Category: Transit

The TTC’s disappearing parking lots: why this isn’t a bad thing

New office development at the TTC York Mills Station parking lot

I’ve written several times on my blog about GO Transit’s problems with free parking. The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) also operates many parking lots — 11,000 parking spots located at 13 of its 69 subway and RT stations — but has declared many of its lots surplus to its needs. Right now, the City of Toronto’s real estate arm, Build Toronto, is in the process of selling or leasing TTC lots for residential and commercial redevelopment. The TTC, unlike GO Transit, charges for parking at all lots, and it isn’t in a hurry to build more. For the TTC, redeveloping parking lots raise money (which, in the TTC’s case, goes to the city) while they generate additional ridership.

There’s a difference between TTC subway stations and GO Transit stations, to be sure. The TTC relies mostly on buses and streetcars, as well as walk-up traffic, to feed its rail system, while GO Transit relies mostly on suburban commuters driving to its stations. They are different models. But in urban areas like Downtown Brampton, I believe GO Transit should be much more innovative than deciding to rip down a city block to build yet another “free” surface parking lot.

GO Transit should rethink their model, encouraging more walk-up and local transit connections as it transforms into a regional rail system. Redeveloping some of its lots is a good way to go; commuter parking garages can easily be integrated into new urban uses and make their stations more attractive places to walk and cycle.

I have more to say about the TTC’s parking lot crunch over at Torontoist.

May 9, 2016
Missed opportunities on the Mississauga Transitway

Route 107 Malton Express bus on the Mississauga Transitway at Tomken Station

After riding the UP Express back in March, the inspiration for a post on a proposed transit hub at Toronto Pearson International Airport, I went for a ride on the Mississauga Transitway.

I first rode the Mississauga Transitway on a snowy Monday, November 17, 2014, the day it opened. At the time, only four stations were opened — Central Parkway, Cawthra, Tomken, and Dixie. On my first visit, I was unimpressed. But I decided to give it another try after the two new stations opened, on a Saturday, when I had plenty of time to check out the service, the new stations, and the environs.

I have many thoughts and criticisms about this new piece of transit infrastructure, which will cost the City of Mississauga and Metrolinx a combined $528 million.

Map of Mississauga Transitway, taken from the GO Transit website

What is the Mississauga Transitway?

The Mississauga Transitway is a bus rapid transit (BRT) project. BRT is a term used in the transit industry to describe everything from limited-stop conventional buses, perhaps with some perks like all-door boarding and queue-jump lanes sometimes called BRT-lite (Brampton Zum is a good example), to fully grade-separated, high speed bus corridors that operate like metro lines (the Ottawa Transitway and Bogota’s TransMillenio system are good examples). Other busways in Canada include the Ottawa Transitway, to be partially replaced by light rail transit, the Gatineau Rapibus corridor, York Region’s Viva Rapidways, and Winnipeg’s RT corridor.

The Mississauga Transitway is a true BRT system, but it has several major weaknesses.

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April 15, 2016
GO Transit and the high cost of “free” parking, Part II: Brampton Boogaloo
GO and VIA Trains meet at Brampton Station

September 20, 2016 update: Metrolinx has begun the process of demolishing its newly-acquired Downtown Brampton properties. It has applied for a demolition permit for 28A and 28B Nelson Street West, two semi-detached dwellings that were built in 2001. In the City of Brampton, demolition permits for residential properties must be approved by the Planning & Infrastructure Services Committee. The permit will likely be approved at the September 26, 2016 meeting of that committee.

On April 5, 2016, Peter Criscione at the Brampton Guardian reported on a matter that arose during the regular meeting of the City of Brampton Planning & Infrastructure Services Committee on April 4. Metrolinx, the regional transit authority that operates GO Transit and UP Express, confirmed the purchase of 1.78 acres in Downtown Brampton, land that will be used for surface parking.

Brampton Station, served by GO Transit and VIA trains, is located in Downtown Brampton, and is adjacent to Brampton Transit’s downtown transit terminal. With local shopping, restaurants, residential areas and employment, it is one of the most walkable stations in GO Transit’s system; it has a Walk Score of 90. (Bramalea GO Station, in comparison, has a Walk Score of 22.) The options of getting to Brampton Station without a car are quite good, at least as far as most GO stations go.

But Brampton Station’s two lots are full, and there are planned service improvements to Brampton, including eventual hourly evening and weekend rail service. Not everyone can be expected to take transit, walk, or get a ride to the station. But I find this land assembly troubling.

According to Criscione, and noted in the minutes of the April 4 meeting [page 25-26], the properties purchased by Metrolinx include:
- 20 Nelson Street West
- 37 George Street North
- 41 George Street North
- 26 Nelson Street West
- 3 Railroad Street (includes 3 separate parcels)
- 28A Nelson Street West
- 28B Nelson Street West
- 30 Nelson Street West
- 42 Elizabeth Street North
The planning committee asked staff to contact Metrolinx and report on the status of its recent and pending purchases of downtown lands. It also invited Metrolinx to work with city staff and officials, as well as present their plans at a future meeting.

The purchase of downtown lands for a parking lot is troubling, in my opinion. Downtown Brampton is a designated “anchor hub” — a major mobility hub where two or more rapid transit lines meet where transit-oriented development and intensification is encouraged. At no point do I see new surface parking lots are part of this vision, especially if buildings must be vacated and demolished to do so. And Downtown Brampton, not yet experiencing a building boom, has plenty of parking lots and garages that could be employed instead.

The embedded Google Map below shows where these properties are located, immediately south of Brampton Station, and west of the Brampton Transit downtown terminal.

On Friday, April 8, I visited Downtown Brampton to have a look at the properties in question.

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April 11, 2016
Mapping Major League Baseball’s stadiums by walkablity, transit access

What major league ballpark is the easiest to get to by public transit? Which stadium has the highest walk score? And where does the phrase “take me out to the ball game” absolutely require getting in a car and fighting traffic to do so?

Over at Torontoist, I explore these questions in more detail. I created a map of all thirty major league stadiums (and the 2017 home of the Atlanta Braves). About half the stadiums are located in downtown areas or urban neighbourhoods, close to transit stations, bars, restaurants, and shopping; the other half are generally surrounded by parking lots.

SkyDome isn’t a great ballpark, especially when the dome is closed, but in these rankings, it does really well.

April 8, 2016
The many challenges of creating a transit hub at Pearson Airport

Sign in Terminal 1 at Pearson Airport. Whether we realize it or not, Pearson Airport is already a transit hub.

Updated April 7, 2016

Lester B. Pearson International Airport is Canada’s busiest airport, handling 41 million passengers a year. It is not the busiest transportation hub in the Greater Toronto Area, though; Union Station is considerably busier (GO Transit alone handles 64.4 million passengers a year at Canada’s busiest station).

Pearson Airport is located almost entirely within the City of Mississauga, but the terminals are less than a kilometre away fromthe City of Toronto’s western boundary; due to the location of the airport terminals, most passengers reaching the airport by road, or transit pass through the City of Toronto to get to it.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), the not-for-profit agency that operates Canada’s busiest airport, has expressed interest in creating a transit hub and guiding transit-oriented development around it. It’s an interesting idea, and some of the facts are compelling.

There are approximately 300,000 jobs located at and near Pearson Airport. The airport itself hosts 40,000 employees that work for the airport authority and its contractors and tenants, including retailers, airlines, and allied services. The remaining 250,000 jobs are located in office parks and industrial areas that surround the airport, in the cities of Toronto, Mississauga, and Brampton, a very large area that extends north into Bramalea, west of Hurontario Street and south to Highway 403.

You can read the GTAA’s report, written by the prestigious planning firm Urban Strategies Inc., and named Pearson Connects: A Multi-Modal Platform for Prosperity online as a PDF. The report claims that Pearson Airport and environs has more jobs, and more economic clout than any Canadian downtown, with the exception of Downtown Toronto. To a degree, this is true. But the size of the Airport Employment Zone, as the GTAA defines it, is much larger in size than any downtown, even Toronto’s; the jobs are mostly dispersed in warehouses, factories, and suburban office buildings difficult to reach by transit.

In fact, Pearson Airport and its surrounding area — all 25,600 hectares (256 square kilometres) — has fewer than 25 employees per hectare, while Downtown Toronto, one-tenth the size, has nearly 200 employees per hectare (and a growing residential population as well). Igor Dragovic calculated these figures from a recent Neptis report. The low employment densities found in business parks and warehouse districts are only partly to blame; the airport itself, with five active runways and a large land buffer, contributes to this.

I calculated # of ppl+jobs/hectare using @pamelablais @NeptisRegions and @StatCan_eng data @JohnLorinc @Spacing pic.twitter.com/jtASY2HNNf

— Igor Dragovic (@idragovic26) March 2, 2016

The GTAA wants to build an “airport-related multi-modal hub” that would tie together existing and planned rapid transit services, including the Kitchener RER Service, LRTs on Eglinton and Finch Avenues, the Mississauga Transitway BRT and a proposed Derry Road transit corridor. It cites airports in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, and Hong Kong as examples to emulate.

The GTAA’s proposal for a transit hub, taken from Page 7 of the report

The report also neglects to recognize that Pearson Airport is already a major transit hub; the problems lie in integrating the existing and proposed transit services together. And for an area the size of the GTAA’s Airport Employment Zone, that’s a very tall order.

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April 6, 2016
On transit ridership in the GTHA

Earlier this week, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) released its agenda for the next board meeting, to be held on March 23. Among the items to be discussed are updates on the delayed Line 1 subway extension to York University and Vaughan, plans for the Line 2 subway extension to Scarborough Centre, the new MiWay/GO Transit terminal at Kipling Station, the planned new 514 Cherry streetcar line and other Waterfront bus improvements, and a ridership update.

As always, Steve Munro is on top of it all, and I encourage you to read his post.

I wanted to make a few observations about ridership, especially in Toronto’s suburbs. Growth in the TTC’s ridership has slowed down in the last three years, from a 2.1% annual increase in 2013, to a much more modest 0.5% increase in 2015.

Ridership figures are not detailed enough to know at what times of the day ridership is changing, nor on what routes. But ridership growth has fallen (or even declined) for other major Canadian transit systems, including Vancouver, Montreal, and Ottawa. There are many causes for changes to ridership — population and employment growth or decline, fare increases, service improvements or cuts, even the cost of gas, which has been declining in the last two years. Much of the employment growth within the City of Toronto has been in the downtown core, but so has the population growth due to new residential highrises. (I’m one of thousands who live and work in or near the downtown core — my TTC use is now mostly during the evenings and weekends as I mostly walk to work).

Hopefully, the Commission and the city don’t use this short-term trend as an excuse to hold back on needed service improvements or projects such as the Relief Line — for one thing, many buses, streetcars and subway trains are already overcapacity, and it is impossible to know whether slower ridership increases represent a long-term trend, or a short-term blip.

There was one table in the TTC ridership update that caught my attention. The table, on page 5, shows the ridership for every Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area transit system (though excluding Milton Transit). I reproduced that table below.

GTHA transit agency annual growth rates, 2013 to 2015. Adapted from TTC 2016 Ridership Update, page 5.

While the TTC’s ridership growth has slowed, ridership in many suburban municipalities have either flatlined or declined. Only Mississauga and Brampton show consistent, positive growth over the last three years. MiWay, previously known as Mississauga Transit, hasn’t expanded transit operations that much in the last few years, but that city continues to enjoy modest employment growth and improved connections to the airport, Brampton Transit and the TTC. It is currently building a new bus rapid transit (BRT) line, the Mississauga Transitway (more on that in a later post), and city council is backing the Hurontario LRT line, which would largely replace bus service on its busiest corridor.

Brampton’s growth has been, by far, the most impressive. That suburban municipality is growing thanks mostly due to new sprawling subdivisions, but since in the last decade, Brampton Transit has been introducing annual system improvements, including the Zum “BRT-lite” network of limited-stop bus routes. Brampton’s ridership is now almost that of the Hamilton Street Railway (HSR). Unlike Hamilton, Brampton doesn’t have two major post-secondary educational institutions, nor a dense urban core, though it serves Humber College, York University, and two secondary Sheridan College campuses in Brampton and Misssissauga.

In Hamilton, ridership dropped by 1.8% in 2015. Most ridership in Hamilton is concentrated in the lower city, as well as a few trip generators in the suburbs, including Mohawk Collage on the Mountain, and Lime Ridge Mall. Many parts of the lower city have been hit hard by job losses in that city’s major industries, though new subdivisions (and, to a lesser extent, downtown gentrificaton) have contributed to modest population growth. Hamilton is going ahead with a provincially-funded east-west light rail line that will connect McMaster University, Downtown Hamilton, and the east end.

Elsewhere, transit ridership growth has been quite disappointing. Burlington Transit saw a drastic 13.3% decline over the last three years, Durham Region, which I recently visited, saw a major decrease in 2015. However, there is lots of promise in its five-year service strategies, which will improve and simplify the agency’s route structure and provide enhanced service.

2015 ridership for GTHA transit agencies (Milton excluded). The TTC, with narly 75% of the region’s ridership total, dominates. GO Transit holds another 9%.

York Region Transit, serving a population of 1.2 million, has only 1 million annual riders more than Brampton, whose population is nearly half of York’s. And despite adding new subdivisions (and a few new residential towers), ridership declined in the last two years. As illustrated in the table below, YRT’s ridership per capita is less than half of Hamilton’s or Mississauga’s.

Comparing York Region Transit to other Canadian transit systems, 2013. From the VRT/Viva 5 year service plan, page 7.

It’s interesting that despite poor transit ridership (amid York Region Council-mandated service cuts and steep fare hikes) York Region, with senior government assistance, is spending $1.4 billion on dedicated median busways on Highway 7, Yonge Street and Davis Drive. York Region will get the Spadina subway extension in 2017, and it pines for an extension of the over-burdened Yonge Subway to Richmond Hill Centre.

In York Region, there’s a troubling disconnect between spending money on capital projects and funding the services that will use the shiny new infrastructure, or feed ridership to it. Brampton has proven that growing service, not necessarily fancy infrastructure, will grow ridership. That said, it remains disappointing that the suburban municipality with the best record for ridership growth in the Toronto region rejected a funded light rail transit line to its downtown core.

March 18, 2016
Tunnel Vision: A History of Toronto’s Subway

If you haven’t yet had a chance to go, you should be sure to visit the Market Gallery at St. Lawrence Market. The current exhibition, called Tunnel Vision: The Story of Toronto’s Subway, is a fascinating collection of maps, photographs, memorabilia, and drawings illustrating over a century of subway plans and operations in Toronto. Dominating the gallery, which was the City of Toronto Council Chambers in the 19th century, is the front of an H-4 subway car; visitors are encouraged to take selfies with it.

While Canada’s first subway opened in 1954, there were serious subway proposals that date back to 1910. Interestingly, many of these early subway maps feature a line that looks very similar to the (Downtown) Relief Line.

I wrote more about this exhibition, which continues until June 11, 2016, in Torontoist.

March 16, 2016
Digging a hole on Main Street
Most people that know me know that I’m a fan of The Simpsons. There’s a scene at the end of a classic episode, entitled “Homer the Vigilante,” where several characters, including Homer Simpson, Otto Mann, Mayor Quimby, and Police Chief Wiggum are stuck in a hole, looking for a non-existent buried treasure.

The final few minutes of the episode are a spoof of the 1963 comedy epic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: a cat burglar tricks the people of Springfield into seeking his buried treasure while he escapes from the police lockup. A briefcase found quickly when digging under a “Big T” says as much, but a few determined souls decide to keep digging in the vain hope of finding that promised treasure. Finally, after digging for hours and finally realizing that there was no fortune to be found, the remaining excavators decide to dig their way out of the deep hole they find themselves in. As the final scene fades into the credits, Wiggum suggests they’re all doing it wrong, providing some nonsensical advice: “No, no. Dig up, stupid.”

On October 27, 2015, Brampton City Council decided, in a 5-4 decision, to terminate the provincially funded LRT line at Steeles Avenue. Council was pressured by local opposition from wealthy landowners on Main Street South and several downtown businesses. Construction on the shortened transit corridor is scheduled to begin in 2018.

After rejecting the recommended surface alignment, Council asked staff, which twice recommended the original surface route, to come back with alternative alignments. Late last week, staff released its report on the various options for extending the Hurontario LRT from Steeles Avenue (Shoppers World). That report, buried in a large PDF document, starts at page 238. The report will be brought to the Planning and Infrastructure Committee on Monday, March 7, and will likely presented at a special public meeting on Monday, April 18.

Yesterday, in Bramptonist, Divyesh Mistry summarized the report’s recommendations. Staff recommended two tunnel options. Both potential tunnel alignments would extend from a portal between Elgin Drive and Nanwood Drive under Main Street to the GO Station, either with underground stations at Nanwood and Wellington Street (at Brampton City Hall and Gage Park), or running straight through without stops, but a new surface stop at Elgin Drive. The first option, with underground stations at Nanwood and Wellington, would cost $570 million; the second tunnel option would be cheaper, costing $410 million. The tunnel would have to clear the Etobicoke Creek bed, and each underground station would require stairways and elevators to provide access.

Staff recommended that council authorize $2.5 million for a new transit project assessment process (TPAP), including technical and design work, that would take two years to complete.

Appendix B from the City of Brampton staff planning report, which outlines each LRT routing option’s consistency with city, regional, and provincial planning policies

Of course, cheapest and most obvious option, running the new light rail line on the surface between Nanwood Avenue and the Brampton GO Station, was “removed from further consideration per Council direction.” Various other alignments that would have seen the light rail line follow McMurchy Avenue, McLaughlin Road, Etobicoke Creek and/or the Orangeville-Brampton Railway were rejected as they were found to be inconsistent with various planning policies, including the city and regional official plans and economic and transportation policies. The various other alignments would be less direct, follow active railways or floodplains, and move the LRT away from Main Street, but in the neighbourhoods of other, less wealthy residents.

Appendix A: from the City of Brampton staff planning report, a map of alternative LRT alignments north of Steeles Avenue

If money weren’t an object, the first tunnel option, with stops at Nanwood and Wellington, would be a reasonable compromise. It maintains the linear alignment most suited to moving passengers, it gets the LRT to Downtown Brampton, the Queen Street corridor, and the GO/VIA station, and it placates the local NIMBYs worried about light rail trains operating on Main Street.

But the City of Brampton, when it rejected the alignment north of Steeles Avenue planned during a multi-year TPAP, threw away the $200 million the province was prepared to spend on that segment. If Brampton ends up deciding to extend the LRT, it’s already in a $200 million hole, unless it can convince Queen’s Park to give that money back. If it decides to build a tunnel, it will dig itself even deeper into that hole. The cheaper of the two tunnel options misses useful stops at Wellington and at Nanwood, where the Brampton Mall lands provide an excellent opportunity for urban intensification.

So I see three options going forward:
- The status quo. Brampton City Council balks at the costs of each alternative alignment, and the Hurontario~~-Main~~ LRT terminates at Shoppers World. Maybe in a few years, Brampton will realize its mistake, à la Mesa, Arizona, and approve and build the extension. I see this as the most likely outcome.
- A return to the surface TPAP LRT alignment. Brampton City Council, once again faced with a staff report advocating the direct Main Street alignment, balks at the cost of the tunnel, and decides to reverse position, even begging Queen’s Park to provide funding. Will a dysfunctional Brampton City Council come to this decision? Possible, but unlikely.
- A go-ahead for a tunnel. With the recent election of a new Liberal government committed to building infrastructure, there’s a slight chance that Brampton would find enough support from upper levels of government for partial funding for a $410-570 million tunnel into Downtown Brampton. But it will be up against many competing bids for transit funding. London, Ontario has a plan for a rapid transit system. Ottawa is ready to start building Phase II of the Confederation Line LRT. And, of course, Toronto has several plans for new subways and LRT lines. Will Brampton be willing to go it alone?
As Lisa Stokes points out, Brampton already has a $1.5 billion infrastructure gap, and there are many other projects that the city needs in the short to medium term, such as a second full-service hospital campus, a central library, a permanent market space, or simply repairing the roads, parks, and recreation centres in dire need of attention.

So because of its rejection of a financially and technically sound surface routing last October, the City of Brampton will likely go through a new round of project assessments. It will also have to go begging for money to build their preferred alternative. Without even starting construction, City Council dug a pretty deep hole for itself. Can it dig itself out?
March 1, 2016
The upshot of the new, lower UP Express fares

Earlier this month, I commented on the poor ridership numbers of UP Express, Metrolinx’s airport rail link between Toronto’s Pearson International Airport and Union Station. I suggested that despite the embarrassing ridership figures, UP Express (UPX) was no white elephant. I argued that instead, the rail service could be a useful transit link for residents of North Etobicoke, Weston, Mount Dennis, and West Toronto.

Later today, Metrolinx’s Board of Directors is expected to approve a major fare reduction for UPX slashing fares by over 50 percent. The Globe and Mail broke the story yesterday; today the Toronto Star has more details.

The one-way cash fare between Union Station and Pearson Airport will drop from $27.50 to $12.00; the fare charged to Presto cards will drop from $19.00 to $9.00. Fares between Union Station, Bloor and Weston will drop to the equivalent GO fares. (The 2016 GO Transit fare from Bloor to Union Station is $5.30, or $4.71 with Presto; from Weston, it is $5.65, or $5.02 with Presto).

The UPX fare between Union Station and Pearson will still be priced at a premium compared to the equivalent GO Transit fare — the cash fare from Union to Malton Station is $7.70, or $6.84 with a Presto card.

Interestingly, before UPX was launched, Metrolinx conducted studies on potential ridership and fares. One study, by Steer Davies Gleave, that some UPX trains might even at capacity by August. You can read Metrolinx’s market research and ridership studies (with some details redacted) here. Obviously, there weren’t enough well-heeled business travellers willing to ride UPX for $27 each, or even enough local residents willing to pay $19 with their Presto card.

This change in pricing makes UPX much more attractive for commuters in the Junction/Junction Triangle neighbourhood, as well as those living in Weston. The lower fares should help increase ridership between Pearson Airport and Union Station as well. It’s a good start, but it isn’t enough.

Last year, I commented on GO Transit’s “fare by distance” structure, which charges disproportionately high fares for short distances, and very inexpensive fares for long commutes. While GO offers co-fares to suburban transit agencies, it offers no such fare integration with the TTC. GO Transit offers free parking at suburban rail stations, burying the cost of building and maintaining its parking lots into the fares of every passenger, whether they need parking or not.

The charts below show the single ride and Presto fares, per distance travelled in 2016, with the new UPX fares. Per distance travelled, a GO Transit fare to Union Station to Exhibition, Bloor, and Danforth is more expensive than going from Toronto to Pearson Airport via UP Express.

Metrolinx is in the midst of developing a new fare integration strategy, so hopefully these concerns will be addressed. Once the TTC completely rolls out Presto at all subway stations and on all buses, it will be technically simple to adopt a GO-TTC co-fare, and UPX should be part of this as well. There are tens of thousands of jobs at the airport and in the surrounding offices and industrial parks. With proper fare integration with TTC, Miway and Brampton Transit (all of which serve Terminal 1), UPX could become much more useful to many more commuters.

Lowering UP Express fares is a good start, a welcome acknowledgement that the rosy forecasts of business travellers crowding the airport trains were never reached. But lowering fares isn’t enough: with proper fare integration, UP Express can offer far more utility than simply being an airport rail link.

February 23, 2016
Down is the new UP: Thoughts on dismal UP Express ridership

At February 10th’s Metrolinx board meeting, there was an update on the Union Pearson (UP) Express ridership. The news isn’t good, as ridership dropped in the last few months, instead of growing according to Metrolinx’s rosy projections.

UP Express launched on Saturday, June 6, 2015, a month prior to the 2015 PanAm/ParapanAm Games. I was one of thousands to ride the train on that inaugural day; thousands of free tickets were given to the public. Nearly 7,000 rides were taken that Saturday, a number that has yet to be surpassed. Metrolinx estimated that UP Express would start off with an average of 3,000 daily riders, and within a year, there would be 5,000 daily riders. While the base one-way fare for UP Express is $27.50, the fare for Presto cardholders is $19.00.

The line chart below shows the projected ridership (increasing weekly towards 5,000 riders by June 2016) and the actual daily ridership. As one can see, the ridership varies by the day of the week, mirroring trends in air passenger traffic. Fridays are generally the busiest day of the week for UP Express, while Saturdays are the quietest.

After the June 6 launch, the busiest day for UP Express were Sunday, June 16, which coincided with the Honda Indy at Exhibition Place, when 5,673 passengers used the train. There were peaks on Friday, June 19 (3,628 customers), Thursday June 25 (3,077 customers), and on Friday, July 10, when 3,424 riders took UP Express, the day of the opening ceremonies for the Toronto 2015 PanAm Games.

But ridership plateaued after October, which had the highest monthly ridership recorded, at 79,010, which works out to a daily average of 2,548 passengers. The last peak was on Friday, October 19, the day before the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend. Nearly 5,000 passengers rode UP Express. Ridership dropped in November and December, a busy travelling season. The daily average ridership dropped to 2,169 in December, a new low, and never was above 3,000 after Friday, October 23. Ridership bottomed out on Christmas Day, when a mere 1,086 rode the train.

Metrolinx should be embarrassed by these extremely low ridership figures. UP Express is a semi-autonomous operating division of the provincial transportation agency with its own President, Kathy M. Haley. The agency spent $4.5 million on a contract for branding with Winkreative, which included special uniforms and even an “in-flight” magazine. The TTC’s 192 Airport Rocket, which has its own dedicated bus fleet, carries 4,700 passengers on an average weekday. The TTC doesn’t have a special operating division or President for that route, even though it carries nearly twice the number of passengers.

For comparison, in 2014 — the last year for which detailed ridership data is available — only twenty-five regular TTC bus routes had a daily weekday ridership that was lower than the UP Express for the months of November and December. The 48 Rathburn Road bus route, a minor feeder route in Etobicoke, carries approximately the same number of people as the airport rail link.

GO Transit’s Richmond Hill corridor — the lowest ridership of GO’s seven rail lines, with only 11 trains daily — had a daily ridership of 10,587 according to GO Transit’s Spring 2015 cordon counts, an average of nearly 1,000 riders per train. UP Express, with 156 trains a day averages just over 15 passengers per train.

The narrative in the local media is that UP Express fares are too high; that ridership will improve if the fares are lowered. Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig claims that “a lack of awareness” is the cause for the low ridership. Given the media hype surrounding the launch, and the improved wayfinding signage at Union Station and Pearson Airport, I don’t think that awareness is the problem.

I also don’t think that lowering UP Express fares, without looking at fare and service integration, is going to be a magic bullet either. Last year, I was pleasantly surprised by the announcement that Presto fares were going to be $19 for Presto cardholders, which was slightly less expensive than I expected. Travelling alone, it’s a bargain compared to riding a taxi or limo, especially if your origin or destination is in Toronto’s financial district. . (Connections at Bloor Station and in Weston are less useful.) I live about 15 minutes away from Union Station by foot, and I’ve taken advantage of UP Express. The cars are comfortable, the wi-fi is a nice perk, and the service is fast, friendly, and reliable.

Happily, UP Express isn’t a white elephant. Most of the sunk costs — $456-million — are salvageable, and a rail link to Pearson remains an excellent idea.

I think the answer is making UP Express more of a transit link, useful for residents of North Etobicoke, Weston, Mount Dennis, and West Toronto. The service would be more like Vancouver’s Canada Line; a part of the local transit network, but with a premium on single-ride fares from the airport to recover costs. Metrolinx could start by integrating UP Express with its GO Transit operating division, phasing out the ridiculous branding and separate bureaucracy.

UP Express could even be part of a re-routed “SmartTrack” corridor, where it would make a few additional stop. But most importantly, it would become part of Toronto’s transit system, rather than a boutique airport shuttle service. The rail infrastructure improvements built for UP Express go a long way towards improving GO train service to Bramalea and points west. Hopefully, we get a revised airport rail link somewhat similar to that of Philadelphia, with fares integrated with the TTC and GO Transit. It’s also worth noting that Pearson Airport offers transit connections to GO Transit buses to Richmond Hill and Hamilton, as well as express and local Mississauga and Brampton Transit routes. There’s a need to recognize Pearson Airport’s role as a regional transit hub, not just a hub for Air Canada and WestJet.

But the UP Express fiasco raises other questions. How can we expect Metrolinx to come up with a credible fare integration strategy when it can’t even get GO Transit fares right, never mind the UP Express? Yes, there are many fine people working at Metrolinx, but the UP Express hurts the organization’s credibility.

All that said, I still sometimes feel optimistic about Toronto’s transit progress in recent years. The UP Express, while suffering from poor ridership, is still useful. The Eglinton-Crosstown LRT is underway, and might be extended in both the east and west. The [Downtown] Relief Line subway plan is still a viable project. And despite John Tory’s budget cuts, TTC bus service has been expanded in 2015 and 2016.

Meanwhile, UP Express will be offering free fares this Family Day weekend. It will be interesting to know whether this promotion will increase ridership on the weekend or not.

Thanks to Steve Munro for providing me with a copy of Metrolinx’s ridership numbers for UP Express.

February 11, 2016