TTC service offers blah, sweat and tears

Lower-than-forecast ridership could be related to the absence of a single word: service

On Monday morning, just as the TTC board meeting was about to get underway, transit expert and activist Steve Munro tweeted that it was ironic he was on the way there and was experiencing big delays on the Bay bus. “Taxi cabs picking off riders,” he wrote, suggesting “service” may be the solution to the transit agency’s recent questions about lowerthan-expected ridership.

I didn’t immediately see his tweet, because I was on a westbound subway car at the time, and there is no Wi-Fi or cellular service available in subway tunnels. The subway car I was in also had no air conditioning — like subway cars I’ve been on the past three trips in a row that I’ve taken, during this smothering July heat.

According to the TTC, up to a quarter of BloorDanforth subway cars don’t have working air conditioning this summer, a problem not likely to be fixed before summer is over.

No air conditioning and no windows that open (so no breeze of any kind), leaving crowded passengers sweating all over each other as they groan complaints. A blazing hot, overcrowded, underground place: that description matches many common conceptions of hell. Religious traditions claim it is a punishment for a lifetime of wrongdoing.

The TTC calls it “The Better Way.” Heat alerts later in the week offer nothing but more blah, sweat and tears.

Of course, I was only on that Bloor subway line that morning because my normal route is closed for the summer. Typically in the morning, I take the St. Clair streetcar across to the Spadina subway line. But the St. Clair streetcar is not running, at all, because the TTC is rebuilding the platforms to accommodate the new vehicles that are being delivered (far too slowly).

Of course, when the new streetcars do come, there’s a chance they’ll be an excuse to provide less-frequent service. Because they’re bigger, and can hold far more people than the existing streetcars. The TTC has been touting this as an opportunity to save money by carrying more people with fewer vehicles. Which means, if you are a passenger, that the new, bigger streetcars will be just as crowded as the old ones but arrive less often.

Speaking of streetcars, when I arrived at Union on the subway Monday morning and went to the Harbourfront streetcar platform to continue my trip to work, the display sign informed me that the next vehicles were arriving in 14, 18 and 23 minutes. It’d be faster to walk than wait, so I did.

At the TTC meeting Munro tweeted about, a report was under discussion that would have children — 10-year-olds, say, who are allowed to ride the TTC for free — required to carry a colour-coded Presto card to access the system in the near future, alongside photo identification. Riders as young as 6 would require yet another coloured Presto card. It seems like the system might cost as much to administer as any fare evasion it eliminates. Most importantly, it also seems designed to ensure that very few children ever ride the system without paying the full adult fare.

Thinking of leaving the SUV at home and using the TTC to take the family to the ball game? Great, kids are free! Just make sure you remembered well in advance to march all your kids down to the TTC identification office to get photo and Presto cards, and then make sure none of your kids lose any of those cards in the meantime. Hmmm. Maybe take the SUV, I guess.

This is of a piece, of course, with the general Presto philosophy of making life difficult, by, for example, requiring you to carry a photo ID at all times to go with it (if you’re riding UPX, at least), and making you wait up to 24 hours after reloading your card online before the funds on it become available. Or remembering to tap on and off when on GO trains but only tap on when on TTC vehicles, where you’ll also need a paper transfer to change vehicles or ride a streetcar.

You get the sense, after a while, that perhaps the TTC is not interested in making it easy or convenient or comfortable to ride.

If you, like me, stopped buying Metropasses when they jacked the price up to $141.50 — more than it would cost to ride the TTC to work and back at full cash fare every weekday this month on the apparent logic that regular passengers should subsidize occasional users by paying more — this apparent determination to make riding difficult might make you reconsider your options.

For me, for instance, a car-share service I sometimes use can get me home, door to door, at the end of the day in half the time for about $12 to $15. That’s more expensive than the TTC, of course, and it means driving in Toronto traffic. But it offers a comfortable seat guaranteed for the ride. It means no unexpected short turns. No waiting in swarming crowds of frustrated and angry fellow passengers in the sun for a bus connection that is not quick in arriving.

Perhaps most significantly, some days, the cars have windows that open and working air conditioners.

“Service.” Munro might be onto something there. I don’t know for certain what’s behind the drop in expected riders on the TTC. But I know that if you were conspiring to turn people from transit users into motorists, the first thing you might do is cut the air conditioning on the subway. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca. Follow: @thekeenanwire