1. Until the megacity, the TTC was a regional transit provider. In the time since, the other regions have grown enormously
2. Any body that crosses regional boundaries would either become a threat to the province (as the original incarnation of Metrolinx was) or subservient to the provincial government
3. Historically, we've had anti-transit, pro-sprawl provincial governments, so Toronto's lack of support for uploading transit (which this would be) is understandable
4. You say you want Translink. The more likely outcome is we'd get SEPTA
I don't know that I would concur on all of them. For example that's the province is anti-transit. I don't see it being all that much worse than the city these days.
Hence the inclusion of the word "historically" in my post. As others have pointed out, there is a lack of trust here, and the recent building spree is only going to go so far in rectifying that--particularly given Metrolinx's abysmal performance to date.
I meant to address that. The province has played a similarly big role previously, and while indeed abysmal, Metrolinx doesn't seem to be building any slower that the TTCs last hurrah, when you adjust for complexity.
There may be a lack of trust, but my whole contention is that this is largely because people are aloof to the TTCs own issues - I wouldn't say they are any better at building, and are worse on things like wayfinding. Plus at the end of the day, the reality is that the province holds the power and capital in our system.
The GTHA’s transit landscape could be streamlined into seven agencies: the TTC, Durham, York, Peel, Halton, Hamilton, and Metrolinx. While consolidating Halton and Peel into a single entity is a logical further step, we could go even further by regionalizing the system into a 'Metrolinx' framework: Metrolinx Toronto, East, North, West, and Hamilton. That said, I am skeptical about Metrolinx assuming direct control of the TTC. While I value their superior wayfinding and regional perspective, there is a risk that the agency’s drive for ‘equitable’ service distribution would come at the expense of the region’s transit core, where 80%+ of total trips occur. Effective transit service must prioritize demand and ridership density over geographic parity.
I wholeheartedly agree, and I think that you've even understated the political pressure that this would enable. There would then be many more provincial and federal representatives to lean on to advocate for funding for these organizations as a whole rather than a handful for each municipality.
Fantastic writeup and am extremely on board with this. Extending this style of governance to the odd regional councils we already have in the province would also be a great action. GRT works surprisingly well to me as a Cambridge resident, despite the bisection of the 401.
A good ambition and goal that isn't shooting for the stars and has real benefits for all involved, but most of all riders.
Your governance point is bad. You have stumbled into a thorny political problem and are approaching it in a very naive fashion. There is little to no trust between the Province and the GTA municipalities when it comes to transit. Combining these agencies is good on paper, but the creation of said agency would be such a shitshow.
Your snide comment on "people of Toronto" is ugly. We are well aware of the state of the TTC; it is insulting to suggest otherwise. Our distaste for the "regionalisation" is covered in my point above: distrust of Ford and the Province in general. Better the devil you know, until the Province learns to stop meddling
It's sort of sounds to me like you assume I don't live in Toronto but I do and I've seen that the city pretty much gives as Good as it gets in terms of trust. Given that I think it makes sense to look at what body is more structurally capable of operating a regional transit system and I think it's pretty clearly the province!
This is a problem Paris has with its regional transit authority; IdFM, ruled by the region, not by Paris city. Politically, the region is not as much friendly to transit or shift from car and this can be feel from the city, which is very mobility friendly (ped, bike, metro…). The region canned some extension or project and just replace rolling stock, or does an airport express train for rich folks.
Just to clarify: I'm not claiming to know the solution to this problem of trust, I am far too dumb for that. I just want to highlight it as it is important to recognize when having this discussion. Hand waving it away or just ignoring it is irresponsible. Secondly: I want to reiterate your stated goal of regionalisation is *good*! It's a solid north star to work towards.
Well, I don't know! If the province couldn't just take the TTC or anything else at will I'd give more weight to the trust argument. I just find it a frustrating one because *somebody* needs to build transit and the city basically has abdicated that role by choosing not to lead or deliver on so many things for so long. I struggle to care about trust when the very thing we are talking about trust on is at stake.
The question is how to do it…do you merge the 905 transit agencies first (similar to how presto was created as a 905 product/org first, and then when it showed competence it was essentially forced on Toronto)…or does the TTC essentially take over MiWay and the other services one at a time.
The risk of a big bang merger of 10 different transit agencies is probably not worth the risk. Especially with the vastly different competencies required to run them.
The big risk with centralization is if you get someone who doesn’t like transit and basically spirals it to death for the whole province….or you have a major organizational failure that essentially results in years of lost improvements province wide.
The final question is how do you deal with the vast differences in service levels between merging orgs. Ideally you want to bring everything up to the existing level of service in the bigger org…but in practice it’s likely that service would be decreased in one and increased in the others…which is obviously bad for Toronto in the short to medium term…and potentially the long term…unless funding to do it the right way can be found (we’re talking about probably 4x the service needed in mississauga to be competitive with Toronto service levels…how is that going to be funded?)
Looking at the numbers, mississauga probably would need to buy 500 buses (double their current number) to get to 1000…to be competitive on a km^2 perspective with Torontos 2000 buses (and also need 100 lrt and one subway line)…maybe just a tad less if you factor the population sizes are 1 and 3m…
While I definitely agree that Toronto could use more regional coordination, I think there are other ways to do it besides making a single unified agency. The TTC already offers good service (albeit with poor reliability), and so does Brampton Transit. It seems like a Verkehrsverbund model, where you have a regional coordinator setting service/fare standards and completing high-level planning, would solve most of the problems you identified with much less disruption. You'd still need a supportive provincial government, which is maybe not realistic currently, but it's certainly something that could be pursued in the future.
A larger governing body just equates to a larger more powerful union. Since the union is a large part of the problem it makes no sense to empower them further. What Ontario needs is a government with the energy and vision to unravel the labour laws that have grown to strangle and corrupt development and maintenance.
Yes the unions that have forced these overly expensive P3 projects on us... except they are generally against P3s. Tell me, can you point to any credible research showing that unions (which are weaker here than in say, most of Europe) are responsible for cost and dysfunction in transit systems? I'd love to some read some material on this.
From what I remember (anecdotally, of course), a big chunk of why everyone is so hesitant to give control is trust.
People don't want public goods to be privatized. From Ontario Hydro, to water testing (which led to the Walkerton crisis), and more recently, Hydro One, people are sick of having their public goods sold off for shareholders.
When the province brought forth the idea to upload the TTC subway, it had a tremendous amount of pushback, because people were uncertain that in 10yo from now, the infrastructure will be sold off.
Your idea makes complete sense, and I too, am for a regional structure. However, it will not happen if there is no trust.
Just consider the big city amalgamation of the 90s which nobody wanted and has since erased most of our local nohow for roads and parks. Let’s learn from our mistakes!
So what would you do in places like the Northeastern US where there's just lots of continuous suburbs between the major cities? Lots of Florida is like that too. In many places, the suburbs are often wealthier than the core city, possibly places where if you couldn't afford to drive, you probably couldn't afford to live there in the first place.
Here in San Francisco people sometimes suggest that as well. But in the Bay Area the urban areas are quite outnumbered but the suburban ones. I do worry that with a suburban majority service would shift towards their desires. For example, more evenly spread out, tilting away from ridership towards coverage. Or less support for all day car-free living & more for peak-hour congestion relief.
Definitely here. The 9-county Bay Area, with transit "coordinated" by the not-very-powerful MTC, is population 7.5M. SF is 0.8, Oakland/Berkeley 0.6. Even with the mostly suburban San Jose that'd only add up to 2.4M.
Couldn't agree more that unification is key. However, what precautions would you take to avoid a GTA-wide agency from descending into MTA or SEPTA-like chaos?
For a US city, my hometown (San Diego) enjoys very consolidated governance. One county governs the entire Census Urban Area and Metropolitan Statisical Area (San Diego has no Combined Statistical Area.) San Diego proper covers at least 40% of Greater San Diego's population. There are only two transit agencies (MTS and NCTD), with 90% of transit ridership happening in MTS. SANDAG, the metropolitan planning organization responsible only for San Diego County, not only builds capital projects but also sets and administers fares across both MTS/NCTD.
For better or worse, unlike Ontario, California avoids meddling in local transit--especially not in San Diego, the city furthest from the state capital.
So a couple of things to remember:
1. Until the megacity, the TTC was a regional transit provider. In the time since, the other regions have grown enormously
2. Any body that crosses regional boundaries would either become a threat to the province (as the original incarnation of Metrolinx was) or subservient to the provincial government
3. Historically, we've had anti-transit, pro-sprawl provincial governments, so Toronto's lack of support for uploading transit (which this would be) is understandable
4. You say you want Translink. The more likely outcome is we'd get SEPTA
I don't know that I would concur on all of them. For example that's the province is anti-transit. I don't see it being all that much worse than the city these days.
Hence the inclusion of the word "historically" in my post. As others have pointed out, there is a lack of trust here, and the recent building spree is only going to go so far in rectifying that--particularly given Metrolinx's abysmal performance to date.
I meant to address that. The province has played a similarly big role previously, and while indeed abysmal, Metrolinx doesn't seem to be building any slower that the TTCs last hurrah, when you adjust for complexity.
There may be a lack of trust, but my whole contention is that this is largely because people are aloof to the TTCs own issues - I wouldn't say they are any better at building, and are worse on things like wayfinding. Plus at the end of the day, the reality is that the province holds the power and capital in our system.
The GTHA’s transit landscape could be streamlined into seven agencies: the TTC, Durham, York, Peel, Halton, Hamilton, and Metrolinx. While consolidating Halton and Peel into a single entity is a logical further step, we could go even further by regionalizing the system into a 'Metrolinx' framework: Metrolinx Toronto, East, North, West, and Hamilton. That said, I am skeptical about Metrolinx assuming direct control of the TTC. While I value their superior wayfinding and regional perspective, there is a risk that the agency’s drive for ‘equitable’ service distribution would come at the expense of the region’s transit core, where 80%+ of total trips occur. Effective transit service must prioritize demand and ridership density over geographic parity.
Possibly, or it could drive for TTC to do more with less (I think they could) and also even enshrine some level of increased service.
I wholeheartedly agree, and I think that you've even understated the political pressure that this would enable. There would then be many more provincial and federal representatives to lean on to advocate for funding for these organizations as a whole rather than a handful for each municipality.
Fantastic writeup and am extremely on board with this. Extending this style of governance to the odd regional councils we already have in the province would also be a great action. GRT works surprisingly well to me as a Cambridge resident, despite the bisection of the 401.
A good ambition and goal that isn't shooting for the stars and has real benefits for all involved, but most of all riders.
You can also start by doing more mergers and regionalizations first!
Your operations and UX points are good!
Your governance point is bad. You have stumbled into a thorny political problem and are approaching it in a very naive fashion. There is little to no trust between the Province and the GTA municipalities when it comes to transit. Combining these agencies is good on paper, but the creation of said agency would be such a shitshow.
Your snide comment on "people of Toronto" is ugly. We are well aware of the state of the TTC; it is insulting to suggest otherwise. Our distaste for the "regionalisation" is covered in my point above: distrust of Ford and the Province in general. Better the devil you know, until the Province learns to stop meddling
It's sort of sounds to me like you assume I don't live in Toronto but I do and I've seen that the city pretty much gives as Good as it gets in terms of trust. Given that I think it makes sense to look at what body is more structurally capable of operating a regional transit system and I think it's pretty clearly the province!
This is a problem Paris has with its regional transit authority; IdFM, ruled by the region, not by Paris city. Politically, the region is not as much friendly to transit or shift from car and this can be feel from the city, which is very mobility friendly (ped, bike, metro…). The region canned some extension or project and just replace rolling stock, or does an airport express train for rich folks.
Just to clarify: I'm not claiming to know the solution to this problem of trust, I am far too dumb for that. I just want to highlight it as it is important to recognize when having this discussion. Hand waving it away or just ignoring it is irresponsible. Secondly: I want to reiterate your stated goal of regionalisation is *good*! It's a solid north star to work towards.
Well, I don't know! If the province couldn't just take the TTC or anything else at will I'd give more weight to the trust argument. I just find it a frustrating one because *somebody* needs to build transit and the city basically has abdicated that role by choosing not to lead or deliver on so many things for so long. I struggle to care about trust when the very thing we are talking about trust on is at stake.
The question is how to do it…do you merge the 905 transit agencies first (similar to how presto was created as a 905 product/org first, and then when it showed competence it was essentially forced on Toronto)…or does the TTC essentially take over MiWay and the other services one at a time.
The risk of a big bang merger of 10 different transit agencies is probably not worth the risk. Especially with the vastly different competencies required to run them.
The big risk with centralization is if you get someone who doesn’t like transit and basically spirals it to death for the whole province….or you have a major organizational failure that essentially results in years of lost improvements province wide.
The final question is how do you deal with the vast differences in service levels between merging orgs. Ideally you want to bring everything up to the existing level of service in the bigger org…but in practice it’s likely that service would be decreased in one and increased in the others…which is obviously bad for Toronto in the short to medium term…and potentially the long term…unless funding to do it the right way can be found (we’re talking about probably 4x the service needed in mississauga to be competitive with Toronto service levels…how is that going to be funded?)
Only bad for Toronto if Toronto didn't also dramatically improve its operations.
Looking at the numbers, mississauga probably would need to buy 500 buses (double their current number) to get to 1000…to be competitive on a km^2 perspective with Torontos 2000 buses (and also need 100 lrt and one subway line)…maybe just a tad less if you factor the population sizes are 1 and 3m…
While I definitely agree that Toronto could use more regional coordination, I think there are other ways to do it besides making a single unified agency. The TTC already offers good service (albeit with poor reliability), and so does Brampton Transit. It seems like a Verkehrsverbund model, where you have a regional coordinator setting service/fare standards and completing high-level planning, would solve most of the problems you identified with much less disruption. You'd still need a supportive provincial government, which is maybe not realistic currently, but it's certainly something that could be pursued in the future.
Yeah, but service level is just one thing, many others I think TTC falls down on.
A larger governing body just equates to a larger more powerful union. Since the union is a large part of the problem it makes no sense to empower them further. What Ontario needs is a government with the energy and vision to unravel the labour laws that have grown to strangle and corrupt development and maintenance.
There is no reason a larger gov. body means a larger union.
Yes the unions that have forced these overly expensive P3 projects on us... except they are generally against P3s. Tell me, can you point to any credible research showing that unions (which are weaker here than in say, most of Europe) are responsible for cost and dysfunction in transit systems? I'd love to some read some material on this.
They aren't the whole or even the majority of the problem but they do contribute, usually through arbitrary requirements
From what I remember (anecdotally, of course), a big chunk of why everyone is so hesitant to give control is trust.
People don't want public goods to be privatized. From Ontario Hydro, to water testing (which led to the Walkerton crisis), and more recently, Hydro One, people are sick of having their public goods sold off for shareholders.
When the province brought forth the idea to upload the TTC subway, it had a tremendous amount of pushback, because people were uncertain that in 10yo from now, the infrastructure will be sold off.
Your idea makes complete sense, and I too, am for a regional structure. However, it will not happen if there is no trust.
I'd like to see an example of a subway system being sold off! I'm pretty familiar with transit networks and I don't think I've ever seen that happen
Just consider the big city amalgamation of the 90s which nobody wanted and has since erased most of our local nohow for roads and parks. Let’s learn from our mistakes!
So what would you do in places like the Northeastern US where there's just lots of continuous suburbs between the major cities? Lots of Florida is like that too. In many places, the suburbs are often wealthier than the core city, possibly places where if you couldn't afford to drive, you probably couldn't afford to live there in the first place.
Here in San Francisco people sometimes suggest that as well. But in the Bay Area the urban areas are quite outnumbered but the suburban ones. I do worry that with a suburban majority service would shift towards their desires. For example, more evenly spread out, tilting away from ridership towards coverage. Or less support for all day car-free living & more for peak-hour congestion relief.
Is that the way population tilts though?
Definitely here. The 9-county Bay Area, with transit "coordinated" by the not-very-powerful MTC, is population 7.5M. SF is 0.8, Oakland/Berkeley 0.6. Even with the mostly suburban San Jose that'd only add up to 2.4M.
Couldn't agree more that unification is key. However, what precautions would you take to avoid a GTA-wide agency from descending into MTA or SEPTA-like chaos?
For a US city, my hometown (San Diego) enjoys very consolidated governance. One county governs the entire Census Urban Area and Metropolitan Statisical Area (San Diego has no Combined Statistical Area.) San Diego proper covers at least 40% of Greater San Diego's population. There are only two transit agencies (MTS and NCTD), with 90% of transit ridership happening in MTS. SANDAG, the metropolitan planning organization responsible only for San Diego County, not only builds capital projects but also sets and administers fares across both MTS/NCTD.
For better or worse, unlike Ontario, California avoids meddling in local transit--especially not in San Diego, the city furthest from the state capital.