Mayor, Chair announce major investment for transit in Toronto

Dear Colleagues,

Today, the Mayor and TTC Chair announced a $95-million investment to significantly expand and enhance transit service, reduce wait times and crowding and reverse the service cuts that were imposed on the TTC in 2011.

This is very good news for our customers and for our work to modernize the company. This announcement has its roots in the Board paper that we released back in August of last year in which we highlighted nine opportunities to improve service – things that could and should be done in the short term – provided funding could be secured. Our case was helped when Local 113 issued a report that supported much of what we had called for by way of investment in the TTC.

In addition to allowing us to expand service, this additional funding will enable us to add more resources to focus on infrastructure reliability, purchase additional vehicles and add more staff to critical frontline and supervisory positions to further improve the reliability and punctuality of our service. Further details of where the money will go are shown below.

It is only because the Mayor and Chair believe we are already making progress that they have supported our case. We have been able to demonstrate that we have come a long way in the last three years in our journey to modernize the TTC and transform our culture to be welcoming and customer-led.

There is still a lot to do. We need to complete the Spadina Extension and introduce PRESTO across all five of our modes. We will re-signal Line 1, open Leslie Barns and roll out our new streetcar fleet. This summer, we will welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors onto our network for the 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games. And we will continue to transform customer satisfaction through a highly motivated, well-led workforce that wants to do a good job.

Today’s announcement showed the Mayor’s confidence in the TTC and the good work that you do day in and day out. We must now prove ourselves deserving of that extra funding as we continue our journey to making the TTC a transit system that makes Toronto proud.

Thanks for your support and please keep doing a great job.

Andy Byford
Chief Executive Officer
January 19, 2015

These new investments will enable us to provide the following enhanced services to our customers:Restoration of all day, everyday bus service that was cut in 2011.

• 10-minute or better bus and streetcar service on key routes from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. six days a week (9 a.m. on Sundays).
• Reduced wait times and crowding at off-peak times.
• Reduced wait times and crowding on 21 of the busiest routes during morning and afternoon rush hours.
• Proof-of-payment and all-door boarding on all streetcar routes.
• Expansion of the Express Bus network, adding four new routes to a network that serves 34 million rides annually.
• Expanding the Blue Night Network, adding 12 routes to the 22-route network that serves four million rides annually.
• Adding up to two additional subway trains on Lines 1 and 2 during morning and afternoon rush hours.
• Route management improvements designed to reduce short-turns, bunching and gapping of bus and streetcar routes.
• Additional resources to focus on subway reliability around signals, track and communications systems.