T3G

Well, yes, because Line 1 Yonge-University refers to the location the line runs. Ontario line would have been like the Second Avenue Subway being called the America line.

Perhaps your career prospects have been jeopardized by comparing your higher ups to actual Nazis. Crazy thought, I know.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/ttc-ceo-says-further-transit-closures-possible-after-derailment-of-aging-srt/article_f79ea6f4-a3be-565d-a63d-be11ed39df87.html World class city, folks.

That is also a possible solution, yes. But unless the service could be relied on to appear decently frequently and reliably, then you'd get the same problem as before. If it were me I would institute stops for all NB routes on McCowan at Bushby and be done with it. (In front of McCowan station is also a possible solution, but the bus would have to cross two full lanes of traffic to access the very short left turn lane, so I reckon during rush hour it would be horrible). That is also a possible solution, yes. But unless the service could be relied on to appear decently frequently and reliably, then you'd get the same problem as before. If it were me I would institute stops for all NB routes on McCowan at Bushby and be done with it. (In front of McCowan station is also a possible solution, but the bus would have to cross two full lanes of traffic to access the very short left turn lane, so I reckon during rush hour it would be horrible).

Well, no, because services are tailored to the locale they are running to. If you split up the Kennedy-STC and STC-McCowan service and run them according to the level of demand, it gives each branch the level of service they require. For the same reason that you wouldn't run the same level of service on the 33 Forest Hill bus as you would on the YUS line. Let's not sit here and pretend there was nothing at McCowan at all - there are a few condos, a plaza, and a business zone within walking distance of the station. To get to STC from there would generally be pretty inconvenient, especially if you have mobility challenges or the weather is inclement. That being said, waiting specifically for a shuttle bus, rather then getting on the first 9 or 134 that comes by (or 16, 38, or 133, if you are closer to Ellesmere Road) would be pretty foolish, so that's probably where the ridership went.

My takeaway from this conversation is: the TTC has service standards to be ignored in the first place??? You wouldn't know that from actually having to use the service. Do whatever you want might as well be the official company motto.

Why would that be the case?

I don't see what Rick Leary has done that could actually be credibly tied back to him in a way that would actually affect his career prospects. The sketchiness of the system increasing? Circumstantial, and it would be difficult to pin that on him, considering policing is the city's responsibility and the city itself has gotten sketchier in the last few years. Safety being cut back in other ways? Good luck pinning that on him either. Informally, I don't think it unreasonable to conclude that through negligence and neglect, the SRT ended the way that it did (at civilized transit systems, these kinds of incidents don't occur), but unless you could produce a letter saying that Rick Leary actively encouraged the deferral of maintenance or such like, it's a circumstantial conspiracy theory at best. Service being cut back? Well, considering that doing more with less is the MO of most major organizations in the 21st century, they would probably congratulate him on finding ways to reduce costs. The fact that in doing so he screwed over both his employees and his customer base is completely irrelevant. The decline of employee morale? Well, nothing unusual about that, and the big cheeses of most major organizations care little for the underlings that are responsible for actually running the organization. So no loss for him there either. Whatever way I try to look at it, his situation is watertight. Wherever he will go post-TTC, he will invariably fall upward, into a position he is ill qualified to make meaningful change at, and enjoy a very nice salary at it. He's not mentally ill, he has the organization by the balls.

I also really enjoyed the event. One thing that the TTC has to be given a lot of credit for is that they do a lot of community events like this really well in the recent era. Be it the CLRV or ALRV last days, this, or the open houses they've had over the last few years, it's a far cry from the last trips of the Hawkers or the GMs, which were interesting if you were a photographer in the know, but were limited in scope and in public communication. I had a look at car 3024/II to see if there were any visual clues as to its past identity. The interior fleet numbers were covered up really well, but one could see the 16 under the 24 on the outside of the car from a certain angle. Why would it be Hillcrest? As any possible form of preservation would preclude running in service, there would be basically next to no opportunities to see the car if it was shut away at Hillcrest. Not that the historical streetcar fleet is much better these days, but it could theoretically be so, unlike with an SRT car. There have been lots of other ideas put forward; I myself have toyed with the idea of mounting on a car on a plinth outside of the civic centre, or, latterly, repurposing the upper level at STC or Kennedy to an SRT museum. Then there is the Toronto Railway Museum downtown. Hillcrest seems to me to be the least logical place to put such a car.

You are overcomplicating the issue. He is not mentally unwell, he is what most CEOs are, a corrupt, greedy, self serving sleazebag who's only interest is in furthering his own career. There is nothing unusual about him, you'll find people like this at the helm of most organizations in the world, public and private. To refer to him as a "soy boy" (which is fascist language for men they find insufficiently aggressive) because he makes decisions you as a front line worked can't comprehend or understand, betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what the term actually means, and degrades the quality of discourse on the forum.

I'm also going to disagree about the Twitter thing. There are people who are technologically challenged and can't work out how to use the site; people without data, people for whom the service won't load. Sure, it's great to be hip and in step with the times and have access to a million different social media feeds that give you complete and up to date information at all times, but it shouldn't be a requirement just to get around the city. No, expecting people to check Twitter while the social media people sit on laurels is just poor service, plain and simple. Some incidents are not the TTC's fault, but it is entirely up to them how they choose to communicate information to the public, and they tend to do so very poorly. Incidentally, there appear to be no difficulties posting cringeworthy memes on their Instagram.

There is a persistent rumour I have heard that the farewell party at STC on Saturday will feature one of the trains. I haven't seen anything from the TTC to confirm these rumours, but your sighting seems to lend them a fair amount of weight. This is how the accident site looked at the end of August:

Are you a moderator?

We also have the odd employee that makes you wonder how they were capable of putting on pants in the morning. They complement our manager and customer base well.

When you explain how some store policy works to a customer and they reply "Are you sure?" No. In point of fact, you, the interloper who is here for 20 minutes if that, is right and we, the nameless automatons who do this for a living, are wrong.

This is an entirely pointless discussion to have in a service changes thread; there's lots of things that were one way, then weren't, then were again.

You'll get no disagreement from me there, though I'm not at all certain how they'd go about it. The only reason we got rid of those 2 is because their respective franchises were up. Were it not for that, who knows how much longer the city would have had to put up with the TRC. Though, in fairness, the city must have had its share of the blame for writing a weak contract. "We're not going to build new lines to newly annexed parts of town because the contract didn't cover those" seems like something that the clowns running the city would have allowed to happen today.

I have! Every now and then, during opening, someone will just forget to unlock one of the entrances and will only do so after 15-20 minutes after a customer gets tired of waiting and goes in through a different entrance and points this out to one of the employees. To say nothing of skeletal crewing that leads to one sick call resulting in no coverage for a given department, calls for backup being repeatedly ignored, managers hiding away in the back instead of dealing with operational issues, etc. If you are not in a highly visible position, you pretty much have no limits as to how long you can take your breaks you want, and you can pick and choose whether to respond to calls for help based on whether you like the person who called for help or not. And to bring this back to transit, in my hometown of Bratislava they awarded the contract for regional bus operations to Arriva Mobility Solutions (a subsidiary of DB, who I believe are contracted for GO expansion). They pretty much do whatever they want, drivers make up their own rules, run their own timetables, and the contract with the region is toothless and they've been unable to enforce the slightest baseline levels of order. If you have employees who don't care, and managers who don't care, it makes very little difference whether the service is delivered by a private or public firm. Don't get me wrong, the TTC is a profoundly sick organization. But so are many private sector firms, especially in today's age of profits over people.

I've spent my entire adult life working in retail. It's not a 1:1 comparison with transit, but being privatized is no guarantee that the job will be done efficiently or that the employees will at all care. Despite what neoliberal shills will claim every time there's a story about the TTC union in the news!

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Toronto is not a rustbelt village. They cannot afford to leave the facility to rot. At length it will be pulled up and redeveloped.

When you explain something about how the store works to a customer and it is not to their satisfaction, so they ask you "well, what do you want me to do?" Why the hell would I care what you do? You can throw yourself on the ground like a child for all I care. These are the rules, if you don't like them you are beyond welcome to shop somewhere else.

If anyone wants any last minute photos of the SRT cars, there are some opportunities. I shouldn't wait too long, however, and if you don't have a proper camera with a zoom lens, don't bother. Car 3001, which was the one that torpedoed the service, is parked on the loop track at the south end of McCowan yard, shunned and disgraced by the rest of the herd. You can see this from the sidewalk on Ellesmere at Parkington. Don't be fooled, like I was, by the google streetview imagery showing a plaza where you could get right up to the fence and get a killer shot... this no longer exists and this is as close as you can get. If you get up on the little hill past McCowan station (on Grangeway Av), you can see the serviceable cars parked, looking like they're ready to head out into service. Of note here is car 3024, which is actually 3024/II (ex 3016); cars 3017 and the original 3024 were reported as being retired early in July and 3016 and 3025 were coupled together, with 3016 being renumbered to keep the number sequence. There is a visual hint; the "30" is yellowed and dusty, while the "24" looks brand new.

I don't know why knowing train departures off by heart would be the responsibility of workers at the CNE. It is the responsibility of the passenger to study up transit timetables themselves.

Ah, I missed that they closed Queen at the same time. Thanks.