TTCriders letter about 5-Year Service Plan

Read our letter to the TTC Board asking them to adopt a more ambitious 5-year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan. As it stands, the plan fails to work towards ridership growth beyond pre-pandemic levels, restore important service frequency standards quickly enough, and respond to changing ridership patterns.

Re: Agenda Item 4: 5-year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan

May 15, 2024

Dear TTC Board Members,

TTCriders is a grassroots, membership-based organization of transit riders from across Toronto. We are writing to urge you to adopt a more ambitious 5-year Service and Customer Experience Action Plan. As it stands, the plan fails to work towards ridership growth beyond pre-pandemic levels, restore important service frequency standards quickly enough, and respond to changing ridership patterns.

Responding to changing ridership patterns: Off-peak and night service

The TTC has recognised that ridership patterns have departed significantly from pre-pandemic norms: the 9-5 office crowd has not returned to in-person work every day, and ridership ridership recovery has been strongest during off-peak periods and on weekends. The Service Plan does not adequately reflect these changes. Many 900-series routes only run during rush hour and have no service on weekends. Plans to start running Sunday bus service earlier in the day will not begin until 2027.

More people are using the TTC’s Blue Night Network than ever before. The 5-year Service Plan notes that there has been a 36% increase in night transit ridership since 2019. While the Service Plan will increase overnight transit headways to a minimum of 20 minutes, this change is only planned for 2027-2028. This means that shift workers like hospital workers and other workers in the night economy will face increasingly crowded night transit without any significant service increase for at least 3 years. 

Growing ridership beyond pre-pandemic levels

The 5-Year Service Plan aims to grow annual ridership from 422 million today to 479 million by 2028. Compare this to 2019, when the TTC saw 525 million trips. Disappointingly, this plan does not set ambitious goals to win back and grow ridership. Frequent, reliable service is fundamental to growing transit ridership. Yet the 5-Year service plan does not propose restoring the 10-minute network standard until 2026. Exciting plans to invest in a 6-min streetcar network will not occur until 2027, and a 15-minute bus network is not proposed until 2028. 

Restoring official TTC service standards  

The 2023 TTC Operating Budget made a significant reduction to TTC service standards, without a report from staff about equity impacts or opportunities for public input. TTCriders wrote to the TTC Board in 2023 with riders’ concerns that new “standing-room only” service standards in off-peak periods would mean transit vehicles would come less frequently and be more crowded, which has an outsized impact on transit riders who use mobility devices and require more room on board vehicles, and on women and shift workers who are more likely to travel during off-peak. We are disappointed that the Service Plan does not aim to restore official TTC service standards until 2026, which will limit service frequency improvements.

Accelerating RapidTO and optimizing investments in TTC service

We are concerned that new investments into service hours are not being felt on the ground by everyday transit riders. The 2024 Operating Budget increased service hours by 2%, but staff shared that 1% of these hours were to address traffic congestion and surface vehicles requiring longer to complete their routes.

It is with this in mind that we urge the Board to further advance the Surface Transit Network Plan (RapidTO). According to the Service Plan, the RapidTO project on Jane Street is scheduled to begin in 2025. Finch East and Dufferin won’t see changes until 2027-2028. There remains no timeline for improvements on Lawrence East or Steeles West. During this time, tens of thousands of bus riders will be left in the lurch, all the while the TTC continues to hemorrhage operating funds to buses stuck in traffic.

High quality express bus networks could be the key to unlocking faster transit and ridership growth across Toronto. Cities such as Vancouver and Seattle have recently implemented rapid bus “BRT-lite” services that have been massively successful. Ridership recovery in Vancouver has exceeded that of Toronto partly thanks to improvements in their bus network. The TTC could do the same with an ambitious 5-year Service Plan. 

Sincerely,

TTCriders

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