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muller877 said:
They are industry awards. Means zero. If you belong to the association, pay your dues and attend the conference each year you are eligible. Then they rotate the awards between all these paying members.

if you look at the past winners you can see there is never a repeat. It's a participation award you get every 30 years (TTC won it in 1986)
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You hit the nail on the head... I thought this was a real award until you pointed this out and I looked at the previous winners. It's kind of like a seat on the Human Rights council at the UN.

amnesiajune said:
The TTC won an award for its now-mostly completed modernization plan - Presto implementation, Blue Night expansion, new express routes, wi-fi in stations, signal upgrades, etc.
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Presto implementation - This half-finished, behind schedule implementation of a Metrolinx boondoggle is nothing to be proud of, and certainly not a convenience for passengers. I love how when I go to stations, if I'm out of money I can't top up and have to pay in cash. Or how I can only get cards from a few select locations. Or how often it doesn't work.
Wifi in stations - This is less than useless, if a train has been delayed then you might be lucky enough to catch 10 seconds of WiFi. It's honestly more frustrating trying to connect to Wifi at each stop for a brief moment of internet than to not have Wifi at all during the trip. What we need is cell service. The only reason that the wifi is needed is because the TTC bungled the cell service contract, seeing it as a way to squeeze out an extra million rather than a service for its riders, that all the major carriers boycotted the contract until it expired.
Signal upgrades - You mean those on-going signal replacements that result in rotating large chunks of the TTC being inoperative? This may be essential, if painful, maintenance but you wouldn't hand out awards for the fact that over the course of a year we have almost never have a fully operational subway system during a weekend.

I know I'm being a negative Nancy, and in terms of what really matters (service frequency, not WiFi or smiley bus drivers) the TTC actually is one of the best in North America, but it's okay to demand a higher bar and I don't think those things you mentioned are the proudest moments of the TTC, more like multi-year temporary travails that riders have to endure.
 
aquateam said:
Signal upgrades - You mean those on-going signal replacements that result in rotating large chunks of the TTC being inoperative? This may be essential, if painful, maintenance but you wouldn't hand out awards for the fact that over the course of a year we have almost never have a fully operational subway system during a weekend.
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To be fair, I'm not aware of any metro worldwide that has deployed CBTC/TBS (required for moving block automatic train control) on an active line in less than 5 years; and even then it's typically their 3rd of 4th line converted rather than the 1st. The 1st deployment includes back-office type equipment, education programs, etc.

BART has actually been trying to install CBTC since the early 90's. They recently issued their 3rd re-tender for that project.

London, which is getting really good at upgrading lines (now with 4 upgrades under their belt), still has vendors (Bombardier most recently in 2014) walking away from re-signalling contracts.

MTA (NY) started their 10 mile trial section in 1996 and finished in 2006. They've done bits and pieces of lines since then but no line has been finished from end-to-end. They're paying $2B for 73 miles from 2015 to 2019; everything seems to cost double in NY.

TTC has a lot of issues. Signal upgrades seems to just be the nature of the beast rather than something systemic within TTC.


Of course, then there's Moscow. They installed count-up timers on the exit wall of stations and tell drivers to keep within 90 seconds of the train in-front of them. As a rider, it feels like one of the best run legacy (older than 20 years) systems out there.
 
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The TTC maybe the best of the worst. At least compared with other North American cities.

Compared with the rest of world, the TTC is still pretty low. Could be better, but hard to do when you have politicians who keep demanding more and more cuts to its operational budget, and very little support for operations from the higher levels of government. (CC to Mayor John Tory and the provincial and federal party leaders.)
 
amnesiajune said:
Because despite all the hate, the TTC really is one of the best transit systems in North America. New York is probably the only system with more extensive service than Toronto, but they're plagued with reliability issues. Subway line shutdowns happen all the time and they don't have any replacement buses - if there isn't an alternate subway route (i.e. nearly anywhere outside of Manhattan) you have to figure out an alternative on the regularly-scheduled buses or just wait it out.
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I wonder if anyone gave credit to Rob Ford from bringing in Byford?
 
aquateam said:
Wifi in stations - This is less than useless, if a train has been delayed then you might be lucky enough to catch 10 seconds of WiFi. It's honestly more frustrating trying to connect to Wifi at each stop for a brief moment of internet than to not have Wifi at all during the trip. What we need is cell service. The only reason that the wifi is needed is because the TTC bungled the cell service contract, seeing it as a way to squeeze out an extra million rather than a service for its riders, that all the major carriers boycotted the contract until it expired.
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There are actually a lot of factors on your phone being able to connect to the wifi as the train pulls into the station. It's mostly do to the speed at which your phone can connect to it. During the doors open event at Downsview park I had the opportunity to speak with the CEO of TConet the company that is implementing the wifi serve across the TTC and he said it mostly come down o how fats your phone is able to get the signal as they use the faster equipment currently available and all of it is provide to the TTC free of charge, they actually pay the TTC to allow them to install it. As for Cell service the equipment is in place it's just up to the cell companies to connect to it. The previous ideas for cell service in the subway were rejected by the TTC because the companies all wanted their own access to the TTC tunnels and sations to put in the necessary equipment which the TTC didn't want to allow for safety reasons.
 
BurlOak said:
I wonder if anyone gave credit to Rob Ford from bringing in Byford?
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Byford was brought in as Chief Operating Officer in 2011. He became interim Chief General Manager when Gary Webster was fired, becoming Chief General Manager in 2012 (renamed as CEO). Rob Ford didn't know much about Byford.
 
W. K. Lis said:
Byford was brought in as Chief Operating Officer in 2011. He became interim Chief General Manager when Gary Webster was fired, becoming Chief General Manager in 2012 (renamed as CEO). Rob Ford didn't know much about Byford.
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More accurately, he was hired by the TTC Board at the time - Peter Milczyn, Maria Augimeri, Karen Stintz, John Parker, Vincent Cristanti, Frank di Giorgio, Norm Kelly, Denzil Minnan-Wong and Cesar Palacio (the latter five of whom were voted off the board after firing Gary Webster) - and he was hired as an informal CGM-in-waiting, since Gary Webster had been with the TTC for 35 years and was expected to retire soon.
 
W. K. Lis said:
The TTC maybe the best of the worst. At least compared with other North American cities.

Compared with the rest of world, the TTC is still pretty low. Could be better, but hard to do when you have politicians who keep demanding more and more cuts to its operational budget, and very little support for operations from the higher levels of government. (CC to Mayor John Tory and the provincial and federal party leaders.)
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On the bright side, there are things the TTC do that are up to first class city standards.

A reasonable and usable night network.
A 10 minute frequent service network.
Good headways on all rapid transit lines at all hours of the day.

Then there is the long list of things that barely come close... which would not be discussed.
 
Headway and the 10 minute network are good IDEAS. Unfortunately the TTC is not too good at actually managing things to ensure policy becomes practice.
 
DSC said:
Headway and the 10 minute network are good IDEAS. Unfortunately the TTC is not too good at actually managing things to ensure policy becomes practice.
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Yes, that's still a major problem. I can say TTC is pretty good in maintaining a 10 min headway outside of the 7am-7pm business day hours.

TTC does need a fleet of relief buses to solve some of the problems. They tried everything on the 504 and yet it's still failing. If they can't afford more spares, maybe they should pull a couple of cars from the route and make them wait around till there is a gap. The problem is supervisors often too slow to react. By the time they decide to short turn a streetcar or bus, there's already a 15 minute gap. The problem is not every car/bus can be short turned. It might be at the end of the run or there's another operator waiting at the relief point for a crew change. The relief buses could be for all routes nearby. not just a specific route. Right now they confine them to a specific route if they exist (which is barely). E.g. relief buses for the 32 Eglinton West ONLY at the two stations. Gaps can happen at Renforth cause of traffic but there's no relief there. The way TTC manages things have to change.
 
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