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When the TTC announced on Monday that it had won the American Public Transportation Association\u2019s (APTA) award for outstanding achievement for 2017, many Toronto commuters and pundits had a kind of collective WTF moment, puzzling over the mystery of an Oscar conferred on a movie\u00a0we all love to hate.<\/p>\n
\u201cA development that will raise eyebrows,\u201d noted<\/a> the Toronto Star<\/em>\u2019s Ben Spurr. \u201cIs this some kind of joke?\u201d The Sun<\/a> fulminated rhetorically, adding that \u201cit\u2019s been a bad year for reality.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo one is saying it\u2019s perfect,\u201d responded<\/a> TTC CEO Andy Byford, who hastened to point out that the system had \u201clost its way\u201d since its last victory, back in 1986 \u2013 an observation that ignored a host of obvious achievements, like the 2003 ridership growth strategy and the execution of the TTC\u2019s accessibility program.<\/p>\n As usual (and yesterday\u2019s reaction was no exception), the TTC catches a great deal of flack that is properly directed at our elected officials. These are the folks who fail to invest in expanding a heavily-used system, shovel vast sums into hopeless projects, jack up fares to protect the delicate sensibilities of property taxpayers, and wantonly punish riders by forcing service cuts.<\/p>\n The politicians we send to City Hall (and Queen\u2019s Park and Ottawa for that matter) are responsible for a lion\u2019s share of the problems that generate all the grumbling about the TTC. And for that, we have only ourselves to blame.<\/p>\n Indeed, the APTA award, in some ways, sends a discrete signal, audible mainly to transit nerds, that the TTC runs a tight ship in spite of, well, everything.<\/p>\n Having said all that, what follows may sound like nit-picking.<\/p>\n My issue with the APTA\u2019s prize is that it\u2019s extremely difficult to figure out why, exactly, the TTC won. And against whom. And by which measures.<\/p>\n Strangely, the news of the prize came straight out of the TTC; the APTA didn\u2019t formally announce it (still hasn\u2019t). The association\u2019s spokesperson, Virginia Miller, told me yesterday that they allow individual winners to reveal their victories at their own pace. Unlike most of the organizations that compile\u00a0various city rankings, APTA doesn\u2019t publish a list of the participating agencies, any kind of score sheet, nor a guide to its methodology for determining how the competitors\u00a0are judged. In an age of open data and public sector transparency, the process is remarkably opaque.<\/p>\n Miller did share some details in an interview, however. The TTC\u2019s award is for a category of transit agencies with at least 20 million trips per year (the TTC tops 500 million). That means 56 APTA member agencies are eligible, although she wouldn\u2019t disclose which others submitted entries. The award is based on performance over a three-year period, from 2014 to 2016.<\/p>\n There are two categories of criteria \u2013 qualitative and quantitative. Under the former, Miller\u00a0said, agencies are judged according to seemingly quantitative areas\u00a0such as safety, operations, maintenance, customer service and financial management. The qualitative category also includes fields such as workforce development, minority and women participation, marketing, accessibility and community relations. Miller explained that for the latter, the TTC cited\u00a0its partnerships with the National Ballet and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, as well as its handling of the 2015 Pan Am Games. The TTC submitted a description of how it moved people around during the 2015 Games but the APTA, she added, didn\u2019t verify the data provided.<\/p>\n As for categories with actual metrics, the TTC scored well in cost-per-vehicle hour, chalking up\u00a0a 2.1% drop over the three-year period. Another was \u201cmileage between delays,\u201d which saw the TTC record a 30% increase (also good). The APTA lauded\u00a0the TTC for its five-year modernization plan and a decision to add 700 weekly hours to its night bus service, which, truth be told<\/a>, is less an accomplishment than a reinstatement of a service that had been cut during the Rob Ford era.<\/p>\n Finally, Miller noted that the APTA\u2019s prize also took into account the fact that the TTC\u2019s subsidy, 89 cents per rider, is the lowest in North America.<\/p>\n Which brings me back to the strange politics of a prize like this.<\/p>\n The TTC\u2019s management works hard to ensure that the agency is run cost effectively, but Byford & Co.\u00a0don\u2019t, of course, make the final decision about the level of subsidy per rider. That\u2019s a political choice, which does bear the commission\u2019s imprimatur but is ultimately the responsibility of city council and Kathleen Wynne\u2019s Liberals, who have studiously ignored long-standing calls to reinstate the Bill Davis-era subsidies (50% of the operating shortfall and 75% of capital outlays) that were on par with almost all other transit agencies in most large Western cities. (The current provincial operating subsidy has been\u00a0nothing since Mike Harris declared transit to be an entirely local responsibility way back in 1996.)<\/p>\n In other words, the TTC\u2019s shiny\u00a0prize rests, in part, on a perverse incentive: the agency gets more points for starving itself.<\/p>\n Which begs this question: Does this award increase or decrease the political imperitive to invest in more and better transit for Toronto?<\/p>\n On the glass-is-half-full side, you might say that the APTA\u2019s gold star tells politicians and the voters they answer to that the TTC is a tightly run operation, and thus worth investing in. But a cynic (!) might argue that the prize, in effect, takes the pressure off those same politicians, because North America\u2019s largest transportation association is telling all and sundry that everything\u2019s fine, nothing to look at here.<\/p>\n I\u2019m inclined to opt for what\u2019s behind curtain number two, especially because the APTA\u2019s award is so wanting in the kind of transparency that would allow the public to make an informed decision about what this prize actually measures.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m not complaining about Team Byford. They are doing a solid\u00a0job under perennially crappy conditions. And who could blame them for trying to get a bit of love in a city that complains endlessly about its transit system?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s just hope the APTA\u2019s gold star doesn\u2019t turn out to be a subtle double-edged sword, one that gives the transit haters out there \u2013 and you know who they are \u2013 just one more reason to perpetuate the thin trickle that\u2019s been dribbling out of the funding taps for lo\u00a0these many years.<\/p>\n photo by Thomas Hawk<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"