Rider Experience and Efficiency

Notes by Adam Schwabe

- York mills escalators out of service
- Mobility issues and accessibility
- Things you have to do: can be functional, it's all about your attitude going in
- Partnerships with libraries for things to do on train - book groups, communities can get together to do it themselves
- Retail opportunities inside the subway: place to buy a breakfast thing beyond the nutritional value of a cookie for the busier stations
- Should be key places of the public realm - centres of activity - everyone benefits from them
- Space between Spadina stations (hallway) could be utilized to rent a table and sell their goods; Flea-market like thing.
- Artwork: driven by the community, get people involved in the experience
- Enhance experience of buskers, some kind of entertainment (but you have to buy permits - and there needs to be this kind of control)
- Great debate in Toronto between surface and sub-surface: surface you get to see the community, people, retail shops - DAYLIGHT would be a great benefit to the experience
- Cable cars (above surface)
- Some prefer not to use bus at all, and will go out of their way (driving) to get to subway instead: motion of bus is jostling, waiting for the bus,
- VIVA busses in Markham and Richmond Hill are based on real-time data.
- Biggest frustration with the bus is waiting for it, same with a train, GO trains and subway have such early cut-off times at night when bars empty out
- Easy efficiency gains: subway saying "use all available doors". All they care is to get people on faster to get people to station faster. Leaving subway 2x2 is impossible because of crowding the doorway
- Stand right, walk left is still ingrained in Toronto culture, but the signs are now gone so it's even more of an issue now.
- How to indicate these things ingrained in our culture? How to communicate the benefits of efficiency? Put up signs saying "you'll save 10 seconds on your trip by standing here"
- Announcements already that say "let people off first before boarding" but there's only so much you can say to people, (taking off your backpacks, etc.)
- Hold festivals and celebrate things happening this week on the TTC on the GO, same way we treat art and entertainment. People act out the "best practices" illustrating what you should do to improve efficiency
- Garbage on the platform - compromise between security and cleanliness.  Maybe too many free papers available - sometimes garbage caught under trains catch fire and present their own hazards.
- Place on the train when you're done with the paper to leave it for other people to read.
- Metro tried to market a campaign for people to reuse and replace papers after they're done with them.
- Design of the paper boxes be improved to allow for replacement (drop-door boxes don't lend themselves very well to putting papers back)
- Encourage people to put papers back in the box - people don't look upon this well socially for one reason or another.
- See if Metro would be interested in putting placements into their papers
- TTC loves the idea of community taking on etiquette and communicating that amongst themselves.
- Perspective helps: really it's not such a bad experience at the end of the day. There's so much bad press about the transit system, but we have it pretty good here (compared to other cities)
- Do we want a happier culture that's more involved? If so, we need to promote that.
- Is it a branding thing? Spacing's buttons are great, but the TTC totally missed the boat (and continues to) with all of this.
- Not just a form of transportation, but a destination.
- Shower curtain with map of system in NYC. Tons of branding opportunities.
- TTC doesn't want to let any of their Intellectual Property go.
- It's a great part of the city, but nobody says anything good about it. It's only perceived in a negative way.
- Screens on platforms in subway. Maybe they need to be better leveraged.
- The ads on the screens really detract from the experience and are enormously distracting. Advertisers have really gone overboard with the repetitive use throughout the system.
- Some people love to see the creative ways they can be implemented in the system.
- Would replacing the ads with art, poetry, video make it better?
- 50% of the ads could remain as is, others could go to charity and local businesses and entrepreneurs.
- TTC drivers could be a little more friendly, you get an odd look for thanking them even at times. On the flipside, some find a lot of the drivers very friendly.
- Accessibility to easy fares is a HUGE barrier to entry - would be great to have some kind of card that you can use everywhere that you can use monthly or a-la-carte, why do we still have monthly passes but nothing for the occasional rider?
- Distributed machines for monthly passes, more accessible


Rob (Metrolinx) in attendance
Employee from the Chair of the TTC