Chris Selley: Microtransit idea offers glimmer of hope in otherwise business as usual TTC meeting

NatitonalPost.com
Sept. 29, 2016
By Chris Selley

In so many ways, Wednesday’s TTC meeting was business as usual. Our order for 204 Bombardier streetcars remains an abomination. We’ll supposedly have 30 by year’s end, 70 by year-end 2017, 76 more in 2018 and the rest in 2019, CEO Andy Byford wearily advised commissioners. He’s not sure we’ll get the 30, and far less sure Bombardier can ramp up so quickly. A second production line in Thunder Bay should help, he said, “but I’ve had more schedules than streetcars.”

If those streetcars do arrive, many Torontonians will loathe them, and not without cause. We’ll use them in part because they hold more people than buses, so we’ll pack them full and make everyone on them wait for every lone SUV driver to turn left. And when the movie stars come to town, as commissioner Alan Heisey quite rightly complained, we’ll close King Street for no reason.

Also on trial at the meeting were the TTC’s oft-maligned project management capabilities, thanks to a KPMG report investigating Toronto’s legendary over-time and over-budget transit projects. KPMG deemed TTC’s project management “at a low-standardized level of maturity,” instead of a “high-standardized level,” which is KPMG’s “benchmark” for public sector entities. In English, that means the TTC has formalized procedures for project management, but they aren’t monitored or enforced well enough. You mightn’t be surprised.

The TTC has accepted all of KPMG’s recommendations. Byford conceded improvement was needed, but framed the report as validation of the direction he was already travelling. He bullishly noted the report’s reference to the TTC’s many “dedicated, experienced and qualified individuals” and “significant change in tone within the organization” in recent years.

“People think there’s no good project managers at the TTC,” Byford told commissioners. “They’re wrong.” And he credibly argued it’s unfair to compare the final cost of the Spadina line extension to the widely quoted original $1.5 billion.

It wasn’t TTC management who decided they wanted “grandiose” stations instead of modest ones. It wasn’t TTC management that shut down work at York University for half a year because of a worker’s death. And for heaven’s sake, the $1.5 billion was supposed to take the subway to York, not all the way to Vaughan.

Chances of most Torontonians cutting him a break? Magic 8-Ball says outlook not so good. Wallowing in our own institutional incompetence, real or imagined, is practically our municipal sport, and that’s not a good thing.

One item on the agenda Wednesday did offer a glimmer of hope, however: “Implications of microtransit for TTC.” Staff are considering whether incorporating non-traditional public transit conveyances into the system might improve both customer experiences and the commission’s bottom line. Microtransit is not normally defined this broadly, but it could harness the power of taxis, Uber cars, minivans, or even Wheel-Trans vehicles.

At the beginner level, this might theoretically help with the TTC’s least profitable bus lines, which too often live and die for political reasons rather than empirical ones. Some routes are economic nightmares: in 2014, the 99 Arrow Road bus carried just 184 people a day. In some areas of the city, especially at night, transit demand would clearly be better served by smaller vehicles. Maybe they don’t have to be TTC-owned vehicles.