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Marathon Diversions

The war on transit riders continues with the Scotiabank marathon on Sunday, September 27.

The TTC’s contributes the service change notices which tell readers almost nothing.  For additional info, they refer people to the TTC website which has the same text as the printer notices.  (Thanks to David Fisher for the photo.)  All this really says is that there will be diversions and shuttle buses everywhere, but there’s no map.  How even those who are familiar with the city can expect to find their way anywhere is a mystery.

The first question one asks, of course, is “where is that marathon, anyhow”.  For that you have to go to the marathon site itself.  (One thing I will give them is that the map is at least accurate with streets, neighbourhoods and landmarks correctly named.)  Street closures have their own set of notices.

Meanwhile, as happens so often, The Beach will be completely closed to traffic east of Kingston Road.

A thorough set of route changes is available at the Transit Toronto site.   (Scroll down about 1/3 of the way in the post.  The GO and TTC diversion information consume almost the entire article from there on.)

Alas this isn’t mentioned in any of the TTC’s public information.  Why must this always be done by the transit afficionadoes and advocates rather than the people we pay to provide this service?

11 thoughts on “Marathon Diversions”

  1. Could be worse, it could be the Washington Metro’s Twitter feed, which is copied directly from the service outages page without regard for how long the message is, so tweets are routinely cut off. The “Complete The Tweet” contests that a blog puts on (and that were covered in the Washington Post not too long ago) are quite hilarious (“There is no service between Rosslyn and King. Customers are advised to” …”ford the Potomac River at their own risk.”)

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  2. Readers of Transit Toronto can also click on the “Waterfront Marathon” link near the top of the page to navigate quickly to the info.

    I have to say that I was confused and outraged by the King and Queen service notices. On Transit Toronto, I posted information wrong twice (I hate doing that — ever — but it happens from time to time. Twice in one notice is just too much, though.) The TTC information was so misleading.

    From the notices, I understood that both Queen and King services were split into two routes… when, in fact, Queen cars are operating through along a detour, and only King was split.

    I think these notices were written by operations staff for themselves and then accidentally ended up being posted publicly. Why anyone outside of the TTC standing at a car stop along King or Queen would care that shuttle buses are also running along Queens Quay is an astounding mystery. More important: tell passengers at the start of the trip what to expect. Tell them that there’s going to be detours, or that you’re going to have to transfer to a bus, or that you’re going to have to walk a bit… so that they can make informed and intelligent choices before they set out on their trip.

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  3. There are too many special events like this and they cause too much frustration to transit riders. They should just move the start/end point from city hall to somewhere on the waterfront (so as to not block Bay Street to/from the city hall), ban the marathon route from using Queen Street through the Beaches and use only the south side of Queen’s Quay. This would eliminate the need for streetcar diversions.

    (Though I’m sure Kingston Road residents are happy as they get streetcar service today, which they don’t usually get on weekends).

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  4. Andrew MacKinnon said:

    (Though I’m sure Kingston Road residents are happy as they get streetcar service today, which they don’t usually get on weekends).

    Did they really… Did the TTC tell anyone about this?

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  5. Andrew MacKinnon wrote:

    “There are too many special events like this and they cause too much frustration to transit riders. They should just move the start/end point from city hall to somewhere on the waterfront (so as to not block Bay Street to/from the city hall), ban the marathon route from using Queen Street through the Beaches and use only the south side of Queen’s Quay.”

    While I agree with Steve’s post that proper communication of such changes is incredibly important and the TTC apparently failed in that regard, I just can’t agree with Andrew’s premise that essentially no event should be allowed to use downtown city streets.

    Santa Claus parade has a greater surface route impact than the Waterfront marathon and for a similar time length on a Sunday (by far lowest transit demand). Should it too be relegated to Queen’s Quay? What about the Pride Parade? Labour Day parade? Any of the ‘Taste of…’ events? One could go on for pages with a list of major cultural events that not only bring in outsiders to Toronto (ie bring money) but make living in the city different than living in sprawling suburbia.

    The Scotiabank Waterfront marathon has grown over the past several years such that this year there were over 15,000 people participating over the three race distances (full marathon, half marathon and 5km). Many were from out of town, out of province or even out of country. Thousands of spectators also lined the streets to watch.

    The Waterfront marathon has made a name for itself on the international racing scene and ranks in the 2nd tier behind such noteworthy races as Chicago, New York and London (30,000+ competitors each).

    When politicians boast about Toronto being a ‘World Class City’, it is because of events like these (and the parades and other celebrations mentioned above) that attract thousands to participate and line the streets in the heart of the city, even if that means affecting some street car routes on a Sunday morning.

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  6. I agree, the weekend marathons and street festivals are one of the best parts of living in Toronto. The TTC just needs to make its detours clearer. What happened to diversion maps? A few years back nearly every diversion would have a map attached to it, now there are only text descriptions which are confusing for anybody. It seems that the TTC’s site has been going downhill ever since the re-design. “Future home of trip planner” has been there for God knows how long. It makes me wish they’d add an animated “Under Construction” gif from some early 90’s Geocities site, I think it’d fit right in.

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  7. Personally I think one of the best things about having an Eastern Gap link to the Islands would be the ability to route marathons onto the Island which would reduce the impact on downtown while providing the TV folks with some nice shots 🙂

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  9. On the Transit Toronto Website, there is a note about the 192 Airport Rocket route being rerouted onto City Streets due to issues about speed, safety, and luggage. Buses are now using The East Mall instead.

    I didn’t know about the change until a friend, who works at the airport, told me about it. Nothing on the TTC site mentions any “diversion” or any service change.

    The TTC’s primary complaint is that the speeds of the bus combined with standing room only on the bus with heavy luggage made the route unsafe. The headway has been maintained, which means that more buses have been added to shuttle passengers over the longer route.

    Here is a far better suggestion: if you’re going to spend more money to operate more buses anyway, do it while maintaining the route over the 427. Surely you would have less of a problem with crowding and luggage and the like. I’m sure TTC drivers are not the daredevil suicide drivers of Hong Kong minibuses.

    If not, then Mississauga Transit should follow suit and ban all buses on all highways. Surely all those flying laptop bags and purses can decapitate someone on a similarly crowded bus.

    Steve: I fully agree. If the TTC, who always is quick to tell us they have no spare buses, can scare up enough to double the running time on the airport oute, they should be able to run more frequent over-the-highway service with seated loads. That this change was made with no notice is both laughable and sadly indicative of the way the “organization” actually operates.

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  10. The 192 has been rendered virtually useless since the detour was put in effect. Not because of the detour route itself, but because the buses have no set schedule of arrival (the AM buses are shining examples), and no set number of buses. I have talked to bus drivers, sent an e-mail TTC, posted complaints with my return address, and my attempts have provided no definitive answers, or in the case of the emails, any response at all. I am currently frustrated and tired of TTC in general. In only the five years that I have been in Toronto, I have seen the degradation of the TTC services raise at an appalling rate. My husband applied to work as employee for the TTC and was disgusted by the attitudes of the workers who did nothing but complain about their position, ask for pay increases, and literally in, some cases, went out of their way to irrate or inconvenience transitors. I’m not applying this to every employee, but my husband declined the position, and I haven’t been happier about him leaving a position.

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  11. Sorry, I was a bit harsh. Just very frustrated with what I’ve been experiencing over the past year and 1/2 as a frequent TTC user.

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