Updated October 22 at 10:25 am:
Brad Ross, TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, advises that effective 9:30 am today all Queen operators will carry passengers around the Shaw/Dufferin and Parliament/Broadview loops, and tell passengers of the layover that may occur.
Also, for those who like to know the internal trivia, the east and west ends of the route are known as “500” and “507” respectively so that they can be scheduled and managed independently.
Original post:
Today, the TTC begins a five-week test of operating the Queen car in two overlapping sections, weekdays only.
- East end cars will operate between Neville and Shaw, looping via Shaw, King and Dufferin.
- West end cars will operate between Long Branch or Humber (alternate cars) and Parliament, looping via Parliament, Dundas and Broadview.
Without rehashing many previous posts on this topic, here is a preliminary look at the issues:
- The design of the overlapped routes may not be ideal, and I hope that it will work well enough that TTC staff don’t reject any alternative arrangements. Part of the problem is a tradeoff between the number of cars and operators available and the amount of additional service on the route. A long term arrangement may require a different route configuration and/or even more service.
- Scheduled service to the outer ends of the line has been cut to provide for the overlap. The premise is that with more reliable headways and fewer short turns, the actual service provided to Neville and Long Branch will be better than on the unified route. However, the AM peak is not, for the most part, affected by congestion and short turns were comparatively rare. Will the reduced service be able to handle demand outside of the overlapped section downtown?
- Overlapped TTC services have a long history of badly managed integration. This can be seen with the behaviour of 502 Downtowner cars that often pull out from McCaul or Kingston Road right behind a 501 Queen and carry as few passengers as possible. How many times will we see pairs of east and west end cars travel across the central part of Queen together?
- Both turnbacks involve on-street loops. Cars waiting for their scheduled departure times may be pushed out by other services, or may simply create congestion of their own while laying over in the middle of the street.
- On the brighter side, both scheduled turnbacks are far enough away from Yonge Street that even a short turn (say westbound at Bathurst or eastbound at Church) will maintain service in the heart of downtown.
With shorter routes, the need for recovery time should be reduced as operators won’t face a 90-minute more trip between termini. For the east end service, recovery times are no more than 4 minutes (peak periods).
In the west end, recovery times are longer, but these are mainly intended to make the schedule merge at Humber work properly — the difference between Humber and Long Branch trip times must always be a multiple of the headway. For example, in the early evening, the Long Branch cars get 13 minutes “recovery” so that their round trips differ by one hour (four times the 15-minute headway) from the Humber cars. Later in the evening, the difference in round trips is only 38 minutes (two times the 19-minute headway), and the Long Branch runs get only 4 minutes recovery.
This thread is intended as a repository for observations and comments about the split route operation, and I am particularly interested in hearing from regular users of the Queen car on their day-to-day experiences.
I have asked the TTC for their vehicle monitoring data for the months of October and November for the 501 and will publish an analyses of route behaviour comparing the unified and split operations.
Steve Munro 
I’m just going to throw in my service story from Friday this week.
I was waiting at Queen and Yonge for a 501 Neville Park. One was just there when I arrived, but it was overcrowded so I took a pass. The next vehicle was a 502 Victoria Park, again overcrowded (I could have squeezed on, but I was curious about how service was running).
After that came the following:
501 Parliament
501 Parliament
501 Greenwood/Conaught
501 Parliament
501 Church
501 Church
501 Parliament
502 Victoria Park
and finally…
501 Neville Park
I’m back in curmudgeon mode now, but I can’t see how this is improved service for the East end.
Steve: This begs an interesting question — where are all of the “500” cars serving the east end route. One went to the carhouse, but where were the others? Maybe there was a queue of streetcars on Shaw Street having disputes with passengers about whether they could ride to Dufferin. Seriously, though, this may be an example of the west end service continuing to function, including those Church short turns, while the east end fell apart.
More generally, I think we are also seeing the general effect on many routes of inadequate service. The TTC expects to produce a streetcar service plan, but there are no service adds on the table until fall 2011, two years from now. I will discuss this in more detail when I turn to the streetcar fleet plan.
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To get a reliable streetcar service along Lake Shore for local trips within South Etobicoke, the following three things seem essential:
1) Keep the streetcars out of snarled traffic
2) Manage the route properly, ensuring regular headways, and ensuring that service speed is somewhat higher than an arthritic snail
3) Keep the headways short enough that a bit of headway variation is not too annoying for riders
It’s not clear to me how a resurrected 507 to Dundas West will meet these criteria.
As far as 1) goes, who knows how the rebuilt Roncesvalles would flow? The ideal way to keep the Long Branch car punctual would be to turn it at Humber loop, like in the old days. (Not that they were always punctual in 1979-1982 when I rode the route a fair amount on summer weekday afternoons.)
For 2), I would assume that if they can’t manage the Queen car despite all the foofraw and the “Queen Streetcar Project”, why would they try to manage a Long Branch car that’s out of sight, out of mind? On the other hand, if the Queen car gets managed properly, then Queen service on Lake Shore will automatically improve as well. Which takes away the rationale that the Queen car shouldn’t provide service on Long Branch.
For 3), who’s to say what the headways of the new Long Branch line will be set at? It may well be a Kingston Road kind of schedule, and that would be worse than present service by the Queen car. And anyway, if the TTC wants to commit to extra service on Lake Shore, and has the streetcars to do so, then it could run all *501* streetcars through to Long Branch instead of turning half at Humber. With all the layover time to make Long Branch and Humber service sort-of interline (I don’t think they do very well), it may not even require that many more streetcars in service. After all, a streetcar running down the street is providing service; a streetcar laying over for 15 minutes in Humber loop or Long Branch loop isn’t doing anything.
Increasing 508 service to give a one-seat ride to downtown is nice, but from my experience King St. is not necessarily better than Queen St. Those 508 cars will get stuck in King St. traffic, especially between Yonge and Bathurst, the same way that 501 cars are stuck between Gladstone and Roncesvalles.
Finally, it seems to me that the best guarantee of keeping streetcar service on Lake Shore at all is having a through Queen car, and in the future a WWLRT. If Lake Shore gets split off as its own route, then if there’s ever a shortage of streetcars, I bet it will be the top candidate for busification.
As for express bus services, has anyone actually seen the new 145, let alone ridden it?
Steve: One of the many schemes TTC staff proposed was to make the entire route 501 a Neville to Long Branch service with no scheduled short turns. However, this would need many more cars (which they don’t have), or much worse scheduled service over the entire line. Many vehicles would be short turned, and service at the outer ends would be unpredictable at the best of times.
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Oops, in my previous post I should have made clear that “run all streetcars through to Long Branch instead of turning half at Humber” means “all *501* streetcars through to Long Branch instead of turning half at Humber”
Steve: I have fixed the text in your comment.
Hmm, it would be nice to have a “preview comment” feature that let us scan over our postings, especially ones that are fairly long. I see other places where I’d like to correct the grammar, but oh well.
Steve: You’re stuck with the facilities WordPress provides, although it keeps getting better all the time. Nothing prevents you from scrolling and editing your comment before you submit it. BTW, some regulars show up with much better spelling and grammar after I edit their remarks. Consider this one of the magical services provided here.
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Ed says:
“To get a reliable streetcar service along Lake Shore for local trips within South Etobicoke, the following three things seem essential:
1) Keep the streetcars out of snarled traffic
2) Manage the route properly, ensuring regular headways, and ensuring that service speed is somewhat higher than an arthritic snail
3) Keep the headways short enough that a bit of headway variation is not too annoying for riders
It’s not clear to me how a resurrected 507 to Dundas West will meet these criteria.”
1) The Reinstated 507 will avoid the intown traffic snarls & accidents that plague the 501 route, by avoiding Queen Street altogether. Turning at Roncies carhouse is a short-term option, given Roncies is undergoing a major streetlift (street facelift).
The Reinstated & Extended 507 route will however deal effectively with issue 1), removing most of the traffic congestion problems from affecting streetcar service Lakeshore Blvd & the Queensway.
2) This is an ongoing problem with all TTC Streetcar routes, even the 510 Spadina & 512 St Clair ‘rapid transit’ lines. The fact that the latter 2 lines have frequent bunching problems is indicative of the TTC’s incompetence in route management. It’s not unique to Lakeshore Blvd.
3) This issue is part political and part TTC management. Again, not unique to Lakeshore Blvd. Only public pressure on political leaders, resulting in directives from politicians to the TTC, will result in a solution for this case.
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I’ve got the Reinstate the 507 Facebook group up now, so please join as a member & add some positive comments. If you can add some pictures or graphics, they’d be greatly appreciated.
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Bunching on Spadina, and to a lesser extent St. Clair, can also be attributed to the massive success of at least the former. Streetcars on Spadina run so closely spaced, and are so well-used (with unavoidable crush loads at Dundas) that some, maybe less than we have now, bunching is inevitable.
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Jonathon, true alot of the time. But there are other occasions where
On Nuit Blanche, the display at Spadina Station showed all 5 510 streetcars at the south end of the route, a bunching situation that persisted for well over an hour.
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Long Branch Mike wrote, “Operators can’t force you off. Then have to call Transit Control if there’s a problem.”
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the yellow button on the CIS terminal to be pressed by the driver in the event of a fare dispute?
If I were in Long Branch Mike’s situation, I would be very tempted to say to the driver, “Well, I believe we have a fare dispute,” while reaching and pressing such a button. 😉
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The Yellow button is the Alarm. It is much like a car alarm, very loud and alot of flashing lights. The Red button is the silent alarm and once pressed everything in the bus is recorded and a two way connection is established with Transit Control with emergency services being sent to the scene automatically upon being pressed. There is a separate button for fare disputes.
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Although, to be fair, Nuit Blanche is a whole other can o’ worms, full of mismanagement, misinformation, and a general lack thereof. I wouldn’t be surprised if those 5 drivers thought there were 15 cars out that night. Regardless, I am really just being semantic. Point taken.
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Jonathan,
Bunching *is* inevitable when frequencies get up three minutes or better. The proper response there is to start scheduling longer vehicles, like ALRVs, to increase capacity without increasing the number of vehicles.
But service on Long Branch is at far longer headways: 10 minutes to Spadina’s 2, and yet bunching is still happening. This is a more serious problem that needs a different solution. In fact, they really should take the ALRVs off of Long Branch and start using CLRVs at higher frequencies. If nothing else, it reduces the impact a short turn has on service. The good thing about a Dundas West split is that you could run CLRVs in this instance. I’m less certain that CLRVs would be successful in a Long Branch-Parliament setting.
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The problem, though, James is any solution predicated on using CLRVs is at best a one year fix, from the re-opening of Roncie until the arrival of the Flexities (Flexitys? Flexitim?).
Even though we’re looking at an extensive period of joint CLRV and Flexity service, my understanding of requirements re: human rights and accessibility means that no route would be allowed to be kept high-floor only. That means a potential reborn 507 would likely have to operate with a mix of CLRVs and Flexities, and so a higher average per-vehicle capacity than a pure-CLRV configuration is unavoidable.
Like it or not, a Flexity-dominated fleet and continued tight budgets on the operating side will almost certainly lead to wider headways, despite claims to the contrary during the order process. What we needed was a portion of the replacement vehicle order to be shortened “fun-size” streetcars that more closely matched the CLRV in terms of capacity while costing less per-vehicle than the one-size-fits-all cars we’re getting.
Steve: The legislative requirement for accessibility does not kick in until well after the last of the new cars will be delivered and the old high-floor cars are retired.
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If streetcars are going to really work, we’ve got to break TTC of their obsession with service standards. They have to be told that streetcars are going to run every X minutes and it’s their job to figure out how those streetcars get filled, even if the streetcars get bigger and that if the people tasked with it don’t come through someone else will be found to do it.
In return, TTC are entitled to demand from Roads and TPS that streets like King and Queen become streetcar-priority with parking and stopping zones moved to parallel or side streets, and the TPSB should tell the Chief that it’s either assist with this or OPP be asked to take up traffic duties (since the Province gets the fines money anyway).
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James Bow wrote:
“But service on Long Branch is at far longer headways: 10 minutes to Spadina’s 2, and yet bunching is still happening. This is a more serious problem that needs a different solution. In fact, they really should take the ALRVs off of Long Branch and start using CLRVs at higher frequencies. If nothing else, it reduces the impact a short turn has on service. The good thing about a Dundas West split is that you could run CLRVs in this instance. I’m less certain that CLRVs would be successful in a Long Branch-Parliament setting.”
The other advanatage of using CLRVs on a reinstated 507 car (assuming it goes to Dundas West), is also the ease of having at least one of those cars only operating along the Lake Shore – i.e. only between Long Branch and Humber. There is demand (at least according to the TTC) for this, and in the long run if the TTC really wants a ROW for the Lake Shore (which is a good idea) then a dedicated car along the Lake Shore would assist in having a reliable streetcar.
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While we’re on the topic, here’s a good article on bunching/platooning.
(No mention of short turns, sadly…)
Steve: Amusingly, the article blames the passengers. We all try to get on the first car causing it to be delayed, and become more crowded, and the platoon to get bigger. Why do we do this? Simple. If the first car gets short turned, we can always drop back to the second or third. If we “do our bit” and wait for the third car, and it’s short-turned, we’re stuck. There is more to line management than blaming problems on customers.
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Interesting that someone forwarded that same article to me here in Malaysia – and yes, the first thing I noticed was that passenger behaviour is to blame.
Certainly that might be part of the problem (and 100% of the problem in the case of elevators, which are mentioned in the article).
But traffic congestion, signals and driver/operator behaviour have something to do with it.
Steve, I have to say that the split experiment seems to be an interesting one but can you confirm for me that the Queen service still has a Long Branch to Neville component? I don’t see it on the map provided (except for Saturday and Sunday).
By the way, if I am out of touch please do forgive.
Regards,
Moaz Yusuf Ahmad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Steve: Cars from Neville run no further west than Dufferin, and cars from Long Branch no further east than Broadview, on weekdays. On weekends, the route operates in its “normal” configuration straight across the city.
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The problem with running in mixed traffic or where you need to use traffic signals is that the effective time between vehicles becomes a multiple of the traffic light cycle time. If you schedule one vehicle every 2:00 minutes but the traffic light cycle time is every 80 seconds then the time between cars becomes a multiple of 80 seconds. i.e. 0, 80. 160, 240 or 320 seconds etc. No amount of line management short of holding cars after every light can correct this. The problem is exacerbated on Spadina when you get a couple of signals, Front and Lakeshore that have much longer than normal cycle times.
The next problem comes from transfer traffic. If another line runs every 5 minutes then every second or third car on the two minute headway is going to get hit by transfer traffic that the next car will not get. If it happens to get hit by cars from both directions at the same time then double whammy. Loading will improve once the TTC goes to all door loading but they are going to have to convince passengers to load at all doors. They will also need to train operators that the 10 people standing 60 feet from the stop are potential passengers. Most passengers will continue to try and crowd on the first car in the queue regardless. The thing I find interesting is the number of passengers who wait for the King cars that turn up Parliament because they want to get off on Parliament or Dundas. They seem to think that this is a normal occurrence.
I went to the ROM yesterday so I drove up Spadina from the Lakeshore and found that the traffic signals seemed to have shorter green phases for the autos but seemed to match the street car service better. It might also have been the fact the Bathurst and Dundas routes are diverting via Spadina and triggering left turn phases for the street cars. I find it amazing that the line operates as well as it does considering all of the outside forces that act upon it.
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Any indication of how this is going? The complete lack of complaints of late, in the media, here, or other blogs would suggest things aren’t going too badly (other than perhaps at the loops, which while unfortunate, isn’t really relevant to the success of the test).
Steve: There is still a lot of short turning westbound at Bathurst and eastbound at Church, but that was expected. I am awaiting the vehicle monitoring data for October so that I can begin analysis on at least the first two weeks of operation. I think it’s important to look at the overall data for something like this to sort the anecdotal reports from what is actually happening on the street.
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I had a friend report the other day that three ALRVs hit each other on Lakeshore westbound just around the curve from Parklawn. They were towed backwards as a coupled train to Humber Loop before being moved individually. That must have been quite the sight – he said the truck pulling them was having some difficulty! (Sadly he did not have his camera with him.) If anyone has some insider information on how this collision occurred I would been quite interested to hear about it.
One would wonder how this could have happened when three cars should never have been there at the same time anyway – Stellar line management. It would be very interesting to see how this incident and the line delays shows up in the CIS data.
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