vic.gedris.org Never mind the blogs, here's the website.

This Sunday will see a large number of service improvements both during peak and off peak periods to implement the next major step in the Ridership Growth Strategy.  The three major changes in this round are:

• Restoration of service during all operating periods (except overnight) on almost all routes.  This will eliminate the “does my bus run now” problem faced by riders on many parts of the system.
• A maximum 30-minute headway (a proposed 20-minute maximum will be examined for possible implementation in late 2009).
• Improvement of loading standards so that the acceptable average maximum load on buses is lower than previously with the result that more buses will serve crowded routes.

The details of the changes have been discussed before on this site, but what I am interested to learn via comments is rider experiences over the next few weeks on the affected routes.

• Is there a noticeable reduction in crowding?
• Do the new off peak services run reliably especially if their headways are 20 minutes or more?  Do buses run on time, or on a non-schedule making it hard to plan trips to meet the posted arrival times for buses?

For Queen 501 riders, there will be a new schedule designed to simplify route management.  The two services, Neville-Humber and Neville-Long Branch, will be scheduled separately (although headways are supposed to be blended) rather than having cars switch between the two branches.  What has your experience been on the 501 for the past month or so, and is there any difference with the new schedule?

Finally, here is the November 23, 2008 Service Summary for those who want all the gory details of the operation.

Updated:  This afternoon, the TTC issued a press release as follows:

TTC announces service improvements

Sets record of 465 million rides

Beginning this Sunday, November 23, customers of the Toronto Transit Commission will now be able to take almost any bus route in the city between approximately 6 a.m. and 1 a.m., seven days a week.

As part of the TTC’s service improvement plan, all bus routes will now align with the hours of the subway. Routes that used to only operate during peak periods, or midday, will now run during the same hours that the subway operates, with a maximum of 30 minute waiting times. An increase in the number of buses during peak periods will mean an increase in service for customers across Toronto.

Customers have been requesting the TTC to increase services in areas of the city that require reliable transit at all times of the week. For example, the 32D Eglinton West via Emmett route will now operate every 30 minutes or better, seven days a week until 1 a.m., servicing
residents on Emmet Ave. who previously had a lengthy walk to and from TTC services.

A full list of new and improved TTC services can be found here.

This site will be under maintenance between about 7 am and noon, Sunday November 16.

Service may be interrupted from time to time.

This is the last in the series for 2008.  I am woefully late in writing fair versions of these from my notes and must blame both personal diversions and far too much transit activity.

Reviewed in this post:

• Lovely, Still
• Adam Resurrected
• Of Time and the City

Saturday, September 13

Lovely, Still  Directed by Nik Fackler

Robert Malone (Martin Landau) is an elderly man living alone, apparently unmarried or widowed.  He has his routine.  It’s near Christmas and he’s wrapping his one present, to himself, to put under his tree.  All the decorations, especially the lights, are old.  The only odd thing about his house it  has many empty picturehooks, but few paintings or photographs.  Also, Robert suffers nightmares from which he awakes listening to Christmas music on the radio.

A family moves in across the street.  Mary (Ellen Burstyn) drops by to say hello and a tentative romance begins.  She is very eager, and after an oddly short courtship, Robert and Mary are sleeping together.  This doesn’t last, thought, and after a particularly violent nightmare Robert wakes up alone in panic. 

Now we learn that all that went before was in his mind, memories of past times.  Richard is terrified of being alone, and his house is full of post-it notes left by Mary, his wife who lives across the street.  Not long after, Robert lands in hospital and Mary is faced with saying goodbye to what is left of the husband she loved.

This is a very moving film with touching work from both lead actors.  All the same, the transition between states for Robert might have been handled less violently.

I couldn’t help comparing Lovely, Still with Away From Her that covered some of the same ground, but better.

Adam Resurrected  Directed by Paul Schrader

Adam Stein, the title character, was the toast of Weimar Germany — a comic, a magician, an entertainer with a wide following even among the Nazis.  Years after the war, he is a sociopath, clever, engaging but dangerous and prone to violence.  This leads him, unwillingly, to a treatment centre in the Israeli desert for Holocaust survivors.

Adam has a thing about dogs.  During the war, he was made a pet of Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe) who recognized him and trained him as a pet emulating and befriending “Rex”, a German Shepherd.  Constantly he worries for the safety of his wife and daughter, and one day sees them walk by enroute to the ovens while he plays his violin.  After the war, he will be rejected by his family as a collaborator.  All of this is interwoven as flashbacks through the story.

One day in the hospital, Adam finds a young boy who was raised as a dog.  Nobody but Adam can reach him.  Gradually there comes trust and, eventually, humanity.

Jeff Goldblum plays Adam and captures his talents, his mercurial mind and his haunting memories perfectly.  He is a comic, a desperate improviser, getting by as he can.  In the end, Adam returns to some sort of normal life, but the spark of creativity is gone.

Of Time and the City  Directed by Terence Davies

Terrence Davies reviews Liverpool, the city of his youth, through a crusted lens with reams of historic footage — old buildings, people, post war reconstruction, deindustrialization.  A mix of poetry and images shows the gritty beauty of the city as it was, a Victorian industrial town of narrow streets with overcrowded housing.

The film turns political with the arrival of the “Betty Windsor” show, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.  Davies contrasts the pomp and luxury with the poverty of Liverpool.  No monarchist he.

As the city rebuilds, accompanied by no less than Mahler’s Ressurection Symphony, old low rise housing falls to new shining tower blocks in fields of open space.  Newer is not necessarily better, and Davies shows us the same lined faces looking out of windows and off of balconies as we saw before in the old Council houses.  Later, the new courtyards will be overgrown with weeds and grafitti.

“Where has my Liverpool gone” is Davies’ theme.  This is a love song for a long-lost friend.

We think we are at the film’s end, sunsets and all, a misty-eyed view to the past.  But wait!  Cue the music!  This is Liverpool reborn, the cultural capital of Europe for 2008.  We must look forward.

Davies says all he needs to with a bombastic finish, the triumphal end of Mahler’s symphony and lots of fireworks.  Perish the thought that the city might only be a shadow of what it once was.

Reviewed in this post:

• Fifty Dead Men Walking
• Synecdoche, New York
• Toronto Stories
• Me and Orson Welles
• Who Do You Love
• Blood Trail

Thursday, September 11

Fifty Dead Men Walking  Directed by Kari Skogland

Yes, another film about The Troubles.  The title refers to the claim that at least fifty people are still alive who, but for a double agent working for British intelligence, would have been assassinated by the IRA.  This particular story is adapted from the life of a real person who made quite a stink about being misrepresented until he actually saw the film and received a $40K financial settlement.

Oddly enough, this is a “Canadian” film due to production arrangements although it’s a co-production with Northern Ireland and has a British/Irish cast.

Martin (Jim Sturgess) is a small time crook recruited as a double agent by Special Branch.  His handler Fergus (Ben Kingsley) takes a fatherly interest in Martin but will eventually lose control of him to MI-5.

The story is told from the British point of view, and it’s the IRA who are a thoroughly nasty bunch with no qualms about their tactics.  Contrast this with the view of the Brits we get in The Hunger reviewed earlier in this series.

Martin’s relationship with his pals, his girlfriend and Fergus becomes more and more complex as he moves deeper into the IRA and his intelligence becomes more valuable.  The tension for us and for him is in wondering when his cover will be blown and he will become a target himself.  Eventually, thanks to a botched MI-5 raid, Martin’s career is over.

There’s nothing here we don’t know already about The Troubles and I left the theatre wondering why we needed yet another film covering familiar ground.

Synecdoche, New York  Written & Directed by Charlie Kaufman

Charlie Haufman is a clever writer, and in Synecdoche, New York he tackles the creative problem of the author as the master of his own world.  Unfortunately, Kaufman didn’t quite master his own world, and this film is too clever by half.

The title, a pun on Schenectady where the story is nominally located, refers to a literary device where a part stands in for the whole.  No, not quite a metaphor (where one things stands for another) or a simile (where two concepts have a fraternal sort of relationship).  If you really care, you can read about it on Wikipedia.

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an author and a director of ineffectual productions in a small theatre.  He’s something of a nerd and his family life is coming apart.  Early in the film, Caded suffers a bizarre bathroom plumbing accident, and as the story unfolds (if this term can be used with such a convoluted script) his various medical conditions get totally out of control.  He is aging rather quickly and can’t do anything about it.

To counter the disintegration of his real life, he creates a fictitious one.  This is hardly a new concept, but for Caden the situation is helped immesurably by a “MacArthur Genius Grant”.  At least there may be a grant, or it might just be in his mind.

With this grant, Caden builds a replica of New York City in a large warehouse, and proceeds to duplicate his life as theatre.  The cast of the play within the film grows and grows, and they become restless that the production never actually starts.  However, the characters get away from him, in some cases living “him” better than he does himself, while his own life (assuming it really is “his” life we are seeing) falls apart.  Try as he might, he cannot will an ordered, happy life by writing it into his play.

By the end, Caden the author/director is himself being directed by a woman speaking through an earpiece right up to the point of death. 

I have left out a lot here including almost all of the action in the inner story.  There are too many contrivances.  Anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes could have been cut from this film without damaging the premise, but Kaufman directed himself, his debut in that role and self-referential within the movie.  Like Caden, he doesn’t seem to know what to cut.

Synecdoche, New York has opened in Toronto.

Toronto Stories  Directed by Sook-Yin Lee, Sudz Sutherland, David Weaver and Aaron Woodley

Toronto gets to play itself in Toronto Stories, a set of four linked shorts by Canadian directors.

We begin at the airport with a mixed bag of people coming through immigration.  A lone, well-dressed boy shows up speaking no English, but with a Canadian postcard of the RCMP.  He’s obviously used to fending for himself as he quickly slips away and takes a bus down into the city.  He will form the link of the four stories to follow.  Each story tells of relationships — one just starting, a few falling apart and an unlikely hope in one of the city’s darker corners.

Shoelaces (Woodley)  Two kids escape from a local bully and wind up playing late at night in a ravine.  One thing leads to another, and that play brings a first kiss.

The Brazilian (Lee)  Sook-Yin Lee (Willia) is one half of a mixed-race couple.  She’s gung ho for romance, but her friend Boris is just not ready for a relationship.  How do you find the right person in a big city? 

During the Q&A, a woman in the audience asked whether the Lee’s employer (the CBC) has any problems with her showing up (again) naked in a film, a reference to her role in Shortbus.  Much tittering in the house.  I do not know how this might fit in with our government’s cultural policies.

Windows (Sutherland) is the least successful of the four episodes.  An escaped con and his girlfriend are in a house that’s clearly not theirs.  He wants her back in his life, she’s not happy about the situation.  A neighbourhood watch busybody calls the cops not because this white couple is suspicious, but because a black window clearner shows up to work on the house.

Lost Boys (Weaver)  Henry (Gil Bellows) is a street man, a bit addled, but he’s got a Forest Hill background.  One of his hangouts is Union Station (the security staff know him well) where he meets the boy from the airport.  When Henry sees the kid leaving with a child pimp, he tries to rouse the police to do something, but they won’t believe him.

The quartet of shorts works reasonably well, but I would have enjoyed Toronto Stories more had there been better connections between the episodes.

Me and Orson Welles  Directed by Richard Linklater

Occasionally, a director has the chance to build a film around an actor who already owns his role.  Such was the case with Christian McKay who had been playing a one-man show as Orson Welles.  So strong is his interpretation, one has to remember that it is still a sketch, an homage, not the real thing.

Me and Orson Welles is itself adapted from a novel.  There’s a lot of crossover here.

Richard Samuels (Zack Efron) is a young would-be actor hoping to play on Broadway.  He manages to talk his way into the Mercury Theatre, Welles at that point fledgling company.   There’s a romantic interest, Sonja (Claire Danes) who actually keeps the company together while hoping Welles will smooth her way to greater things in the film world.  Richard should know better than to upstage the great man.

Welles is preparing Julius Caesar and Richard will play Lucius.  Rehearsals are chaotic.  Richard is not a very good actor.  Amazingly, opening night comes off brilliantly, a triumph for Orson Welles.  Richard is not so lucky and his career in the theatre is a brief one.

Me and Orson Welles isn’t a big, complex story, but it has a lot of brilliant acting with solid work right into the supporting cast.  The direction and editing are tight, and it’s great fun to watch both as an ensemble piece and to see Christian McKay’s take on Orson Welles.  What could have been a weak film built around one overdone character actually works because Linklater has the good sense to keep Welles off the screen enough for us to savour his appearances.

Friday, September 12

Who Do You Love Directed by Jerry Zaks

A great way to start a Friday at the end of the fest is a documentary that sends you out wanting to sing and dance.

“Who Do You Love” is the story of Chess Records, the label that brought black music to a wide audience in America. If it were just a biopic with historic footage intercut, it would be interesting but not exciting. If it were just a music video, with actors carefully synching to old recordings, why bother?

To his credit, Jerry Zaks brings major characters to life, especially Muddy Waters, and with them, their music.

The Chess brothers started off in the junkyard business, but Leonard Chess (Alessandro Nivolo) wanted more.  He heard a new kind of music, the blues, and knew that there would be a market for it.

Chess starts by opening a club in rundown part of Chicago betting that at least the black audience will come and the whites may follow.  Next he buys a record company.

In still segregated America, a white man embracing black culture was an oddity, and both the musicians in the story and we in the audience have good reason to distrust Leonard’s motives.  He’s far from perfect, friendships can be strained and families don’t always hold together.

The real treat is rapport between the characters and the actors.  All are musicians and perform in the film.  David Oyelowo (Muddy Waters) is Nigerian, speaks with a British accent, but mastered both the black delta accent and the slide guitar (after two and a half months of work).

Both Oyelowo and Marshall Chess, Leonard’s son, were at the screening, and Who Do You Love got a lot of help from other living musicians who were part of Chess Records.

Blood Trail  Directed by Richard Parry

Robert King started as a war photographer in 1993 in Sarajevo, and he was really not up to the job.  His fellow media members figured that either he wouldn’t hold up, or would be killed.  Only a year earlier, Richard Parry had started covering wars as a cameraman, and Parry found King an odd subject.  At the time, King was only 24 and an outsider, but gradually he learned his craft. 

Chechnya, Moscow, Iraq — these are among the places Robert King worked, and Parry’s path kept crossing King’s.  The idea of a documentary about a war photographer, someone who went from barely being able to sell a picture to regular appearances in Time appealed to Parry, and his film kept getting longer.  First it was a 25-minute short, then a 50-minute TV documentary, then finally an 80-minute feature with the addition of recent fottage in King’s Tennessee home from 2007.

When we watch TV or see photos in newspapers, we can forget that someone had to take them, often at great risk.  How to show the real character of what is happening in such situations?

When we see Robert King as he is today, we see someone who became part of the machinery of war and was changed by it.  He started off naive, rose in strength and skill, but now is marked by his profession. 

This documentary is a fine counterpoint to Hurt Locker which I reviewed earlier.  No bravado, no heroics, no sense of immortality, just a look at the human cost of going back to theatres of war over and over to document what happens there.

Reviewed here:

• The Wrestler
• Birdsong
• Adoration
• Four Nights With Anna
• Good

Tuesday, September 9

The Wrestler Directed by Darren Aronofsky

Aging wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson is well past his prime.  He makes his way through a circuit of small-town fights for the smallest of fees.  The fights are harder and the fans don’t come out the way they used to.

Yes, it’s a fight film, and it’s not the sort of thing I would normally go to except for the lead actor, Mickey Rourke.  Could this actor who dropped out of the business pull off a major role?  What was that Golden Lion at Venice all about anyhow?

Rourke has actually spent time working as a wrestler making him entirely believable in a demanding physical role.  This isn’t gentlemanly, olympic stuff here, this is mean, dirty, play to the crowd, the more blood the better showmanship.  It’s hard on everyone.

The film starts with fight sequences, but we also see Randy’s personal side.  He has a thing for a local stripper Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), but she respects the client/dancer divide.  His daugher Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) has been estranged for years — he was always the absent father.  The plot on this side is fairly predictable with unrequited love and reconcilliation, but Rourke’s acting makes you focus on Randy’s character as he tries to rebuild his life.

Yup, it’s a tacky plot, but there’s lots here for the wrestling fans and great acting from Mickey Rourke.

The Wrestler opens in December 2008 in the USA.

Birdsong Directed by Albert Serra

Birdsong is supposed to be a slightly absurb retelling of Three Kings story from the Nativity.  It’s a Catalan fil, in black and white, with an absurdist sense of humour, or so the Festival would have us believe.  It fit into a niche in my schedule.

At the introduction, we learned that the director was not in Toronto, but instead we would have one of the actors who turns out to be Canadian (!?) and just happens to be a friend of the programmer.  Not very Catalan.  We are told that the film is languid.  We should feel free to laugh.

This is an ominous introduction to anyone seasoned by years of film festivals.

The three kings wander.  The shots are, shall we say, static.  No point on moving the camera around.  One of the kings seems to have a stone in his shoe.  He falls down.  They can’t agree on whether to go on or if one of them can even make it up a hill.

In time, they walk up the hill.  This is a very, very long shot.  They disappear over the ridge.  They walk down the other side.  There is no dialogue, no sign of a star, no supporting entourage, no camels.  After 40 minutes they seemed ready to bed down for the night, and I decided that this was a good time to join them by walking out.

Wednesday, September 10

Happy-Go-Lucky

I have already reviewed Happy-Go-Lucky in Part 2 of this series.

Adoration Directed by Atom Agoyan

In Adoration, Atom Agoyoan has given us a memory play, but one with multiple memories and not all of those true.  Who can we trust?

Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian) is a teacher of French and drama living in Canada, but originally from Lebanon where she lost her family to the war.  Her husband Sammi (Noam Jenkins) left years ago, and was later killed with his second wife, Rachel (Rachel Blanchard) in a car crash.  Their son, Simon (Devon Bostick), is Sabine’s student.  A coincidence, perhaps, but things get much more complicated.

Simon is working on translating a report of a terrorist attack, but chooses to reframe the story in the first person and convert it to a monologue about his parents.  He posts the story online and provokes an explosion of angry responses in a multivoice chat room.  The school, in a predictably spineless manner, fires Sabine. 

Meanwhile, Simon’s relationship with his remaining family, an uncle who isn’t quite sure what to do with him and a crusty old racist grandfather, becomes strained and he turns instead to his teacher.

Everything gets sorted out in the end, but it’s a difficult journey.  Nothing is what it seems.  Despite clever writing, editing, cinematography and music, I’m not sure it’s worth the trip.

Other writeups of Adoration suggest that it’s another brilliant work from Agoyan, but it struck me as more than a bit contrived.

Four Nights With Anna (Cztery noce z Anna) Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

Leon is a simple man who works in the crematorium attached to a small village hospital.  He lives alone, and his past has seen some dubious activity.  At the story’s outset, Leon witnesses a rape, but the victim, Anna, sees him.  That lands him a term in prison and his new job is something of a favour, a hoped-for return to a normal life.

Now Leon lives across from Anna and fantasizes about her.  He has tender feelings, but they are obsessive.  He wants to look after Anna, and figures out a way to ensure she will sleep soundly by swapping ground up pills for the sugar she takes in her nightly tea.  This involves an often-open window used by Anna’s cat that gives Leon access to her room.

On his first visit, he just gazes at her sleeping body and tidies up a bit.  The second time around, Anna has just thrown a big party, and Leon cleans up.  On the third, Leon, who hopes that Anna could be his bride, leaves a ring.  The fourth visit brings the police who have been keeping an eye on his movements.

After a trial and conviction, another prison term.  Leon returns home to find a brick wall dividing the two houses. 

All of this is an improbable tale, and yet I found myself drawn into the sensitive study of an outsider.  Artur Steranko plays Leon, a man we can at best pity, and at worst loathe for what he might have done and might still do.

Good Directed by Vincent Amorim

John Halder (Viggo Mortensen) is a moderately successful professor and writer, but apolitical.  Some years ago, he wrote a novel sympathetic to euthanasia based on his own family circumstances with his mother. 

We are in Germany in the 1930s, and this obscure work brings Halder to the attention of the rising Nazi regime.  He’s not sure what he can really do, but lends support to a good cause with a bit of arm twisting.  He doesn’t realize what is happening around him, or that things will become much worse.

This would just be a story about a “good german”, but more is going on.

Halder is haunted by the truth, and at critical moments, he hears music that comments on the action.  All Mahler, and if you know the source, there is bitter irony in every piece.  

The final scene is a long steadycam shot.  Halder has been sent to a camp to report on what is really happening.  He arrives to the chilling, familiar queue of new arrivals being sorted either as workers or for immediate liquidation.  Doesn’t look too bad unless you know what is actually happening.  As he walks deeper into the camp, he comes on a little band playing Mahler’s funeral march based on Frère Jacques and sees, finally, the real horror of his “good” German society.

The original, theatrical version (C.P. Taylor, 1982), used music from several composers, but for the film, director Vincent Amorim wanted the continuity of one musical voice.  Mahler, a Jew who converted for social reasons to Catholicism, was the obvious choice.

The visual style of the film comes straight out of Masterpiece Theatre.  These are all actors we know, people who play characters we like, and even the Nazis can be such charmers.  We see society through Halder’s eyes.

The analogy to our own time is apparent.  Should be believe a government that seemingly acts in our interest?  When does support for such a regime become complicity in its darker purposes?

Good will be released in the USA on December 31, 2008.

On November 13, Toronto’s Planning & Growth Management Committee will consider a report recommending that the Front Street Extension be deleted from the Official Plan, and that an Environmental Assessment be conducted on a local road north of the rail corridor in Liberty Village.

Official Plan Amendments take time, and the formal change would come before the January committee meeting and then go on to Council.

This change is long, long overdue.  For decades, planning for downtown streets was influenced by Front Street’s eventual purpose as a distributor for traffic from the Gardiner.  Streetcars for Toronto’s original scheme for the Harbourfront line was a bidirectional loop line via Front, Bay, Queen’s Quay and Spadina with a surface transfer station directly above the mezzanine of Union Station modelled after the Bloor Station transferway.  This option was rejected specifically because it would interfere with Front Street’s use as part of the expressway network.

(We were also told that the line could not possibly be on the surface under Bay Street because there was no place to shift the pedestrian traffic.  Tell that to all the people streaming through the teamways today enroute to GO trains and the ACC.)

With the FSE removed from the plans, we can examine transit needs in the western waterfront without it getting in the way.  The Waterfront West LRT is itself badly in need of review as a single entity, not as a hodgepodge of separate projects.

Sadly, the WWLRT seems condemned to travel through the Exhibition Grounds via a route under the Gardiner rather than along the south edge of the park where it could serve Ontario Place and any redevelopment on the CNE lands.  The alignment east of Strachan via Bremner Boulevard is fraught with problems of available road space, conflict with pedestrians and road traffic at Skydome and overcommitment of the capacity of the Union Station loop.

So much of our waterfront transit planning is done piecemeal with past studies used as excuses for continuing down the same failed path, a path of compromises and bad choices where transit always comes second.

Killing off the Front Street Extension is only a first step.

The following press release came out today:

MacIsaac to become part time Metrolinx chair following release of final report

TORONTO, Nov. 6 /CNW/ -

NEWS

Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology in Hamilton has announced that Rob MacIsaac has been selected as its new president starting February 1, 2009.

MacIsaac will continue his work as Metrolinx board chair on a part time basis.

Since 2006, MacIsaac has built a team to get the regional transportation agency up and running, and to develop a Regional Transportation Plan and Investment Strategy for a seamless and convenient transportation network for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The final plan is expected to be released before the end of the year.

QUOTES

“I would like to thank Rob for the outstanding success he is achieving in establishing Metrolinx. His vision and leadership is instrumental in working with area elected officials to develop the first Regional Transportation Plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. I am pleased that Rob will continue to lead a dedicated team that will continue to deliver,” said Transportation Minister Jim Bradley.

My own take on this is that Metrolinx needs full-time leadership from someone who is dedicated to making the process of building our transportation network truly open.

Too much of Metrolinx’ work has been shrouded in secrecy with critical studies kept from public view.  The massive spending required to overcome decades of neglect, the trade-offs and the need for political and public support demand transparency.  Everyone must trust that the spending is wise and appropriate to the task, and that decisions are made on public needs, not on deals between politicians and lobbyists. 

Decisions may be made out of sight with the best of intentions, but without public understanding and trust, they will be vulnerable.  Metrolinx needs to learn how to have full public debates about the merits of various schemes, and keep the “commercially confidential” stuff separate from the basic question of building our regional network.

The November Board meeting, when Metrolinx is expected to approve a final version of the Regional Transportation Plan, will be interesting indeed.

Update 2: The Register has a story about Berlin and the Dutch State Railways where the issue of copyright and use of public schedule data by outside application creators has arisen.

The TTC is not alone in fighting against externally built apps.

Original post follows:

There’s a great post and comment thread by Shawn Micallef on the spacing website about yet another non-TTC application to help users get TTC data.  This time, it’s an iPhone app.

Update:  The Torontoist site also has a post on this (sorry David for not picking up on that earlier).

After the initial burst of launching the still-not-bug-free and incomplete TTC website, work on that site seems to have ground to a halt.  At the very least, the TTC should put up a “coming soon” page with a list of committed improvements and dates.  This would allow people to spot the things that are still missing, and give us all a sense that the project isn’t stillborn.

One excuse is the need to make documents fully accessible.  This places the community who needs such services in the position that they appear to be the problem, rather than the TTC’s own inactivity and lack of preparation for this requirement.

An important issue raised by Shawn (and by others in the past) is the way that the TTC jealously guards its internal data on the grounds that it has some commercial value.

Get off your butts, guys.  This is public information and all your sitting on it does is to prevent people from making good use of the data.  Other cities make this type of scheduling info freely available, but Toronto is too busy protecting its “intellectual property”.

This is the last part of the study including chapters 5 to 8, most of which are quite short.

• St. George Station
• Terminal Options
• Line Stations
• Evaluation

Most of Chapters 5 to 8 has the feeling of a quick completion to an otherwise detailed study.

Chapter 5 covers St. George Station in two paragraphs. Just as with the discussion of Bloor-Yonge, it completely ignores the problems created for the Bloor-Danforth subway of delivering many more riders per hour on the Spadina-University line.

Additional side platforms are proposed along with protection of the property needed to build them, but I don’t think such protection was ever implemented.

Chapter 6 discusses four terminal options as options for a 90-second headway.

Exhibit 6.1.1 shows a generic double pocket track configuration.

Exhibit 6.1.2 shows this scheme applied to Finch Station. The layout includes provision for a northerly extension.

Exhibit 6.1.3 shows this scheme applied to Wilson Station.

Exhibit 6.2.1 and Exhibit 6.2.2 show bi-level versions of Finch and Wilson Stations. Both of these are quite expensive, and double-deck construction is required at these locations because there is no room for new side platforms.

Exhibit 6.3.1 shows possible extensions of the subway to Sheppard West and Steeles. This would allow turnbacks to be split between two terminals. Downsview Station, of course, has already been built, and the northern extension of the Yonge line is part of the Metrolinx short term plan.

Exhibit 6.4.1 shows various alternative alignments for a loop configuration. These schemes are no longer viable both because the lines have gone so much further north and because the terminals are further apart. However, the idea was responsible for the “subway only” view of extensions because a loop, by definition, requires a consistent technology.

Note that the Spadina line would have continued north on Dufferin rather than swinging northwest through York University.

Chapter 7 reviews busy line stations and the problem of clearing passengers from platforms.  One major problem it ignores is the limited capacity at some locations when escalators are closed for maintenance.  The status of these stations today is:

• College:  A second entrance at the south end of the station is proposed as part of a new development northwest of Yonge and Gerrard.
• Dundas:  There are no plans for a second entrance at this time, although one should be added to meet fire code.
• Queen:  This station already has two entrances and more capacity is unlikely to be provided.
• King:  This station has two entrances (plus the Melinda exit southbound).  The north end can be very congested when the escalator is not working even though there are alternative ways out of the station.
• Union:  A second platform project is now in progress.

The stations between College and King are constrained by building foundations and wider exits can be provided only as part of redevelopment projects.

Chapter 8 is called “Evaluation”, but all it actually does is to list the infrastructure and vehicle costs for the preferred options.

This brings us to the end of the Improved Headway Study.  Although this took up a long series of posts, I wanted to put the whole document up with comments so that readers could see how current plans are coloured by decades-old studies, even when these studies have a clear bias in favour of certain options and studiously ignore the larger context of alternatives.

This section includes the remainder of Chapter 4 covering three alternatives to the centre platform option at Bloor Yonge.

• A double station with new platforms north of the existing Bloor Station
• A bi-level station
• Two versions of a diversionary route with a new southbound or northbound track and station

I commend these to the readers who have been proposing various alternative tunnel and platform arrangements here for a clear view of just where the structures actually lie.  Bear in mind that much has been built since these plans were drawn, and assumptions about available rights-of-way or the acquisition and demolition of buildings are probably no longer valid.

Chapters 4.2 through 4.4 describe three optional layouts of Bloor-Yonge Station.

Series Station Option

This scheme involves building a second station north of the existing one as shown in Exhibit 4.2.1.

The area is constrained by footings of nearby buildings and this explains the odd layout of connecting passageways.

However, with two stations close together, ATC operation would be mandatory even if the headway were not close enough to demand it otherwise. This option was rejected.

Bi-Level Station Option

This option requires construction of a new northbound track and platform underneath the existing subway. Because the Bloor line is in the way, it has do go deep enough to get under that line before rising back to the surface.

The drawings showing this are all crowded onto one sheet, and I have scanned separate sections to make this easier to follow.

Exhibit 4.3.1a shows the southbound platform while Exhibit 4.3.1b shows the northbound one. On the southbound side, the existing northbound track is removed and the platform is extended out so that trains can load and unload at the same time.

On the northbound side, there is a similar arrangement, but it is completely new. The connection to the Bloor line is partly shown here, but also in following drawings. In effect, there is a new east-west passageway under Yonge Station from both sides of the northbound track connecting to new stairs and escalators up to the Bloor line.

Exhibit 4.3.1c shows two different chunks. One is the detail of the connection from the northbound platforms to the existing Yonge Station. The other is a cross section at the north end of Bloor Station showing how the existing subway structure (now the southbound track) nestles within the structure of surrounding buildings. Any proposals for expansion in this area must take the existing building foundations into account.

Exhibit 4.3.1d shows the station in cross-section looking north.

Divided Station Option

This includes two separate schemes, one with the new northbound station under Park Road, and the other with the new southbound station under Yonge Street.  Both of these had extensive conflicts with buildings in the 1980s, and this is even more of a problem today due to construction of new towers.

Neither of these is practical, but I have included them so that those of you who propose schemes like this can see where, exactly, the new structures would have to go to build them.

Park Road Option

Park Road is the street on the east side of The Bay, and this is also the point where the Bloor line curves under Yonge Street and enters deep bore tunnels.  The proposed station would be under the Bloor line at this point.

Exhibit 4.4.1a and Exhibit 4.4.1b show the details of the connection arrangement between the stations.

Exhibit 4.4.2 shows the alignment with the new track swinging east from Rosedale Station and down Park Road. The lines rejoin between Isabella Street and Wellesley Station.

Yonge Street Option

For the Yonge Street option, the station would lie under Yonge (and the Bloor Subway) between Bloor Street and Asquith Avenue (the back of The Bay).

Exhibit 4.4.3 shows the alignment with the new track swinging west from Rosedale Station and down Yonge Street. The lines rejoin between Charles and Isabella Streets.

Exhibit 4.5.1 summarizes the issues of all of the options.

I am inserting a little sidebar into the discussion because my archives yielded up an exhibit not included in the TTC’s report.

Exhibit 2.1.1: 2011 Forecast For Base Case Network

This is the demand analysis shown in Chapter 2 which establishes the “need” for additional capacity on the Yonge line, specfically at Bloor-Yonge Station.

Network 2011 Demand Analysis

This is the companion chart from the Network 2011 study showing the projected demand on the rapid transit network with the addition of lines on Eglinton West, Sheppard, the DRL and the Spadina/Harbourfront line.

These two charts appear side by side in the Network 2011 study, but only the first one was included in the Improved Headway Study.

The DRL diverts a good chunk of traffic off of the Yonge line below Bloor, although this is partly backfilled by new riding pouring in at the top of the line. (Other studies had different versions of this line including routes that went further north.)

The projected demand on the Spadina line, 7,500 per hour, was rather high considering it was to be a surface operation crossing many streets. Oddly enough, only the Harbourfront portion was built initially, and we waited until 1997 for the Spadina streetcar.

I don’t intend this to be a definitive example of a demand model (I don’t think “definitive” is a word one can use in that context anyhow), but it points out how the importance of the DRL was recognized over 20 years ago. Indeed, in the Network 2011 plan, it was the second priority for construction with 1st place going to a Sheppard line only as far east as Victoria Park.

In this section, we begin Chapter 4 of the study with a description of the centre platform option at Bloor-Yonge Station.

Some of the work needed for this scheme was built during construction of 33 Bloor Street East and the Toronto Parking Authority lot between Hayden and Charles Streets.  The TTC took advantage of the subway structure being uncovered to widen the station and replace the centre columns with a roof spanning both platforms and tracks.  As you can see from visiting the station, this work ends at the northern third of the station because this is physically inside the structure of The Bay.

The section on construction feasibility describes what is necessary to continue this layout further north and it involves, among other things, closing the Bay’s concourse during construction.  That entire passage is almost surreal because it details problem after problem with the construction, but forges bravely onward.  There’s also the small matter of closing Bloor-Yonge Station because the existing platforms must be removed before the tracks can be relocated.

Chapter 4.1 details the centre platform option at Bloor-Yonge. One challenging part of this is the connection between the new platform and the Bloor subway. This is provided by a new passageway under the southbound platform running north to the point where it encounters the Yonge Station structure. Here it dips down below the existing station to provide access up to the central platform.

Building this connection is very difficult both because it is difficult to get equipment into the affected space, and because of groundwater conditions.

The north end of the station lies within the structure of The Bay and immediately adjacent to the Bell Canada Asquith central office. Widening the structure at the north end is constrained by the location of the buildings.

[Due to the physical size of the drawings, I have scanned them in sections.]

Exhibit 4.1.1 (A) shows the northern third of the new station. Visible here is the taper necessary to fit between existing buildings plus the location of the connecting passage to Yonge Station (dotted lines under the southbound platform).

Exhibit 4.1.1 (B) shows the central part of the new station. The passageway under the southbound platform is clearly visible here. One point to note is that this is the only way to get from the new centre platform to Yonge Station. Pedestrian flow would be unidirectional, but this is still a potential choke point especially if any of the escalators along the way are out of service.

Note also the physical location of the Bloor Station relative to Bloor Street above. The widened part of the street is left over from the days when a streetcar transfer station connected to the subway here. You can see remnants of this in the layout of the subway structure below.

Exhibit 4.1.1 (C) shows the south end of the station. The third platform is new, but the exits through 33 Bloor East have already been built roughly as shown.

Exhibit 4.1.2 is a fascinating drawing looking up, yes, up at the subway structure from below to show how the various elements of Bloor-Yonge Station relate to each other.

Exhibit 4.1.3 (A) shows the north end of Bloor Station for construction staging purposes. I have included it because it shows the location of the Bay and Bell buildings. The Bay was built around the subway, but the Bell building predates it and cannot be disturbed. This is the main switching office for central Toronto. Originally, it was the “Walnut” exchange, now “92″, and the first electronic exchange “964″ is also housed here.

Exhibit 4.1.3 (B) shows the central part of the station and the limit of “Segment C” (described in the text) which begins at the south side of Bloor Street.

Exhibit 4.1.3 (C) shows the south part of the station and “Segment B”. Parts of this already exist, except for the new platform and the relocated tracks.

This installment completes Chapter 3 of the study with the evaluation of alternative signalling strategies.  The recommented alternative is Automatic Train Control, no surprise there, based on the premise that it provides the maximum benefit versus the expenditure.  Underlying this, however, is the goal of a 90-second headway and the increasing challenges to subway operations as the headway drops.  ATC is treated as a means to achieve this dubious goal rather than a worthwhile move in its own right.

Chapter 3.4 Evaluation and Recommendations starts with a set of charts attempting to show a “cost effectiveness” value for the various options.

Exhibits 3.3.8 and 3.3.9 show the minimum headway and increased capacity for each option. These are, of course, an inverse relationship because shorter headways mean more capacity.

Exhibits 3.3.10 and 3.3.11 show the estimated capital cost and implementation periods for the four options. Note that the costs include neither include either the additional vehicles nor the station modifications needed at Bloor-Yonge or Finch to support the schemes that depend on reduced dwell time at this location. (See footnote 8 in the text.)

Exhibits 3.3.12 and 3.3.13 purport to show the “cost effectiveness” and “productivity” of the options.

Exhibit 3.3.14 summarizes the information for the four options. Note that this is a $708-million project in 1988 dollars before we even start on the infrastructure changes needed to make short headways possible.

Exhibits 3.3.15 details the operating implications of each option both while under construction and after implementation.

Cost effectiveness is measured as a ratio between the capacity increase and capital cost, but the absence of infrastructure and vehicle costs renders 3.3.12 questionable at best. The dip in the line for option 1C, extensive changes to the existing signal system, is cited in the text as showing that it should not be pursued because the “cost effectiveness” value does not go up as much as with the other options. Alas, we do not have a chart showing the same ratios with missing components included.

Productivity is measured as a ratio between total capacity and fleet size. Again option 1C fares relatively badly because it requires slower line operation and a larger fleet to provide a given capacity. In effect, this chart is a measure of line speed because speed determines the fleet size needed for a given capacity. Common to all options is a drop in line speed because trains are so close together.

The “cost effectiveness” ratios, were they recalculated with the fleets included, would be:

• 1A:  $15.4-million per thousand increase in capacity
• 1B:  $27.7-million
• 1C:  $53.3-million
• 2:  $49.2-million

In the text, we also learn that the increased revenues through riding may not cover the increase operating costs, although a change to one-man train operation could offset some of this.  No specifics are given, and I caution readers that the cost of maintaining vehicles is a considerable part of total operating costs, and for subways in general the train crews account for less than one quarter of that total.

The text also cautions about the impact on customer satisfaction both during and after completion of the project.  A vital paragraph warns:

The ability to consistently sustain the desired headway must also be considered during
the evaluation process. For example, in order to guarantee that 112 second headway can
be consistently sustained under all operating conditions, Bloor Station should be
reconstructed to achieve 30 second dwells, and the Finch terminal should be modified as
indicated under Option IB herein. (However, apart from the high capital cost of
reconstructing Finch terminal and the small reduction in headway gained, productivity
would be reduced due to train turnaround behind the terminal stations, and a fleet
increase would be required. This would suggest that subway extensions to new terminals
should be considered as an alternative.) With regard to 90 second headway operation, the
fact that several worldwide transit systems which are designed for 90 second headway
operation are not actually operated at 90 second headways, suggests that the headway
objective under Option 2 may not be sustained under all operating conditions.

This should have been a red flag to everyone.  If there is even the possibility that the 90 second headway could not actually be sustained, this calls out for a review of the basic assumption.  Notwithstanding the concern, the report goes on to recommend approval in principle of a 90 second design guideline.

This section presents considerations for the vehicle fleet and yards required to house these cars.  An important consideration for any decrease in headway is that the number of trains in service goes up.  This generates added capital and operating costs for an expenditure that addresses only peak period demand.

A proper comparison of lines would look at what happens if the fleet is expanded (regardless of the technology) elsewhere so that new off-peak service is available in a corridor that does not now have rapid transit.

As we will see later, the additional vehicles are a substantial portion of the total project cost for peak headway improvements on an existing line.

One point worth noting here is that the spare ratio included in the calculations is only 12% compared to the more generous 16% used today. This affects capital costs for vehicles and carhouse/yard space.

Chapter 3 Vehicle Considerations begins by talking about a proposal for wider doorways. This eventually showed up in the design of the “T1″ car.

Also proposed is the acquisition of a 7th, 50-foot long car that would add capacity to existing and future trains. In the context of 1988, this was proposed as a third car added between a married pair. For the new “Toronto Rocket” unit train sets, it would be a short, seventh car in the consist. Seven car trains would completely fill station platforms requiring precise braking. This would be provided by Automatic Train Control.

The longer trains would also have some effects on terminal operations (longer trains take more time to clear crossovers). The study mentions that there would also be signal effects, but only in a non-ATC environment where existing signal circuits may not be able to handle 500-foot long trains. Similarly, complications with yard operations mentioned in the study do not apply to the new TR trains that will be single units regardless of their length.

At this point, the TTC has not publicly addressed the option of adding a seventh car as a way to increase line capacity.

One other small consideration related to the fleet is the impact on the traction power supply. More trains, especially operated at “high rate” with faster acceleration, draw more peak power and this triggers the need for power distribution changes.

Appendix III Vehicle Requirements lists the calculations of fleet size in detail for various scenarios. I have included it here so that all vehicle-related discussions are linked from one post.

This thread began with an introduction to the “problem” of capacity at Bloor-Yonge Station which dates back to the 1980s, an era when all expansion of capacity for travel from the suburbs to downtown was assumed to be on the subway network.  If you accept that premise, then it follows that massive expansion of subway capacity is absolutely required.  However, as we have recently seen from demand projections by Metrolinx, when there are good alternatives to the existing subway, people may find other ways to get downtown.

In this section, I will present another chunk from the long Chapter 3 in the TTC’s 1988 study.  This part includes descriptions of four ways to achieve shorter headways on the Yonge line through signalling changes.

Chapter 3 Option 1A discusses minor changes to the signal system needed to get headways down to 122 seconds.  Two critical issues are:

• Keeping dwell times at Bloor Station at or below 45 seconds
• Achieving a 122-second headway through Finch Terminal

At Bloor, this option proposes dispatching trains not from Bloor (as is done now), but from Wellesley northbound and Rosedale southbound.  The idea is to maintain a regular headway at Bloor (and hence dependable loading times), but this assumes a regular supply of trains to be dispatched toward Bloor Station.  If trains are arriving at bunches at Bloor before the change, there is a good chance they will still arrive in bunches nearby afterward.

As for Finch Terminal, the report concludes that a 122-second headway is possible, with difficulty, but definitely with “drop back” crewing where crews step back one or two trains at the terminal, and a fresh crew is always available to take a train out as soon as it arrives.  This scheme has been implemented on-and-off over the years depending on availability of operators.  However, problems stil arise with crews who are not ready to take their trains out the moment signals clear, and any assumption that good dispatching could be sustained through peak periods is on shaky ground.

Chapter 3 Option 1B discusses changes needed to get down to 112-second headways.  As with option 1A, drop back crewing would be used at Finch, although the need to operate this with razor-sharp timings gets more important as the headways get shorter.  Indeed, the TTC’s feeling is that this could not be achieved without using a second pocket track north of Finch for turnarounds.

The track layout for this operation is shown in Exhibit 3.3.3.  One drawback of this arrangement is the increased running time needed for trains to drive north, reverse, then return onto the southbound platform at Finch.

Changes would be made to signals at several locations on the line where the existing arrangement prevents trains from running this close together.

Finally, the 112-second headway would also require reconstruction at Bloor-Yonge to get the dwell times down to 30 seconds.

Chapter 3 Option 1C describes the changes needed to get down to 105-second headways.  This would require an aggressive change in the existing signalling system and a reduction in operating speed due to the close spacing of trains.  It is not recommended.

Chapter 3 Option 2 describes an Automatic Train Control system.  Remember when reading this that the technological framework is twenty years old, but the general discussion remains valid.  Only by moving to ATC with a moving block, computer-controlled signal system (such as on the RT), can trains be operated on extremely close spacings.

As with option 1C, the operating speed of the line would actually decrease because there would never be enough clear space in front of any train for high speed operation during peak periods.  Moreover, there would be no “stacking” space for trains during periods when actual running times are less than the scheduled values.  Today, we see terminal queues because trains often have more running time than they need.  Only two trains can fit in a terminal at once, and the excessive time is burned up in a queue approaching the terminal.

In an ATC environment with very close headways, all trains would have to operate on a set timetable with standard dwell times at stations to avoid bunching.

One change since this report was written is that the signals on the original Yonge line are now over 50 years old and must be replaced.  The decision to convert to ATC, at least on the oldest part of the line, therefore has no aspect of discarding existing technology before its time.  Whether we will ever need to get down to a 90-second headway, the signal system will cease to be a constraint once the technology is implemented over the entire line.  That’s a long way off.

In the next section, we will look at the fleet and carhouse requirements of the service increases for these options.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion here about the practicality and desirability of adding capacity to the Yonge-University subway.  My position is clear:  there is more to be gained by adding new capacity in other corridors that can, in addition to relieving pressure on the Yonge line, provide alternatives in the transportation network to what now exists.

For twenty years, the focus has always been on beefing up the Yonge line, and this reflects the TTC’s long-standing tradition of looking only at their network when planning transit capacity.  Earlier subway expansion schemes completely omitted the GO Transit network from calculating potential regional demand and modelled all growth in riding on the subway system.  The effect of this shows up in the Network 2011 proposal that projected large increases in subway demand.  Those increases triggered a study in 1988 of what could be done to add capacity to the Yonge line, and we are still living with some of the fallout from that study today.

When I dug the report out of my archives, I thought that I would only scan, edit and post a few chapters. However, I soon realized that the arguments of 20 years ago are worth reading today because they are instructive both for the basics of transit operations, and because they show the origins of some current thinking.

For convenience, I have chopped up the document into sections.  The text, which was originally doublespaced typewriter (Courier) format, has been converted to single spaced Times Roman (yes, I know some of you just hate Times Roman).  Some exhibits that didn’t lend themselves to text-based conversion have been scanned separately as jpegs.

The first installment (this post) contains chapter 2 and the first parts of chapter 3 of the Final Report (chapter 1 was the Executive Summary) dealing with the problem of projected congestion and the various ways in which signal changes could be used to reduce headways.  In the next installments, we will see:

• detailed descriptions of four schemes for signalling changes to achieve closer headways
• a discussion of vehicle requirements
• conclusions and recommendations for signalling
• four schemes for a reconstructed Bloor-Yonge Station
• evaluation of impacts at other stations and terminals, notably Finch and Wilson
• options for the Yonge-Spadina loop
• final summary and recommendations

Chapter 4 (the Bloor Yonge schemes) contains useful material to those of you who have been, figuratively speaking, drawing lines on maps for the past few weeks with possible alignments for additional tracks.  It helps to know the lay of the land both above and below ground.

Because we have already had quite a lot of discussion about routing alternatives, I will exercise my editorial prerogative to delete or severely cut repetitions of past discussions.  The main reason I am putting this material up is to show what was actually considered and how the history of past studies like this colours future projects.  That’s an important context for the current Regional Transportation Plan discussions — things that seem trivial today will take on the aura of historical received wisdom in less than a decade.  Maps drawn on stone tablets are hard to change.

Chapter 2 sets the initial problem — a projected growth in demand on the Yonge line beyond its capacity. 

Right from the beginning, there are problems with the premise and the assumptions.  The question of a 90-second headway had been on the TTC’s mind for six years already, but the long station dwell times needed to handle passengers posed a challenge.  If these went above 30 seconds, the trains could not serve the stations on a close headway.  We will learn later that there are huge challenges to remove all barriers to close headway operations, but other than a passing reference to the Downtown Rapid Transit line (aka the Downtown Relief Line or DRL), the assumption that the Yonge line must be modified to handle this demand is never challenged.

This chapter includes two diagrams of interest.

Exhibit 2.1.1 shows the Network 2011 base case flows for the existing subway system.  Note that this does not include the contribution of the Sheppard Subway which would add to the demand at Bloor-Yonge.  The projected peak demand southbound to Wellesley is 41,600 per hour.  Oddly enough, there are demand problems on the Bloor-Danforth and University lines too, but these are not mentioned anywhere in the report.

Note that the stated capacity of the line is 34,000 per hour, not the more commonly cited 40,000.  The reason for this is that it is physically impossible to run service frequently enough to handle that demand with the present signal system and track configuration (this is discussed at length in the report).

There is a reference to the Harbourfront-Spadina LRT which, at the time, was still a decade in the future.  It does not actually appear on the chart, but is mentioned for some reason in the legend.

Exhibit 2.2.1 is taken from the Downtown Rapid Transit study and shows the preferred alignments for the DRL.  The out-of-the-way alignment via Eastern Avenue was needed because this was the era of ICTS (the Scarborough RT), and there was pressure for the TTC to build the DRL with this technology.  Such a line could not share the existing subway yard capacity, and it was routed out of its way to Eastern Avenue where a yard might be constructed.  Resurrection of the eastern waterfront wasn’t even on the table, and it’s worth noting that there is no station between Queen & Pape and Sherbourne Street.  Even that one is shown as “optional” with the first “real” station at Yonge or Union depending on the alignment.

This option was rejected because the prevailing political mood focussed on growth of the suburban transit network.  More capacity into downtown was seen as a way to stifle the growth of suburban nodes.  That’s a rather quaint idea seen from a few decades’ distance given what passes for “downtown” at those nodes.  Development went where people wanted buildings, and that was downtown supported, oddly enough, by the same GO Transit commuter rail system that the TTC ignored in its studies.

Chapter 3.1 sets out the basics of then-existing subway operations.  Note that the headway in 1988 was actually more frequent (130 seconds) than it is today (140), and this corresponds to the peak capacity of 34K per hour.  In 1988, the line still had a mixture of the old Gloucester (”G”) cars and the newer Montreal Locomotive Works (”M”) and Hawker Siddeley (”H”) equipment.  Both the “M” and “H” cars were capable of “high rate” operation, but this was not possible on the Yonge line for two reasons.  First, the “G” cars couldn’t keep up, and second, the “H1″ cars had severe problems with motor vibrations at high speed.

Over the years, the TTC has rejected high rate operation even on the BD line where it has been technically possible since 1966.  In any event, as we will see later, close headways and fast operation don’t mix well, and this is something of a moot point for a line operating with a train every 90 seconds.

Even in 1988, the TTC was unable to get the headway down to the 120 second design limit of the signal system.  Bloor-Yonge station, with its long dwell times, was always a problem, but with the addition of Finch Terminal in 1974, the TTC created a track layout whose geometry makes a 120 second headway impossible.  It simply takes too long for trains to move in and out of the terminal due to the length of the crossover.  (Similar problems exist at the terminals on BD.)

Chapter 3.2 discusses the frequency of subway service.  How often can a transit system operate trains on its lines?  The material here is standard transit design stuff, although I amazed how often people who should know better don’t appreciate the basics.

One important change since this report was written are hte operating practices for automatic block signals.  When the system was installed, a single red aspect meant “stop and proceed with caution”, and the track circuits were arranged so that a train could creep past a single red.  Indeed, trains could pull up right behind their leaders provided they did it slowly.  Current operating practice, thanks particularly to the Russell Hill crash, is that a single red means “stop and stay”.  This has the effect of keeping trains further apart in congested parts of a line and accentuating the effect of long station dwell times.

Where a northbound train could formerly pull right up to Bloor Station and drive into the station as its leader was pulling out, current practice holds the next train just north of Wellesley, and it cannot actually enter Bloor Station until the preceding train clears a track circuit well north of Bloor Station.

One of the advantages of the planned automatic train control system will be the elimination of this restriction.

Exhibits 3.2.1 through 3.2.3 show three track configurations that allow restrictive terminal times to co-exist with a 90-second headway.  The first diagram shows the existing operation with a 260-second headway beyond St. Clair West.  A similar scheme could be used with an extension north of Finch to divide terminal operations.  The second shows a schematic layout of a line with two branches at each end, each taking half of the service.  That layout is not applicable in Toronto

The third shows a loop line where there is no terminal, and this concept led directly into the proposed Yonge-Spadina Loop which, as we know, was never built.  The loop was a dubious proposal when it would have connected from Yonge to Dufferin via Steeles, but as the Spadina line swung further west, it became totally impractical.  However, this scheme was responsible for an “Environmental Assessment” that established that only subways were appropriate for expanding the rapid transit system to the north.  Self-evidently, only subway technology is workable for a loop configuration, but that “assessment” (a term I use with some contempt) was subsequently used by the TTC to block any study of an LRT network in the northern 416 and southern 905.

In the next segment, I will continue with the detailed evaluations of four proposals for modified signal systems.

Reviewed here:

• Dean Spanley
• Is There Anybody There?
• Witch Hunt
• Séraphine
• Hunger
• The Hurt Locker

Sunday, September 7

Dean Spanley directed by Toa Fraser

Our title character, played by Sam Neill, is a man of the cloth, but rather more eccentric than the dotty vicars who show up as stock characters on Masterpiece Theatre.  He has a real fondness for Tokaj, the older and rarer, the better.  It’s effect on the Dean is quite astounding — he regresses into earlier lives as a dog and recounts at length stories of past adventures.  Whether he is a just a good con or many good dogs rolled into one barking mad Dean (yes they avoided that line in the film) is hard to say.  Let’s say that the by the end of the story, if he had wanted to get back to a dog’s life, he certainly succeeded.

The star turn belongs to Peter O’Toole, an aging cantankerous father (Fisk Sr.) whose relationship with his grown son (Fisk Jr., Jeremy Northam) is strained, despite weekly visits.  Fisk Sr. has a lifetime’s worth of eccentricities cunningly deployed to insulate himself from the rest of the world.  Under this, however, we will gradually learn that Fisk Sr. really pines for his other son, a victim of the Boer War.

A rare excursion takes them off to a lecture on the transmigration of souls.  Yet another potential con-man, the visiting Swami (Art Malik), intrigues old Fisk with his tales of reincarnation.  I couldn’t help thinking that this part had more meat on it originally as a foil to Dean Spanley himself, but wound up on the cutting room floor.  That lecture provides the initial contact between the Fisks and Spanley, and launches them on a search for ever rarer wines.

The fantasies of a dog’s life are a bit overdone, but they set up the denouement.

By the end of Dean Spanley, I wasn’t sure whether I had just seen an amusing fantasy about re-incarnation, a story of a delectable con artist with a prediliction for fine wine and tall tales, or an extended product placement for Tokaj.

Whether you believe that the Dean was once a spaniel, the yarn is a delightful one and the acting is superb.  Sit back, sip a glass of wine, and enjoy.

Is There Anybody There? Directed by John Crowley

Not too many years ago, I remember a film festival Q&A where Michael Caine talked about winding down and making only a few more films.  So far, he’s showing no sign of this, and filmgoers are luckier for his continued active career.

Is There Anybody There? sees Caine as The Amazing Clarence, a retired magician who pines for his ex-partner, his now-dead wife.  He has been living in a small seniors’ home run by a young couple who struggle to keep the place operating.  Their son Edward (Bill Milner) is fascinated with the afterlife and ghosts, to the point of hiding a tape recorder under beds to hear what happens right at the end.  The prosaic arguments between funeral attendants are not quite what he was expecting.

Edward’s relationship with his parents is strained by their focus on the business, and an unexpected friendship develops between the boy and Clarence.  This is the heart of the film, and the two actors, Caine and Milner, work together flawlessly.  In the Q&A, Caine had great praise for the younger actor’s skill and professionalism, and their rapport shows on the screen.

Clarence’s attempt to leave home in his van run aground, literally, and thus begins a series of misadventures.  We watch him come unglued bit by bit as he loses fragments of memory and skill one by one.  A grand return to his magical days goes wrong in a hilarious (except for the victim) accident, and at this point Clarence really knows his life is near its end.  Edward, by now a good friend, gets to experience death not as some mystical event, but as a natural part of life. 

Michael Caine spoke about the challenges of taking on this role where he must portray confidence and enthusiasm that must give way to confusion and acceptance of his condition, together with the rebirth of finding a close friendship he was not expecting.  The Amazing Clarence is a great role.

This was my second choice for best-of-the-festival, and only by a close margin. 

No North American release date has been announced.

Witch Hunt directed by Dana Nachman and Don Hardy

The past twenty years have brought wave after wave of accusations and convictions for child molestation as feelings of hidden guilt and privacy gave way to outrage and public acceptance that long-standing wrongs must be corrected.

What happens when this yearing for retribution is exploited for political ends?

Witch Hunt shows us Kern Country, California, where the city of Bakersfield went through just such an experience in the 1980s.  A crusading District Attourney started to find perpetrators everywhere.  Convictions were based on rehearsed testimony and supressed evidence, many were arrested and jailed.

The “crime wave” was completely political in origin, and only after the state Attourney General intervened in response to protests over unlawful prosecutions, were the cases reviewed.  On man served 20 years for crimes he did not commit.  The DA responsible for these travesties is still in office and has been re-elected seven times.

Abuse of power is an important issue, no more so in our “law and order” society where throwing people in jail is a simplistic “solution” to every problem.  The unscrupulous can, and have used crime scares and prosecutions to further their own political careers. 

Unfortunately, what would have been a good 60-minute documentary is stretched to a 91 minute feature.  There is much lingering on photos of the children whose families were torn apart by the legal system.  They are important, but the pacing suffers from over-indulgence.  Sean Penn is the executive producer and narrator, and I couldn’t help wondering whether nobody wanted to tell him he needed tighter editing.

Séraphine directed by Martin Provost

There are days when I have planned to see four films, and by the time the third one ends, my body just wants to go home, to eat, to sleep.  But some films sound too good to miss, and I go back into the lineup for one more round.

There are times I am rewarded with films like Séraphine.

Yolande Moreau has a brilliant role as Séraphine de Senlis (aka Séraphine Louis), a simple woman, a house maid doing odd jobs for anyone who would hire her, trudging from place to place.  There may have been complaints in her posture, in her businesslike attitude to her employers, but her real love was for nature and for painting.

As a young girl, she was a maid in a convent, and at the age of 42 had a mystical revelation that she should paint.  Séraphine always said that her inspiration was from on high.

Entirely self-taught, Séraphine begins with simple images, but in a distinct style.  From her simple life and drab surroundings come a leap to a brilliantly coloured world of paintings.  For a time, she was unknown until an art critic, Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Tukur) comes to Senlis and discovers her art.  Uhde became a patron and advocate of Séraphine’s work, and her style literally blossomed, her paintings became more complex although always in the same recognizable style.

Alas, with the depression, Uhde could no longer buy her works, and Séraphine ended her life in a psychiatric hospital for the aged.  She died as a little-known artist.

The film Séraphine opened on October 1 in France together with a retrospective of the artist’s work.  And, yes, the paintings in the film are only copies — the originals are all in museums and far too valuable to use as props.

The film’s website (in French) contains many stills and a trailer, and this page in particular contains beautiful samples of Séraphine’s work.

Monday, September 8

Hunger directed by Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen is a visual artist born in England in 1969, and Hunger is his first feature.  The setting is Northern Ireland in 1981 at the time of the infamous, brutal Maze prison, and the hunger strikes led by Bobby Sands.  McQueen doesn’t take sides here and tries to show how the guards, the official forces of British might were just as damaged by the troubles as those they locked up. 

At least that may be his intent.  Watching the story at a distance of nearly three decades, and in a post 9/11 frame of reference, it’s impossible to see this just as a history play, a morality story about man’s inate violence.  How you react to the film will depend a lot on your view of how such violence, state sponsored or not, should be judged.  Reaction by viewers who lived through “The Troubles” is predictably strong on both sides of the debate.

Michael Fassbender is excellent as Bobby Sands as is Liam Cunningham as Father Moran, a priest who tries to act as go-between between the starving Sands and the government.  He fails, and after 66 days Sands is dead.  Nine others would follow, and finally Margaret Thatcher relented only to the point of letting political prisoners wear their own clothing instead of prison garb. 

Fassbender starved himself for two months before shooting to play the role, and his skin-and-bones appearance is only partly makeup.  A 21-minute long scene between Fassbender and Cunningham is a tour- da-force of acting.  Father Moran’s sympathies lie with Sands right up to the end, but he cannot condone suicide and must wrestle between his politics and his regilion.

McQueen’s training as an artist shows in every carefully composed frame.  Many shots are beautiful pieces of cinematic composition, and this plays off against the grim surroundings. 

I regret that the film goes on too long.  We get lots of violence against prisoners, assassinations of guards and the deliberately filthy conditions in which the prisoners lived while protesting.  It’s not pretty, but if you don’t buy into the political story, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the characters.

Instead, I found myself watching Hunger as a parable for our times.  Are the excesses of the “war on terror” justified?  Are we complicit because of acts done in the name of our own safety?

Hunger was awarded the Camera d’Or at Cannes.  It opens on October 31 in the UK, and for a limited release in the USA on December 5.  No Canadian date has been announced yet.

Religulous

This is the point in the festival where I actually saw Religulous, but I have already published the review in Part 2.

The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow

This really has been my day for war, terrorism and religion.  How I manage these thematic screenings, I don’t know, and sometimes it’s just an accident of the schedule.

The Hurt Locker coupled with Religulous shows the worst side of macho America.  Neither film maker intended me to have that reaction, but we old lefties from the ’60s approach things a bit differently, I’m sure. 

In Religulous, we had a comedian masquerading as a commentator on the extremism of religion, forgetting that man invented god(s) in his own image.  If we think of the divine being as a character from weekday soap opera, it explains a lot.

In The Hurt Locker, we have a bomb disposal squad whose leader is a menace to himself and to his squad, but who survives within the army because he’s the gung-ho guy who has already disarmed over 800 devices.  We can go anywhere and we can do anything, the very attitude that got the USA into such a mess in the first place.  Humility is not in his repertoire.

As The Hurt Locker opens, we meet a bomb disposal squad that is less than 40 days to the end of their rotation in Iraq (the film was actually shot in Jordan).  They’re decent guys, but their leader gets blown up and morale isn’t high.  In comes a replacement, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), the hot shot who has no fear.  He’s a bad fit, but he’s the leader and he quickly proves he knows his stuff.

As the squad disarms progressively more complex devices, they come to appreciate James’ expertise, not to mention his amazing luck.  However, things come off the rails when James decides he’s going to get the bad guys, and slips away with his men to do a night search for the bad guys.  He’s totally off his mission, doesn’t bother with backup and seriously wounds one of his own men while pursuing his targets.  Great stuff, but is this really the way the army runs its war?

On one raid, the crew discovers a “body bomb”, a dead boy with a bomb implanted in his chest.  At first they’re just going to blow it up, but our hero, thinking he knows the kid as a roadside vendor near the base, digs in and removes the device from the body.  As he carries out the dead boy, the Pieta symbolism takes US arrogance to new depths.

The rotation ends.  James is back home with his family, but his real love is the field, and gosh darn it, he signs up for another year.

A better metaphor for the mess in Iraq couldn’t be found although I doubt that was Kathryn Bigelow’s intention.  Great FX.  Surround sound.  Shifty eyed locals with terrorist thoughts in almost every heart.  The idea that the USA might be in the wrong war isn’t in a single frame.  The film is adapted from writings of Mark Boal who was an embedded journalist, and if it’s even close to true, it’s a frightening glimpse of the war.

I didn’t stay for the Q and A, and don’t know whether the director was challenged by any members of the audience about the politics of her film.  Myself, I couldn’t help comparisons with Hunger where we see neither side as saints, but both trapped in history.  A little humility in The Hurt Locker would have gone a long way.

No release date for North America yet.  Maybe they’re waiting to see who wins the election.

After all the other posts of the past week, here is one to catch up on bits and pieces from the Metrolinx Board meeting on October 24.  These are not trivial issues, and they relate to each other in ways that will become clear.

Status of the Regional Plan

There was considerable discussion of the timetable leading up to approval of a plan on November 28.  It turns out that there will be a Board “retreat” to consider the status of things on November 3, but this is nearly two weeks before the deadline for public comments.  This might suggest just how much impact public input might have in the process, but more to the point, some of that “public comment” includes reviews of the draft by regional planning staff.

Even assuming they all work a bit harder to hit the early November dealine, there remains the question of Metrolinx staff reviewing the comments, and the Board deciding what to do with them.

Rob MacIsaac, Metrolinx Chair, was clearly upset (as he has been on several previous occasions) with the idea that the plan will not be “finished” and approved on November 28.  His position, and by extension that of whoever is lighting fires under his butt, is fundamentally wrong on this.

From a purely political and process point of view, nobody plans to fund, much less start building, all of the Metrolinx plan out of the 2009 budget.  The Board has already identified projects that enjoy a quick start, and these will chew up the lion’s share of spending for several years.  Most projects that will generate spending at least for the next few budget cycles are already known, and that list can be nailed down in November. 

In fact, Metrolinx somehow got from selecting projects for advanced evaluation to approving them for implementation without benefit of detailed review, something that is only now starting.

Moreover, there is a legislative requirement to review the regional plan from time to time, and so we can expect changes long before work is started on building much of the plan, assuming we find money to actually build any of it.  Although a 10-year review is the current thinking, some members of the Board argue for a shorter 5-year cycle.

MacIsaac is creating unnecessary strain on the Board and bad feelings about what must be done in November to no good end.  Nobody casts a 25-year plan in stone on day 1, and it’s time MacIsaac stopped trying to force the Board, the municipalities, the regional transit agencies and the public down this path.  It is a manufactured crisis that has no place in this important discussion.

How Much Money Do We Have?

Another long discussion turned on the question of the $11.6-billion MoveOntario nest egg promised to us by Queen’s Park.  We are all taking it on faith that this is still money in the bank, but from a purely bookkeeping point of view, much of it won’t actually be spent from the next few budgets anyhow.

The Board got into a heated debate about what to do if this is the only money Metrolinx ever sees.  This brought on visions of the old regional “build my subway first” rivalries, and Mayor McCallion, among others, wanted nothing to do with it.  She argued that the Metrolinx role is to propose a network, to identify what is actually needed, not to get into political horse-trading and construction of pet projects.

This issue involves questions of additional revenue streams such as tolls, sales taxes and other ways to extract money for the greater benefit of transit systems.  The Board didn’t stop at capital funding, but is also very concerned with operating dollars because the local transit systems will be on the hook to operate all of the new services.  As if that isn’t bad enough, Metrolinx reports now speak of “eligible costs”, and the municipalities may find themselves on the hook for project costs everyone thought would be picked up by Queen’s Park.

It’s hard on one hand to publish glowing reports about mobility hubs and neighbourhood design, and then turn around and suggest that making a line look nice isn’t a Queen’s Park expense.  This sort of thing undermines the confidence of municipal leaders, and puts them in the ludicrous position of not being able to afford the new toys Uncle Dalton might give them.  The word is “downloading”, and it’s not a popular word around the Board table.

We don’t know yet whether we can even build the “top six” projects with the $11.6-billion, let alone anything else in the Regional Plan.  By the way, one slice has already been taken out of that pie — the Spadina Subway extension funding counts against Queen’s Park’s Metrolinx commitment.

Where Does the Growth Plan Fit In?

Brad Graham, ADM for the Ontario Growth Secretariat, gave a presentation about how Metrolinx’ plans fit so well with the direction of the Growth Plan.  Much back patting and kind words were heard.

There’s only one problem.

While Ontario is busy stimulating, regulating, generating new transit-oriented neighbourhoods out in the 905, what is actually going to be built by Metrolinx focuses much more on existing travel patterns and particularly core-oriented movements.  All that stuff about Mobility Hubs looks good until you realize that a lot of them (and associated services) it won’t be built soon.  This is partly related to funding, and partly to the pressing need for more capacity into the core.

Another problem is that the projected modal split in much of the 905 is still poor, and will take years to improve.  A lot of that will come from better commuter service to downtown, not from inter-regional travel.  How this is supposed to stimulate interest in transit-supportive neighbourhoods is unclear.  Yes, there’s a chicken-and-egg problem.  Without new neighbourhood designs, transit in the 905 is doomed.  But without transit in the 905, car oriented planning will be the standard.

Mayor McCallion raised the issue of infrastructure to support new population.  This is not just a question of transit capital, but of sewers and water, hospitals, schools and all the other bits and pieces that go into a city.  Without money to build and operate these facilities, there is no point in talking only about new transit lines.

The Mysterious Benefits Case Analyses

The process for getting a line built by Metrolinx is supposed to be:

• Propose a line
• Study the line for its benefits
• Study the line for its financing options (including “alternative procurement”) (AFP)
• Approve the line as part of the Regional Plan

However, the current process doesn’t work like this.  In fact, we have lines that already have, more-or-less, Board approval (the “top six”) that are (or are about to be) going through “Benefits Case Analysis” (BCA) by Metrolinx (actually, by their consultants).  Although nobody has actually said so, it appears that parallel studies for alternative procurement are already underway.  All of these threads will come together (or more likely collide) at a Metrolinx Board meeting that may or may not be in public.

The BCA for York Viva was supposed to come to the public meeting in October, but it was held until the private session.  Adam Giambrone raised a question of whether it could be made public, and in the course of discussion, Rob MacIsaac implied that parts of the report might include confidential commercial information that they wouldn’t want to (or couldn’t) release.  That smells a lot like an AFP study to me.

To further complicate things, the BCA process has already spawned many optional schemes for the projects under study.  Some of these make changes in the draft Regional Plan that have never gone through any sort of public review.  Ironically, some of them are alternatives that have been suggested by folks like me who, in the past, have been told to go play with their toy trains and leave the real work to the pros.

In practice, a line in the Metrolinx RTP doesn’t seem to mean much because it’s all subject to detailed study and alternatives analysis through the unseen BCA and AFP processes.  So much for the vaunted public input we hear so much about.

Metrolinx really needs to sort out its processes for project definition, investigation and inclusion in updated regional plans.  I understand the pressure to cut corners to get the first projects underway, but some very bad precedents are being set.

Studying Projects or Studying Networks

The draft regional plan is a network, not a set of lines that exist in complete isolation from each other.  Work toward the draft operated, we are told, by finding the correct set of lines to have the best effect in the 15 and 25-year timeframes.  All of the demand estimates are based on a fully built-out network.

However, the BCA process goes one line at a time, and this risks missing the links between projects, the possibilities of looking at alternatives that span project boundaries.

I will explore the question of subway capacity in a separate thread, but the analysis for the Yonge Subway extension to Richmond Hill is deeply troubling.  This extension triggers higher riding on the existing subway which the TTC has finally admitted cannot be handled by the existing infrastructure.  It’s not just a question of buying more trains, putting in new signals to run them closer together, and fine-tuning terminal operations.  Now we know that there are capacity problems from Bloor south with the stations themselves.

The TTC has resurrected a scheme for a third platform at Bloor, and it’s fairly easy to see that this is not the only location where more platform and circulation capacity are needed.  Moreover, if the Yonge line delivers more transfer passengers per hour to the Bloor line in the PM peak, this will trigger capacity and service issues on that line too.

The RTP itself includes alternatives both on the comuter rail network and the subway system to divert traffic off of the Yonge line.  Why aren’t any of these being studied at the same time as the Yonge extension?  Could we avoid the need for massive capacity expansion on Yonge by operating other parallel services?  What are the comparative costs and implementation issues?  Could we get better network coverage for comparable or modestly higher investment?

That’s the sort of thing Metrolinx should be doing, but it’s not.  We risk many of the mistakes of past decades by studying lines in isolation from each other.

A Few Concluding Words

Metrolinx is so fixated on the short term, on giving Queen’s Park a finished report and a “quick start” set of projects, that we risk an opportunity to do proper comparative analysis and planning.  The Board needs to seize control of the process and set out a few basics: 

• a short-to-medium term plan that will give Queen’s Park enough to munch on for budgetary purposes,
• a review even of that plan to ensure that project sequencing is appropriate and alternatives really have been considered,
• a clear process that keeps debate in public fora as much as possible and ensures input by municipal and transit system staffs together with the public.

This is not the time to sit back and admire the map on the wall, but to treat it as a living, changing and challenging guide to our future transportation network.

Back in 2002, I collaborated with Rocket Riders and the Toronto Environmental Alliance to produce Transit’s Lost Decade, a report on the savage cutbacks in transit during the 1990s thanks to budget cuts.

This morning, I received a comment in the thread about the November service changes from James who asked:

How does total service, as of November 23, 2008 compare with peak service prior to the big cuts of the early 90’s?

This sent me digging into my archives to see how we have been doing.  For the details, please refer to this linked spreadsheet.

By November 2008, the AM Peak bus service will stand at 1505, still 43 less than the 1990 level of 1548.  The difference in capacity is slightly greater on two accounts:

• 1990 includes articulated buses (fleet of 90, number in service unknown)
• 2008 includes 21 buses replacing streetcars on St. Clair for construction

If we assume that at least 70 artics were in service, this is the capacity equivalent of 35 more 40-foot buses.  Adjusting the totals gives an effective service of 1583 buses in 1990 versus 1484 in November 2008.  During this period, the Spadina subway was extended from Wilson to Downsview, and the Sheppard subway largely replaced bus service from Yonge to Don Mills.  However, these do not completely offset the difference in peak bus operations.

On the streetcar network, the AM peak service is down by 37 cars even though the Spadina route did not exist in 1990 (15 vehicles).  The level of streetcar service is much, much lower now than it was in 1990 and shows no sign of improving.  The long delay in decision-making on rebuilding and/or replacing the streetcar fleet means that “Ridership Growth Strategy” is a hollow term to patrons of those routes.

Please refer to this list of streetcar vehicles and headways for November 1990 and 2008.

Finally, you will note the presence of the Trolley Coach fleet in 1990.  With the recent difficulties involving Hybrid Buses, Toronto continues to see how a fascination with new technology first with CNG buses, then with hybrids, has turned out.  Hybrids may come into their own as battery technology improves, but today we can only look to our sister-city, Vancouver, to see a real commitment to electric buses.  That’s another thread, and I will turn to it soon.

After many, many years, the service improvements promised by the Ridership Growth Strategy are here.  Starting November 23, we will see the rollout of more service on many, many routes to implement the following new service standards:

• Peak bus loading standards are reduced by about 10% (a route will be considered to be “full” with a lower average load).  This triggers service improvements on many routes, but loading generally has been rising and there is already a backlog of changes waiting to begin.  This affects 62 routes with a total of 89 more am and 65 pm peak buses.
• Off peak bus standards, as well as streetcar and rapid transit standards for all periods, are unchanged at, effectively, a seated load.  Note that this is an average over an hour and local variations will occur.
• Routes with services less frequent than 30 minutes will be improved to the new 30-minute maximum headway.  This affects 26 routes.
• All routes will operate seven days a week during all periods until at least 1:00 am.  This affects about 86 routes.

Also, Mount Dennis Garage will open roughly a year after it was actually finished.

One caveat, of course, is the already known problems with hybrid bus availability.  The degree to which the TTC can get and keep its fleet of these vehicles on the road will affect the full rollout of the new peak period services.

Meanwhile, I cannot help noticing the breadth of the changes across the system with 20% better service found fairly commonly on some routes and periods just to get average loading within the standards.  This shows a combination of deferred improvements and of the unusual rate of riding growth on some routes.

Updates October 25: 

A summary of the changes, boiled down from the 80-odd page original, is now available.

A table of the revised loading standards is now available.