If this city is serious about pedestrian safety, how about not forcing a mid-block crossing on Richmond Street?

A new TTC System Map

With news of the upcoming fare increase in January, it should not have come as a surprise to anyone that people would begin hoarding TTC tokens to insulate themselves from the increase. It’s not a new concept: token hoarding occurred with every previous fare hike (2007, 2006). The difference this time, however, is that the TTC does not have their usual back up of paper tickets, as they were discontinued last year due to counterfeiting. The result? A token shortage, with the initial restriction to 10 tokens on Nov. 6, followed by a restriction to 5 tokens just three days later on Nov. 9, and today, the unprecedented halt to bulk token sales altogether. And the “solution” (as described by Chair Adam Giambrone)? Reintroduce paper tickets, at least temporarily, until the new year.

In the context of the budgetary pressures facing the TTC this coming year, it is appropriate to limit any potential loss of revenue through token hoarding as much as possible. However, it would be nice if the Commission was up front and honest about it. The first news release on November 6 that limited token sales to 10 made no mention of revenue loss, only to “ensure enough tokens in the system” for customer use.  One week later, a news release finally mentioned the issue of hoarding, but it wasn’t until today’s release that the potential loss (estimated at $5-million in 2010 — see issue with this below) of revenue was discussed. Without a doubt, the Commission was ill prepared to deal with a fare hike in a post-ticket environment, and the actions over the past few weeks clearly demonstrate this.

INTERESTING FACT CHECK:
From today’s press release:
“Without taking these steps today, the TTC could lose more than $5 million in 2010 revenues due to token hoarding.”

The TTC ordered 20 million tokens in 2008 to replace adult tickets, on top of the original order of 20 million tokens in 2006. Hoarding would have lost the TTC 25 cents per token. To make the TTC’s estimate to lose “more than” $5-million plausible, this means that every other token the TTC has would have to be hoarded. Of course, it is extremely unlikely every single token would be even in circulation, considering the number that are lost (I lost 4 in Montreal!) and the TTC likely has a large supply in reserve.
(Thanks to @anthonyschein for correcting my earlier tweet mistake!)

So now with another quick fix, it looks like we’ll have these paper tickets again. And that brings me to the main point of this post that marks my return to the blogging world.

How many quick fixes can the TTC’s fare system handle?

In a tweet earlier today, I summarized the list of changes made to TTC fare media in the past three years that have impacted the customer experience. These include:

• The introduction of new bi-metal tokens in 2006 in response to the discovery of counterfeit of the old tokens;
• The termination of adult tickets in fall 2008 in response to the high rates of counterfeit tickets and the purchase of more tokens;
• The introduction of security holograms and a special “activation sticker” to the Metropass in response to reports of fraudulent passes this past summer;
• The announcement a couple weeks ago of plans to install Metropass readers and token validators on all buses and streetcars; and finally,
• Today’s announcement of temporary paper tickets.

All of these are essentially quick fixes to the fare system, all in the name of preventing fare fraud. And all these quick fixes have come with a cost:

• The initial supply of 20 million bimetal tokens cost $1.7-million to produce
• An additional supply of 20 million bimetal tokens to replace tickets cost $2.0-million (source)
• Security holograms on all weekly passes and Metropasses costing an additional $250,000 annually
• Metropass and token validators on all buses and streetcars in 2010 will cost approximately $1.5-million.

This is a total of a minimum of $7-million for quick fixes on a fare system that is now officially obsolete, as the TTC finally adopted the Presto smartcard system that is being rolled out across the GTA last week. Adam Giambrone tweeted earlier today about a five-year timeframe for TTC Presto implementation. Given that, the total cost of these changes could be over $10-million (given additional annual cost of the new fancy holographic Metropasses). Given an nine year period between 2006 and 2015 (five year Presto target), the TTC has spent over $1.1M per year on capital alone to fight fraud. I’m curious how this cost-benefit is working out.

The worst part is, these quick fixes basically gave the TTC an excuse over the past three years to resist the adoption of Presto, a fare system that has been under development for six years. I know it is not this simple, but if the TTC had signed onto, and budgeted this $10M to actively work to implement Presto back in 2006, we would be only a year from a smartcard system that contains all sorts of security features to prevent the fraud these quick fixes have strived (and clearly failed) to do.

And now, we’re back to paper tickets, at least for the next couple months.

My comment posted on Macleans.ca blog, in response to why Tories claim Toronto’s streetcar contract is ‘not stimulus’:

Baird claims that because Toronto’s streetcar contract is over a 10 year period, it does not offer “immediate stimulus”, which is a load of crock (see, I can control my language!). The second the contract is signed, the whole chain of supply to build them will be initialized, from the engineers, parts manufacturers, and quite possibly, the construction of a new assembly facility in the GTA. The Toronto streetcar contract also has a “Canadian Content” clause as well, where at least 25% of the value of the contract must be spent in Canada.

The reason why this isn’t acceptable to the Tories is because unlike small scale road and bridge or sewer projects, this is long term, large scale thinking that they will likely not get any photo opportunities from. The first streetcar is not expected to roll off the assembly line for two years, and they’re very well aware that they need a big publicity stunt before that. Once again, the Tory mantra is not to ‘dream big’, but to resort to expediency and short-term political advantage.

While the economy was falling down, down, down, Harper was flying round, round round.

source: Macleans.ca

So Harper brought out the “Coalition isn’t patriotic because they didn’t have a flag at their news conference” card today in Question Period. By the way, this was an outright lie, there were in fact two flags at the news conference, as per the convention in displaying the Canadian flag with all the provincial and territorial flags. I pointed this out through a comment on the Macleans.ca blog, and was subsequently called a Muslim and a Terrorist (both of which I am not).

From the “Rules for Flying the Flag” Website:

“With flags of the Canadian provinces and territories

When provincial and territorial flags are flown with the National Flag of Canada, the order is based on the date of entry into Confederation of the provinces followed by the territories. In a grouping of flags that includes the National Flag of Canada and all of the flags of the provinces and territories, the order of precedence is:
1. National Flag of Canada
2. Ontario (1867)
3. Quebec (1867)
4. Nova Scotia (1867)
5. New Brunswick (1867)
6. Manitoba (1870)
7. British Columbia (1871)
8. Prince Edward Island (1873)
9. Saskatchewan (1905)
10. Alberta (1905)
11. Newfoundland (1949)
12. Northwest Territories (1870)
13. Yukon (1898)
14. Nunavut (1999)

When there are more than three flagpoles/masts, the National Flag of Canada should be flown on the left of the observer facing the flags, followed by the flags of the provinces and territories. An additional National Flag of Canada may be displayed at the end of the line if desired. ”

So basically, the coalition leaders followed the rules. Because of this layout, the Canadian flags are on the outside, which means it’s really difficult to show blatant patriotism when you want to recognize that we are a federation of provinces and territories. Stephen Harper discovered how to get past this a long time ago by putting as many flags behind him as possible, as shown below:

source: PM Harper’s Flickr Site

I find it hilarious that the Tories have tried to villify the Coalition for this, when there are these examples of their poor flag-etiquette, like here, when all the provincial/territorial flags are displayed, but not at all in the order as required above:

source: PM Harper’s Flickr Site

Why are we even talking about something so trivial like this when there are much bigger things to worry about? The politics of this are really interesting, but when it comes down to accusations of treason and disloyalty to a country we all love, I have to draw a line. Grow up Mr. Harper.

Culture in Danger (Culture en Péril, with subtitles) (via Tupperfan)

The LCBO announced in May that it would no longer be handing out plastic bags at its stores, to the delight of most environmental-minded citizens, and the scorn of other plastic-loving ones. It was intended that the LCBO would not order any more bags after their supply runs out.

From their news release:

LCBO has stopped ordering plastic bags and expects supplies of the remaining stock to run out by summer. As a result, availability of plastic bags in the next few months will vary from store to store.

Note it said “by summer”. Not “in the summer” or “the end of summer” or “by fall”, but “by summer”, which would mean before June 23, 2008.

The Toronto Star went even further:

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario will announce today that it won’t hand out plastic shopping bags once it exhausts existing supplies, the Star has learned. Some stores have already run out.

So I found it strange that it is now the end of September and the three main stores I go to (Manulife Centre, Hudsons Bay Centre, and Yonge/Wellesley) are still handing out plastic bags. Even busy stores, like Yonge/Dundas, still have a supply. The strangest thing is that some stores seem to have restocked plastic bags, as in, they had run out and now they have them again.

There’s two possible explanations:

1) The program is incredibly successful and everyone is bringing their own bag or asking for paper bags (because you have to ask, since most clerks are still reaching first for the plastic). This means the supply of plastic bags is dwindling more slowly than they first thought.

2) They caved in on the policy and have quietly brought plastic bags back.

I certainly hope #1 is the case. But two things are causing me to be suspicious. First, is the return of bags at the stores that had previously run out. And second, is the quality of the more recent plastic bags - they are thinner than the old ones. Why would the bag change if there was no new contract signed?

Does your local LCBO still have plastic bags?