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How to deal with subway failures
- Thread starter lead82
- Start date
wyliepoon
Senior Member
In the case I mentioned above, the KCR that operated West Rail was a government-owned corporation (the privatized MTR only took over operations of the line in December of that year). KCR was profitable, but not likely because of West Rail - it was considered a "white elephant" (similar to our Sheppard Subway) because it failed to meet its projected ridership.
Not the 401, but if an incident of an equivalent magnitude stranded drivers on a toll route like the 407, I think it would not be unreasonable for them to ask for a refund/discount on their tolls.
*****
Giambrone has not ruled out compensation for passengers affected by the incident, just that it won't be a refund (http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/728525--forget-about-a-refund-says-ttc-chair?bn=1). Peter Kuitenbrouwer at Posted Toronto suggested that the TTC give out free tokens - I think that is a dumb idea; the TTC's made thousands of people line up on Yonge Street to board shuttle buses, and now you want people to line up again for tokens?
The only alternative appears to be free rides on the YUS one Wednesday evening, plus a discount on the December Metropass. I'm not calling for an outrageous discount on the Metropass; a reduction of the price by the value of one cash fare or one token should be fine. Considering December is holiday season and fewer people would be buying Metropasses anyway, the effect on the TTC would not be as great as other months of the year.
With this incident, the upcoming fare increase, and angry commuters ready to revolt, the TTC (and Adam Giambrone) needs to do something to improve its public image. For the long term, this appears to be the thing that will keep TTC accountable to its customers.
Second_in_pie
Senior Member
A great way for Giambrone to improve the TTC's public image is to resign.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
They gave me compensation because of the stoppage. I had bought a day pass, but the earlier suicide at College basically screwed up my itinerary, so I didn't need the daypass. I went up to Davisville and they gave me an unmarked daypass and one of those green "get on the subway" free cards. They were pretty nice about it, but I was the only person there which surprised me.
Whoaccio
Senior Member
A more appropriate analogy would be when an airline cancels a flight. Even if it is for totally understandable reasons (like weather), passengers almost always demand some kind of refund and sometimes even compensation for being delayed in addition. Same for Greyhound & VIA. Even with Pizza delivery, 45 minutes or it's free aren't exactly unheard of.
Highways, for reasons I disagree with, are considered a public good by most people and hence beyond the control of any particular agency. It's not like every time someone enters an on ramp for the 401 they think "okay, MTO, I'm payin x cents per km in tax dollars for this trip, I am giving you responsibility to get me out the other end." With the TTC or Air Canada though, people are explicitly trusting someone else to transport them. That's why they are paying.
Chuck
Senior Member
I agree very much with the comment that the best approach, at least in the case of the YUS line, is to stop providing shuttle buses. Though I live at Yonge and St. Clair, I took the University line home instead due to the closure. Normal commute: 30 minutes. Subway closure commute: 40 minutes. At the same time that people were waiting 90 minutes for a bus, there was plenty of extra room on the University trains heading north from St. George.
Better signage and direction is key. During closures, all advertisements should cease on the platform monitors, and instead be replaced with instructions: "Yonge line closed. Take University line instead". Regardless of what is done, there would still of course be a deficit of capacity. The spare capacity on the University line is nowhere near high enough to carry an extra 30,000 people per hour when the Yonge line closes.
This incident drives home the fact that there is not enough subway capacity in Toronto even on the best of days, and that the $10B transit city plan would have done essentially nothing to improve the situation last week. We need a DRL heading north to at least Eglinton, and we need more reliable east-west connections (not just on Eglinton) so that if one line closes, people actually could bypass the closure on another line, and head back to their home line farther north.
Better signage and direction is key. During closures, all advertisements should cease on the platform monitors, and instead be replaced with instructions: "Yonge line closed. Take University line instead". Regardless of what is done, there would still of course be a deficit of capacity. The spare capacity on the University line is nowhere near high enough to carry an extra 30,000 people per hour when the Yonge line closes.
This incident drives home the fact that there is not enough subway capacity in Toronto even on the best of days, and that the $10B transit city plan would have done essentially nothing to improve the situation last week. We need a DRL heading north to at least Eglinton, and we need more reliable east-west connections (not just on Eglinton) so that if one line closes, people actually could bypass the closure on another line, and head back to their home line farther north.
nfitz
Superstar
What an odd statement! Have we not seen a lot more progress in many TTC issues since Giambrone joined the TTC and became chair?
Chuck
Senior Member
Progress has been made in areas that would have happened anyway, such as fare card implementation, station accessibility, and general greening of the TTC. Transit City is the single biggest mistake in the TTC's history that will take generations to fix, while the new streetcars and subway trains (which would have also happened anyway because they are simply replacing an equal number of 30 year old vehicles) can be as much if not more so attributed to efforts by City Hall.
nfitz
Superstar
Wow ... what backwards thinking! Biggest single mistake since they built the Bloor-Danforth subway! ROTFLMAO!