TTC takes a bath and comes up looking like $1 million

You won't need sunglasses to protect your eyes from the dazzling tiles and ceiling slats, but if the subway looks a little brighter lately, it's not your imagination or another break in the tunnel.

The TTC is on a cleaning binge attempting to muck out all 69 stations by the end of the year with the help of some temporary workers.

"We're getting into the nooks and crannies as best we can," said TTC spokesperson Brad Ross.

Cleanliness plays into customer service, said outgoing TTC vice-chair Joe Mihevc.

The TTC has hired 32 temporary workers, who operate in teams of four or five, cleaning mostly the exterior of the stations in the afternoon and moving inside after the evening rush.

The $1 million bath is money that's in the budget, said Ross.

"Customers are actually coming up to our crews and saying, 'This looks great,'" he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Britain's Got Talent" winner does TTC "flash opera"

  

Paul Potts, a "pop opera tenor" who won the Britain's Got Talent contest in 2007, surprised TTC riders at Union Station with a busker-like (except for the tux) rendition on "What A Wonderful World" last Friday.

The small crowd quickly grows, with many of the commuters whipping out camera phones. It's clear many do not know who Potts is, and are just enjoying the unexpected spectacle. "Well done, what's your name again?" asks one after Potts finishes to loud applause, hearty congratulations and requests for photos.

Enjoy the sustained high note at 2:45 on "I love you."

Crusading lawyer remembers fallen cyclists

Bike advocate and personal injury lawyer Patrick Brown sent this seasonal bulletin.

"Each Halloween is a haunting reminder of the unnecessary and tragic loss of Ryan Carriere [father, husband, cyclist, artist and so much more].  Hopefully Martin and the others will see fewer and fewer memorial rides," Brown wrote in an email.

Toronto cycling advocate passes the torch

 
Yvonne Bambrick, the enthusiastic and civically engaged head of the Toronto Cylists Union is cruising to greener pastures, although she's not saying which way she's pointed.

Bambrick was the first executive director of the union since that was established in 2008. When she decided earlier this year it was time to move on, she stepped into the role of communications director while Andrea Garcia, director of advocacy and operations, got her feet firmly planted on the union pedals.

Under Bambrick's direction, the union has become an influential voice not just for cycling in Toronto, but for walking and transit. She has lent her energy and support to the upcoming Bixi bike sharing program, cycling lane expansion and projects like the Union Station bike station and on-street bike parking.

Although she is a fierce advocate for cycling as a means to a healthier city, Bambrick is also a patient listener even when others' views aren't necessarily aligned with her own.

Here are her closing remarks.

Smitherman camp attempts to put a price on Ford's vision of Toronto transit

The George Smitherman camp has been researching the costs of some of rival Rob Ford platforms.

Using the city's candidate information service, which allows candidates equal access to financial and other information from city staff, Smitherman's people have compiled a detailed look at some of Ford's transit plans, including the penalties for cancelling Toronto's historic order for new streetcars.

Ford has suggested that streetcars cause more congestion than they alleviate and he is proposing to rip up some of the existing downtown lines and halt the building of light rail into the suburbs.

TTC spokesman Brad Ross confirms the numbers are directly from transit officials but many are guesstimates because they represent scenarios the TTC has never had cause to calculate.

"We get asked frequently the cost to cancel contracts for the streetcars. We don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing we would have undertaken unless direction were given to us," he said.

The cost of ripping up streetcar tracks, for example, is tough to calculate.

"We would never rip up the network. It’s not something you would do. If a policy decision was made to eliminate streetcars, then over time, the track and overhead wires would obviously be removed, but only over time… so we never provided an actual dollar figure. It’s too difficult to say," according to Ross.

But some of the numbers being floated in response to the Smitherman questions, include:

- $116.3 million wasted on Transit City light rail work so far

- $1.6 billion in contracts against which penalties could be levied, including new streetcars and tunnel boring machines for the Eglinton Transit City line.

- $1,100 to remove and repave each metre of existing streetcar tracks (although Smitherman's documents didn't have the total metres, Ross called The Goods to report that there are 90,000 metres of double track)

-$1,100 to remove each metre of overhead wire along streetcar tracks

-$200 million for new bus garages given that Ford is proposing to replace downtown streetcars with buses

- $407 million for 550 new hybrid buses at a cost of $740,000 each

- $35 million a year for 700 additional bus drivers

Where the candidates stand on Transit City

The latest survey of candidates' views on transit are now posted on the Public Transit Coalition's website.

The coalition is the same group that just spent $500,000 from the TTC workers' union to set up a website and ad campaign warning against the evils of privatized transit and the one that supported Mayor David Miller's fight against the province's deferral of $4 billion in Transit City light rail funding in last spring's budget.

Not surprisingly the survey questions are geared at gauging candidate support for Transit City and for maintaining city council oversight of the TTC.

Incumbents seem to score well on this survey, hardly a shock since they were in the government that backed the Transit City plan.

CAA surveys mayoral candidates in and around Toronto

Issues continue to be lost in this municipal election as Rob Ford's lead continues to dominate Toronto's mayoral race. To keep that lead Ford continues to say more of the same vague stuff with which he opened and his opponents look increasingly desperate.

But once you get past the surprise Ford juggernaut, transportation remains the top concern for many voters in the city and around the region.

So the CAA has put the question of transportation priorities to Toronto mayoral candidates and those in other municipalities, including Burlington, Mississauga and Vaughan. Clearly many candidates didn't respond but some might see that as interesting of itself.

You won't be surprised by the responses, many of which are formulaic out-takes from formulaic platforms but if you're just starting to pay attention to the specifics of the race have a look.

Fare system duel continues with website updates

Of the 68 parties who requested the details on the TTC's open payment requirements, only 11 have submitted the official application for the multi-phased bidding process.

According to the TTC's procurement website, Accenture, the company that designed the provincial Presto payment system being rolled out by GO Transit is not among them. Neither is MasterCard unless it is hidden under another name in a consortium.

Visa, however, is moving ahead on in the procurement process which will see interested parties talk turkey over the next few weeks on the details of the TTC's specs.

Meantime, to counter allegations from some TTC officials that the financial details of its open payment deal would eventually be more transparent than those surround Presto, the province has added some details of the Presto Accenture contract to the Presto website. The only dollar details, however, are those that have been previously quoted by the government and Presto officials.

Everybody wants a piece of the TTC's payment action

The specs for the TTC's open fare payment system have been requested by no fewer than 68 parties, including major credit card companies, banks and even Accenture, the company that won the $250 million contract to design the province's rival transit farecard, Presto, which the TTC doesn't want to install.

Some of those names, ranging from newspaper reporters to Metrolinx officials, aren't likely to register as official bidders. But it will be Monday before the TTC publicly announces which companies on the long list are making a serious play for the business, worth about $900 million annually.

The business opportunity is extreme, given that TTC ridership continues to climb and the Canadian market for micro-payments is only going to expand. Transit fares are considered a great gateway to convincing more of us to convert to the so-called contactless credit and debit card for those small purchases we're now transacting in cash.

"The card is the same card you use to buy your newspaper and coffee," Mastercard vice-president Cathleen Conforti told The Toronto Star this summer in a phone interview from her New York office.

She wasn't coy about the company's interest in the TTC and used the Mastercard experience on New York transit by way of example.

"You can use your card to go buy a Metrocard. You register for your monthly pass and give them your credit card information and you tap with your card every day and the payment platform knows you have that. The most important thing we're supplying is the convenience for the consumer," she said.

And there's no hassle for the rider in terms of converting to a special credit card, said Comforti.

"Over 99 per cent of active cards are PayPass enabled. In Canada you do not have an issue in enabling consumer cards. Globally,... it is a feature everybody wants on their card," she said.

Her company, which is on the TTC list, has been involved in transit for years in Salt Lake City, Paris, Liverpool, Warsaw and Taiwan.

Bad day for Toronto's streetcars

It was out with the old and out with the new this week as mayoral race frontrunner Rob Ford suggested that Mayor David Miller's new suburban light rail lines to the suburbs were a flight of madness that needs eliminating. He also said that downtown traffic would move faster if we got rid of some of the old streetcar lines and replaced them with buses.

Never mind that people like streetcars better because the tracks offer a sense of permanence that reassures them their ride won't be rerouted or eliminated in hard times.

According to Ford's website -- he didn't give The Toronto Star an interview -- buses would allow better traffic flow at less cost.

But it's not clear whether buses are easier on traffic. The law now requires that motorists yield to buses pulling in and out of stops and it would take more than three times as many to carry the same number of commuters who pack the streetcars along King and Queen.

Typically buses stop more than streetcars too, particularly on suburban avenues like those where the Transit City lines are planned.

Not much news in Ford's rejection of the newfangled suburban light rail lines. But it was a welcome announcement anyway from the east-end Save Our Sheppard (SOS) crowd who took to their namesake avenue Wednesday lobbying for a halt to construction of the Sheppard LRT, the first Transit City line scheduled for completion.

According to SOS stalwart Patricia Sinclair, Ford showed up for the morning rush-hour event, along with rivals Sarah Thomson and Rocco Rossi. (pictured here with Sinclair)

Another idea that keeps popping up, the conversion of the SRT to a subway, is being misrepresented as a matter of simply popping bigger trains on the original light rail above ground track. But transit experts were quick to point out that subways couldn't handle the curves on the SRT and the whole route might have to be changed.

That exercise would easily up the cost from the $1 billion Ford has hung on the project.

And don't even get transit insiders started on the viability of changing the Metrolinx Big Move plan, including Transit City, by the Pan Am Games in August 2015.

The Sheppard subway extension being proposed by Ford is about 4 kilometres longer than the Spadina subway extension, which is about 8 kilometres with six stops, that won't be finished until at least late 2015. It's been in the design and engineering mode for at least two years and the tunnel boring machines the TTC ordered about a year ago to drill the hole haven't yet been delivered.

So creating a 10-stop subway in less than five years seems unlikely at best. And, by the way, the idea that the boring machines Metrolinx has ordered for the underground portion of Eglinton could be transferred to Sheppard is a non-starter. The custom-built machines aren't the right size for subway digs. It's conceivable those that are to be used on the Spadina line might work but then you would have to wait until the end of 2015 to start employing them.