Auckland's Privatized Transit a Warning for Toronto

[kEiThZ]

If a company is looknig for a 20% profit margin, would we prefer the extra 20% get's paid to shareholders in Spain; or to people in Toronto who will spend the money locally?

I might have some sympathy for this argument if most of these guys were actually staying in the 416. My parents have several family friends who work for the TTC. Not a single one of them lives inside the 416.

 

[nfitz]

I might have some sympathy for this argument if most of these guys were actually staying in the 416. My parents have several family friends who work for the TTC. Not a single one of them lives inside the 416.

Just as I expect there are TTC drivers who live in 905, I'm sure there are VIVA drivers who live in 416. I certainly know TTC employees who live in 416, but I no none who live in 905; perhaps this is because I live in 416; where do your parents live?

I'm pretty sure however that no TTC employeers are commuting from Barcelona.

 

[waterloowarrior]

at the end of the day it's a pointless hypothetical argument... maybe the TTC workers are spending their money on vacations to Barcelona!?

Aecom and URS are owned by Americans, they still get engineering contracts for TTC work
Lafarge is French and St. Lawrence Cement is owned by a Swiss company, our roads still get paved with their materials...
West 8 is Dutch yet they are still designing the Waterfront plan
Waste Management is American yet they do garbage contracts in the 905
etc.

In the case of the GTA transit there would be a few Canadian-owned companies (Miller, Can-ar, government-owned companies, Bombardier and SNC for rail??) .... the Canadian subsidiaries of the UK bus companies First Group, Stagecoach, and National Express ... Veolia (French-owned)... and maybe other companies like MTR, Keolis (SNCF, also partly owned by Caisse) and Arriva (which is being bought by Deutsche Bahn),

 

[nfitz]

at the end of the day it's a pointless hypothetical argument...,

No it isn't ... how much profit does the company running the service make. How much less do they pay their employees.

For example, the claims that garbage pick-up in Etobicoke is cheaper, because they are paid 22% less is great ... but how much profit is being pad to the owners of the company?

Contracting is great for short-term specialized work. But for long-term grunt work? Does it really save money? And if it costs about the same, then someone is getting less to provide someone else the profit.

 

[afransen]

Most of the savings in Etobicoke is due to higher productivity. There's nothing wrong with foreign companies earning a profit. If everyone felt that way, no one would buy Bombardier streetcars, etc. As long as they provide a service at a competitive price and follow labour regulations, it's just fine with me.

 

[sjc]

- This hodge-podge is all the worse because each company accepts only its own tickets, and not those offered by competitors. Since inter-company transfers are impossible, bus routes can be insanely circuitous. My daughter’s bus trip to school takes three long detours through different neighbourhoods, doubling what should be a five-kilometre route.

Are they forbidden from accepting each others tickets? If there are more than 2 companies, could 2 or more work together to create a competitive advantage? Are multiple companies allowed to operate transit on the same routes?

Tickets are expensive. Passengers pay according to how far they travel (and then pay again if they need a transfer). Trips of just a few stops cost as little as $1.70 – but another $1.70 is added each time the bus passes through another invisible “stage.†Travelling 40 kilometres from the city’s north to south costs $12.70 to $16.50 (depending which company is used) and takes two hours. A passenger travelling the same distance in Toronto (say, from Scarborough to Etobicoke) would pay $3 once, and require less than half the time.

I have always thought that short distance trips were too expensive on the TTC and that those travelling from Scarborough to Etobicoke were not being charged enough. Also, while it might be possible to travel 40 kilometres within Toronto within an hour if both ends of the trip are on the subway, you would be hard pressed to make the journey in that time if either (or both) ends of the trip involved a bus.

Yet Aucklanders still pay for transit – three times over. Once through taxes – subsidies to private transit consume half of all property taxes collected by the regional government. Then again at the fare box. And finally a third time through inconvenience. No wonder Aucklanders take transit one-quarter as often as Torontonians. So before you get carried away with enthusiasm for the inherent efficiency of the private sector, visit Auckland. It’s beautiful. But you’ll need to rent a car.

If they paid for transit "three times over", then their transit would be funded to 300% of their costs. Inconvenience isn't something that would be eliminated through a public transit model.

 

[Mapleson]

Referring to the bus network (London only, not the rest of the UK which did things a lot differently).. The UK in general is a bad example of privatization of transit, but from the studies I've read the London bus system saw significantly decreased costs and increased service with competitive tendering... the information I've seen on other systems like Stockholm, Helsinki, and Copenhagen was similar.

London Bus is one of the most iconic transit systems in the world. Thatcher screwed over the rail system (it costs more to travel from Birmingham to London than London to Amsterdam) in the in the early 90s. The national bus system didn't have to compete, so it's just as hopeless (five hours from London to Exeter by bus, one hour by car) and not even competitive (Flight from Plymouth to Stockholm to Edinbourgh is cheaper than bus/train from Plymouth to Edinbourgh). Local transit is then done on the County level, trying to serve rural and urban areas.

It is a mess, but they've done so many different things wrong they couldn't help doing a few things right. London Bus and the Highway Agency 24 national areas are a couple of them.

I do believe in contracting out of services where appropriate, but I also know that the current collective agreement can sometimes make this easier said than done.

The private sector is not magic.

Exactly, there should be competition to keep prices reasonable, but it's how you arrange the contracts that detacts if you'll get quality work and value for money.

I have a bus system map for Sheffield, but only for First Group's routes. It was nuts.

Other Ontario systems with contracted transit: Barrie (First Group, formerly Greyhound, formerly PMCL), Peterborough (Stagecoach/Trentway-Wagar), parts of Durham Region's "system", Port Hope, Cobourg.

That's Thatcher's legacy with privatisation and metropolitian county council abolition in 1986. If you think it's bad now, you should have been there a decade ago before they all merged and consolidated. London and a few of the other unitary authorities made it out reasonably OK because they could still regulate where, when, and how often to run services. Everyone else was left to the loving embrace of the free market.

Which is a dangerous assumption. Instead of profit margins, with a public system you end up overly expensive labour costs.

That's where competitive tendering comes in. You tender the job and if the more expensive labour makes their bid higher than the labour with corporate profits and overhead, then you go with the company, and vice versa you'd go with the union.

I strongly believe in more flexible contracts that pay a minimum base rate for performing work and then incentives/penalties for the quality of the work.

 

[Mapleson]

Are they forbidden from accepting each others tickets? If there are more than 2 companies, could 2 or more work together to create a competitive advantage? Are multiple companies allowed to operate transit on the same routes?

These are the companies that are left. In the early 90s, there were well over 20 different companies. They aren't forbidden, but anyone that accepted someone else's tickets eventually realised there was no point in running two head offices. Multiple companies do operate the same or near routes.

I have always thought that short distance trips were too expensive on the TTC and that those travelling from Scarborough to Etobicoke were not being charged enough. Also, while it might be possible to travel 40 kilometres within Toronto within an hour if both ends of the trip are on the subway, you would be hard pressed to make the journey in that time if either (or both) ends of the trip involved a bus.

The TTC went to a flat fare system when Metropolitan Toronto arose because the boroughs could outvote the Toronto proper. You'd be hard pressed to get enough edge councillors to vote for distance based pricing without completely taking the TTC out of their hands.

If they paid for transit "three times over", then their transit would be funded to 300% of their costs. Inconvenience isn't something that would be eliminated through a public transit model.

I think Auckland shows how to do it worse than England and the old Conservatives did. Inconvenience is reduced through a public transit model (Toronto compared to Auckland, for example), which should have a related "cost". Personally, value all my time at least at minimum wage ($0.17 per minute).

 

[kettal]

Auckland is perhaps the most car-dependent city I have been to. Hitch-hiking near the highways is a very common sight.