wasn't paying much attention to the municipalities in Durham Region, so I don't know whether they resisted amalgamation or not. The Durham regional government has been in existence since 1974, and a google search doesn't seem to be coming up with much information about what kind of reaction there might have been to the amalgamation stuff during the Harris years. But according to this site, by February of 2000, Durham and a few other regions still hadn't started the restructuring that the Harris government was calling for. A bit of score-settling on Flaherty's part?

But anyhow...if you're sad about this announcement, don't fret! Because hey - there's lots of money for highways!

Transit aside, Mr. Flaherty said what the Region is ready for is for work to be completed on Hwy. 407 and Hwy. 7 and that positive assurance came out of the March 6 announcement.

"What we have for Durham now is a firm commitment for highway construction and the Province is going to spend more than a billion dollars doing that," he said. "It is a good thing for Durham."

Well, golly, what a relief. Because it's always a great thing to build more roads and widen the highways so we can stuff more and more cars on them! Just stellar.

And to make sure he gets his car paradise, he's holding federal transit funding hostage:

Highways are a provincial responsibility, but Mr. Flaherty said the federal government was able to push the Province to get this work done on the highways.

"My position with the Province is we will put money into transit but you have to put money into highways," he said. "If they want funding for transit then they better fund the highways."

Once a Tory thug, always a Tory thug. Don't be fooled by the reformaTory greenwash, or the strategy of muzzling neo-con extremists in the party to make them sound more moderate and less "scary".

Look! They made this just for me!

I'm looking SO forward to this.

Seriously, this describes my weekend travel to a T. I take the TTC to Union, take the GO to Meadowvale, and take Mississauga Transit shuttles from there to my destination.

Starting this summer, Mississauga Transit will recruit about 500 passengers to try the system that will allow them to board Mississauga Transit buses, GO Transit and the TTC at Union Station, all with one pass.

Me! Me! Pick me!

Thinking twice: I hope that the Mississauga Transit fare will still be 50 cents when you're taking it to or from a GO station or stop. Otherwise it won't be worth it for me to use this card if I have to pay $2.50 for the Mississauga shuttle.

Thinking thrice: I'll still need my metropass, since apparently the TTC has only signed on for fares from Union Station so far. But at least I could use the same card for two transit systems. Better than the endless tickets and quarters that are my transit life at the moment on weekends.

Declare war on wraparound transit ads

My eight-year old and I had a rather unpleasant GO Train ride a few months back. Unpleasant because when we're on the train, he always looks forward to looking out the window at the scenery going by. But without thinking, he and I got onto a GO Train car that had an ad painted all over the outside. And while you can see out the window somewhat, the view is obscured.

I remember when this trend started. I was in my late teens or early 20's, living in Kingston, Ontario. A real estate company decided to buy an ad that was painted all over the outside of a bus, including the windows. So, from the inside of the bus, all we could see through the translucent windows were fuzzy grey impressions of the buildings outside. I fumed when my bus in the morning was an ad bus; in Kingston, there is no waiting for a couple of minutes for the next bus - they come every 15 minutes if you're lucky, or every half hour or hour depending on your destination.

I don't care about ads so much. They're ubiquitous. But I resent it when advertisers make my life as a transit user miserable by blocking out all the scenery.

So what did I do about it back then? Nothing. I swore up and down every time I got onto a bus with these window-blocking abominations all over them that I would write a letter to the company advertising, to the Transit Commission, to the papers, to the Prime Minister, hell, to the Pope too. But I never did.

I think I'm going to start, though. I'm tired of advertisers trying to appeal to car drivers with their ads, by making transit passengers' rides miserable. I'm tired of our transit systems allowing it.

I'd love to see a campaign by transit riders, where we write to advertisers whenever we get stuck on a streetcar or train with blocked windows, telling them that we will now go out of our way to avoid their products because they wrecked our trip.

Ridership growth strategy in the budget

More on this a little later, but just for now, a link to one of my favorite transit sites, which has an excellent breakdown of how Toronto will be expanding its fleet of vehicles through the budget. I can't figure out a way to link to the exact post, so look for the March 8th post titled, "Toronto's 2007 capital budget favours transit". It's currently at the top of the page as I'm writing this, but it looks like they update frequently.

More later; gotta hop the bus and streetcar to work.

It's International Women's Day Today!

I meant to post this earlier today and forgot. If you're in Toronto, hop the TTC to one of these International Women's Day events during the next few days! (Like how I tied in a completely unrelated subject to transit? Pretty clever, huh?)

Seriously - IWD's important. Be there!

Transit discussions elsewhere

I should make it a regular thing to link to other blogs and discussions happening on transit. Anyhow, I've been meaning to do this for a few days. Bread and Roses is having a great discussion on transit, and it all started out with a link to my blog. :) So go check it out. Thanks, skdadl.

Also, there are a few conversations about transit on babble that you might want to check out, here, here, here, and, tangentially (sp?), here.

Over at that first link on Bread and Roses, I saw that someone posted this editorial from the Toronto Star. Man, I've been seeing those signs for the last week or so and fuming over them. I was going to take a picture of one on the weekend just to rage about it here, but the train was moving and I couldn't get a good angle.

Yeah, it's the passengers who are responsible for train delays, right? Let's just break this down.

First of all, any time I've ever seen anyone rush for the doors, and get stuck in the doorway, it takes, what, half a second for the driver of the train to release the door a tiny bit to let them get their bag inside? Yeah, I don't think that's what's causing the big delays, folks.

And when the hell was the last time you saw a piece of garbage catch fire on the tracks? Are they kidding us? Almost every time there is a delay, they say it's passenger illness. Sorry dudes, that's not really something people can help. Although I did come across this odd tidbit about the New York subway. They say that the most common illness that causes train delays in New York is people fainting from dieting. Wild. Anyhow, sorry for the digression.

The real reason for subway delays in Toronto is this: not enough subway lines so that people from all over the city are crammed onto three woefully inadequate lines. That's the reason. We're packed like frigging sardines in the subway cars during rush hour. And the streetcars. And the buses. We're over capacity, folks, and that's what causing your delays.

The fact that the TTC is blaming its passengers for something that is due to underfunding is downright offensive.

Okay, maybe not a few billion...

I was afraid that the speculated 3 billion was too good to be true.

But we'll take a billion. Besides, there's nothing for me like watching Stephen Harper give Dalton McGuinty the warm fuzzies.

[Edited to add: whoops, the article in the previous post didn't predict three billion from the feds - they predicted 3 billion combined from the feds and the province. My mistake.]

According to the article, the reformaTories are calling their new transportation plan "FLOW", but the article doesn't say what the acronym stands for. If I were feeling a bit more creative, I'd come up with something better, but this is the best I can do:

Fall 'Lection, Open Wallets

Sorry for being cynical. Harper doesn't give a sweet goshdarn about transit, the environment, or gridlock. What he cares about is getting elected. We'll get that funding now, but look out if he gets a majority government. Or heck, even another minority.

What the GTTA needs is stable funding. This cash infusion is nice, but we also need an ongoing commitment to maintain and continue to build up our system. And we don't just need it from the feds, but also the province. According to the Commissioners at the TTC meeting at the end of February, the province was dicking us around on the Spadina subway extension to York University and Vaughan, saying they would only release their committed funding dollars IF the feds coughed up their share.

Before the Mike Harris government took power at Queen's Park in 1995, the provincial government provided steady funding for the Toronto Transit Commission.

Ontario paid 75 per cent of the TTC's capital needs – new vehicles, repairs to facilities and the like – and picked up half the operating losses not covered by the farebox.

If that formula were still in place, in 2007 the TTC could expect Queen's Park to shell out $678 million – $140 million as an operating subsidy and $538 million for capital costs. Instead, the TTC expects about $227 million from the province for capital expenses this year.

...

Ontario has offered to pay one-third of the proposed York University subway extension, if Ottawa pays a third.

Hello? What's wrong with this picture? Didn't the provincial Liberals run on a platform of restoring the cuts made by the "Common Sense Revolution"?

If they're still playing games like that with transit funding after this election pandering by the reformaTories is over, then they're going to leave the transit systems in the GTA starved for cash. We get jerked around enough by the Feds. The province doesn't need to join in.

So, Dalton can be all "delighted" for now. Who am I to rain on his parade? But he'd better start coughing up once his new friend Steve is done sucking up to the suburban swing voters in the 905. We need stable funding.

Major funding for GTA Transit!

A few billion dollars sounds very nice.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy!

I know, I'm setting myself up for disappointment. I know this doesn't mean I get subways to everywhere, and a 45 minute trip one way to northwest Mississauga. But I'm really hoping for good things out of this three billion dollars.

Like expanded GO transit service. And those subway extensions, to York University and Vaughan - woo hoo! I love the idea of light rail lines in Etobicoke and Scarborough and North York mentioned in the article as well.

But what I also really want to see happen with some of this funding is more coordination of all the transit systems. It's a good thing to do individual projects within each system. They all need doing. But one of the major things for people who travel between GTA municipalities - especially at odd times and not the usual commuter rush - is that the systems aren't coordinated enough.

If we're going to have a Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (GTTA), then I want to see it make the transition between systems much more smooth. For instance, the timing of the Mississauga Transit buses that go to Clarkson GO station aren't coordinated with the timing of the trains, particularly the off-peak trains that only run once an hour. There's nothing more frustrating than waiting half an hour for the bus, and then arriving at Clarkson GO ten minutes after the train (which comes once per hour) has left.

I'd also like to see the fare system coordinated between the regions. I know I'm not going to get free transit on this side of the revolution. ;) But I think smart cards would be nice.

Credit where credit is due: one thing I love about Mississauga Transit is that they coordinate their fare system with GO Transit. So, if you're taking a Mississauga Transit bus to or from a GO station in order to use the GO Train (the proof being a used or about-to-be-used GO ticket), you can pay 50 cents instead of $2.50. Which is nice, since the individual fare on Mississauga Transit is $2.50 for both adults and children! Only if you buy tickets do you get a break on the fare for children, and even then, it costs $1.50 per ride for kids. A bit of a shock to the system, when in Toronto you can get ten children's tickets for under five bucks. Luckily, we always pay the 50 cents each, because we're always en route to a GO station when we take Mississauga Transit.

Trippin' II

After spending several hours on the TTC and GO Transit tonight doing my twice-per-weekend jaunt back and forth to Mississauga, this isn't going to be an overly political or analytical post...

Went through Lower Bay Station again tonight on the way home. The subway driver wasn't chatty at all about it the way the one in my video was. In fact, he didn't mention it at all as we were passing through.

I did, however, see my favorite pet peeve subway ad. I've been seeing this stupid ad for how long now? Years. Since my eight year-old was a one-year old, I'm pretty sure. Anyone else sick of seeing this?



(Click on the picture if you're having a hard time reading the print on it. My "favorite" line: "Want to send your kids to private school....but think you can't afford it?")

Isn't that lovely? The Fraser Institute's going to help the working class join the class war against the working class by promoting private education, and pretending that anyone can afford it if they're deserving enough. And those who are deserving enough but just can't quite scrape the money together? Well, if they have the right (and I do mean "right") attitude, they too can join the ranks of the rich in trying to dismantle our public services, in particular, the public education system. I seethe quietly every time I see this ad.

So, I should probably explain those 20 hours of public transit per week that I claim in my profile. My son goes back and forth between my place in Toronto and his father's place in Mississauga every week. And, just my luck, he's way out in the northwest territories of Mississauga, on the edge of Oakville. I make four trips per weekend (two ways for pick-up and drop-off). And a two-way trip can take anywhere from four to five hours. So...two of those trips per week, plus anywhere from 10-12 hours per week commuting both ways to work on weekdays and socializing in the evenings and on weekends, adds up!

For all of you taking public transit tomorrow to get to work - have a good trip. Night!

TTC Meeting - Density along subway corridors

Sorry for the delay in posting. Essay writing and life got in the way. Since the essay was about the meeting I attended (and I got it in half an hour before the deadline at midnight last night!), I'll just crib the final issue that interested me from parts of my essay. :)

As you've probably guessed, I am of the “can’t have too many subway lines” and “suburbs are to be avoided at all costs” school of municipal planning, so I was quite interested in a discussion about the Spadina subway extension to York - in particular, about making high-density development along the line a high priority. Again, De Baeremaeker was the strongest voice on this issue, which isn't surprising - check out this Toronto Star article about his intensification advocacy in Scarborough. At the meeting, he put on the pressure, demanding that there be concrete plans in place to try to get high density development along the subway line, as opposed to townhouse developments and suburban-style single family homes.

Anthony Perruzzo pointed out that "density" goes beyond buildings and housing units, and that the fact that 65,000 people go to and from York University every day, and the fact that Downsview could easily become a desireable destination if the park is made more beautiful and inviting, means that the people moving on the trains to these destinations also constitute “density”. De Baeremaeker clarified his point, saying that he doesn't want to see suburban sprawl along the line, as we see in Scarborough around the Rapid Transit stations. He was quite passionate about it, and his passion was infectious, at least for me.

The main point is this: if car-based neighbourhoods are allowed to spring up around TTC subway stations, it will guarantee that the TTC loses money on their transit investment that costs millions upon millions of dollars, because people in the area won’t take transit. With high density development, more people living near subway stations means that more people will take the subway, and the millions invested will serve more people.

Michael Thompson supported De Baeremaeker's motion that the TTC require minimum density along the Spadina extension and other transit corridors, and reconciled De Baeremaeker's points with Perruzzo's, saying that both commuter traffic and high density development are important.

This goes to Gord Perks' point in the article I quoted in this post - that the reason regional transit is a failure is because of the low density development and car-based sprawl. It sets up transit for failure when municipalities allow this sort of development to happen.

De Baeremaeker is right to fight hard to make sure this doesn't happen any more than it already has in the outer neighbourhoods of Toronto. I want to see subway lines all over the place in Toronto, but I don't want to see the TTC dumping money into what turns out to be a sinkhole if City Council allows a bunch of suburbs to pop up around subway stations.