Updated January 15: The TTC agenda for this month reveals that the report requested in June 2005 may now be presented in March 2010. I am not holding my breath.
In case you’re wondering, positions 2 through 4 in the queue are occupied by three requests from Vice-Chair Mihevc dating from 2007.
Original post from December 14, 2009:
On June 22, 2005, I gave a presentation at the TTC called Transit Priority on Spadina, Harbourfront and St. Clair. In response to this, then Vice-Chair Olivia Chow moved:
1. That staff be requested to take the necessary action to implement transit priority signalling on Spadina by September 2005 at all locations where it is not already active, with a report back in the Fall of 2006 on the impact.
2. That recommendations 2 to 6 embodied in Mr. Munro’s submission be forwarded to TTC staff and City Transportation staff, with a joint report back to the fall meetings of the TTC and Planning and Transportation Committee.
The request was referred to Rick Cornacchia who is now the General Manager of Operations, a post formerly held by Gary Webster, now the TTC’s Chief General Manager. The fall of 2005 came and went with no reports, and in the periodic list of outstanding Commission requests, this motion now holds top rank as the oldest outstanding request. A report was supposed to come forward to the meeting on December 16, 2009, but there is nothing in the agenda.
In the midst of the TTC’s many problems, kvetching about this may seem to be small change, but the underlying issue is not. Many of the complaints about existing operations on private rights-of-way focus on the inadequacy of so-called priority signalling which in some cases actually hinders rather than helps transit operations. This affects both the credibility of the TTC in providing service and in designing the new Transit City routes where speeds considerably in excess of those now achieved by buses is advertised.
Some small changes appear to have happened on Harbourfront as reported by others on this site. If there actually is ongoing progress and improvement, one would expect at least a status report. If there are specific locations where changes cannot or should not be made, the reasons for such a stance should explained.
One almost wishes that now MP-Chow would run for and be elected Mayor next fall. Her report might be ready by then.
(My previous article on this subject from May 2009 includes a link to the 2005 presentation.)
Steve Munro 
Transit priority really does require some political will — probably at the mayor’s level, whoever he/she may be — to bang heads together in two departments that don’t always see eye to eye. Getting a TTC report on the issue would be only the start, but having the report fall off the agenda isn’t at all encouraging.
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This is not an inconsequential issue. It speaks to other issues which the TTC have long fingered like a transit planner/Google Transit integration (not withstanding the Admiral’s tease On The Rocket) leaving it to volunteers like myttc.ca to fill the gap.
Not only have they not produced this report, but they have not produced any progress reports which would indicate why this is taking so long. If I were a TTC Commissioner I would be incandescent that Staff are being so cavalier. After all, they aren’t being asked to implement it, merely to report on what it would take to do so. If co-operation from other arms of the City (I’m looking suspiciously at you, Roads Dept) is holding up the show, simply staying mute won’t break that logjam.
Every organisation has project delays but there comes a time when you have to show up to the boss shamefaced and explain what’s taking so long. That time has more than passed for this issue.
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I have noticed that the Dufferin bus takes advantage of transit priority an awful lot more than anywhere else in the system, possibly because of its high level of service, and it usually works. Has the city ever thought of giving buses priority through T-intersections, so that if a bus were stopped at a red light T-intersection with no through traffic (stopped at the side with no actual intersection, just left turns) it could just, at the drivers discretion, go through the intersection? That would speed up things in parts of the older city.
Steve: The potential conflict is with pedestrians. There is no such thing as “discretion” at red lights. Red means red. If transit vehicles are allowed to move, then conflicting movements cannot. There is, by the way, a major problem at T intersections with cyclists who ignore red lights and imperil pedestrians.
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I absolutely agree with Mark Dowling, who said “Not only have they not produced this report, but they have not produced any progress reports which would indicate why this is taking so long. If I were a TTC Commissioner I would be incandescent that Staff are being so cavalier.”
I think this is simply a very small (though long-standing) example of how the TTC staff simply ignore the Commissioners if they ask embarrassing questions or raise ideas that staff do not like. As Steve has often pointed out, TTC staff frequently ‘forget’ to include the full costs of their favourite projects, appear to make no use of the statistics they have – Steve’s analyses of the 501 streetcar schedules being a good example – and totally screw-up on things like fare increases and tokens. The Commissioners need to remind TTC Staff that THEY are in charge and to make good decisions and set the best priorities they need FULL, ACCURATE and TIMELY information.
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Steve–FYI–here is some “hot off the press” Transit Signal Priority data from York Region. This was presented to York’s Transportation Services Committee on Dec 2-09.
The York approach initiates a transit signal priority request (ie hold a green or truncate a red) if the bus is “x” minutes behind schedule. As best I could understand, previously there were two levels of request–if the bus was 3 minutes or more behind schedule or if it was 5 minutes or more behind. The request is made automatically without the driver having any influence. In the past 12 months, 7000 requests have been made and 5000 were granted.
In mid November, “x” was changed to 1 or 3 minutes late. This has increased the request rate by 40%. There appears to have been no impact on auto traffic operations, so staff is thinking that this change has been successful and will be maintained.
Steve: For that to work in Toronto, there would actually have to be real-time info available to co-ordinate transit vehicle movements with the signal system. That is really asking a lot of what we have.
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The extended green or truncated red signal is one version. However, for me, transit priority is when it is red for all signal directions and the transit vehicle has a go with its own signal. That includes before the left turn arrow.
The problem is the use of signals that look the same as everyone else’s signal. Europe uses transit signals that are different for transit, but not here.
Steve: Toronto uses the vertical white bar as a transit only “green” mainly to avoid confusing motorists with a green aspect they may take as their own, but that is the only one of the semaphore-derived aspects we see here.
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I decided to look at what you had to say about Spadina after a miserable experience there this afternoon. I don’t doubt that priority signalling would help, but I also wonder whether there are some other possible solutions. Could the left-turn signals be re-timed until the end of the green light cycle, rather than being at the beginning? Also, would it improve service speed if all the little stops (Sussex, Willcocks, Nassau, Sullivan, Richmond) were bypassed?
Steve: I believe that the traffic folks prefer to have the left turns first in the cycle (a) because that’s when motorists expect this phase at intersections in general and (b) there’s a better chance that they won’t conflict with pedestrians still in the intersection from the main through phase. As for the “minor stops”, they perform an important role in making the line more accessible, and they are well used in their time. The larger question is whether the left turn should be pre-empted at such “minor” locations when there is a streetcar present. Given the frequency of service, that would be more than half the time. Alternately, if we put a streetcar only phase ahead of the left turns, we could wind up with a situation like Harbourfront where the streetcars don’t get much green time at all.
Something that is noticeable depending on the level of demand is that the streetcars easily get out of sync with the “green wave” designed for the road traffic. They cross the intersections at the start of a green, but by the time they leave the farside stop, there’s a good chance they will be caught by the next red. Spadina does not have green time extension on it to let approaching streetcars clear the intersection, and this adds to the problem.
The situation differs from location to location depending on the stop placement (or if there even is a transit stop) as well as the traffic demand on intersecting streets.
It’s a complicated business, but the absence of any report on the subject or detailed analysis of options (or even experiments), we never have a debate about the tradeoffs in the allocation of road space and time to transit vehicles.
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I don’t see why we require externally viewable transit signals. That other green light just needs to be in streetcar cab. IMO, it would also be safer. As long as the pedestrians have a don’t walk signal and the cars a red light, either party doesn’t need to know the streetcar has a green. Personally, I have been driving on Spadina and waiting in a left-turn lane. The transit light went to green and for a moment I thought it was the left-turn signal before I caught myself.
Steve: We have externally viewable signals for two reasons. First, it is a lot cheaper to install a signal than to retrofit an entire fleet with cab displays. That would have been the attitude when the lines with transit signals first appeared. Second, a visual display allows someone watching the traffic operation to know what signal the operator is supposed to be seeing. This is useful if the actual signal display is in dispute.
If the TTC were going to install some sort of onboard system, it should have more than a signal display. It should also have more sophisticated capabilities for operators to interact with traffic signals to indicate whether they needed to go “now”, or if they could relinquish their “priority” status.
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Josh asks “Could the left-turn signals be re-timed until the end of the green light cycle, rather than being at the beginning?”
This would not make any difference, becuase the amount of green time for streetcars, and the amount of red time, remains the same. Now, if you move the left-turn signals to the end if a streetcar was present, that would “work”, except for all the accidents caused by such an implementation. It would confuse all road users, even if it worked reliably.
It seems that signal priority is expanding across Finch Ave. E. The green light at Don Mills Rd. now holds for Finch East buses; I don’t think I noticed that earlier in the year. The light also holds at Bayview, and I think Leslie as well. Considering the headway on Finch East 39 buses, the greens get extended a lot.
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There should be a traffic light at the Earlscourt loop to stop the eastbound traffic so the streetcar could move on a right turn out of the loop. Either one that gets triggered when the streetcar moves onto the sidewalk, or timed for schedule departure. Of course, buses or streetcars could still make a right turn on red.
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Steve: “Alternately, if we put a streetcar only phase ahead of the left turns, we could wind up with a situation like Harbourfront where the streetcars don’t get much green time at all.”
I would consider the Streetcar-only phase not as a replacement for the current time but in addition to it, and only if there is a streetcar ready to use it and there is left-turning traffic.
The sequence would be
Red (other street)
Streetcar-only (if needed)
Left turns
Straight through (cars and transit)
and back to the start of the sequence.
I would expect the Streetcar-only phase to be very short – only long enough for one tram to go through. The extra advantage is that if there are two cars waiting, the first can go through, pick up passengers during the left-turn phase and hopefully be moving off by the time the next car is allowed through (of course, this would require training the public to wait for the following car if the first is over-full).
I realize this isn’t a complete solution, but I do think it might help the situation somewhat.
On a slightly different note, I always thought they needed a very significant time (and therefore distance) to allow proper synchronization, and was surprised to be told that the minimum distance is as low as 140 meters, although they prefer 200 meters. I was also informed that anything over that 200 meters is overkill.
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Spadina is fairly difficult for transit priority right now because the headways are so low; it’ll be easier once the Flexity fleet is in place. What’s needed at that point is a clearly stated goal — e.g. average streetcar gets no more than 45 seconds of cumulative red-light delay from Bloor to King — and the political will to hold feet to the fire until the goal is achieved.
It’s interesting that DavidH’s was “told that the minimum distance is as low as 140 meters, although they prefer 200 meters. I was also informed that anything over that 200 meters is overkill.”
If a streetcar is moving at 40 km/h (perhaps this is dreaming, but it should be achievable on a private ROW on a 50 km/h street), that’s 11 m/s. The streetcar will cover 140m in 12 seconds or 200m in 18 seconds. Given the average flashing-hand phase is at least 12 seconds — probably much longer on ROW streets given their width — and the left turn green phase is at least another 10 seconds, This seems like a recipe for streetcars sitting while cars turn left in front of them, or creeping along while being passed by cars and, too often, bikes.
If that comment reflects common wisdom among city staff, it’s yet another example of how they simply do not understand what transit priority is or how to make it work.
Steve: A fix that is appearing on St. Clair, but may not be working at all locations yet, is a detector well in advance of intersections that is tied to an extended green phase for streetcars. A similar scheme exists on some “mixed traffic” operations where the flashing hand may have completed its cycle and be solid, but the through green phase stays up for a period of time.
A big problem on Spadina/Harbourfront occurs where the lines cross a road that has a very long green time, notably Lake Shore Boulevard. If the streetcar misses its green, it has a very long wait. Indeed, there are times when the frequency of streetcar service is shorter than the cycle time for the intersection, and this inevitably causes bunching.
While we may not all agree on which approach to signal priority is ideal (and multiple, site-specific schemes are likely best), the absence of the long-awaited report on this subject puts advocates and politicians in a difficult position. If we ask for better priority, we are told “wait for the report”, or “staff must know what they are doing”. Meanwhile, transit riders fume at delays.
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Is it known how the signal priority system installed on spadina would actually work? I mean, are there detector loops installed in advance of the intersections or just at the intersections? I would also hope that various components of the system would not need to be repaired before the system could work.
Steve: At this point, it is hard to say. Some of the equipment was supposed to have been installed during construction and is therefore not obvious just looking at the pavement (as opposed to loops added after the fact).
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Has there been any indication when the report on fleet reliability and availability might be presented? It’s late too but not as late as the transit priority report, yet.
Steve: No word at all.
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This will work on St. Clair but I have my doubts about Spadina. The length of the green cycle for streets crossing Spadina is determined by the length of time for a pedestrian to cross Spadina. If you delay the start of the green phase for a cross street, say Dundas, then you have to delay the start of the next green for Spadina to allow the slower pedestrians enough time to cross or they will be caught in the road when the light changes. They do this on University Avenue because it has a nice wide centre median and no one wants to walk on that street any how.
One of the advantages touted for the new Finch and Sheppard LRT lines is that the medians in those streets will allow a place for pedestrians to wait safely in the middle of the road. Can you imagine the street car platforms on Spadina at Dundas if most of the pedestrians got caught in the middle? The only thing that will help Spadina is to be first to have all service run with Flexity cars to reduce the dwell time for loading and unloading.
Another thing that might help is to make the headway a multiple of the main traffic signal frequency, Lake Shore Blvd. and Front St. are signals that operate on a very different cycle time. I don’t know what the current cycle times are but they were every 80 seconds in the core in the 70’s when I stood on the corner and counted cars for one of my university courses. With an 80 second cycle time the service should be every 160 seconds. This is not as good as the current 113 seconds but the cars are twice as long and will hopefully load faster. By the wonders of the math the headways and the capacity increase by about 40%. If every third car still went to Union this would result in a 480 second or 8 minute headway, every second car would give a 320 second or 5 minute 20 second headway, slightly better than now.
The current service cannot stay evenly spaced because the headway and the light cycle time are not similar. Some cars end up one light behind the car in front, some two and some three. The longer the gap the later the car gets as it misses another light because of the larger loads it picks up. Service cannot be kept on a regular headway because of the signal system with the existing headway. Any service that is going to be at the mercy of the traffic lights should have its headway adjusted to fit the light cycle times.
Some people want to put the left turn phase at the end of the green phase. The problem with this is if you end up with more cars waiting to make a left turn than can fit in the left turn lane they will block the left hand through lane and no one will get through on the green phase. I know that those nasty motorists don’t deserve any breaks but if [you] make the car traffic so bad that you create gridlock then you screw up all the rest of the transit service that must share the other roadways with them.
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Since there was mention of the semaphore aspects to avoid confusing motorists in one of Steve’s replies above I will repeat part of a posting which I made week or so back which received no comment:
I sent this in as a result of witnessing a potentially serious accident. Something should be done in this regard. Why isn’t it?
Steve: Probably this situation is due to a combination of indifference, lack of knowledge and the fact that traffic signal designs are prescribed by Provincial regulation. I suspect that even getting the white bar aspect within a regular traffic head took a lot of work. Any update to this scheme may be completed in our lifetimes, but don’t count on it.
The current arrangement with a pair of heads for through, turning and transit movements, plus the pedestrian signals is, pardon the expression, overkill. There are so many of them that it’s easy to confuse which is which, and that isn’t helped by poor placement of some of the explanatory signage and inconsistent use of a green aspect or green arrow for the transit signal.
If there is to be a change, an important part is that the new signals be comprehensible to everyone on the street, and consistent with other usage. For example, the vertical bar is now used as a “transit only” phase in many locations, not as a semaphore equivalent of “green” where both transit and auto traffic may be allowed to move together. Motorists and operators should not have to look at both sets of signals to determine whether the bar is an exclusive phase.
Another consideration is pedestrians who, as we all know, will cross whenever they think there is a break in the traffic. They will “read” the signals for autos and transit to determine whether their path is clear, regardless of what the pedestrian signal actually says.
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Here’s the provincially approved traffic signal.
Here’s the write-up in the highway traffic act [see section 19.1].
The TTC can’t read and the MTO isn’t enforcing their own laws. Shame on both.
Steve: As I said, the white bar indication is for a “transit only” phase. However, in cases where transit and auto movements are allowed concurrently, this does not apply. The challenge is to design a set of signals for motorists (including those in left turn lanes), pedestrians, and transit that are easy to understand by all.
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In other locations in the world, there are don’t use the written word to describe that a traffic signal is for transit. That includes the United States, not just Europe.
The sign pollution just adds to the confusion. For example, why use the sign “TRANSIT SIGNAL” and another “LEFT TURN SIGNAL” sign for the priority left turn signal (who really gets the priority over streetcars), when there are traffic signals available that look different. Don’t they know I am a s-l-o-w r-e-a-d-e-r . They just become targets for graffiti.
I remember the “ADVANCED GREEN” sign that disappeared decades ago. They should do the same with the “TRANSIT SIGNAL” signs, once they join the rest of the world.
Steve: I have not checked recently, but do know that at several locations, the “LEFT TURN SIGNAL” sign was mounted between a through and a left turn signal head, and it was possible to see different displays on each head at the same time. Which signal is the turn signal? Motorists unfamiliar with the standard arrangement could easily be confused.
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But “transit only” is exactly how transit priority should be implemented. For example, look at the situation of extending the green cycle, which is the main manifestation of transit priority:
– A street car approaches an intersection whose traffic lights are amber or are about to turn amber. (This wording is for far-side stops, for near-side change “approaches” with “is ready to depart”)
– Let the traffic light continue its regular cycle, but show the vertical white bar during the amber and the beginning of the red phase. (Lets say to a maximum of 30 seconds)
– When the street car is clear of the intersection (and this is very easy to determine with far-side sensor loops), the white bar light goes out.
– The next phase is immediately the green in the perpendicular direction. This approach minimizes the disruption of regular rhythm of the traffic lights which in turn minimizes automobile queuing.
We don’t need a special signal for the period when both transit and autos can proceed. We have that already. Its “green”.
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Neil says:
Since downtown lights, not including Lake Shore and Fronts Streets, have a total cycle time of 80 seconds. Delaying the light cycle by 30 seconds is 37% of the cycle time. Add in the 2 second all red and the 5 second amber and you have 37 seconds, almost half of the total cycle. You might get away with a 3 second delay on Spadina, but not on every cycle without totally screwing up the downtown grid which is used by buses and streetcars on cross streets in mixed traffic as well as autos. All door loading as well as larger vehicles will help with the problem. The other problem is to get rid of the TTC’s desire to run to a schedule rather than maintain service. Spadina and St. Clair are such short lines that no one cares if all the cars lose a half trip or a whole trip a day as long as they arrive at regular intervals.
The most important things in the schedule is to ensure that operators get their legally mandated break and that they get relieved at the proper time. It does not matter which direction they are going or if they have made all of their trips or even part of them.
When Fleet loop was out of service the supervisors would short turn cars at Wolseley and send them back south to get back on time. It did not matter that there was no one down there to ride them or that there were people waiting north of Queen. The cars had to get back on schedule and service be damned. In the 60’s they would have operators change cars on the street to get them back on time while still maintaining service. They need to get back to the idea of maintaining service rather than trying to get on schedule.
If you watch Spadina on NextBus, you can see the problem as cars run in herds with big gaps between them. Or if you have a scanner, listen to the supervisors short turning half the service to maintain an unmaintainable schedule. They are turning about half the service on St. Clair, part of the problem is that not all of the operators are comfortable with the necessary speed to operate the service. The shuttle buses are getting delayed in the construction west of Old Weston road so the inspectors short turn them at Lansdowne and send them back to Oakwood. They should short turn them at Lansdowne and send them west to Gunn’s road where there are no street cars; however, there is this median and they can’t turn left coming out of the loop.
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At many busy inetersections (both inside and outside Toronto), I have seen cars wanting to turn left queued in the middle of the intersection, and then turning during the “everything red” stage. It sometimes seems the length of the “everything red” stage is set to allow that, given precisely what Josh is asking for.
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Tom West says:
Most of these intersections, especially in the outer areas, have long left turn lanes that allow the vehicles to keep clear of the left through lane. If you look at the intersections on Spadina and St. Clair most left turn lanes are only 4 or 5 cars long. This may be enough to serve the average demand, [but] there will be some times when more than 5 cars are waiting to turn left. This is a consequence of “Queueing Theory” which explains why all the check out counters are empty when you enter the store but have a line up of 3 people when you want to check out; demand is not uniform.
If there are 6 cars waiting in a line that is only 4 cars long then the left through lane will be blocked. If there are a lot of pedestrians crossing then the right through lane will be blocked by cars waiting to turn right and hardly any cars will get through the intersection. This will quickly back up the short blocks in Toronto to block the previous intersection and gridlock results. In addition the cars that turn left at the end of a cycle will conflict with pedestrians that are slow to clear the intersection and the cars waiting in the intersection to make their right hand turn.
Most intersections do not let left hand turns go first to be nice them but rather that it is the safer and more expedient thing to do at the intersection.
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I remember seeing the Bloor MU streetcar trains, closing their doors, and if their light is amber (yellow) they would still proceed on through the intersection. This was before the “everywhere red” was implemented. While the perpendicular traffic now had the green, the two-car train was still proceeding on through, making them wait. That’s how “transit priority” was done in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Today, what Neil is suggesting would be fine, with a bit of the 1950’s added in.
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