TORONTO – The number of riders on the TTC is again at a record-setting level with over 510 million riders having taken The Better Way in the last 12 months. With the TTC now advocating for a downtown-relief line – an expensive and lengthy upgrade – are there faster ways of improving service?
Despite reducing service along many routes in order to save money, ridership on the TTC continues to grow.
“Two weeks ago we hit a record ridership of 510 million trips over a 12 month period, we cracked the half a billion mark last year, next year we anticipate 528 million rides, so ridership continues to go up,” Brad Ross, Executive Director of Corporate Communications for the TTC said. “So we need to do some things to increase capacity as we see that ridership grow.”
To deal with the increased number of riders, the commission has taken steps to increase service along much-needed routes.
“We are doing some things with respect to new Toronto rocket subway trains, and a new signalling system that will give us some greater capacity but not for a very long time,” Ross said.
Over the last two months, the TTC has also increased service on 77 subway, streetcar, and bus routes.
According to Ross and officials at the TTC, an additional subway line could relieve the increasing pressure on the Yonge-University-Spadina line.
“We’re at capacity on the Yonge line, particularly at Bloor-Yonge station,” Ross said. “During peak times both in the morning and the afternoon, it is very, very crowded. It is at capacity. Sometimes you have to wait three, four trains before you can get on depending on the time of day.”
The TTC, Metrolinx, and the province of Ontario are also building expanded public transit across Toronto.
Currently, the Eglinton, Sheppard, and Finch light-rail transit (LRT) lines are under construction.
The extension of the University subway line north to York region is also “well underway,” Ross said.
What the city really needs to build better transit, Ross said, are firm commitments.
“We think there has been a lot of plans. There’s always been a lot of talk about transit planning,” Ross said. “What needs to happen is that all of the parties, the TTC, the city, the province, Metrolinx, need to make some commitments, some firm commitments that can be relied upon.”
Subway lines despite their perceived necessity, take a long time to build, a Toronto-area blogger points out, and surface routes such as area serviced by buses and streetcars desperately need better service.
“Right now, it seems that the only real improvements we are discussing are subway lines we cannot afford and which, in any event, could not be open for years,” Steve Munro said. “Service on the rest of the system is ignored in this debate even though the surface routes carry more people than the subway, and are essential to the subway’s ridership levels.”
Over the last two budgets, Munro claims, changes to service standards have brought about one-time savings to the TTC.
The first change was to cut off-peak bus routes that didn’t carry a minimum of 10 riders an hour.
More recently, service standards were pushed back to what they were prior to being changed by Mayor David Miller.
“The second was to change the loading standards by rolling back the “Ridership Growth Strategy” changes implemented under Miller by which the measure of a “full” bus was reduced by about 10%” Munro said in an e-mail to Global News. “This tactic gave some headroom to absorb riding growth and make service a bit more comfortable.”
Munro warns though that these savings cannot be repeated in the future.
“Both of these changes cannot be repeated in the next budget cycle without either further service cuts, or even worse crowding problems.”
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