Updated August 8, 2014 at 6:40 am: According to an article in today’s Toronto Star, TTC CEO Andy Byford is advocating a move to Proof-of-Payment (POP) fare collection on all streetcar routes effective January 1, 2015. He will also seek funding for service improvements including a return to the 2012 crowding standards, although this will only be applicable for off-peak service thanks to the shortage of vehicles.
Updated August 7, 2014 at 4:20 pm: The City’s Planning & Growth Management Committee has voted to defer the McNicoll Garage issue until 2015. More political point scoring by the Ford/Stintz faction in their waning hours.
Updated August 7, 2014 at 7:50 am: Information has been added about the bus and streetcar fleet sizes in 1990 before the recession that led to widespread service cuts. Service in 1990 was better on the streetcar network than it is today, and the bus fleet is barely back to 1990 levels in terms of scheduled capacity across the system.
Comments about system capacity that were originally in the post about service changes for August 31, 2014 will be moved to this thread.
Transit is “The Better Way”, or so we have been told by the politicians responsible for managing our transportation system. Road building simply won’t work — there is no room for more cars in many locations even if we could build more expressways — and transit is the answer.
Sounds great! Transit advocates like me should be cheering. With the election of those champions of infrastructure spending, Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals, to Queen’s Park and the imminent demise of the Escalade-loving Brothers Ford at City Hall, transit’s future should be assured.
If only it were that simple.
The Subway
Toronto has not opened a new rapid transit line since the Sheppard shuttle from Yonge to Don Mills in 2002, and even that did little for the network as a whole, especially for the critical links into the core area where capacity is at a premium.
Our next line, the Spadina Extension to Vaughan, will open in late 2016 if you believe the TTC’s website, or more likely early 2017. “At this time, the in-service date remains the fall of 2016 although the project is facing a serious scheduling challenge,” according to the July 2014 CEO’s Report.
The subway has a reasonably new fleet with brand new Toronto Rocket (“TR”) trains plying the Yonge line, and on Bloor a fleet of “T-1” trains built between 1995 and 2001.
Fleet size isn’t an issue. The TTC will have a surplus of TRs for the foreseeable future because they have ordered 10 extra trains for the Spadina extension, and a further 10 trains for service improvements. Meanwhile, the T-1 fleet is larger than the Bloor and Sheppard subways need between them because original fleet plans assumed that some of these trains would stay on the Yonge line. Now the TTC is scrambling to find locations to store all of the T-1 trains.
The problem for both subway routes is that there is only room for so many trains on the track thanks to a combination of the signal system and the terminal geometry. Headways (the space between trains) lower than the now-scheduled 140 seconds are possible, but challenging.
The signals keep trains from coming too close together. At busy stations like Bloor-Yonge with long stops for boarding, the next train can be kept waiting some distance from the station until its leader not only departs but runs far enough down the track for a clear signal to be given to occupy the platform.
At terminals, there are basic operating limits — how fast a train can move through switches without throwing passengers onto the floor, how long it takes a 6-car train to drive through and completely clear the crossover so that another movement can occur, how quickly the next train can be ready to move off. A 120 second headway is theoretically possible, but difficult to achieve, and even at 130 seconds there can be congestion with the slightest delay.
(A separate problem familiar to many riders is the long queues of trains stretching back from terminals especially at the end of peak periods. This is caused by trains arriving at the terminal faster than they leave, a side effect of the scheduled transition to off-peak service and an indication that, for that time period at least, there are too many trains trying to use a limited amount of track time.)
The TTC’s solution, touted for years, has been to convert to Automatic Train Control with a computer-based signal system that will allow trains to safely operate closer together on the mainline, and which could reduce terminal times. This system will not be in use on the Yonge line until 2019, and it is unclear when it might appear on Bloor-Danforth because this will also involve the purchase of a completely new fleet. (The T-1 trains are not ATC-capable at reasonable cost, and the older they get, the lest cost-effective an upgrade program becomes for their remaining lives.)
Until ATC is switched on, the TTC’s ability to run trains closer together will be limited, and with this, their ability to add capacity to the subway system where it is really needed.
This capacity problem was recognized in the late 1980s when TTC ridership was booming and the Yonge line was packed to the doors. Variations on what we now call the “Downtown Relief Line” were proposed to increase capacity into the core area, but this line was traded away in a political deal for the Sheppard Subway. The capacity crunch was effectively wiped away by the recession of the 1990s when the TTC system lost 20% of its ridership falling from 450m to 360m annual rides. Toronto passed the 450m mark long ago and the TTC projects 537m rides for 2014.
Without question, some additional capacity is possible on the proposed GO Transit “RER” network provided that GO becomes truly an urban operator with convenient stations well connected to feeder transit routes and with attractive fares for urban travel. If they persist with a model focussed on 905-based commuters, GO’s contribution to “relief” will at best be a lessening of demand that might otherwise feed into outer parts of the subway network.
Meanwhile, Councillors argue about more suburban subway lines and decry the need for additional capacity in the core area.
The Streetcar Network
For many years, the streetcar network languished both because it was seen as something for “downtown”, and because the population of areas it served was stagnant. The last new streetcar to roll onto Toronto streets dates from 1989, and the first of the “CLRVs” (Canadian Light Rail Vehicles) will hit its 40th birthday in 2017. New Flexities will replace the aging fleet, but not immediately as production deliveries only just began (this for an order placed before Rob Ford was Mayor) and they are temporarily halted by a strike at Bombardier.
Toronto last added a new streetcar route to its network in 1997, the 510 Spadina line (although there was a small connection on Queens Quay from Spadina to Bathurst that brought 509 Harbourfront CNE extension into existence in 2000). These additions were possible only because service cuts earlier in the decade had freed up cars from other lines.
In 1990, total peak streetcar service required 222 vehicles including some PCCs that were still in use. This did not include the Spadina route which was still operated with buses. No streetcar route has as many peak vehicles assigned today as in 1990, nearly a quarter-century ago.
By November 1997, the AM peak scheduled service required 178 cars (plus spares) out of a fleet of 252. In January 2014, the peak requirement had grown to 202 cars (out of 251) from an aging and less-reliable fleet. This number will rise slightly when track on Spadina south of King and on Queens Quay comes back into operation this fall, the first time in some years that the entire streetcar system will be served, on paper at least, with streetcars.
Streetcar_Fleet_Scheduled_Service_1990, 1997 & 2014
To the degree that service was added between 1997 and 2014, many of the peak scheduled cars are “trippers” that go out for a specific journey, possibly not even a round trip, to cover demand on the busiest part of various routes. Such runs may use the less-reliable members of the fleet (or not go out at all) so that some work can be had from cars that might not be trusted for a full day’s operation.
Demand has grown on the streetcar system over two decades, especially on routes like King where there are whole new neighbourhoods that did not exist in 1997 with riders eager to travel by TTC to downtown, if only they could board the service.
Current plans call for the replacement of the CLRV/ALRV fleet with the new Flexities, but the TTC wishes to dispose of its least reliable cars (the ALRVs) as quickly as possible. This will require some juggling of the remaining CLRV fleet to replace lost ALRV capacity on 501 Queen and 504 King. The big problem, however, is that it will be several years before the growing Flexity fleet actually provides more capacity than the cars it replaces, and some routes will not see meaningful improvement until at least 2017.
The TTC has proposed a 60-car add-on to the current 204 Flexity order, but this is a “below the line” capital project with no funding. In a Rob Ford world, we will be lucky to see even the first 204, never mind a supplementary order.
Some streetcar capacity improvement will be possible through a combination of better line management especially avoidance of bunching which wastes time at stops and operates many cars well below capacity. More and better transit signal priority is also needed. A big improvement can come with all-door loading on the new streetcars, but this will benefit only the routes where they operate, and much will depend on the capacity and reliability of service provided.
“It will all be better with the new cars” is absolutely no excuse for failure to improve what we have today.
The Bus Network
The TTC faces a major problem with its bus network. Thanks to service cuts implemented by the Ford/Stintz regime, plus the cancellation of plans for more buses and a new garage, and compounded by reliability problems with the Hybrid bus fleet, the TTC has hit a wall on improving bus service.
First, it is important to understand the size and makeup of the fleet, and the capacity of service it can provide. Here is a table and a chart showing the makeup of the AM peak scheduled service from 2005 to 2014, and the relative capacity of those fleets.
Bus_Fleet_Scheduled_Service 1990, 1997 & 2005-2014
Bus_Fleet_Scheduled_Service_Ratio 2005-2014
The table shows the makeup of the scheduled bus service primarily from 2005-2014 with 1990 and 19977 as references back to the pre-accessible fleet.
In 1990, the fleet included 90 Orion III articulated buses, a number that had dwindled by 1997 thanks to poor manufacturing quality. I have not broken them out in the table because the TTC service summaries do not give a specific number in service on routes with mixed artic and standard bus operations. The striking comparison is that the peak scheduled vehicle count in 1990 was not reached again until 2014. Only the Wilson-to-Downsview and Sheppard subway extensions did not exist in 1990, and the Spadina bus had not yet been converted to streetcars.
The scheduled requirement has grown from 1216 buses in November 1997 to 1563 in March 2014, but this growth in vehicle count masks a change in vehicle capacity. Even without the more generous provisions of the Ridership Growth Strategy, the capacity of a bus for planning purposes is 10% lower with low-floor vehicles than with high-floor buses.
This is reflected in the lower half of the table where the raw vehicle counts are restated as “equivalent to 12m low floor buses”. The 1216 high-floors of 1997 equate to 1338 low floor buses, and so about one third of the growth in scheduled requirements comes from the reduced capacity of the low floor buses. The remainder is real growth. (For the purpose of this table, the articulated buses are counted as 1.5 standard low floor buses.)
Since 2005, the number of vehicles on the road during the peak period has grown by almost 20%, but their capacity is up only about 13%. The chart shows this in graphic format. Note the drops in 2011 and 2012 corresponding to the Ford-Stintz cutbacks.
Improvements in 2013 and 2014 came from a few sources:
- The budget process was less draconian and effectively gave the TTC a boost in subsidies. The amount was “flat lined” to previous years, but because the TTC had a “surplus” in 2012 and in 2013, getting the same subsidy (including the unspent surpluses) made for a real increase in funding relative to spending.
- Buses that had been ordered before Rob Ford became mayor continued to be delivered through 2012. A future order was a victim of the service cuts along with the McNicoll Garage that would have housed the vehicles. All orders now in the pipeline are simply to replace vehicles that will retire soon.
- The older Orion V and Nova buses have remained in service longer than planned to keep the total fleet numbers up. This has been a particular challenge in 2014 when the amount of City and Metrolinx construction work has required about double the number of “construction extras” on various routes. Contrary to popular belief, this is not all on the streetcar system.
The TTC has already stated that its spare ratio — the proportion of the fleet in excess of scheduled requirements — is lower than it should be, and they plan to reduce service requirements just to add to their maintenance pool. Some services that would normally be restored with the fall schedules — standby relief buses and school trippers — have been omitted because of a bus shortage. Other peak service improvements are on hold for the same reason.
McNicoll Garage was originally planned almost a decade ago, but it was removed from the TTC’s capital planning when Transit City was announced. The network of suburban LRT lines would so reduce the bus requirements that another garage was not needed. Rob Ford (aided and abetted by Dalton McGuinty and an unduly pliant City Council) cancelled Transit City, but also slashed fleet requirements through changes to the Service Standards. His hand-picked TTC Chair, Karen Stintz, went along with this “for the greater good” of the transit system.
We now see where that “greater good” has brought us.
The TTC has no net-new buses in the pipeline, nor any garage to store and maintain them even if they were ordered yesterday. Reliability of the current fleet is challenging, and yet the TTC’s focus has been on “good news” stories about cleaner subway stations, not about problems with the bus fleet.
The short-term bridge provided by a subsidy flat-line-that-wasn’t depends on a constant surplus, and the TTC is unlikely to show one for 2014. Older vehicles have been kept in service, but there is a limitation to how much of this is possible.
The hybrids are a special problem because their power systems have not performed as well or as reliably as originally hoped. In its original 2014 capital budget, TTC management proposed changing the target life of a bus to 12 from 18 years. This would have both accelerated the retirement of the hybrids, but also produced a bulge in capital spending that the city did not want to fund. The target life remains 18 years, but this issue does not go away just because the bean counters don’t like the look of the numbers.
Reporting on System Capacity and Reliability
Once upon a time, and a very long time ago it was, the TTC actually published information about the reliability of its fleet. This disappeared in a simplification of what we now call the CEO’s report during an era when the Commissioners did not want to trouble their little heads with a lot of operating details, and the reports have never returned.
Even worse, there is no regular report showing the degree to which the published service actually operates, the latent demand for service that may go unmet, or a measure of service quality that does not perpetuate the TTC’s long-standing mythology that being within 3 minutes of schedule, 2/3 of the time, is good enough. What is reported is done at far too summary a level, too many averages over time and space with no sense of what service is really like on the street for a would-be rider.
The emerging problem with capacity on all of Toronto’s transit modes, and hence on all of its network, is not a state secret, and it is the sort of information that a Commission, not to mention its management, who were doing their job should routinely have available for debate and for policy direction.
For much of the current Council term, however, we have a Commission that wants to make the mayor’s threadbare tax-cutting policies look good, a Commission that cares about style — how clean are the buses — but not whether there are enough of them on the street or whether the service is well managed. The TTC is a stepping stone to higher office, as well as a place where Rob Ford could try to get even with the lefty, pro-transit policies of his predecessor. If the riders were screwed in the process, that really didn’t matter.
The problem here is a simple one: we claim that we must make transit better because it is the only viable alternative to increased use of private automobiles. However, the in-the-trenches policy is to squeeze transit as hard as possible because there must be “waste” and “gravy” just sitting there for the taking.
Buy more buses? Hell no! Be more “productive” with the ones we already own. Build more subway capacity downtown? Why would we do such a thing when there are suburbs waiting to be filled with half-empty subway lines? And streetcars? Let’s not even go there.
We have a Commission that does not want to know how bad its own system is or what the options might be to improve it, and a management that seems unwilling to tell them just how deep is the hole in which the transit system now finds itself. If there is a plan for how Toronto will get from 2014 to the balmy days of 2019 when finally we might see greater capacity on the system, it hasn’t been published or even hinted at by anyone at the TTC.
As for Queen’s Park, they have grand dreams of regional transit, but no money for local system improvements. That’s the city’s job, they say, and after all we give you all that gas tax revenue. The fact that this is a pittance compared with former provincial subsidies is lost on those who only want to tell us how much they will spend on new transit construction.
At Council, the word has been cut, cut, cut. The TTC has a huge unmet need for capital funding, and a definite need for better operating subsidies. The idea that somehow the system can be so efficient that every new rider travels without a net loss is a pipedream, especially when so many new riders are sought in areas where short, inexpensive trips are far from the norm. To get the excellent transit we claim we want to have in our world-class city, we need to pay for it.
What does Council have money for? Over $1-billion for a subway line in Scarborough to be raised through a new tax. Meanwhile, Toronto saves tens of millions by cutting service, and a few hundred millions by putting off vehicle purchases.
We bought the myth that transit spending could be cut, and we weren’t watching when critical decisions traded away the capacity for future growth.
Any new mayor, any new TTC Commissioner, should demand full information from TTC management about the state of the system and the options for making improvements now. The request should be without condition, no “can you get by with $100m”, but an open ended request for honest, forthright advice and policies that can rebuild the transit system.
Any new mayor, any new Council, should be prepared to dig deep to properly fund the restoration and improvement of the TTC network — all of it, not just a handful of pet subway lines whose primary function is to get votes, not to carry riders.
Get ready for lots of crowded riding because there is little Toronto can do to avoid it.
Steve Munro 
Thanks for running this blog & your work Steve.
When the new streetcars start rolling in, will there be service improvements in terms of using the replaced streetcars to increase service on other lines? Or do the older ones immediately get retired?
Steve: This is a major topic of debate. The TTC wants to retire the worst of the old cars as soon as possible, and their published fleet plan sees the ALRVs going first even though the Flexities will replace CLRVs. If they stick to this plan (and there are indications, but nothing definite, that they won’t), they would actually create a shortage of cars for 501 Queen and 504 King because there would not be enough ALRVs to field needed capacity. The whole question of fleet capacity, and not just the streetcars, will be a subject of a future article. This is the most serious question facing the TTC, and it has been totally ignored by the Commissioners until quite recently in what I can only describe as an abdication of their responsibility to provide transit service.
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Steve, another “highlight” of the service changes come September you should mention for the benefit of your readers are the many runs temporarily cancelled due to a shortage of buses. There are huge line-ups of buses waiting repairs at almost all divisions, with Eglinton, Arrow and Mt. Dennis being the worst hit. With so many older Orion VIIs due for rebuild, there simply aren’t enough resources at Hillcrest to catch up with the backlog of repairs on the rest of the fleet. Buses requiring major engine/transmission and/or body work have been out of service for months. The hybrids are failing at an alarming rate and there are days when they cannot even make the scheduled AM peak period service – on the summer schedule!
Many of the remaining older Orion Vs have structural issues and severe corrosion, so they will likely be around only until they are due for MTO inspection, meaning a few months for most of them. Overall, don’t remember a time when the fleet situation was quite as bad as it is now. And all of the additional service due to construction work around the city is not helping the situation at all. If anything, it is going to get worse in October with the track replacement project on Bathurst requiring the replacement of the 511 Bathurst (and possibly the western portion of the 505 Dundas) with buses.
To answer a question above about the new streetcars: when they enter service on Spadina they will operate with trolley poles only. The intersections will not be ready for pantograph operation, and the trolley pole will be required for deadhead moves to/from Roncesvalles anyway. As things stand, the ALRVs are to be retired first and temporarily replaced with CLRVs on a 1 to 2.5 ratio (the numbers don’t make sense entirely, but that’s the official line anyway).
Steve: Run cancellations are not mentioned explicitly in the service change notice, although I did spot the reference to the cancellation of standby buses because there are not enough vehicles available to operate them. I plan to write an article about capacity constraints — the item that should be really at the top of the election debates, not new subways — in the near future.
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Shortage of buses AGAIN? Surely to God they haven’t forgotten the bad days of the mid-1990s! It seems then the TTC is back in a State of Disrepair.
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I could be wrong, but I am under the strong impression that penny pinching has been the order of the day, along with “efficiency”, which would normally mean “full use” of all assets. Well of course, reserve capacity, and efficiency are opposites of each other, therefore, if you want to improve efficiency first you would approach waste, then when you are looking to improve budget performance, you would start to go after reserve capacity, and eventually full time service. I am sure they attacked the idea of idle reserve buses when the raised the number of riders in the loading standard. Both of these would reduce the number of buses available, perforce means reducing flexibility. Also it would mean more congestion, as a small number of riders defected, thus slowing buses, and further reducing flow rates, and effective capacity.
Having people who are neither familiar with, nor particularly friendly too transit set budgets will tend to mean not enough buses on the road or available. I also do not expect these same people to have a particularly good understanding of the complex nature of incentives or traffic interactions that a decrease in service quality would set off. Seeing streetcars as being more of an impediment than the 50-70 or so cars that would be on the street otherwise is not a model of the world that leads to sophisticated budget planning or quality service delivery.
I suspect that congestion across the city would be a somewhat smaller issue (even for dedicated drivers), if the loading standard had been set to a lower number of passengers at peak, and service frequency increased instead of the other way. Also there would likely be buses that could be shifted in order to meet special needs without massive disruptions. Also the general ability of the city to grow would be improved.
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Truth to power, of a sort, got people fired under this current council.
Given what I’m seeing in this mayoral race, not much is going to change as far as a willingness to hear bad news about ttc issues.
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Good read though.
While the chart missed out the Orion III Artics, the remaining units were in service in 1997 and all 185 Orion V lifts were in service.
Steve: In 1997, the service summaries did not break down the vehicle assignments by type, and so I had to go with just a raw number of vehicles. I can dig through the route-by-route nunmbers for the artics, and that will only increase the effective size of the 1997 fleet. From a capacity standpoint, I treat the lift buses as the same capacity as high floors because that’s what they are, at heart. I will also update the streetcar numbers with the 1990 figures showing the level of service before the recession and the service cuts from which the system never recovered.
As for the hybrid issue, the TTC could have considered the option converting the entire diesel-electric hybrid fleet to regular clean diesel fuel so it could save enough costs. The case had happened with Edmonton Transit System’s two DE40LFRs before. New York MTA had converted one Orion VII hybrid bus to diesel so it an be a test bed for their 385 hybrid buses and OC Transpo also plans to convert the hybrid fleet as well. People may remember years ago that fifty Orion V Natural Gas lift buses were converted to straight diesel after the TTC exited the CNG program.
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Isn’t it the same with QP? They give us billions and billions of dollars for all sorts of pretty little new LRT rail lines, or subway yet not one dime for current and future operating costs. How are we gonna run these new lines?
And yes, agree with Og, after listening to all these supposed mayoral candidates, in my opinion, not one of them has a transit clue and nothing will change regarding hearing bad news etc. at TTC.
So, we have Wynne who doesn’t care anymore, she’s too busy trying to figure out how to possibly make her balancing act promises happen without making a single cut. She will be dealing with a new Mayor, who doesn’t have a clue, and both will be dealing with a TTC that is still mostly old-boy 70’s thinking. Nice picture!
Steve: While there is a willful blindness to local transit problems at Queen’s Park, I have to place the larger blame at the TTC’s feet for the absence of detailed information and public debate on this issue. To some, it would be too embarrassing to discuss how much extra subsidy something like the Spadina extension will require, or to ask difficult questions about how the subsidy caps have really hurt service delivery.
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Typo: the Bathurst connection to the 509 HARBOURFRONT line was opened in 2000.
Steve: Thanks for catching this.
I guess when the Cherry trackage opens, that will be the longest new trackage since Spadina.
Is it possible, with all this cut cut cutting, that the system will be in more dire straits than in the terrible 1990s?
Steve: If the new mayor and council don’t trade in their subway fantasies for some serious attention to the rest of the transit system, yes, it will be worse than the 1990s. Back then, we had the double-whammy of a recession and the Harris cuts. This time around, we have strong demand, but no will to serve it except with a few subway lines as election baubles.
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Toronto has two problems; traffic and transit. The refusal to ‘manage’ traffic, by reducing it to a level the road system can handle, impacts not only transit and those who travel on it, but the car drivers also, who waste substantial time mired in ever growing jams.
There are many ways to trim traffic, and one I think is worth exploring is a congestion charge, like London’s. It should not be seen as a revenue tool, since it will not produce much if any revenue, but will involve a charge to use a car in a prescribed area at specific times. I suggest Bloor to the lake, Bathurst to Don Valley. The charge can be tweaked to achieve a predetermined traffic level.
It is worth a read about London’s system, at TfL or Wikipedia.
A significant reduction in traffic levels will not only improve life for the car driver who opts to pay the charge, but frees up surface transit and increases its average speed, a blessing for riders. But most important is that a bus or streetcar round trip time reduction of 5% represents a 5% capacity increase! And what’s more, a capacity increase without cost. It should be a political win win win win.
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Toronto can’t do a congestion charge until it has enough transit capacity to absorb the increased ridership it would trigger. Maybe after the relief line is built, although it might take both the east and west branches of the relief line before there to be enough excess capacity.
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Steve, what I personally am most appalled at, is that while all see the issue with congestion, and say transit it the solution to road space, nobody wants to address the notion as a question of either attractiveness or capacity.
Clearly, since outside the core and shoulders, transit is a minority of trips, if the city population is growing by say 2% transit ridership needs to grow at a much faster rate to actually hold road traffic close to current levels. At a 25% share, for transit to absorb most trip growth from a 2% population growth ridership would need to grow at 8%. Queens Park and City Hall, need to be focused on that kind of number. Instead we are try to squeeze capacity growth down to under the 2.5% ridership growth, and celebrate efficiency improvement. The resultant growth in congestion will soon enough squeeze out all gains in efficiency.
I do not think we can actually achieve 8% ridership growth even with a very agressive Ridership Growth Strategy, however, the current approach seems to be an active Congestion Growth Strategy. I suspect that if you grew the bus fleet and driver pool by 10% you would only scratch the surface of the issue. If you actually want to squeeze real efficiency out of the bus network, it will mean more buses need to be able to run much faster. This means more closed ROW, or at least dedicated lanes that are respected, and shorter trips to transfers where they can transfer more of their load.
You cannot pretend to push for cost effective fixes to congestion, not build more protected from traffic transit, and suggest that subway is an answer. What is fairly clear that subway that is operated for a small load is an extremely expensive proposition from an operations as well as capital perspective. This is why it does not make sense to go too far in the just in case direction. Yes allow for reserve capacity, but look at the reasonable growth over a more reasonable time frame, say 20-40 years, and look at the actual speed and maximum capacity of the mode.
Toronto needs to spend the money wisely, build what is required, and make transit attractive, but it cannot spend it all on a handful of subways. Surface buses will need to be operated in large numbers at reasonable frequency across most of the city in order to make transit accessible and attractive. For the region to address real congestion, it needs to make transit much more attractive not less, and that means growing the bus and streetcar fleet much faster than the population and notably faster than ridership growth.
Yes, real route management will help, but even with new and better management approaches and systems, the number of buses on the road will not meet the need, and even 10% more now would likely be short.
We have not ordered enough streetcars to really address what should be done in terms of service improvements, meeting capacity requirements, and dealing with latent demand, let alone the service extensions that would help reduce growth in traffic.
You cannot reasonably tell people they need to pay a road toll as a solution, when there has not been an attempt to have a viable transit option on the table. Yes, reducing traffic load will improve transit, but more transit is require to make this viable to begin with.
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Capacity problems are bound to be a big problem with the Eglinton LRT. A condo developer wants to build a giant condo development near Don Mills and Eglinton which will replace the Celestica building. There are several other parking lots near there which could become tall condo buildings but nothing announced yet. Huge condo developments like this threaten to overload the low capacity of light rail, which I think is a really bad decision for a line like this which is mostly underground and which could have been easily changed to a much higher capacity subway if the outer sections were changed to elevated or simply not built. Are we going to have to build the downtown relief line to relieve Eglinton’s severe overcrowding problems, not just to relieve the Yonge line? It is far more expensive to build the downtown relief line than to make Eglinton a proper high capacity subway, so I have no confidence that the expensive DRL will be built anytime soon. Eglinton is going to be viewed as a major screwup if it turns out to be severely over capacity when it opens due to big condo developments at Don Mills and elsewhere.
Steve: Oh dear, oh dear. You seem to think that the DRL would exist to “relieve” Eglinton. No, it would exist to take people downtown without ever going near the Yonge line. For several years, I have listened to people downplay the Don Mills extension with comments that “nothing is happening at Eglinton” when it was obvious the area is ripe for development. Eglinton does not need to be a full-scale subway, and if we made it one (especially without a DRL) we would just overload the Yonge line, the very thing we seek to avoid.
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I use to joke that I would expect Rob Ford, if he were to somehow get reelected, to justify cuts to surface routes by saying that Toronto was building subways and thus we don’t need streetcars or buses.
I stopped laughing when I began to realize that he might actually believe that.
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Steve, could you please remind everyone why the TTC didn’t ask for those extra 60 streetcars during the search process.
And I am getting so sick of hearing about the ‘capacity’ of the new streetcars. Less streetcars means reduced service levels. I’d rather have a 3/4 full streetcar every 10 minutes instead of a 3/4 empty streetcar every 15-20 minutes.
Steve: At the time of the search, the TTC had a much more draconian attitude to additional capacity than they have today and, as with some other projects like the St. Clair right-of-way, it was mainly about saving money, not providing better service. They have yet to make a definitive statement on “service standards” for the Flexities, and a lot of that will depend on who is controlling the TTC budget and subsidy when the cars actually arrive.
Most definitely, “capacity” of the cars is meaningless unless there are lots of them on the street, and they are reasonably spaced. We have a few decades’ experience with the TTC’s inability to manage larger cars on Queen and the resulting decline in service quality and ridership.
The TTC claims that larger vehicles on wider headways are easier to manage, but Queen (and more recently Bathurst and Dufferin) are proving just how much of a fantasy that statement is.
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Thanks for writing this article, Steve! Hopefully, management and other decision makers will not only read it, but actually do something to improve the situation we find ourselves in right now.
I just have a clarification to make on your comment about the trains queues approaching terminals: this is certainly NOT due to too much running time at the end of the peak periods; if anything, the scheduled running time is insufficient and the peak periods never finish on time. The problem is actually caused by adjustments to headways and trains being held for re-sequencing in order to put operators back on time. On the YUS, there are seven points used for dynamic headway adjustments: Finch, Bloor, Union, St George, St Clair West and Downsview. The old ‘Intermediate Point Headway Control’ (IPHC) system was running using the fixed, pre-programmed schedule and was good for fine tuning headways when everything was running according to schedule, but it was useless when the line was late, because the system would dispatch the trains as soon as they arrived at the IPHC point. The new system is better in the sense that dynamic headway control at the control points along the line can be done mostly without manual input from the tower. The disadvantage is that the pre-written schedule is not worth the paper it is printed on, and across-the-platform crew changeovers have to be done on a regular basis, especially after the end of peak periods (which never finish “on time”).
To coordinate these change-overs it is necessary to manually adjust the train departures from the IPHC points, so that the two runs involved in the change-over arrive at the changeover point from opposite directions more or less at the same time. As a result of these adjustments, it is not uncommon for trains to be held at the terminals longer than they should , which results in other trains backing up on approach to the terminal. These queues are not only an issue at the end of peak periods, they are just as frequent during the midday, evening or weekends. On the YUS, this is a particular problem at Downsview, because most crew change-overs take place on the “Spadina” side of the line (change-overs happen all the time at stations such as Glencairn, Lawrence West or Yorkdale).
Regarding future improvements and running trains closer together, the fleet size may not be a problem, but we may not be able to dispatch all scheduled service in time for the morning peak without affecting the nightly maintenance window, because there is a limit on how fast they can be pushed into service from Wilson and Davisville. A small change will be made in this regard in September, in that one Wilson run will be re-allocated to Davisville on weekdays. Overall, eleven trains will be dispatched from Davisville for the AM and PM peaks (as opposed to ten at present) and three runs will be based out at Davisville on the weekends to give more time for maintenance overnight. But in the grand scheme of things, this does not amount to much and there is not much wiggle room left for little adjustments like that, so the problem will certainly be more severe after the Vaughan extension opens.
Steve: Thanks for the clarification. I do know that when I was regularly travelling outbound to Kennedy at the end of the AM peak, queuing was a constant problem and it typically was triggered by the westbound headway dispatching at the day normal headway with the occasional Greenwood train sandwiched in between. Until the eastbound headway fell back to the midday service level, a queue was common. This could have been fixed by scheduling trains to run out of service eastbound (a common practice when the line was late). A related problem, as you mention, was that if the service was late (a common situation), the IPHC pushed trains eastbound as fast as it could, and they piled up at Kennedy.
I am not sure that terminals are the ideal place to space trains especially when they are mixed in with trips to the yard (e.g. westbound to Greenwood or southbound to Wilson). Better to do the spacing beyond the cutoff point where only the through service is affected. Also, a train running back to the yard should be dispatched as soon as possible from the terminal, even if it dawdles a bit behind an in-service train enroute. Needless to say, this presumes that the crew is ready (and eager) to leave as soon as possible.
The problem with the maintenance window is also serious, and temporary solutions such as the Finch/Cummer storage tracks have been proposed. However, nothing will happen there until a North Yonge extension at least to Steeles is funded, and that’s not going to happen soon. It is disheartening that basic operational constraints like this are not acknowledged as part of project plans, but come along as “gotchas” after the fact. I have never been very impressed with the TTC’s abilities in this regard because either they are simply not looking at issues in sufficient detail, or they are holding back complications for fear of endangering the primary project. A similar behaviour was evident in the “selling” of the benefits of Automated Train Control. It is a necessary project, but was oversold to provide cover for funding.
A question that both TTC management and ATU 113 need to address is whether it is realistic to have crews take trains over the entire length of a route that, some day, will stretch from Vaughan to Richmond Hill with a one-way trip time of about 90 minutes. At 3 hours per round trip, it will become very challenging to keep crews “on time”. A further problem will arise with ATC and one-man trains because a swap will no longer be a quick across-the-platform exercise. Some sort of drop-back crewing with a pool of spare operators will likely be required.
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I was really not that worried in the early going about the Eglinton getting overloaded from mere Condo developments directly on the line. The cost of a subway would still have been much more, as the station designs, sizes etc would all be much larger. However, why do you believe that this load is going to be more than 2.5 times what Metrolinx forecast was. Metrolinx forecast was only 5300 peak. Were they not building these underground stations so that there was the possibility of taking over some of the mechanicals area and going to a 4th car? If this line is ATC, frequency should be able to be 40 trains per hour which even at 3 cars in 18,000. You worry about overloading Eglinton? I would suggest that as long as they can short turn trains to only cover the underground, most heavily used portion, this is not likely to be an issue, with one possible exception.
I would note to you that the Danforth line is not yet overloaded and is running a capacity under 27K. How many condo towers are they building, or are you suggesting that all those buses that currently running to Danforth are going to drop their load on Eglinton instead?
Frankly, I do worry a little about overloading Eglinton, mostly the portion between Yonge and Spadina lines, when there are issues on the Yonge line. Other than this, as long as they can short turn. If it had been built to have 4 car platforms, I would not really even worry about the issue when the Yonge line had issues.
If you want to start worrying about issues, take a look at the idea, of the Sheppard LRT and this generating real redevelopment, and nobody building a Don Mills Subway, this without a Yonge extension would be a worry. If this line were to reach capacity, there are a lot of other issues that would be a concern.
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I understand that the DRL is largely to relieve the Yonge line but it seems that putting huge condo developments at Eglinton and Don Mills will overload Eglinton (and indirectly overload Yonge as well). This development will probably house 10000 people or close to it, and there are several other sites near here used as parking or low density retail that could easily house tens of thousands more people. We all know that the DRL will cost a huge amount of money and we probably won’t even start seriously talking about it until Eglinton opens and is packed thanks to the condo developers. So what, the DRL opens in 2040 and we are waiting for three light rail trains to go by before getting on before then? From what I can tell only GO expansion is being taken seriously now, and the rail line on the northwest side of Celestica is absent from any serious plans. How is making the Eglinton line a low capacity LRT that costs as much as a high capacity subway supposed to prevent the Yonge line from being even more overcrowded than it is now? It will still dump a large fraction of 10000 people an hour in rush hour onto the Yonge line which will make it severely overcrowded but Eglinton will be packed as well. If Eglinton were a proper subway then Eglinton would be well below capacity and I can’t see it making a big difference to how packed Yonge is.
Steve: Your bias for subways is showing. If the folks from all those condos really are headed for Yonge Street, why would they try to get on Eglinton if there is no room for them on the Yonge subway? Also, you presume that they will even want to go to Yonge when, with the DVP right next door, they may be headed for jobs elsewhere just as many who live along the Sheppard subway corridor are today.
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Apparently, it is possible to build a subway quickly. At a recent conference in Finland, I picked up a university magazine. An article called “Light at the end of the tunnel” discussed boring a new 14-kilometre, 8 station subway through granite, 20-30 metres underground. Actually, they don’t bore, they detonate.
Here is the last paragraph. I was surprised at the date.
Wow! 2015.
Steve: And if only Toronto were built on granite, we would be all set! It isn’t, at least not close enough to the surface to be a reasonable option for a subway tunnel. A related issue would also be the location of stations, and the degree to which these have been built without substantial disruption at the surface or to subgrade utilities.
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Steve, I would think that the TTC should now be working to find some way to do a better job of tracking loading, headway adherence etc. If they had the data, and could show how often they had no reserve buses, how often the buses were loaded past the point of being able to accept more riders etc, it would be easier to make an argument for subsidy, and easier for the public to place pressure on council.
Just to get an idea, how long does it take from order to delivery on a bus.
Steve: Roughly a year for the start of the order, presuming that there is available capacity at the manufacturer. Note that “order” means a signed contract and does not include all the farting around while Councillors jockey for political advantage over the issue.
Does the TTC have a pool of qualified drivers.
Steve: No, they keep their driver complement sized to service needs, fleet size and known attrition mainly through retirement. There is big opposition to keeping “unnecessary” headcount in city agencies, aka “gravy”.
Olivia Chow, was talking about adding 10% to bus service. I personally think this is not nearly enough given the lag in service.
Steve: I agree, and feel that she was low-balling to keep the projected costs down and avoid being tarred as a spendthrift NDPer. Beside the cost of various subway plans, she is a positive tightwad.
Correct my numbers please, but did not bus ridership rise about 30% from 2005-2014, and as you say capacity has risen 13%, so per bus loading has in effect risen about 15%. If every bus was average that would likely be ok, but does that not mean that the instances of buses having to either bypass stops, or running very slow because of overloading thereby radically increase (is there a number for this, likely something like triple?). Will not even marginal increases in loading not push this number much higher again, especially on the busiest routes, where the odds of the next bus being able to carry the load are much lower? Does this not hugely increase the odds of having a significant increase in travel time on any given journey (not to mention the odds of it being uncomfortable)?
Steve: It’s a bit more complicated than that. What has happened over the past decades is that off-peak ridership has grown faster than peak ridership basically because that is where there was room to handle more riders. The increased loading on vehicles (peak and off-peak) does add to journey times through increase in dwells at stops as passengers try to get on and off packed vehicles.
If the TTC was able to publish these detailed numbers, could they not greatly relieve the pressure on themselves, and direct at least some of it to council, and even the province. Also did the TTC itself actually push the extension? or was this mostly politically driven? and to what extent were they directly responsible for the decision to make this subway?.
Steve: The Spadina extension was politically driven first by York University and later by York Region, not to mention the former Provincial Treasurer whose riding it would serve. Similarly, the Richmond Hill line is very much a product of York Region’s ambition coupled with, at one time, a fifth column within the TTC actively working for subway expansion. As for Scarborough, we know the political history of that extension.
Advocate for more resources? TTC management? In a time not long after one chief executive was fired for daring to speak the truth to Council? There are times TTC management are too afraid of their own shadows, and spend too much public effort on soft issues rather than the hard details of what the transit system needs, if only for self-preservation.
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In response to an earlier comment, the Danforth line is staring at approaching capacity challenges.
Many may understandably not realize it, but Yonge and Bloor-Danforth do not have the same capacity. The answer to how that can be when they are both subways is: Track layout (and by extension in most places, tunnel layout). Yonge has handily more pocket tracks than Bloor-Danforth does on either side of Yonge St. That’s worth at least a couple of thousand per hour. Bloor-Danforth not only has fewer pocket tracks, but most of them (2 out of 3) are poorly located for the purposes of boosting capacity. Bloor-Danforth probably has a practical capacity of 26K. Meaning it likely is currently at capacity.
TTC staff flagged this growing problem during Scarborough debates a year ago.
Steve: What Karl refers to here is the ability to stage “relief trains” at strategic locations where they can fill gaps to mop up demand.
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Road and expressway building is specifically what you do not want to do, as that actually makes traffic worse.00
There are also specific conditions where removing road capacity has been found to improves traffic.
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Excellent article! And a sad commentary on the state of transit in Toronto. The one thought that comes to mind is that those calling the shots on transit don’t ride it and never will (it’s for someone else). They don’t value good surface transit, be it bus or tram – it is simply a hindrance to their single-car drive to work, home or shopping.
I’ve been in Calgary now for two months. Most of the bus fleet looks to be low-floor New Flyer from the early 2000’s (just guessing) with a handful of even older high-floor buses — this year introducing new low-floor buses from Nova and New Flyer. The bulk of the C-train fleet seems to be the original cars which seem to be in pretty good shape after more than 30 years service though there are plans to replace them in the next five-ten years as they would be end-of-life (and they don’t have air conditioning). Getting around bus is okay but tends if often tediously slow. Other than the C-train it seems Calgary has not done much with transit priority so buses often get bogged in traffic. Some routes go along expressways but there are no transit lanes so again they often get stuck in traffic. Not sure what the route management is used — perhaps simply buffer in for traffic delays. Calgary does have one route known as “circle route” though properly speaking it is really two routes — one that goes on the route clockwise and the other that goes counterclockwise.
Phil
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Steve..
To address trains queuing at the end of the line along with terminal constraints has anyone ever given thought to permanent turnbacks i.e. every other train on the Y-U-S turning back at Sheppard and Wilson.. every other train on the BD turning back at Islington and Warden.
Would that not help ease terminal capacity?
Steve: This is only possible if there is a pocket track in which to store the short turn trains, as at St. Clair West. Otherwise, you have to make the crossing move in the face of oncoming traffic. This sort of scheme has been proposed for Finch with an extension at least to Steeles. The west side is not a problem because half of the service will turn back at Downsview (using the new pocket track north of the station) while the other half goes through to Vaughan.
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As you say peak ridership has not grown as much, due to lack of space, will not some of the load that would have been on peak shift to other modes, including auto. The growth in ridership, if the system was well resourced, should really happen in proportion across all periods, except to the extent that flex time is becoming more popular. That growth is strongly skewed to off peak, is actually a little disturbing that only allocation method is in effect overcrowding (as opposed to some pricing incentives). I would still be surprised if detailed data had been kept, if we would not find the frequency of buses being in overloaded conditions had increased measurably.
I was not saying so much advocating, as exposing, simply collect and release enough detailed data to be easily analysed, publish some analysis, and allow others to make conclusions. Your point, is clear, and its fact outrageous. It is truly amazing that there have not been more repercussions to the removal. The TTC should not need to advocate, merely present the facts, however, pointing out obvious conclusion in areas they should have expertise, should not result in consequences of that nature to officers of public institutions.
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I find it interesting, actually distressing, that the non-transit users DEMAND that public transit users should or must fill ALL the seats and most of the standing room. Yet, that automobiles are not to be given that same leeway.
According to this website, in Europe, the occupancy rates by commuters going to and from work is about 1.1-1.2 people per automobile. For family trips, it’s 1.4-1.7, while travel or leisure trips it’s 1.6-2.0. I’m assuming that for Canada and, especially, in the United States, those numbers will be much lower.
Toronto has been pushing the capacity of its public transit higher and higher, while ignoring the same capacity requirement for automobiles.
Steve: The difference is all that “empty space” on public transit is perceived as waste, while empty space in cars (not to mention on roads if any can be found) is part of the convenience of motoring.
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With regards to Olivia Chow’s 10% increase in bus service
It does represent a starting point, however, it would make sense to me, to do a 10% increase initially, and then maintain a fleet growth at say 5% until the old loading standard was achieved. This approach would also offer a chance to see how load growth occurred when space was offered, and a chance for transit to have a larger impact on congestion. If this capacity was rapidly filled, clearly you have an answer.
Some of these buses likely should be used in Rocket services, in order to reduce travel time, and make transit more attractive even on the longer rides.
Would it make sense to have large shelters at Rocket stops, in order to provide for an attractive place for riders to transfer between the finer grained and more express services?
Also, while I am not a believer in large subway extensions, I think that Toronto needs to look long at adding parallel capacity as opposed to extensions to its subways. Yonge to Steeles makes sense to me only in that it offers a chance to build more turning capacity and the line is currently heavily used to at least Sheppard.
Yes I agree, and I also agree with your commentary with regards to Danforth’s limits. It also does not yet enjoy the advantage of TR trains. I would actually suggest that 26K is generous (hence my comment under 27k), but, at that it is not yet experiencing the overload conditions on Yonge. The Eglinton LRT, should also have some minor effects on load growth on Danforth. I would argue that the largest threats that the Danforth line faces at this point are the possibility of it being extended very close to or into Markham, which could potentially divert a lot of traffic onto this line which really belongs elsewhere, and a failure to build a Don Mills subway (especially before any important extension).
If a Don Mills subway is actually built it should divert some riders onto the Crosstown and the down a Don Mills subway even from east of Victoria Park. The Crosstown represents a reasonable additional parallel capacity to Danforth. The eventual conversion to TR trains, and new switching should also add a little capacity. However, network wise what is required is for the Crosstown to be joined by another rapid route to the core east of Yonge. The issue on the Bloor end of the line should also be slightly aided by the Crosstown, and at this juncture there still seems a little capacity on the western side of YUS for that to work. Additional capacity from an extra turn around at both ends of YUS of course would further aid the capacity of the network as a whole.
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I believe while the original plan was to have short-turns at Downsview, a change in the tunnel curve north of Downsview station made it impossible to build a storage track between the (present) tail tracks at Downsview. So now they are going to build a storage track north of Wilson Station and short turn the trains at Wilson. I’m not sure exactly where this storage track will be (maybe opposite Wilson Yard?) and if anyone has more info., please provide same.
It’s my understanding that the AM rush-hour short-turns that are presently executed at St. Clair West will shortly move up to Glencairn and then in a few years to Wilson and eventually to Finch West using the storage track being built north of Finch West station.
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Well that does sound dangerously close to advocacy. I gather Mr. Byford has either made a decision, as he cannot stand it anymore, or has a good pension or allowance otherwise.
I would hope that they could add some buses by simply using parking lots. They clearly then need to keep fleet size growing, even as the Spadina extension, Crosstown construction, Finch West LRT, Sheppard East LRT come into service, even though in theory these replace bus routes.
Could not the TTC also start by having some of its more basic functions in a prefab building that can be erected in a much shorter period, of course this requires approval from council which is itself a non trivial adventure. Hopefully this comment is the beginning of a drive towards greatly improved service, and a general move to improve fleet use (improved headway management), and fleet size.
I suspect that we are now at the point that to actually start to approach headway management, the TTC will require a large fleet, so that it can actually hope to have reasonably predictable run times and sufficient recovery time.
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About time that the TTC got into the 20th century with all-door boarding and POP on all the streetcars. Now if they implement time-based transfers (like on St. Clair), they’ll get into the 21st century.
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If you can’t increase the supply, then reduce the demand … or maybe you are asking the wrong question.
The real issue here is that the population of the City, and the GTA, has been growing faster than infrastructure, or more importantly, faster than the ability of the economy to create good jobs — unemployment in the 416 if 9.7% — nobody ever mentions that.
We could reduce demand by building cities where people live closer to where they work and shop — rather than a hub and spoke system with full vehicles in one direction heading in in the morning, and empty ones making the return journey, with the reverse in the evening — but that sort of change should have been required decades ago in the 905 and can’t be fixed in the short term.
The 905 is not carrying its share of population growth due to the greenbelt limiting sprawl, but the bigger issue is why is a GTA with an extra million or two people better than the GTA with out current population?
The unemployment rate in Ontario and all provinces in the east is far higher than the 4 western provinces — let them have the population growth. But reread Limits to Growth, Herman Daly or others and remember that growth has its environmental costs, and bringing more people into a wasteful country like Canada is not good for the planet.
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Is there any evidence that stop service times are better on Queen (where POP supposedly already exists) than on King? I am looking at the October 2012 service summary (trying to find something where King and Queen were unaffected by construction, and when Spadina cars were not all short turning at Charlotte). The average travel speed on Queen (Humber-Neville) was about 1.2 km/h faster thank King during rush hours (e.g. 13.3 vs 14.5). But the average speed on Queen would presumably be influenced by the ROW section along the Queensway.
Not to doubt the conventional wisdom, but more to express some wariness given that we frequently hear statements of “We know [x] is a problem, but once [y] arrives, it will solve [x],” only to find that the effectiveness of the solution has been oversold, or there are other underlying factors that would also need to be addressed, or the benefit of [y] has been offset by some other element that is now less efficient. (e.g.: “We know streetcar bunching is a problem, but once we start running the higher-capacity streetcars more frequently, they won’t bunch up any more!”)
One reason I am wary about the claims about all-door boarding is that recent public comments have also extended the benefits to alighting, even though there will be no change for alighting passengers (there will be twice as many doors, but the cars will be twice as long and carry twice as many passengers, and if they exit in single file instead of in a dual stream as today, then alighting times will be longer).
Steve: One change for both directions is the low floor which will speed boarding and alighting by anyone who now has difficulty with this. People packages, groceries, luggage, baby carriages, etc., will no longer be the obstruction to flow they are today. Also, because of all-door loading, internal circulation won’t be as much of an issue (imagine if everyone boarded a subway car by only one of its four doors!). It will no longer be necessary to push your way through the crowd, or conversely to hog a space near the door, to be sure that you can actually get off at your stop.
As for Queen vs King and stop service times, I have been doing a lot of work on King recently as part of the city’s traffic study, and something that shows up (no surprise to regular riders) is that “gap cars” take longer at stops because of onboard congestion. Also, the interaction of traffic signals with stop service is especially bad when a “parade” of cars arrives after a gap. Looking at Queen is a future, but obvious, comparison.
It will also be interesting to see how the King car’s behaviour changes when it goes to POP.
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I do not think we ought to judge POP by the Queen experience as it is POP in name only. I have never seen (or heard of) fare inspectors on Queen and if POP were actually being enforced surely operators should force all passengers paying with cash, tickets or tokens to take a transfer. If not they have no proof they paid. As there is now no inspection there is no problem: if the TTC gets serious about inspection this will change. (Will these inspectors be able to demand an immediate fine payment from those with no proof as those in European cities can? Having seen someone actually handing over a wad of Euros in Vienna I could see that this would be a useful reminder for other passengers!)
I agree with WK Lis that this would be the time to bring in timed transfers – if for no other reason that nobody will be trying to inspect them when entering.
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Steve,
Theoretically, if we were to split the 2-sides of the Y-U-S-Vaughan line into 2 halves, would that allow us to address some more of the Yonge Line issues?
I realize this may not be feasible due to the need for more space/pocket tracks at union, and that ripping up front street again is a non-started, but I’m curious about this from a best practices POV.
Should we have put a 3rd or even 4th set of rails during the Union renos to allow for this?
Steve: Years ago there was a proposal for a four-tracked Union Station, but it would have been very tight. In any event, that is no longer an option. Also, splitting the lines would discourage round-the-horn travel from University to south Yonge.
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The real failure was that when the railwaylands/Skydome was being built, they could have roughed in some tunnels under the road, much as was done on the Bloor Viaduct.
What really bugs me is that we are building all these condos within walking distance of Union Station – it should be nearly off office development. Now we have First Gulf saying that the Unilever site will be like Canary Wharf as a second financial centre (which makes little sense… even if they put in a second GO station nearby) when we had ample land for office towers just a few years ago, but most of it is gone in the condo boom… the Mirvish/Gehry site should have been office space given its location on the PATH etc.
Steve: Actually, until quite recently, there was little market for new office space and indeed the second phase of the Bay-Adelaide Centre sat barely above grade level for years. Developers build what the market wants, and what it wanted was condos downtown. The Unilever site would make a nice GO station, but an even better DRL/Don Mills Subway station. It’s even on John Tory’s SmartTrack and so all bases are covered.
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Can’t they consider accelerating bus service through POP, even more aggressive TSP, etc.? These things can increase capacity of service by increasing frequency without requiring more vehicles.
Steve: It will be a lot for the TTC to bite off even to get the streetcar system converted to POP, never mind the buses, although they will come in time, almost certainly faster than they originally planned.
It is important to remember that this type of change, as with Transit Signal Priority, does not confer a uniform benefit over an entire route, direction or time of day because existing conditions may not benefit from the changes. It’s very much a matter of micro-planning. A 10% improvement on a busy section of a route does not translate to a 10% reduction in round trip times. Also, these are one-time fixes, worth doing in their own right, but they will not provide a repeating source of “efficiency” that can be used to avoid future service and fare increases.
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Ok, so maybe more aggressive TSP isn’t something that can be implemented overnight, but what’s stopping Byford from trying to implement POP on bus routes sooner?
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I would suggest Steve that even when it is only the able bodied and empty handed, we will find that boarding a low floor vehicle is faster and smoother. There seems to be a larger space requirement, and a break in flow when you have to climb or go down stairs. I would think that 100% low flow, all door boarding, providing the space beyond the doors is not too constricted should represent a substantial improvement.
Also in the case of King, the new proposed headway being as tight as it is, should mean that there is much more space and many more doors for riders to use. Is the current proposal not to have basically same number of cars even after the new cars are fully deployed on King? The only problem will be that some those frustrated riders will return to, or perhaps start using the line. Personally I find it confusing that King, which seems to be the most overloaded line is not the first to get the cars.
Steve: The last time the TTC published a fleet plan (2014 budget), the King car would see about a 50% increase in capacity. That’s a calculation I made, and it involves certain assumptions about how the TTC would convert the existing “tripper” service whose primary function is to provide a wave of frequent service during the eastbound AM peak lasting about one hour. Depending on the ratio of new cars assigned to trippers vs regulars, the percentage increase in capacity will not be the same across the entire route.
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Thanks for this, Steve, very interesting to read. I recently moved to the western side of the Bloor-Danforth, and my daily commute takes me to Spadina and then north along the Spadina line. Sounds like I’m extremely lucky – my sections still seem like they have some capacity left, and since I’m within walking distance of stations at both ends, I won’t feel the peak-hours bus shortages.
While we may face some serious crunches going forward, I take a lot of heart in the fact that transit seems to be a top priority in Toronto right now. Even if it is being foolishly manipulated politically, it has been front and centre in both the municipal and provincial elections. People care. Will that finally move the much-needed DRL forward, or result in funding for the new garage? I don’t know. More people paying attention may make the political pandering over transit infrastructure worse, rather than better, but I’m at least optimistic that we can finally get some of this overdue infrastructure under way. As bad as the upcoming bus problems might be, they can be fixed in relatively short order with enough funding, at least when compared to the time required to build a DRL.
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You’re forgetting that BD lacks the curves and grades that cause the slowdowns YUS has. As a line that’s mostly straight with higher average speeds, it can handle much more than the numbers Karl has quoted, and will be able to handle even more when it’s changed over to a new signal system.
As for POP, I predict it will be abandoned faster than Lower Bay was after the TTC sees its revenues drop. The TTC will eliminate the unlimited pass just as GO did, and Torontonians will cheat on short trips when evading an enforcement officer is as simple as getting off at the next stop. Just stand or sit next to the doors on all trips! With GO, it’s different. The enforcement officers can do quick sweeps because the aisles are clear and the stops are far apart. Even so, I’ve seen people duck into washrooms.
As for the constant funding/service rant, most politicians and upper-middle class folks don’t use public transit. The little people do — no offense. The ones who get fed up do what they can to get a car and drive. Those are the smart ones. The ones who don’t (or can’t for whatever reason) suck it up and suffer because they have no choice. The suburbs hold the power my friend, and it’s been that way since the 70s. The TTC is intentionally trying to squeeze the non-captive rider out of the system because they know the money just isn’t there to provide a comfortable service. When capacity was available in the 60s and 70s, it was the other way around, but our funding priorities have changed since then. Healthcare eats a lot of what previously went into transit.
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Steve, I don’t think the figure of 252 streetcars available in 1997 is correct. 196 CLRVs plus 52 ALRVs gives 248. Even if you add the two PCCs and the Witt you are only up to 251. 🙂
Steve: Ooops … my mistake … yes, it was only 248. I will fix the article.
Subway terminal backups don’t depend on the end of rush hour or changeovers. When I was riding regularly to Finch station, in the 7:00 AM range, it was still possible to get queues starting at far south as Sheppard. If we crept into Sheppard, I would take the Sheppard subway to Don Mills to get to Seneca College instead.
Steve: But the problem is similar — trains are arriving early. The basic problem is that if the service is late, there is no intermediate point headway control holding trains back, and they get to the terminals (or as near as possible) early. This is a long-standing problem, but it was most noticeable after the AM peak when the service was just late enough for IPHC to be ineffective, and trains to pile up at terminals because they had more running time than (without IPHC) they needed at the end of the rush hour.
Operators on 501 and 508 do not routinely open all doors for POP, even where it will likely speed up service. Passengers have grown to expect this, and try to get on at the front as usual. As soon as someone tries to get off with a baby carriage, it all comes to a dead halt.
Steve: Yes it will be interesting to see a change to all doors opening all of the time. Even then, until we have fare machines at all doors, people who do not have passes and transfers will not be able to (legitimately) use the other sets of doors.
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