Okay, I strongly agree with about 50% of Gunn's comments and disagree with the rest.
MAINTENANCE AND EFFICIENCY
Of course, here he's quite right. State of good repair is obviously the most important thing. The last thing we want is another accident. As for the fare recovery, I don't really understand how that needs to be the concern of a TTC manager. One of Gunn's weaknesses was that he wasn't much of an advocate for government funding beyond state of good repair. I believe that there is a lot of waste at the TTC, but I don't think any of that has to do with the routes. Sure, there are a handful of routes where the buses aren't packed off-peak but that's perfectly normal on any successful system. We should be increasing service across the board, not reducing it. Too many bus routes are standing-room-only at midnight. The waste is in other areas, like inefficient staffing policies (i.e. drivers on RT trains that drive themselves) and extraordinarily high absentee rates. That's not to mention the vast wasted capacity created by a complete failure to maintain any kind of headways, particularly on downtown streetcar routes. When 4 streetcars in a row pull up on the 510, the last two cars are generally completely empty. We're paying for drivers and streetcars to provide a 5-minute headway when in reality we're only providing a 20-minute headway. I'd fix all those problems before I'd cut a single bus from the Silver Hills.
SHEPPARD
He's always had a hate-on for this project, so this reaction isn't surprising. As I've said before, Sheppard is a vital and valuable project that will connect two important parts of the city and serve an incredibly fast-developing part of the city. As for the congestion on the Yonge line, he's absolutely right, though I wonder why he never uttered a peep about a Downtown Relief Line when he was GM. I agree that the DRL should be the city's next transit priority and the need will become extremely apparent when the upcoming extensions are completed.
SPADINA
He's right about everything being preposterously overbuilt at the stations, but that has less to do with design than unnecessary scale. Munich's stations are simple but also beautiful. Painting the walls interesting colours or adding interesting light fixtures cost nothing in the scheme of a station. It's the vast caverns that add cost. The whole Spadina line is massively over-designed. Most of it should be elevated, as virtually any other city would do in that kind of a suburban/industrial setting. There's no reason why it has to be unattractive and the VCC, for example, could be built around the viaduct much like Scarborough Centre or Burnaby Metrotown have been.
MIXING TRACK GAUGES
I don't consider myself to be qualified to speak on this issue. I suspect Gunn knows what he's talking about. It all depends on how much more it costs to produce a different gauge of vehicle from the norm versus the cost of additional maintenance facilities. We already have separate maintenance facilities for the RT and that hasn't been crippling. Eglinton would have needed its own yard anyway, had it been built as subway, so I doubt the costs will be as serious as he suggests.
EGLINTON
He's obviously right about Eglinton. It should obviously be a subway, or automated light metro, if it's going to be built grade-separated. I'm glad that he points out the fact that LRVs are at least twice as expensive for equivalent capacity as subway vehicles. Running more expensive low-floor vehicles on a completely grade-separated route just compounds the absurdity.
STREETCARS
I'm not entirely clear what he's suggesting here. If he says we should replace all the streetcars with articulated buses, I disagree for a whole host of reasons. If he's saying we should keep the CLRVs and rebuild them indefinitely, I also disagree. Anyone who's ridden modern LRVs knows that the CLRVs are severely dated. I don't understand why they should have so many bugs in them (though I wouldn't be surprised if they do) since it's not like LRVs haven't been tested in other cities.
ROCKETS
It's funny that he says "Let's see how people use these trains" as if no other city in the world operates them. I've lived in a city with open-gangway trains. People obviously don't use them to walk from one end to the other to get to a different door. It's not like that would even be possible at peak where the delays are a concern anyway. The capacity benefit is also real. People routinely stand in the open gangway areas.
SIGNALS
I've heard a lot of people saying that the TTC doesn't have people qualified to administer a lot of these projects. Gunn's comments support that, which gives me a lot of anxiety. I think a turnkey project with a major provider would be the best approach here.
FRAGMENTATION
There were plenty of crazy ideas created through the Commission chain-of-command, and much worse, many good ideas were strangled in infancy. The TTC chain-of-command is infected with one of the most severe cases of Not-Invented-Here syndrome that I've ever seen. At the very least, Metrolinx has the possibility of coming up with some new ideas that aren't rehashing of what the TTC did in the 50s.
LABOUR COSTS
I completely agree with Gunn on this issue. Ford shot himself in the foot with his Police deal and we're going to be paying dearly for it over the next years. The absentee rate, as I mentioned, is a huge issue and an obvious symptom of a bigger problem.
IMPRESSIONS
He's clearly right. The system is dirty. Not New York dirty, but clearly dirty compared with how it used to be and how it should be. I'm always amazed by how buildings in the PATH are able to keep their underground spaces absolutely immaculate despite the thousands of people passing through while the immediately adjacent TTC spaces are filthy. Try it sometime. Walk from St. Andrew into any of connected buildings or from Union into BCE Place or RBP and see the difference. It does make one wonder about the stories like the one of the TTC janitor at Kipling quoted in the Star as saying that he and the other janitors spent their shifts at the nearby multiplex...
