I understand the TTC’s enormous financial pressures, and the feds/province haven’t announced extra funds to keep transit agencies going, but this announcement about layoffs worries me a lot. http://www.ttc.ca/News/2020/April/23_04_20NR_reducing_costs_during_covid19.jsp

Any time you see a transit agency talk about “matching service capacity to system demand” you should see it as a red flag.

It’s a tale as old as time: 1) cut service to match ridership; 2) service gets more crowded and worse; 3) ridership drops further.

Death spiral.

Here’s the TTC’s experience in after the recession in the early 1990s. Service was cut to match ridership that dropped due to job losses, service got worse, then ridership dropped more. Dropped ~90 million riders in 7 years.

At same time, funding was cut, and it was politically easier for governments to jack up fares to make up the difference, because fewer people were relying on transit. Higher fares just accelerate ridership drops.

The way out was a Ridership Growth Strategy — a big injection of funding for service that initially didn’t look entirely justified, but worked because if you make transit a more attractive option by reducing crowding, people will use it.

The TTC’s hands are tied here because they’re stuck with the funding they’ve got (for now), but this seems a missed opportunity. With extra support, could redeploy some staff and do more capital work. Or expand WheelTrans for people who need help getting around, etc. Options.

Like, I wonder if we’ll look back on this and ask why the hell the city didn’t use this time to speed up and finish installing automatic train control on the subway system, or make stations accessible. People are more accepting of subway closures right now than they’ll ever be!