Updated November 7 at 11:35 am:
The proposed site for the new streetcar loop sits on the east side of Broadview just north of Queen, and this would make the entrance curves quite close to the Queen Street intersection. Normally this is the sort of configuration traffic planners hate as cars would have to turn off Queen onto Broadview, slow for the northbound facing switch (with the butt end of the car still sitting in the intersection) and then proceed into the loop. A far from ideal arrangement.
The existing parking lot’s rates are 75 cents per half hour to a $4 maximum before 6 pm, and a $3 maximum overnight. At those rates, the atttraction is for long-term parking, not for local shopping.
The TTC has done without Parliament Loop for years and nearby around-the-block loops are quite adequate for buses.
A proposal many years back to build a new streetcar loop here for the King route was cancelled for budgetary reasons, and more recently Cherry Street Loop has been talked up as a turnback. Other than as a possible eastern terminus for a split Queen car, the need for a new loop at Broadview is hard to understand, especially at the expense of a local parking lot.
The proposed new parking site on the west side of Broadview just north of Thompson Street appears as a vacant lot in the satellite view on Google. It is currently occupied by a temporary building which was a sales office for a proposed condo that was completely out of keeping with the neighbourhood and was rejected by Council. As I noted in the comment thread, a smaller loop could be built using this land, Thompson Street and the laneway connecting the two. This would leave the Legion’s building in the middle of the loop on the northwest corner. Why the TTC insisted on taking the larger parking lot for a proposed loop, a project that is not even in the Capital Budget, I don’t know.
Original Post:
Buried in the November 9 agenda for Toronto’s Government Management Committee is a report detailing an exchange of properties between various agencies. One of these is the old Parliament Loop at King Street where an archeological dig has been in progress — this is part of the site of Ontario’s first Parliament Building.
In order to assemble the historic site for public use, there will be a swap of various chunks of land between private owners, the Ontario government, the Toronto Parking Authority and the TTC.
There is now a parking lot on the east side of Broadview just north of Queen, and this would become a new streetcar loop. Although this would be a handy place to short-turn 504 King cars (rather than looping via Parliament and Dundas), it could also be an eastern terminal for a split Queen route should this be implemented on roughly the current route model.
Steve Munro 
Why don’t 502 short turns in downtown go to York instead of Victoria? It’s 3 short blocks (Sheppard Ave doesn’t count). I realize the point is to get operators on schedule, but in the PM peak, Richmond isn’t that bad (all the traffic is on Adelaide), making the looping time negligibly longer. It’s a small thing that would help making it rider-oriented that operator-oriented.
Steve: You really don’t understand how TTC line management works. The idea is to get the operator on time. Whether they serve any customers is secondary.
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With respect to the crane loading on Charlotte Street, from listening to the inspectors and CSI the TTC had no idea that the crane was coming and the police would do nothing about it. This is a far cry from the past. I remember when the building on the North side of Eglinton West of Yonge went up that the curb lane of Westbound Eglinton was full of concrete trucks sitting and waiting for their turn to unload. The police came and forced all the trucks to leave so that the bus service into the station could operate unimpeded. This no longer seems to be the case and if you want to park and screw up the TTC service that now seems to be okay. If the TTC knew that this was going to happen then they could at least have tried to have extra service out to maintain headways.
You cannot build a line that will only work if every thing goes according to plan. You have to build a line that cannot operate over the most important parts even when things do not go according to plan. If you don’t do this then you have to have a lot of recovery time built into the schedule to allow the service to run over the most important part of the line when traffic is screwed up. Isn’t it better to have these cars do something useful most of the time than to sit around at the end of the line waiting for their time?
I don’t know if this plan is the best or whether it would be better to go back to separate 501 and 507 lines but at least the TTC is trying something, finally. Whatever they do they better make sure that any new loop will accomodate a 30 m long car, or maybe two.
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Robert regarding the crane delivery on Charlotte I believe that a 2 am. delivery would likely be illegal (a violation of noise bylaws and restrictions on construction activity) and a nuisance to the people that now inhabit the residential buildings adjacent to the site.
The contractors at the various construction sites in the King West neighbourhood already take a great deal liberties with holding up traffic and being a general nuisance so this should come as a surprise to no one. The Charlotte loop is also a nuisance tying up King traffic as the Spadina cars negotiate the turns back to Spadina. So in this case the TTC and the construction site deserve each other!
The Dufferin loop does appear to be getting fairly frequent use as I’ve seen on numerous occasions 504 cars during rush hour being short-turned at Dufferin. King-Queen-Dufferin-Shaw would miss a number of stops for Liberty Village so I can only guess that the cars are turning at Dufferin. Queen and Dufferin is pretty much a mess most of the time with only one northbound lane south of Queen.
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Michael Vanner said: Robert regarding the crane delivery on Charlotte I believe that a 2 am. delivery would likely be illegal (a violation of noise bylaws and restrictions on construction activity) and a nuisance to the people that now inhabit the residential buildings adjacent to the site.
Nope, that’s not the case. I’ve had a crane erected around 10pm-midnight on Bloor immediately west of Sherbourne. I live in the building next door to the one requiring the crane. This operation closed Bloor for the weekend.
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Steve said: You really don’t understand how TTC line management works. The idea is to get the operator on time. Whether they serve any customers is secondary.
Funny how they complain about low revenue when they don’t even provide the service riders supposedly pay for. If they want more revenue, they should provide the service to where it’s needed most before riders pay for a cab instead. It’s just good business.
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Now that the 501 Split Route trial is shortly coming to an end, and whatever kinks in operation been (hopefully) smoothed out what have been the observations of riders and blog readers?
Steve: I am still waiting for vehicle monitoring data from the TTC so that I can do a thorough analysis of how things behaved, not just ad hoc observations on the ground.
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The west Queen to south Dufferin short turn is rarely used as there are overhead issues, but primarily switch problems. Being at the bottom of the hill the switch fills with sand, causing switch incidents. The normal turn back is Shaw/King/Dufferin for this reason (not ideal for customers).
Steve: Would the Queen/Broadview turn back loop proposal be a good location for a Step Forward implementation for the King cars, and possibly (although awkward) for the Dundas cars (assuming dual directional entry/exit)? Step Forward helps reduce Kingston Rd short turns for the Queen car, and this is already the relief point for the King cars. I believe there is enough room for a small building/trailer to locate there, and the run time is adaquate for such a program. Do you believe this is possible, and could it work?
Steve: For King, yes. Dundas, no. As a more general issue, the TTC and the ATU need to figure out how to get the benefit of crewing that does not tie operators to specific cars/buses without having a Division Office right on the line and conveniently about 10 minutes from the terminus.
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