The TTC is a public service, paid for through public monies. If the level of service being delivered is not satisfactory, people are entitled to voice their thoughts accordingly. I am no "jerk" who "thinks that they know better", by the way, I am a railfan and historian and have spent 15 years of my life extensively documenting the TTC system. In so far as anyone could be considered so, I considered myself at a time to be a "fan" of the TTC. However, my appreciation for transportation and infrastructure does not preclude me from criticizing it, or the people running it, as and when I see fit.
There are a lot of problems in this city that the TTC has no control over, yes. And there are things that the TTC has that should be praised: their front line workers are, by and large, very good. Their operators put up with a lot of shit from people taking their anger out on the wrong source, not to mention having to deal with asinine levels of traffic, and very poor scheduling on some routes which seems to eliminate the possibility of so much as a bathroom break at the end of the line. Their maintenance personnel are also very good, even older vehicles appear to be, from a passenger perspective, to be in reasonable condition. They managed to keep the CLRVs going long after they should have been put out to pasture, and the TTC's sadly meagre fleet of historical vehicles has been restored very lovingly; each of those vehicles is a gem that Toronto as a city can be proud of. The only problem is that there should be much more of them.
However, it is extremely clear that there are a lot of things going wrong at the TTC that are entirely their fault. The variety of asinine operating procedures that slow down the streetcar network considerably, and seem to exist solely to undermine the legitimacy of streetcars as a viable form of public transport (something which has been very successful) are the biggest embarrassment to come out of this organization in recent years. Why can only one streetcar enter a stop on the King transit mall? Why does every vehicle have to stop and inspect a switch visually before proceeding? Why does every vehicle have to crawl through said switches? Why can't two streetcars pass through special work at the same time? Why did they slow down the Flexity door speed around the time Covid broke out? Why is it that intersections are getting rebuilt without the curves that were suggested for said intersections years ago?
Then there is of course the legendary, decades old problem of the TTC's inability to manage headways. Why is there no one watching the system map and instructing operators to hold when vehicles become bunched together? Why are 2, 3, 4, 5 packs of buses leaving the TERMINALS together instead of being split up there? A high school student could look at a route map and identify where vehicles should be held in order to balance out service, why can't the well paid professionals at the TTC do the same?
But of course, you don't need to be a railfan or transportation buff to criticize the TTC. If we want to encourage usage of public transport, we need to make the transit system attractive to use. If you ride down the Spadina streetcar line, on straight, private, empty track, failing to crack 25 km/h, why would anyone find this to be an attractive form of transit? Is this the best form that our transit system can take? What about having to wait 40 minutes on a cold winter night for service that should run every 10? At what point do we throw our hands up and say "This is ridiculous, walking would be faster!"
If it makes you feel any better, Metrolinx is no better. It's as though Toronto is cursed. I'm not asking for a miracle here. I want a transit system run by people who don't hate the very idea of public transit.
