Many service changes will come into effect on June 19 thanks to the two common factors influencing summer schedules: seasonal riding changes and construction.
The service changes are detailed in the usual spreadsheet form. This will be a point of comparison in the fall when we see when and if these changes are reversed, what improvements are funded from the May service “reallocation”, or if budget problems start Toronto into a downward spiral.
Construction Diversions
The 504 King diversion in Parkdale for track and overhead reconstruction between Roncesvalles and Close will continue until the end of the summer. The operation of streetcars on Roncesvalles itself should resume at the end of July.
The 506 Carlton car will divert around the Gerrard Street bridge over the Don River during reconstruction until the end of the summer. Westbound service will run via Broadview, Dundas and Parliament. Eastbound service will run via Parliament, Queen and Broadview. Cars will be added to the schedule to compensate for the added mileage.
The 505 Dundas diversion around street reconstruction west of Spadina will continue through the summer.
The 502/503 services on Kingston Road will be converted to bus operation until late November for watermain construction.
Rapid Transit Service
On the Yonge Subway, the only service change will be the withdrawal of one standby train and one of three scheduled gap trains. The scheduled headways are not changed.
Service on the Yonge subway has been lower than budgeted because of the late arrival of the Toronto Rocket trains. The first of these is expected to enter service in June. There is no word yet on when this will trigger headway improvements.
On the Bloor-Danforth subway, peak period service will be reduced by 12-15%.
On the Scarborough RT, running times will be increased to reduce top speeds during hot weather.
Details are shown in the spreadsheet.
Steve Munro 
Steve said … “On the Scarborough RT, running times will be increased to reduce top speeds during hot weather.”
Don’t tell me the holly trolley chokes in hot weather too. What’s the reason for this? Will the reaction rail melt if it gets too hot?
Steve: Not sure, but that’s what it says in the service change memo.
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Steve, is there a link to the details from where you got the spreadsheet?
I’m wondering if Shorncliffe will continue to turn every other AM bus at Sherway. With the headway increased to 9 minutes, if this continues then headway on Brown’s Line south of Evans will be 18 minutes in AM peak. (Unfortunately PM peak is already like this, so I’m not holding my breath.)
Last time I checked, Shorncliffe’s AM and PM peak headways to Long Branch loop were worse during the peak periods than any other time of the day.
Steve: The info is not yet online on the TTC’s site. The only change to Shorncliffe is during the AM peak when the headways on the 123 and 123A will both change to 18 minutes. You are correct about the peak service. Because both branches go to Long Branch except during the peaks, there is better service to that loop off peak than peak when half of the buses go to Sherway, and there is no change in that arrangement.
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My understanding to the Roncesvalles construction is because of a gas line at Geoffrey Street that wasn’t supposed to be there. Does the TTC now have to tear out the streetcar tracks again because of this gas line? If so, can the tracks be reused?
Steve: The work by Enbridge to move its gas main has already taken place. Here is the Construction Update from May 9 showing the plans for the remaining work.
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Mimmo,
While visiting the McCowan Carhouse during one of the TTC’s open houses (a fascinating event, well worth the ticket price), I heard some interesting things: the Linear Induction Motor, when delivered, was 14 mm above the reaction rail, and the TTC had a devil of a time with units overheating during the summer.
An engineer at the carhouse (now retired), looked at the matter, and arranged to lower the LIMs by 2 mm, and that solved the problem. The distance between the LIM and the reaction rail was too far, and that required a greater electrical charge to overcome resistance and move the cars, and that overheated the LIMs. Since then, the TTC has managed to lower the LIMs even further, to just 11 mm above the reaction rail.
Still, there’s a fair amount of resistance there, and that translates into heat. At high speeds, that probably is more of a problem.
The guys at McCowan Carhouse are doing a fantastic job keeping these vehicles running. I was impressed at their dedication to their jobs and the pride they took in their work. But it still illustrates to me that in re-inventing the wheel, as ICTS does, we’ve provided a pretty complicated answer to a rather simple question, and we’ve been paying the price for nigh-on forty years.
Steve: A related improvement has been in the maintenance of the reaction rail which must not “wander” vertically relative to the running rails. Also, the cap on the reaction rail is pulled upward by the motor, and must be snugly held onto the underlying rail structure so that there are no high points that will catch on the motor as it passes. As you say, a lot of maintenance for something that was supposed to have the simplicity of “no moving parts”.
I won’t mention how the running rails were never supposed to wear out or develop corrugations. The rail grinding they do must be a figment of my imagination.
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Thanks for the info James/Steve. This may explain why Bombardier now offers a conventional non-LIM propulsion option for the new Mark III cars. In all fairness though, the original concept was mag-lev, not the half-baked solution we got.
As for tight clearances, it’s not all ICTS. Wait till you see the TR trains choke going around UNION. One of the supervisors was joking about that last weekend at Bloor-Yonge while the Y was in use, and also mentioned that there were train/tunnel height issues in other places. I was more annoyed at the diversion itself — why is it that somehow they were able to maintain that section of track for the last 40 years without doing this Museum split over and over?
Steve: Yes, the TTC seems unwilling to do track maintenance under service any more, although in the case of the St. George crossover, I think that there are problems under the roadbed that require an extended shutdown. One thing we are seeing is that as the system ages, the kind of problems we will encounter are not easily fixed. Meanwhile, however, track is routinely replaced overnight in many locations. One day, there are new strings of rail sitting in the tunnel, and a few days later they have been swapped into service.
As for TR clearances, I have been hearing rumours of this for months although the TTC denies them. Why they didn’t build a clearance test car (like the old “Duncan’s Dragon”) to check for the fit of TR’s before they got here, I don’t know.
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Hey Steve,
I work around Parkdale and the 504 King Streetcars (as of May 19th) are still doing their normal routing (except for the Roncesvalles strip). In fact, the King-Parkdale diversion is no longer listed under Diversions or Route changes on the TTC’s website. Any idea what’s going on with that?
Steve: I am trying to find out what’s going on with that project. The City’s website still claims it will start in “May”, but that page hasn’t been updated in a few months.
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As the TRs are now doing training runs on YUS during daytime, then surely any clearance issues have been sorted – or else they’d be creating havoc with regular operations!
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The people at McCowan are magicmen. I know the SRT does not like the winter, now it does not like the summer. It makes too much noise as well. So, uh, when does the SRT work well exactly? In the rain? God I hope so.
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On the changes themselves, I find the change to the airport rocket interesting. It used to run every 40 minutes in the early morning, now it’s down to 8. I’m wondering if there are any large passenger clusters, and if the TTC could be helped by having busses on this route sit around outside the terminals where crowds gather so a large crowd could be served by two buses.
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For some reason I think summer of 2011 is the behemoth of construction seasons. There will be so much construction this season.
If you get fungus on your leg, you cure it now, but if you avoid it then it will grow up your leg so much that the docs will have to cut off your leg.
This is what it seems to be happening. This is the 3rd/4th time for the St. George-Bay repair. The Viaduct tracks are not welded together and just nailed to the ground thus slow speeds. The 506 is extremely slow.
Then there is 502, 503, 504, 505 & 506 mentioned above.
It is cheaper to buy a bandaid when the wound on your leg is a small cut.
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Hello Steve,
At Roncesvalles we were told that there was a problem with the contract for the King track project and as a result the start date had been pushed back. Initially it was only going to be one week, however obviously it has been longer now. I did talk to one of the shuttle bus drivers a couple of days ago though and he had notices on board that indicated that the work would now start on Mon. May 30th. No info on what this does to the project timeline and when service will be returned to King through Parkdale and the west side of Liberty Village once it is removed. Hope this helps with some people’s question.
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The King Street track tender was awarded on May 11.
Call Document
Tender Call No. 72-2011, Contract No. 11TSP-11RD
Description
Reconstruction of TTC Track, Road Resurfacing and Sidewalk Construction on King Street West from Close Avenue to Queen Street West in the Toronto and East York District.
Recommended Bidder
Sanscon Construction Ltd.
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Thanks for this – I called the TTC about 504 streetcar service resuming on Roncesvalles and got a long awkward silence. Most of the construction is done so end of July seems reasonable.
Steve: Here is the text from the Board Period Memo for the schedules that will run from June 19 to the end of July:
This memo goes to many people inside the TTC, including Customer Service, but the organization is notorious for one hand not knowing what the other is doing. If they hope to improve Customer Service, they need to start by making sure that everyone actually knows what is going on. Reading info like this should be an essential part of everyone’s job, and it should be widely available.
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No sign of the 506 diversion across the Don starting yet. Steve, do you know when this starts?
Steve: No, although I noticed a reference in an article about roadwork and track stored on city streets that the Gerrard project would not finish until November. This suggest a later start than originally planned. The contract was awarded on June 8.
In the service change memo for the period beginning July 31 which was issued on June 3, the project is still shown as running until the end of August. I suspect that this will change once the September schedule notice comes out.
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Re recommended bidder for the King St. track tender:
Isn’t Sanscon Construction Ltd. the contractor that didn’t put enough resources to work on the Roncesvalles job and it took forever?
Steve: Yes, and they seem to be taking their time on King Street too.
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