Free roads? Why not free transit?

A recent Star editorial concerning road pricing generated the predictable response from the anti-toll crowd: we paid for the roads so we have a right to use them at no cost.

What if we all agreed that road use be free of charge, with one concession: public transit become free of charge as well? Consider this: we already pay close to 50 per cent of transit operating costs through taxes, why not go all the way and pay the full cost – it could be the cheapest way to give everyone equal access to transportation, and for those lucky enough to already own a private automobile it would be the most affordable second car they could ever buy.

Free-of-charge public transit is by no means a novel idea and even a number of municipal candidates across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) have mused about offering free transit to seniors during the middle of the day. Something that may not be widely known is that a number of cities around the world have been providing their residents with free of charge public transit for many years. Visit www.freepublictransit.org for more information and click on various communities listed in the box on the left-hand side of the Home Page.

While fare-free transit may not make sense for big cities with well-established transit systems it might be worth consideration for smaller communities that are struggling to grow transit ridership. The regions of Durham, York, Peel and Halton, the 905 belt, are grappling with record-breaking population growth and along with the new jobs and residents there’s ever-increasing traffic congestion and bad air that "auto-matically" come with more cars.

Fortunately municipal decision makers and the land development industry are attempting to turn the corner on urban sprawl and there are some notable examples in the GTHA such as Markham Centre and Cornell in York, and Oak Park in Halton. These communities have been planned with people walking, cycling and using public transit for the majority of their travel needs, and there’s a growing awareness that we won’t be able to accommodate projected population growth and densities using the same transportation approaches from an era when the car was king.

In the future, if we rely too heavily on private automobiles for the majority of our travel needs, studies and transportation models predict our communities will become choked by traffic and quality of life eroded by the associated negative environmental and social impacts.

All 905 communities have a desire and plans to increase transit use from an estimated 10 per cent today up to 30 per cent in 20 to 30 years. These targets are ambitious at best and others suggest they can’t be achieved without innovative policies and practices, and strategic investments that position shared and active modes of travel ahead of the private automobile.

According to the 2010 York Region business plan and budget, their transit system (YRT – Viva) has experienced the highest ridership growth rate in the GTHA in the past few years and one of the highest in Canada (as per Canadian Urban Transit Association statistics). Recently ridership growth has slowed down from double digit increases to approximately 3 per cent in 2008 and 2 per cent in 2009.

While this growth is impressive, and the introduction of Viva bus rapid transit and subway extensions have positioned York and its member municipalities as transit leaders in the GTHA, achieving their stated ridership goals may benefit from pioneering tactics like free of charge transit.

Today in York Region there are about 312,000 households and the transit department there expects to raise $50,499,500 from the fare box this year. Using some simple math - revenue divided by total homes – the investment required to provide each and every household in York Region with free of charge public transit for a year might be as low as $161.86.

This number is compelling considering the Canadian Automobile Association estimates it costs close to $9,000 a year to own and operate a motor vehicle in Ontario, and communities that have implemented free transit policies have seen huge transit growth plus reduced expenditures for road repair and construction.

Removing public transit fares in other urban areas appears to have paid off big time in terms of healthier ridership and improved quality of life. Could not this fall's municipal election campaigns (in which road tolls akin to political suicide have been mentioned) provide a forum in which fare-free transit is given a fair hearing?

About Lorenzo Mele

Can the TTC create a culture of customer service?

The long awaited report from the TTC Customer Service Advisory Panel was recently released and as could have been predicted, the general public sentiment appears to be that the report doesn’t go far enough in addressing the serious nature of the problem -- "poor customer service."

The report, available on line http://ttcpanel.ca/report/, is organized in eight sections with a series of 78 observations and corresponding recommendations. The volunteer Advisory Panel, TTC staff and others that supported the effort to research and prepare the report should be commended, and their work is an excellent beginning to what could be a long journey for the TTC in their quest to deliver superior customer service.

The first and presumably most important section entitled, "A renewed focus on customer service" seems misleading given it implies that at some point in the not too distant past the TTC did focus on customer service. The challenge is that public transit operators like the TTC don’t view and treat customers in the same way that a service industry such as a hotel or retail enterprise does since public transit operators face little or no competition.

Transit administrators refer to the people that use their services as passengers or riders, and given that the majority of their clients don’t have a choice in how they commute to work or travel around their communities these so-called customers are essentially held captive by an industry that in most cases isn’t compelled to practise superior customer service because of the monopoly they hold.

Nonetheless the report does highlight some important changes that once implemented should improve the overall experience for TTC employees and their passengers. Section six of the report "Fare media and payment systems" once resolved with ubiquitous smart card technology will overnight relieve TTC operators from the least desirable aspect of their jobs – policing the fare box.

My uncle drove a TTC bus for close to 30 years and in my youth I remember how he would lament about the people who refused to pay the fare and how this caused him and his fellow drivers’ considerable angst and aggravation. Most large-city transit systems solved this problem a while ago and as a consequence their operators can better concentrate on the most important aspect of their work – operating vehicles safely.

Other benefits of an automated fare payment system include faster board times since drivers don’t have to scrutinize transit passes and the fare box, transfers would no longer be required and who knows once this annoying duty is eliminated by the introduction of smart cards or a similar system, TTC operators might even have time to give customers directions or a smile.

The other recommendation worth mentioning is a need to focus on the youth market, and it’s important that the TTC does recognize how vital students are to their business, since on some routes they comprise most of the riders, and as these youth become adults it’s important to keep them as transit customers. The panel recommends the formation of a student advisory committee and an excellent example worth exploring is the Youth Onboard or YO program for short that York Region Transit (YRT) started a few years ago. In York Region each high school has a number of transit ambassadors that are recruited to help communicate to their classmates’ route changes or simply promote the use of transit to get to school. The YRT program seems to be working well and could be a model for the TTC to follow.

What remains to be seen is how the recommendations are received by the mayoral candidates and in what manner they might weave the panel’s findings into their own campaign platforms concerning transit. The quick hit ideas like improved communication through signs and display boards are tempting but a deep culture transformation is required if the TTC is to become truly customer service oriented.

As a start it might be useful if all elected officials and TTC brass were required to travel by transit at peak hours at least once a week, then they might begin to cultivate the empathy needed to understand their patrons concerns and in response create the "Culture of Customer Service" the panel recommends.

About Lorenzo Mele

Can the TTC adopt a customer-service approach?

In March of this year the TTC formed a Customer Service Advisory Panel in response to increasing friction between the paying public and a transit commission that appeared at best indifferent to their customers needs. Not exactly a big surprise when you consider the TTC is a monopoly that serves a market referred to in industry parlance as "no choice riders."

The panel had a daunting task and was encouraged to review current plans and processes related to customer service, and front line (operator) employee hiring and training (initial and re-certification), including the possible introduction of a customer Bill of Rights that would address employee as well as customer expectations.

The panel consulted with the public as well as TTC employees, including meetings and focus groups. The result of this effort will be a public report (scheduled to be released sometime in 2010) that is intended to provide recommendations concerning expertise and resources needed to achieve success, which I hope means "happy customers."

The report may outline organizational changes that could include members of the Commission and management, as well as private citizens to address specific areas of interest. The findings and final recommendations of the panels’ review are sure to provide fodder for the mayoral candidates as they debate the intricacies of public transportation policy in the city.

It’s important that TTC management and their political masters recognized the urgency of the situation and struck the "blue ribbon" panel earlier this year. The chair of the panel works in the hospitality industry and seems a natural fit for the challenge at hand.

What remains to be seen is how well the initiatives and tactics used in a true customer service oriented industry will be received by TTC management used to customers held captive in a transportation market that offers little choice and increasingly less service.

About Lorenzo Mele

No simple, single cure for transportation woes

For our mayoral candidates the "red rocket" seems to have become their "silver bullet" in the endless pursuit to find a solution to our transportation challenges.

The electorate are looking to politicians and decision-makers to ease commuter woes, and no one seems to have the heart to tell them that common wisdom and professional opinion suggest there really isn’t a single answer for something as complex as the way the citizens of Greater Toronto choose to move around the region each day.

Rocco Rossi is the latest mayoral candidate to position himself as a transit "super-hero" by promising to build two kilometres of track every year, over the next decade. Rossi says the city can afford the $4.5 billion price tag if it sells Toronto Hydro and other assets, and then uses that cash to clear the $2.5 billion debt. It seems that once someone dons the Captain Transit cape nothing can get in the way of their mission.

Mr. Rossi’s financial plan to fund his transit quest isn’t entirely apparent to me, however, in his words, The City of Toronto is rich in assets and together we own a lot of stuff’, and it seems that he and the Toronto Board of Trade don’t consider Toronto Hydro to be central to the operation and mission of the city.

That's beginning to sound like the same pretzel logic and voodoo economics the Mike Harris "common-sense revolutionaries" proffered up in the mid-1990s to clear a provincial deficit prior to an election. In that boondoggle we saw a prized public transportation asset sold to the highest bidder. Considering the tolls collected each year by the ETR 407 total a half a billon dollars a year it’s no wonder taxpayers continue to lament that decision.

What’s encouraging is that all of the candidates support transit expansion in some form or another, and some of the financing schemes being offered up are also on the mark. The challenge is that regardless whether we choose subways, buses or light rail transit (LRT) these systems once built require on going operation, maintenance and ultimately replacement. If, as Rossi suggests, we sell assets to pay for capital expansion how will we afford the other on-going (operational) expenses?

People move around the city in a variety of ways, at all times of day and for many different reasons. How we use the transportation system is based on many considerations – where we live and work, our disposable income, our age, our health, our recreational interests, our diet, and more. The notion that a "single fix" approach is out there, if only we could find it, is preposterous, and the search itself stymies creativity, collaboration and partnership. Humans are complex beings and our mobility needs and the transportation challenges they present demand sophisticated solutions.

With the run up to the municipal elections candidates across the GTA will form an opinion regarding "how they would solve the traffic problems in their community." What remains to be seen is whether someone emerges that has the acumen to fully understand the problem, the humility to admit they don’t have all the answers and the courage to deliver solutions they know will be unpopular.

About Lorenzo Mele

There's no such thing as 'free' parking

"There is no such thing as free parking — even if you work at a parking lot." This Star headline, was prompted by a judgment made recently by the Honourable Justice T.E. Margeson where the appellant was the Toronto Parking Authority (TPA) and the respondent the Minister of National Revenue.

Essentially the ruling states that a parking space provided to an employee by their employer should be considered a taxable benefit that would attract Canada Pension Plan contributions.

If the judgment were applied further afield there could be tax implications for anyone who drives to work and parks their car in a space provided by their employer. Considering that an estimated 70 per cent of Canadians drive and park their cars free of charge on their employers’ property the financial ramifications for workers and their employers could be profound.

The challenge, of course, is that if an employer decided to purchase a transit pass for their employee instead of giving them a free parking space to use each day, their investment in transit would be considered a taxable benefit.

If you consider this point in the context of the current transit dialogue that’s gripped the city it seems that at the very least our tax laws should be aligned with our community goals. If we want more people to use transit and use their autos less, then commuters deserve a choice and we could start by acknowledging that parking is not free, it’s a benefit and we should have to pay for the luxury.

Determining the economic value of a parking space at a TPA lot or garage is easy; they have a big sign out front with the prices listed. On this point the parking authority argued that it does not lose money because the lots aren’t full, and that no one is guaranteed a space. Unfortunately for the TPA and its employees their arguments concerning the value of the benefit didn’t sway the court and if they park without paying, it’s a taxable benefit.

At a suburban office park the value of an "employee parking" space is more difficult to assess, but it can be done. Land values in most of the GTA have approached the $1 million an acre mark, and the cost of building and maintaining a parking lot can range between $20 and $50 a month per parking space.

So the parking space that millions of Canadians use each day does have a value and given surface parking lots are one of the more dominate land forms in our cities it might be useful if we take a closer look at how much all this free parking is actually costing us.

About Lorenzo Mele

It's not just about finding room for bikes

It’s wonderful that our mayoral candidates and the electorate have a position on bike lanes, whether pro or con, considering not that many years ago the topic didn’t really register with voters and politicians alike. Today there’s general support for bicycles - they don’t pollute, they save us money, they’re fun to ride and they help keep us fit.

Some of the candidates like bikes but not on arterial roads, and the latest plan for University Avenue is generating lots of debate. The reality is that many arterial roads are already used as main thoroughfares by commuter cyclists, and generally speaking bike lanes installed along strategic stretches of roadway could improve safety and comfort for cyclists and lead to more people cycling.

As a form of transportation the bicycle is ultra efficient, a model of appropriate technology that eclipses the automobile in its ability to transform energy into forward motion. For a machine that is seemingly so perfect it’s sad that it causes so much angst and consternation. Militarizing the debate is hostile and counter productive and I wonder if the vitriol that some people use to explain their distain for all things bicycle is really as pervasive as they would have us believe.

Others suggest that a licensing fee for bicycles, to pay for their use of the road and new bike lanes, would be in order. Like bike lanes that go against the traffic – this suggestion is "contra-flow" to prevailing thinking. If someone chooses to ride a bicycle, their travel behaviour should be rewarded and in many countries (unfortunately not ours) governments are paying their citizens to ride their bikes to work.

The Canadian Automobile Association, a seemingly unlikely cycling advocate, promotes the virtues of the bicycle in their spring 2010 issue of CAA Magazine. A series of articles under the "Pedal Power – helping the planet two wheels at a time" banner, reports on the benefits of cycle tourism and bike sharing schemes that have been in place for years in cities like Paris, Barcelona and Stockholm and that may be coming to our city around this time next year.

There appears to be lots of common ground on the debate and if we tease apart the rhetoric we’ll discover that it’s about real estate – and the amount of space to be shared by those on bicycle, on foot, wheeling and in motor vehicles. The dilemma then is where bicycles should go in the right of way (ROW) – that area of land municipalities take from developers and planners and engineers carve up to accommodate the numerous and competing interests and needs.

If this space isn’t adequately shared – transit slows, cars speed, cyclists don’t feel comfortable or safe and pedestrians are put at risk. When we get it wrong the consequences can be disastrous and tragic. As a first consideration we must apportion space more equitably for all road users and then employ road designs that don’t place the needs of motorists ahead of other road users.

A forum happening in the city April 23, 2010 and hosted by the Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation or TCAT, will examine these challenges under the lens of something called "complete streets." Just as a relationship requires a sense of completeness between partners to make it work, our road network must be designed so that streets work for all road users not just those using a car.

About Lorenzo Mele

Customer service a sea change for TTC

It seems almost too easy these days to find fault with the TTC, and this latest embarrassment concerning the state of repair and cleanliness of the stations should prompt us to take a closer look at the root causes.

Iit wasn’t always this way and I remember as a child in the 1960s how exciting it was to travel downtown from Scarborough on the subway. The cars and stations were shiny and clean, and the drivers were polished and professional. It was a different era, of course, but something more than the passing of time and age have led us to our current situation.

Today, at the helm of the TTC are accountants, planners and engineers and the board of directors and its leadership are politicians. The public face of the corporation had been its general manager up until June of 2006, when as was stated, “political interference” from his commission overlords prompted Rick Ducharme to quit as chief general manager of the public transit commission.

So who is running the TTC today? The chairman, a politician is still there but in obvious turmoil so we’ll give him a pass. The general manager is a civil engineer who joined the commission early in his career and is the only GM to have been promoted to the position from within. He’s a company man, appears to understand the union culture and as far as we can tell (no wildcat strikes lately) labour unrest is in check under his leadership.

Recently, recognizing that the commission was experiencing public relations challenges he struck a "blue ribbon" panel led by a local hotelier to examine the problems and recommend solutions.

In my mind, this action of TTC brass reaching out for help from its customer base, the hospitality industry and private sector, to focus their attention on customer service was an important first step in admitting they don’t have the expertise to effectively address these important concerns.

Further, it appears the TTC may have lost sight of their reason for being – to provide quality service to its customers.

The TTC boasts one of the safest public transit systems in the world and the ratio of fare box revenue to operating costs is one of the best in North America -- if not the best.

For this we can thank the engineers and accountants, but we shouldn’t be surprised that a service led and managed by accountants and engineers isn’t customer focused. It’s not their fault; they don’t have the training nor are their brains wired to manage the complexities of operating a transit system from a customer perspective. This coupled with the fact that the TTC has been crying poor, and for good reason, for as long as I can remember.

Their corporate culture has lost the ability to dream.

Customer service challenges aside, what becomes really difficult to understand is how we could be investing billions of dollars expanding light rail across the city before we’ve addressed the state of repair of existing stations. I suspect the TTC has an answer for this and it will be interesting to learn how they respond to business leaders who are growing increasingly frustrated by an organization that seems to have forgotten they’re supposed to be the "Better Way."

About Lorenzo Mele

Why a $5 road toll makes good sense

Lorenzo Mele.

Congratulations to Sarah Thomson, candidate for Mayor of Toronto, for introducing us to her bold vision to support transit expansion in the city. Thomson seems to understand that Toronto needs more than a "cap in hand" funding strategy to support transit expansion since senior levels of government are growing weary of bankrolling our transit vision. And we can’t forget that once the subway and LRT systems are built, money is needed to operate, maintain and ultimately replace them.

The challenge is that such a powerful economic measure must be considered in broader terms than simply collecting $5 from each motorist using the DVP and the Gardiner Expressway to fund subways instead of light rail transit.

As a candidate in a municipal election, it takes courage to introduce unpopular ideas, and it would be unfortunate if we devolve the important discussion that Thomson has started down to the simple "war on cars" or 416 versus 905 struggles. We deserve an informed civil debate to better understand how we might apply a tried-and-true economic strategy to improve traffic congestion, air quality, and fund our transit and cycling dreams.

Road pricing or tolls were used in Roman times, places like Singapore continue to evolve road pricing schemes first introduced there in 1975 as a way to manage ever-growing traffic congestion, and charging a fee for a good or service is the very foundation of our revered market economy.

The "law of supply and demand" is applied effectively to virtually every aspect of our consumer society, save for transportation. Tolls or road pricing implemented strategically across the GTA and Hamilton (not only on the DVP and Gardiner Expressway) and combined with improved transportation services (transit, bike lanes, rapid transit, vanpools, carpool lanes and parking lots, community shuttles) and better land use planning that puts people and the places they need to go to closer together, would transform the way we choose to travel around our city.

Along with rising fuel costs, road tolls would give motorists an economic incentive to seriously consider travel choices other than the private automobile. Overnight we would see increases in carpool activity, and transit use, more employers would allow their employees to work from home, and some people might decide to work closer to where they live or live closer to where they work so that they could cycle or even walk to work.

The interesting thing is that the future is here with respect to road pricing since we have a world class example right in our own backyard. According to www.tollroadnews.com in 2009 the 407 ETR (Express Toll Road) had revenues of $560 million and average weekday trips of 380,000.

The challenge with the 407 ETR is that "we the people" no longer own the highway so we don’t share the revenue, and although that’s a matter that I won’t address through this blog, we are collectively benefiting from having a alternate parallel route to the 401 and Highway 7 that is used daily by transport companies delivering our goods and services and commuters, the majority of which likely have a 905 area code.

Experience world wide has demonstrated that travel demand can be better managed with road pricing than without. As our population grows and our municipal budgets shrink due to competing spending priorities, road tolls will become a vital ingredient in our transportation future as we strive to maintain the quality of life of everyone in our city and surrounding regions.

About Lorenzo Mele

Transit woes demand tough love

Our hopes for an expanded transit system across the GTA have been dashed with the tabling of the provincial budget. Our mayor is outraged. He thinks the decision; in his words is "thick" and every candidate for mayor has something to say about Santa Dalton becoming a Transit Scrooge. Like a Hollywood movie script, political theatre needs good guys and bad guys, and besides lamenting about it, again in our mayors’ words, "how are people in our poorest communities going to get to work," what are we and our leaders prepared to do to make our Transit City plan a reality?

There’s no disputing that the current municipal leadership is transit supportive; they’ve been tremendous advocates for Toronto’s transit plans and we’ve seen payoffs in the past. Unfortunately, in tough economic times, which may be with us for some time to come, their passionate and at times zealous approach no longer resonates with our provincial and federal bankers. Our population will continue to grow and the need for expanded transit along with it. The question now becomes – what’s our plan ‘B’?

Will we simply wait to put our cup out again and hope that in a few years time a benevolent Premier or Prime Minister has a change of heart and fills it up with the billions of dollars that are needed for transit? Or do we start acting like the world class city we long to be and use the powers granted to us by the Province under the City of Toronto Act and become masters of our own destiny. If expanded transit is really that important to Toronto and the rest of the region then we need to devise a pan-GTA financial strategy that is dependable and sustainable.

Last year the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) prepared a Territorial Review of Toronto and they determined that traffic congestion, resulting time delays and long commutes cost us over $3.3 billion annually in lost productivity. One of their key recommendations outlined in Chapter 2.3 of their report, was for Toronto and the surrounding region to begin tackling transportation challenges by creating incentives for reducing car use, securing access to additional revenue sources, and longer term funding and investment commitments by our federal government.

When the OECD report was issued last year politicians and citizens alike seemed indifferent and I don’t recall any mass protests or outrage expressed that traffic congestion and long commutes were resulting in a collective loss of an obscene amount of money. The main comment from our Mayor was that the federal government should take note and solve Toronto’s problems. I agree that the federal government does have a role to play on the tax policy and investment fronts but we also need to help ourselves. We seemed to take the news in stride and now as the municipal elections begin to grip our interest no one appears to be connecting the dots.

Consider this – our transit dreams won’t happen without billions of dollars, traffic congestion and the resulting lost productivity costs us billions of dollars, the OECD recommends that we devise incentives for reducing car use and develop additional revenue sources, and we have a Premier acting more like Scrooge than Santa. If someone is brave enough to connect the dots they’ll see that the answer to our problems – road pricing - is staring us in the face.

About Lorenzo Mele