To / Destinataire
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Mayor and Members of Council Maire et membres du Conseil |
File/N° de fichier: |
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From /
Expéditeur |
General Manager, Transit
Services Directeur général, Services de transport en commun |
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Subject / Objet |
Transit Service
Reduction for 2010 |
Date: December
7, 2009 Le 7 decembre 2009 |
On November 27, 2009, Audit, Budget and Finance
Committee adopted recommendations to Council that would require transit service
reductions in the amount of $5.6 million (net saving in 2010). The savings are
divided into two groups; one of $2.6 million and the other of $3.0 million.
These groups are described below, and the particular removals of service that
would incorporate the $3.0 million group are listed on an attachment to this
memo.
Transit Services Department is currently
under-spending on the 2009 budget because of delays in training new operators
resulting from the Serco DES strike, which is affecting the MTO DriveTest
offices. Should this option be supported at Council, service levels through
2010 would continue at these levels as opposed to originally planned levels.
Staff would respond to normal changes in ridership levels on individual trips
through the normal quarterly planning cycle, by re-allocating trips among
routes. These changes would occur primarily during peak periods, and would
involve no removals of service, only changes to the frequency of service. With
this option, there will be a reduced ability to respond to increases in
ridership with increases in service capacity.
This option would result in savings of $2.6 million in
2010.
The reorganization of bus routes to be more productive
and efficient would continue. Service would be removed at certain times,
principally evenings and weekends, on local routes with relatively low
ridership, requiring some customers to walk further to or from their nearest
bus stop. Some sections of routes would be removed where they provide parallel
service to busier routes, requiring some customers to make an additional
transfer. Some pairs of routes would be combined where they provide generally
similar service from nearby areas, requiring some customers to walk further to
or from their nearest bus stop. Some routes that now provide direct service
downtown would be cut back to be feeder routes to Transitway service, requiring
some customers to make an additional transfer.
Routes affected would be 5, 6, 9, 12, 18, 43, 57, 63,
64, 69, 82, 85, 86, 88, 101, 102, 111, 114, 118, 127, 131, 137, 141, 145, 146,
149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 165, 166, 167, 171, 173, 174, 176, 178,
191, 193, 231, 245, 263, and 306.
Details of the possible service changes are in the list
attached to this memo. (Please note that this list is different from the
list included in the budget options from October 23 and is also slightly
different from the list to be included in the budget options documents this
week, in both cases because of additional analysis that has been conducted
since the previous lists were issued.)
Within this group, there are four types of service
changes:
-
Removals of
service where ridership is low – $2.0 million
-
Restructuring
of routes for efficiency – $0.3 million
-
Removal of
parallel service where other routes can be used – $1.6 million
-
Added
capacity on busy routes to compensate for reductions – ($0.9 million)
Together, the service removals and the service
increases add to a net saving of $3.0 million in 2010.
The services that would be removed where ridership is
low are currently used by approximately 974,000 customer-trips per full year.
Our estimate is that 597,000 of those customer-trips would no longer be made on
the transit system. The net funding per year to retain those customer-trips is
$3.0 million in a full year. Thus, the
resulting average subsidy for these customers is currently $5.12. This figure
compares to the system-wide average subsidy per customer-trip of $1.87.
If adopted by Council, some of these changes would
begin in April 2010 and the remainder in June 2010. The time available between
Council’s consideration of the budget in late January and the practical
deadline for making schedule changes in time for implementation in April is
very short. For that reason, the service change options that will require new
schedules to be written cannot be implemented until June. Transit Services have
opted to implement changes at their earliest to reduce the number of services
affected to reach the financial target.
Transit Services staff are continuing to work on the
details of these possible changes, and will be ready to assist Councillors by
providing additional information. In particular, ridership figures for the
routes affected and maps of the options that involve changes to current routes
will be available this week.
For more information on this, please contact me or Pat
Scrimgeour, Manager, Transit Service Design.
Original signed by:
General Manager,
Transit Services