On Sunday, February 17, the TTC will introduce new schedules with improved services on many, many routes throughout the city. I have boiled a long TTC document describing them in detail down to a mere 8 pages for easy reference.
Please note that I have not proof read every single line, and for definitive information, you should go to the TTC’s site.
Update: For the detailed TTC service summary, go to the February service summary.
Update 2: My consolidated table of service changes has been corrected to include the list of routes that still await added service. This was placed temporarily in a reply to a comment, but has now been moved where it belongs.
These changes are long overdue, but many of them bring routes only just within loading standards. We must hope that this trend will continue into 2009 as the bus fleet builds up with new deliveries, as riding continues to grow, and as the city’s revenues are strong enough to support more transit improvements.
A few notes about reading my chart:
- The column “vehicles added” gives the number of new vehicles on the route at the time shown. You will notice that the effect of “n” new buses varies with time of day because the relative changes are different.
- The old and new headways are shown. In some cases these are for blended services, and if you are interested in one branch, please refer to the TTC’s details.
- The load factors shown are for recent riding counts “old” and projected loads after the change. The values are for the peak hour within the period, and loads on individual vehicles will vary.
- The loading standards are shown for peak and offpeak services. Due to the variations between capacities on different types of vehicles, the standards are not identical for all routes. The off-peak standard is based on a seated load.
The last page of my summary shows those service improvements which have still not been implemented due to budget constraints. In effect, we’ve got what we’re getting for now, and for the rest, come back later. This shows that the TTC is still constrained in its ability to handle growing riding by the money it is given from Council to subsidize operations.
I fervently hope that this list will drop to and stay at “Nil” over 2008, and that we won’t be back worrying about service shortfalls in two years’ time.
Some points are particularly worth noting.
Bloor 300 and Yonge 320 Night Buses
Service improvements on these routes will reduce overcrowding especially on the popular 320 where the recorded average load is 82 passengers per bus! The headway on Yonge south of York Mills will be more than halved from 7’30” to 3’30” on the weekday schedule (which operates Tuesday through Saturday mornings). Sunday morning service is also improved, although not as dramatically.
At this rate, we may need to put streetcars back on Yonge to handle the demand on the night service!
Finch East 39
Service on this busy route will improve during most operating periods. The AM Peak headway will drop from 90 seconds to 79, with half of this service running express, and half local. Finch Station has severe bus congestion problems, and it will be interesting to see how the TTC fares with even more service on the 39.
Midday, early evening and Saturday services will now include express operation on half of the trips. The arrangement of express stops will change considerably. Fourteen little-used stops between Brimley and Warden will be dropped from express service, and they will be replaced by twelve busy stops from Warden to Bayview
Longer term, obviously, something will have to be done to increase capacity without flooding the street with buses. Artics might be nice in the short term, but an easterly extension of the Finch LRT is really what this street needs. (I’m getting carried away with myself, and will stop these fantasies immediately!)
Other Miscellaneous Changes
54 Lawrence East is now officially an accessible route.
139 Finch East is renamed Finch — Don Mills to clarify where it goes.
53 Steeles East will include mixed express and local operation on weekday evenings.
Steve Munro 
It’s great to have good news to chew on.
Next step is indeed to monitor the effect of these changes on actual capacity — a 300 Blue Night driver worried that a doubling of service would lead to slower travel times. (Is it just the Yonge bus they call the Comet…?)
Route management will/should come under closer scrutiny as this rolls out.
Steve: You want frequent service and headway reliability? Are you feeling well?
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Good news for sure, but there are many glaring omissions which leave me scratching my head. For example, I frequently use the 43 bus northbound weekday mornings, and at least once or twice a week, the loads are so severe that some passengers are left waiting at various bus stops between Lawrence and the 401. Again, this is northbound service in the AM. The 43 southbound to Kennedy station, from what I can tell, is just as bad if not worse. How can this not be addressed?
Meanwhile, at the 57 bus platform at Kennedy station, I see twice the number of buses arriving every morning (while I wait for the 43 to Steeles), with full loads but certainly not crush loads. To boot, these 57’s leave almost empty, while the 43’s arrive with crush loads (people standing right up to the front door and even in the narrow aisle at the back) and leave packed.
These service increases a great, but maybe the TTC should also be re-allocating some of the buses to spread out the pain a bit more evenly. It’s frustrating for people to watch buses on other routes arriving more frequently and leaving empty while you’re crammed in like a sardine once your bus finally arrives.
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Does this mean that instead of waiting 20 minutes in the cold before an empty bus follows a jam-packed bus, now we’ll wait 20 minutes in the cold before a jam-packed bus comes in front of a half-full bus, which comes in front of an empty bus?
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Looks like “actual” service frequency to Long Branch on Saturday afternoon on 501 has been reduced from 45′ to 30′. Yay
That 3’30” on the Yonge owl is incredible. How many more years until 24 hour subway service?
How can they fit those additional Finch buses in Finch station? Will Cummer 42 or Drewry 125 eventually have to be deposed to North York Centre or even Sheppard?
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Thanks for the summary; I was sorry to see the 192 Airport Rocket has a slightly REDUCED service and wonder if using standard passenger counts is ‘fair’ on this route. Whenever I take it, the 192 bus has many passengers with luggage so, though the bus may not be filled with people it is pretty crowded with ‘stuff”.
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Good to see.
But there aren’t any improvements to rush-hour streetcar service, I suppose because there are no spare cars in the existing fleet. I’m curious: would it make sense for the TTC to add a few buses interspersed with the streetcars to address crush loads on some of these routes, or are there reasons why such a stop-gap measure wouldn’t work?
Steve: The TTC has done this on occasion, but there is a problem with availability of buses too, especially once the service improvements kick in.
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“The last page of my summary shows those service improvements which have still not been implemented due to budget constraints.”
Huh. Why do I not see this? Am I looking in the right place? I’m following https://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/20080217.pdf from the posting.
Steve: Fixed. Thanks.
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This is great news. I think with this investment, reliability and efficiency will both improve and will make transit an appealling alternative to even more riders. Their are two routes that I use frequently that I hope get hit with this expansion news- #95 York Mills can use a few more buses and the 100 Flemington Park bus needs a lot more buses. I am sure their are other needy routes out there but these are two routes I am familiar with and continually have problems on.
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The 192 decrease is officially billed as a “service reliability” improvement, i.e. the TTC is adding more time to schedules while keeping the number of buses constant. I would have hoped that the TTC would have added a bus or two to compensate.
Too bad we didn’t see any service improvements on most minor routes today. I guess those are coming in September along with the expansion of evening service to every route.
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“At this rate, we may need to put streetcars back on Yonge to handle the demand on the night service!”
What a great idea! We can at least have the streetcar service to roughly York Mills, the heaviest part of the route, but then one day we’ll have to replace it with a subw…D’OH!
Steve: And we will close that subway during the day for maintenance!
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Two of the route improvements will directly affect me. I take 85 Sheppard East during morning rush & the 190 Rocket during afternoon rush. The 190 improvement looks great…but only a 10 sec increase for a jammed up 85 Sheppard looks terrible. It’s hard to believe the 85 Sheppard is listed as having an original frequency of 4’45” during morning rush. In my experience it is more like 8-10 minutes with 2-3 bunched up buses arriving at once. So in that regard I echo Dean’s cynicism. Unless they can get a better handle on the load times and headway, things won’t look much different from where I stand in the cold.
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Thanks as always for the breakdown.
I cannot see the previous service summary on the TTC website anymore. Is it still secreted away on there somewhere so that one could compare the branch-by-branch breakdown of the new service?
I’m curious as to how the added service on Finch East will be broken down between 39E and 39C. In the morning rush, it certainly seems like there’s at least two 39C’s to one E — and it has always seemed to me that at the least sign of schedule disarray 39E’s magically turn into C’s.
Steve: Unless you saved the old summary, or have it in hard copy, or ask me very nicely, no, you can’t make comparisons. Please leave a comment with specifics you want.
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How many years has it been that the articulated bus has roamed on the streets of Toronto? Too bad the articulated bus was not successful back then in TTC service. Maybe they should try again with the new designs of articulated buses. Maybe they have improved in design and maintenance enough to try out a few on the straighter routes, like the 320 Yonge night bus.
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Like Leo, I see a few little problems that leave me scratching my head as well. The 96/165 isn’t that bad in the midday weekdays by my experience as the combination is already every 5 minutes, mostly using the RTS lift buses. I am usually able to get a seat. And service is increased during that time, and the evenings (where improvements are more needed).
On weekends though, the combo is more often than not standing room only, even closed doors, Saturday and Sunday eastbound between 11AM and 3PM, and westbound between 2PM and 7PM, and lower capacity Orion VIIs are used exclusively those days. And both routes aren’t touched during those times.
Otherwise, not bad (apart from the late notice), though I notice those routes at the end that didn’t get the crowding resolved. So there’s still a backlog, though it is much smaller.
The 192 headway increases are supposedly the result of schedule adherence, no buses are being removed from what I can tell. Perhaps it’s the luggage slowing things down.
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I can’t complain about the 92 increase in service – as that’s the closest service walking from my house.
I’ve used the 191 a few times in recent days. It’s packed both ways out of Kipling terminal in the a.m.
I have to give Gianbrone credit for getting this better press coverage than earlier service increases – much better job than his predecessor.
OK – however – something isn’t adding up with the numbers:
– the added service will add 15-20 million riders this year
– the cost will be $22 million (or it $22)
If TTC gets the low end (15 million), they only need to average $1.47 in revenue from these added passengers to break even in terms of operating costs. This is less than the average operating revenue for 2006 – $1.76.
Yet Gary Webster is quoted as saying (in The Toronto Star):
“But for every fare, the TTC requires a 62-cent subsidy, said Webster.”
This doesn’t add up – the TTC will make a good margin if the cost and ridership projections are accurate.
Steve: Webster is talking about the average subsidy per passenger over the entire system, not the cost and revenue for the service changes and new riders. New riders will come everywhere on the system, not just on the improved routes. It is impossible to assign a specific fare to a specific route, let alone to a specific service change when so many happen at once
The TTC has a bad habit of trotting out cost and revenue figures purporting to link specific decisions with general effects. This keeps the bean counters happy because they think that the service changes are revenue neutral. But if they were revenue neutral, why did we have to wait so long for them to happen?
Another question, from what I can see, the Finch East bus frequency is at least 50% better than on Finch West. Am I reading this wrong? There is no planned increase to the peak service on the Finch W. Yet the LRT is proposed for Finch W. Seems odd.
Steve: Finch East deserves LRT too, but it is embarrassingly close to the Sheppard Subway. As for Finch West, the west end of the LRT line has potential to connect southwest to the airport giving it a raison-d’etre stronger than just replacing the existing bus service.
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Too bad they didn’t do anything with the Shepperd West bus, anybody living along there waiting for the bus, waits hours while the short Express buses roll right by in the swealtering heat and unbearable cold., it’s insane!
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WK Lis: It’s been 5 years since articulated buses last roamed the streets of Toronto:
http://transit.toronto.on.ca/bus/8505.shtml
TTC is allegedly acquiring articulated buses for 2009. The Mount Dennis garage will supposedly host upwards of ~150:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_buses_and_trolley_buses#Facilities
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Some points I would like to make:
The TTC planners certainly aren’t keen to deploy rocket services. Given the increase in passenger load of the 190, it seems strange why doesn’t the TTC put rocket service on heavy routes. For example, the new 39E Finch East Express service might as well be a rocket, given the many express stops it has, and that it will short turn at McCowan anyway. If we implement more rocket services on long haul routes (36 Finch West, 35 Jane), less buses would be bunched up as they wouldn’t have to follow one another.
The 53F to Staines is certainly a very long route. Did the TTC consider running it to Don Mills Station (Ditto for Finch/Steeles West to Downsview)? It certainly seems viable as running up buses on Yonge St. is not doing anything for headway or reliability.
Steve: There is already the 139 Finch — Don Mills as it is now known which runs from Don Mills Station to Neilson. Whether it would carry more riders if it had more service (ie if Finch itself were not swamped by 39’s) is hard to say. It appears that riders want to go west to Finch in greater numbers than south to Don Mills.
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Leo said “Maybe they [articulated buses] have improved in design and maintenance enough to try out a few on the straighter routes, like the 320 Yonge night bus.”
Sadly, no. At least if you opt to do what OC Transpo did : equip them with only a 4-cylinder engine! Some smart a– on City Council thought it would be an “efficiency move”. The result was a number of buses overheating and one catching fire, gutting the interior. With either the heat or the A/C operating, the bus has no power to accelerate decently. I’ve seen old men stand up faster than those buses can move away from a bus stop. And, being low floor, they still get stuck in the snow. During one heavy snowfall here, on a Sunday, NONE of the artics were sent out.
But they are better than the Orion Iakrus’ that both the TTC and OC Transpo operated (some of which were second hand from the TTC!): their rear ends don’t sway back and forth on slippery roads, hitting every parked car in sight.
And, I would LOVE to see the TTC try to experiment with low-floor double-deckers the way Ottawa will (and B.C. does). Oh what fun to see how many stations they can’t operate into!.
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There is now 1 bus on the 39 Finch East (split about evenly between local and express) every 79 seconds during AM peak – which makes it by far the most frequent TTC bus route. If any TTC bus route merits conversion to LRT, this is it. (Why on earth was the subway built on Sheppard? Either Finch or Eglinton would have been much more logical corridors, since they are both busier and both are continuous across the city. If the subway were built on Finch, Mel Lastman would have still got his North York Centre, just shifted north a few blocks.) As a short-term solution, this route (and a few others, like Eglinton) desperately needs articulated buses. It has enough traffic to justify them pretty much any time on weekdays. (The articulated buses can stay in the garage on weekends. We don’t need them then.)
Also, why is the TTC not putting more buses on the 139? Surely it would be faster than the 39E for passengers going downtown, and it would help fill the underused Sheppard Subway.
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Thanks for the summary, steve, it’s great.
As for your comment on the blue nights, I’ve actually thought about it – putting streetcar tracks back on Bloor and Yonge. If we had a transit city sized network already then it might make sence and it’d certainly help during subway outages. What we really need is some of those fancy LF60’s that cities like Ottawa, Hamilton, and Mississauga have. 60 foot “bendy” buses are really needed here, especially if you look at routes like 39 Finch East, 53 Steeles East, and 29 Dufferin. They can shorten the headway from 2 minutes to 1 minute and 50 seconds, but really that’s pointless because traffic lights alone (not even counting traffic) would cause bunching. When you get headways this low you need larger vehicles. If you are running these LF60’s on these daytime routes, then it makes sence to use them night-time on Bloor and Yonge.
Steve: That was a suggestion for an April 1 posting, but I wanted to use it sooner.
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“Steve: Finch East deserves LRT too, but it is embarrassingly close to the Sheppard Subway”.
So what? The Carlton cars run just as close to the Bloor-Danforth subway, same with the St Clair streetcars. It seems silly to me that the lighter-travelled part of Finch will get an LRT service, while Finch E drowns in buses with 79-second frequencies for years to come. It’s obvious that many people along the Finch E corridor don’t want the hassle of transferring at Don Mills (and waiting *forever* for the train to depart the station – what the heck is up with that anyway?), and then transferring again at Sheppard to go downtown. They’re better off staying on Finch to Yonge and transferring once at Finch station, where trains leave promptly.
Steve: Yes, going out of one’s way to use the “fast” subway is a waste of time both for the long dwell times at the terminals and for the long walking transfer from the bus loop to the subway at Don Mills. Many times I have thought I am getting to the station just in time to catch a bus, only to just miss it because it takes so long to get from the subway platform up to the bus loop, especially when the escalators are not working.
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Steve,
I am looking for the previous service summary stats for the breakdown between 39C/39E in the weekday morning peak period.
I see on page 22 of the new service summary that in the morning peak there are 14 39C and 16 39E, each with a 5’15” headway. Would you be able to look for the equivalent numbers for the last period?
Steve: For the period that ended January 5, 2008, the service is made up of:
5 39/39F buses (Finch Station to Seneca College)
14 39A buses (Finch Station to McCowan)
12 39C buses (Finch Station to McCowan express)
14 39E buses (Finch Station to Neilson express)
This gives a total of 45 buses. Each branch operates on a 6’00” headway for a combined 90-second service.
In the new schedule, the numbers on the branches listed above are 6, 16, 14 and 16 for a total of 52 buses.
Come Tuesday morning, I’ll be very curious to see if there are more 39E than C’s leaving the station.
To Andrew, based on my own use of the 139 route, which is quite useful for me heading home in the evening, I can guess that the main reason they’re not adding any more service is sheer lack of demand. It’s rare for any vehicle to have more ten passengers from Vic Park to Fairview Mall.
(This is also a service that still causes massive confusion to passengers, especially casual transit users, even 4+ years after its introduction. It’s a frequent, almost daily experience to have people freaking out when the bus hits the offramp for the highway. Perhaps the renaming will help, but even more useful would be if the TTC had more information, and also postings in Chinese and other languages to better inform people along the route.)
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“Why on earth was the subway built on Sheppard? Either Finch or Eglinton would have been much more logical corridors, since they are both busier and both are continuous across the city.”
While, aside from the fact that Eglinton was supposed to get a subway as well as Sheppard, Finch was studied, but Network 2011 preferred the shorter link from Sheppard to STC than having to run south from Finch (keep in mind that the primary goal was a high speed link between North York Centre and STC, local service was, at best, a secondary goal).
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OK – so what are the factors for demand along Finch? Is a good chunk because it’s the last stop on the subway? What would change when the subway is extended to Steeles?
From what I recall (and it seems on the Google Earth), the section of Finch between Bayview and Yonge is on the low end of the density sale even for a suburban neighbourhood. Furthermore, there is a long stretch of what I see is called the ‘Finch East Greenbelt’. Further East, there is the Skymark area – which has many residents.
From where the TTC is adding buses, it’s the long haul expresses that (39C&E) that are gaining ridership. These don’t stop between Don Mills & Yonge – so they might match the 139 + Sheppard Subway in terms of time because of this and the one less transfer.
Now with an LRT – there would be no express service.
Steve: With a subway, there would be no local service. You can’t have it both ways.
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Going through the route changes:
32 Eglinton West. I know this route can get bunched up at times, especially the portion between Keele and Eglinton Station (especially west of Eglinton West, that’s where the line gets most crowded). Combine the fact that you have two different services going in completely separate directions (one route goes to Renforth, the other to Lawrence via Trethewey). There has been many a time when a bus headed in either one of these directions was short turned before it reached Keele. Decreasing headways do not help this route at all. I think it’s about time the Trethewey portion of this route was separated and run on its own from Eglinton West Station. To compensate, the 32D service should be run 18 hours a day, 7 days a week to pick up the slack. This allows service to Trethewey to be isolated from the rest of the route, running on its own schedule, and if a bus to Renforth needs to be short turned, it can be done so at the Emmett Loop. There’s also the West Park Hospital and several apartment buildings along Emmett, also a ridership generator.
35 Jane: With the increased service, why don’t they allow for more service on Hullmar (currently runs rush hours only)
36 Finch West: High time they added more service west of Kipling.
37 Islington: Maybe the Rexdale portion of the route should get its own route name. I’ve seen people disembark at Bergamot when they realize the bus is heading west instead of North. It would be akin to Joe’s comment about the 139.
38 Highland Creek: This is an interesting one. I’ve never observed decent loads on the points east of Scarborough College. With the way they are increasing service, you’d think they’d have a short turn branch running to Scarborough College only in the middays and afternoons. Historically, service along this line was around 12-14 minutes, if not for the crowds at Scarborough college.
39 Finch East: Yay for the increase in express services. I think it is about time they did that. Nay for the change in bus stops for four reasons: 1) I’ve always enjoyed the quick non-stop ride from Don Mills to Finch Station and vice versa, 2) the stops at Leslie and Bayview DO get crowded in rush hour traffic, forcing buses to spend more time at those stops as those people cram in on and already crowded bus and 3) at one point I lived just outside the stop between Bridletowne East and Birchmount. Obviously, people who are used to boarding the express bus at this and other similar stops are going to be quite disappointed. I understand the rationale behind this route, people travelling to/from Leslie and Bayview now have express options but there are going to be people who will be negatively affected by this change.
43 Kennedy: It’s interesting to note that service to Steeles is most frequent on Sundays now instead of rush hours. This is because of the 43B, of which I have never understood its purpose. Why don’t they cut out the 43B and have those buses run straight to Steeles instead? Has anyone seen the Sardine can situation on the Steeles portion of the route during rush hours?
53 Steeles East: Yay again for the new evening express service, though it would be nice if this route also got midday and Saturday express service as this route does get quite crowded at those times. Good thing they didn’t butcher the stops like they did the 39.
92 Woodbine South: Still waiting for year round late evening service.
96 Wilson/165 Weston Road North: I agree with Sean Marshall about no improvements to weekend service. That is when a lot of crowding occurs. But if they can’t increase the service on both routes, then make a supplemental route along Wilson to Jane only, akin to the old 96F branch to Jane and Beverly Hills. Also, I’d like to see them restore service cut on Saturday and Sunday evenings (15 minutes common service on Saturday late evenings, used to be 10, 30 minute intervals east of Wilson Station, as 165 service turned back at Wilson).
100 Flemingdon Park: This route has the most screwed up rush hour schedule I have ever seen. Increasing it doesn’t help much either. Hard to predict which branch will arrive first. I guess this is why they gave the 100 an extra bus bay at Broadview. Kudos for the restoration of service to Eglinton Station during Sunday evenings, overdue I say. I do want to note the comparison between Saturday and Sunday late evenings. Saturday late evenings take 4 buses to run from Eglinton to Broadview Stations. Sunday late evenings take 3. Wonder why the difference?
108 Downsview: They really need to improve Weekday Midday and afternoon rush hour service. The increase in Saturday service is nice, but I think they missed the boat on this one.
124 Sunnybrook: The increase of service on this route is not reflected in the schedule. Would be nice if they hit Saturday daytime service as well. Still waiting for restoration of Sunday Late Evening service.
133 Neilson: So they finally rebuilt Finch Avenue? This I gotta see. Wonder if they have fixed the sardine can rail crossing at Morningside. And any idea on the bus loop for Morningside and Finch?
139 Finch-Don Mills: I’m a little curious as to why they added midday and evening service to this route when no one uses it.
190 Rocket: Still waiting for late-evening service on Weekends.
191 Rocket: About time they increased service, I’ve heard lots of people bitching about the crowding situation on this route.
320 Yonge: I have to say that the creation of the Blue Night network increased ridership during the wee hours for the late night stragglers. But with this increase, I think it is high time that they run the Yonge portion of the subway (and only the Yonge Portion) during late night hours. It could even run on 10 minute intervals. Yes, I know that the line needs to be shut down for maintenance at times, I suppose they could pick a weekend late night period every several weeks, maybe Saturday Late Evenings, to do whatever work needs to be done.
All in all, while I am impressed with the increases in service, I don’t think a service increase of this “magnitude” does not deserve the fanfare it got. Call me crazy but this sounds like a regular general service increase rather than a major one. This “increase” did not include introductions of service periods on any route, which is what I am looking for. Late evening service on the 91/92 Woodbine routes and 67 Pharmacy route. Sunday late evening service on the 21 Brimley and 124 Sunnybrook. Saturday Service on the 78 St Andrew and 122 Graydon Hall. Sunday service on the 51 Leslie. But I guess we will have to wait until September for that, like others have been saying.
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Steve, I currently take the 4:18 or the 4:33 AM bus from Hendon(north of Finch) on the 320Yonge route daily. Most days, after picking up passengers along the way, it becomes standing room only at York Mills for the duration of the trip. And as you can see, that’s quite a distance still to go! This was a long time coming.
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Steve said “Finch East deserves LRT too, but it is embarrassingly close to the Sheppard Subway.”
However, there are ways to establish Finch E LRT without stealing riders from Sheppard subway.
For example, Phase I of Finch East LRT can operate from Fairview Mall north on Don Mills then east on Finch, all the way into Malvern. Buses would serve the section of Finch between Yonge and Don Mills in the interim.
Once the Finch W LRT is extended east of Yonge, that route can run up to Kennedy or McCowan. Such an arrangement would provide Crosstown operation on Finch for most of the city, yet encourage riders to get to Yonge using Sheppard subway rather than Finch station.
Steve: When I say “embarrassingly close”, I am being ironic. The received wisdom was that everyone from roughly the lake to North Bay would ride the Sheppard Subway line in preference to all other routes, but it didn’t work out that way. I will be fair and note that part of the reason is that it ends at Don Mills, and the extra farting around to use the “faster” subway would be more than offset by the time lost to added transfer connections. All the same, building an LRT line on Finch East might make some ask why we wasted a billion on Sheppard as a monument to Mel’s ego.
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Now, let me get this straight. Not long ago I was at a well attended meeting at Metro Hall to consider the Queen 501 service which has deteriorated so badly over the years. Now, looking at the changes for Queen I see that any improvements seem to be limited to Saturday Sunday and holiday service which, as I remember it, was not the major concern.
Are we to understand that no actual improvements will take place on this or the other streetcar lines until new streetcars which have yet to be ordered arrive? If there are not enough streetcars available to provide proper service one can only ask why the TTC got rid of their re-built PCC’s a number of years back? They still had a number of good years in them.
Steve: There is a separate report coming about the Queen car in May with proposals likely to be implemented in the fall. Right now, the TTC claims to be concentrating on improved management of what is there already, although the weather has not been helping. As for streetcar services generally, we need an honest answer from TTC about just how many dead or unreliable cars there are in the fleet and why this situation was allowed to develop.
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Perhaps you could have a separate thread on bus technology.
One argument not included is that when San Francisco converts a route from diesel buses to ETBs, ridership increases about 10%.
I understand that the previous bus technology study was biased against ETBs. I would be interested to see an updated study on the economics of ETBs versus the hybrid buses on routes with high ridership but not destined for LRT operation.
Perhaps Transit City could become “Electric City”.
Letter from today’s Star:
Steve: Studies of route conversions need to look carefully at all of the changes, not just the technology. For example, in SF, were the scheduled service and capacity the same after conversion to trolleybus? Was this a route that had many hills that the diesels could not navigate easily, giving the TB an edge on speed? What are the relative comforts of the TBs for passengers.
Taken to an extreme, but simple example, if you replace a bus running every 15 minutes with a subway running every 5, does ridership go up because the subway is faster or because it’s more frequent and wait time is short enough that it does not figure in perceived trip quality?
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Wow, the service on Finch just got greatly messed up. Now it’s like the 39E/C is more like the 190 Rocket than a true “Express” route. But I still don’t get why the TTC doesn’t get artics. Since the buses will get bunched up, and everyone gets on the first one anyways, why not just get a bigger bus and eliminate the 2nd, empty, bus anyways and save the cost of a driver. I’ve also heard about how the garage accomodates artics, but has it been confirmed that they’re on order? I certainly hope so.
And as an aside, why are the hybrids being run on the major arterial routes like Finch, Lawrence and Steeles (Especially the express parts)? Because aren’t the greatest cost savings of a hybrid present during starting and stopping, since the most fuel is consumed when accelerating, so wouldn’t it make more sense to use the hybrids on ‘residential’ routes that are slow and stop frequently at stop signs and not on 60km/h arterial expresses so their savings are fully utilised?
Steve: The TTC plans to include a call for artics in their next bus order. The problem has been to get vehicles that are robust and reliable, words that certainly would not describe the last batch we had. We will have to wait and see what the industry offers.
As for assignments of the hybrids, they go to the routes operated by garages where they are based. It’s the same way, in reverse, that people in the west end get the old junk that seems to live at Queensway Garage. If that garage ever got a full shipment of new buses before other parts of the system, people in Etobicoke wouldn’t know what to make of it!
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I know this is a little off-topic, but I’ve given some though to your idea to put LRT on Finch East, and it seems to make sense. Service between Yonge and Don Mills can just stop at traffic lights, but otherwise it could run right into Malvern. A headway of 1:19 would go to an amazing 1:51 with articulated buses. If we used 90 foot streetcars, we can get this headway up to around 3 minutes, which is more reasonable.
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This list has some pretty impressive improvements on it. As others have noted, the Yonge night service is something that really stands out: Yonge Street is going to have subway-like frequencies even at 3:30 in the morning. I can certainly say I’m going to enjoy the near-doubled weekend frequencies on the Woodbine South, although I have to think if the design loads are for the summer period only.
For every truly impressive change, though, there’s at least one or two that are not going to have much difference. For example, the Sheppard East bus is going to have its average headway reduced from 4’45” to 4’35”. What is that extra 10 seconds realistically going to achieve? It is going to be essentially lost within the usual bunching and normal fluctuations that we see on Sheppard. Would that extra bus thrown onto Sheppard not be of more value on a lower-frequency, shorter route where it would have a very noticeable effect on headways? An extra bus on Parliament, just to pick a route at random, would reduce headways from 16 minutes to 11 minutes and make service much more attractive.
Meanwhile, on longer and busier routes, what is needed more than an extra bus or two is to better manage the service that’s already on the route. Even out the headways and reduce the bunching. In effect that would serve as a service improvement and capacity increase on its own, by making better use of capacity that is currently being wasted.
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Is there any reason why these specific changes are not being publicized by the TTC? As of now (Saturday, 7 pm.), the TTC website has a nice graphic promoting the service changes, but when you click on it, you still get a couple of minor changes which took place in January. And when I went through Kipling subway station this afternoon, I made a point to look for any notifications of changes at the bus platforms. As you may have guessed … nada. I don’t know how you would know of changes, if any, on your route.
I have to wonder, do they have any communications professionals on staff at all, or is it just done by someone else in their spare time?
Steve: The new service list has been up on the TTC website with details since Friday midday. You may need to ensure that your browser isn’t picking up a cached version of the page.
I agree with you about notices to riders. I have seen one copy of a handout with details of changes, and that was lying on the floor of a subway car. The pegs mainly have bundles of the piece about Special Constables. When will the TTC learn that people really are not interested in that sort of flyer and they won’t take them home by the millions?
As for Communications professionals, I believe that they have a few, but the organization as a whole takes time to rumble into action, especially for a change this big after a long period when few routes ever had new schedules.
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If the TTC is short of functioning streetcars now when the route along Fleet Street and a fair part of St Clair are being operated by buses it does not augur well for the day when these routes need to get a full complement of streeetcars back on them. For the last several summers the TTC has had the tracks on at least one major route under reconstruction, with at least some service provided by buses – in 2007 it was Dundas – so presumably they had a few extra streetcars available. As far as I know the trackwork this year and next is all on non-revenue lines (Church, Parliament etc.) so all lines will need their full complement of cars.
Steve: For 2008, we have the St. Clair line shut down to complete the section from west of Vaughan to east of Dufferin, as well as Caledonia to Keele. There’s also the outstanding matter of the ramps at St. Clair West.
In 2009, the west end of King gets rebuilt from Dundas West down to the west end of the “new” track in Parkdale.
Don’t forget that even while Dundas was under construction, the service was still running on other streets.
All the same, we need a realistic statement from the TTC about fleet availability for more service between now and the point we start seeing a new fleet. In particular, there is no excuse for overcrowded off-peak service.
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Streetcars on Yonge? Why not? But can we then close Rosedale and Summerhill Stations once and for all 🙂
More seriously, if there is that much demand for 320 is the next step to look at adding a new route east of Yonge such as Jarvis-Mount Pleasant-Bayview (to York Mills). This would bring Sunnybrook Hospital into the Blue Night network which might be valuable.
As for the number of dead streetcars – weren’t there a couple of dead ones put aside to kick off the CLRV relife programme?
(That tactic – using unserviceable cars for parts and then send them off for relife – turned out to be one of a series of disastrous decisions made when Dublin’s first DART cars were sent to Siemens a couple of years ago, which meant they returned a couple of years late!)
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Hi Steve, It is now Sunday afternoon and nowhere can I find the new schedules that take place tomorrow. People that use the 320 Yonge and the Bloor-Danforth Blue Night services (due to cold, winds, start times,bus spacing, being some of the only people on the street, etc.) need more than anyone to know the approxiamate times of the newly scheduled buses that they have to catch. Apparently, someone didn’t take this into account.
Steve: For clarity, are you talking about schedules on stops, or online? I spot checked several online timetables including 300 and 320, and they seem to have the new info.
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re: local service and subways
Actually, my point wasn’t about subways. However, from doing some checking, most subway routes have local bus routes too. Examples:
Toronto:
– Yonge
– Sheppard
Montreal:
– St. Denis (Henri Bourassa/Laval line)
– Decarie (Cote Vertu Line)
– St/Catherines/De Maisoneuve (Main downtown stretch)
New York City
– Lexington Ave
Some of these have infrequent bus service – others quite frequent.
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While buses are in service on St. Clair West, every other bus should be extended to Jane/Scarlett Road. This could replace the Runnymede bus that runs only on a short portion of St. Clair. In addition, the Junction bus should be extended to Jane/Scarlett Road.
When the streetcars do return to St. Clair West, the Junction bus should then replace the portion of St. Clair from Jane/Scarlett Road to Gunns, using every other bus if numbers do not warrant full service.
The would be the first steps prior to Transit City’s plans of an LRT right-of-way on St. Clair to the Jane LRT.
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Interesting to note that these service improvements actually screw people in the 905 area. Two service changes of note:
25 Don Mills: Weekday midday service increased to 6 minutes, but instead of a 30 minute service on the 25D, the headway is INCREASED to 36 minutes.
37 Islington: Weekday Midday service to Steeles appears to be increased to 12 minutes and the headway for the 37D, formerly at 30 minutes, is increased to 36 minutes, not 24 minutes if it was a service “improvement”.
The 58 Malton was increased as well but I have no clue if TTC service was improved or worsened west of the airport.
If this is the TTC’s Ridership Growth Strategy, I would have hoped for a much more broad improvement along a wide variety of routes, especially those in the 905. So far the 905 is only given a small rock hammer to chisel away at its transportation issues rather than a large jackhammer given to the Toronto Proper.
A missed opportunity, I must say.
Steve: Service north of Steeles is run under contract to York Region. I suspect that given the choice of paying more to run buses more often, or less for slightly wider headways, that’s what they chose.
Looking at the service review for their routes (Appendix C within the Draft 2008 Service Plan for YRT), we learn that the 37 Islington route carried only 139 passengers per day and was already up for review.
As for the Malton bus, the headways before and after the change are:
AM peak: 22’30” / 21’00”
Midday: 18’00” / 16’00”
PM peak: 25’30” / 22’30”
Early evening: 24’00” / 24’00”
Late evening: 30’00” / 30’00”
Saturday:
Early morning: 50’00” / 36’00”
Morning: 24’00” / 20’00”
Afternoon: 20’00” / 18’00”
Evening: 48’00” / 24’00”
Late evening: 60’00” / 60’00”
Sunday:
Early morning: 40’00” / 40’00”
Morning: 30’00” / 24’00”
Afternoon: 20’00” / 18’00”
Early evening: 30’00” / 30’00”
Late evening: 60’00” / 60’00”
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