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)
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.
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.
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.