Fourth Quarter 2014 Update: Results for fourth quarter of 2014 have been consolidated into a new table below.
Route_Performance_Summary_2014Q4
The headway reliability numbers for many routes continue to lie well below the TTC’s targets for bus and streetcar operations.
Routes which have improved by more than 10% since 3Q14 are:
51 Leslie, 60 Steeles West, 125 Drewry, 126 Christie, 172 Cherry Street, 198 UTSC Rocket, 301 Queen Night, 322 Coxwell Night, and 512 St. Clair
Routes which have declined by more than 10% since 3Q14 are:
35 Jane, 36 Finch West, 55 Warren Park, 66 Prince Edward, 87 Cosburn, 88 South Leaside, 97 Yonge, 109 Ranee, 111 East Mall, 122 Graydon Hall, 133 Neilson, 141 Downtown via Mt. Pleasant Express, 160 Bathurst North, 161 Rogers Road, 162 Lawrence-Donway, 195 Jane Rocket, 224 Victoria Park North, 502 Downtowner and 508 Lakeshore
A few items worth noting:
- Service quality has declined considerably on both of the Jane routes despite a recent reorganization into local and express services, and adjusted running times to match actual experience.
- Reliability of the Blue Night services continues to be poor at a time when (a) there is no “congestion” on most routes as an excuse for delays, and (b) reliability is of particular importance to riders.
- The 501 Queen car at 52% (nothing to crow about) is more reliable than the Downtown Beach Express Bus at 45%.
Looking at the data over a two-year period, a very long list of routes has seen a decline of more than 10% in headway reliability. Only a few routes, mostly night services, have improved by more than 10% since 1Q13:
- 10 Van Horne, 52 Lawrence West (which has been reorganized since 1Q13), 90 Vaughan, 102 Markham Road, 117 Allness, 171 Mount Dennis, 301 Queen Night, 303 Don Mills Night, 308 Finch East Night, 309 Finch West Night, 311 Islington Night, 322 Coxwell Night, 353 Steeles East Night and 385 Sheppard East Night
Third Quarter 2014 Update:
The statistics have not changed much from the second quarter. One issue with many routes operating on wide headways (night services and express routes) is that they have consistently low performance values. Such routes should, of course, be measured for on-time performance, not headway adherence, because missed vehicles have a far graver effect on would be riders than on a route that operates every 5 minutes. Express-to-downtown routes (the 140 series) should be measured for on time performance in their catchment areas. Their headway once they are on the express leg of their journey is of no consequence to riders.
Second Quarter 2014 Update:
There is little change in the route performance statistics for the second quarter despite our having emerged from a bitter winter. The change from Q1 to Q2 is less than 10% for most routes with some improving and others falling behind. Those that are beyond the 10% mark can, in some cases, be explained by route-specific issues such as construction, but not all of them.
Two new routes appear for the first time, 172 Cherry and 195 Jane Rocket. It is mildly amusing that the Cherry bus, which must fight its way through construction downtown, manages a 69% reliability score while the Jane express service manages only 58%.
In this quarter, the 58 Malton and 52 Lawrence routes were combined. Their former scores in the mid-50% range have astoundingly improved to 81% on the consolidated route. I will follow this up with the TTC to see what magic they have wrought here.
First Quarter 2014 Update:
Route_Performance_Summary_2014Q1
The reported reliability stats continue to be dismal. Although it is tempting to say “ah, yes, but Toronto had an appallingly bad winter”, there is a basic problem here: the statistics reported by the TTC didn’t change very much and many routes actually improved relative to the end of 2013.
I will not rehash my critiques of this method of reporting service quality (see the original article below) beyond noting the the TTC’s targets show that irregular service will be the norm — 1 in 3 trips can exceed the target, but service remains acceptable. This means that in a typical day, a rider can expect to encounter at least one “off target” service in their travels.
Finally, a long-standing issue has been the inability to maintain reliable service on the Queen car due to its length and the mixture of Humber and Long Branch services. Although April 2014 is not included in these statistics, the CEO’s report for June 2014 notes an improvement in that month’s streetcar average:
The increase in performance was attributable to the turnback of the 501 Queen route at Humber Loop for the Gardiner bridge work. This shortened the route and promoted a more reliable eastbound service. [Page 10]
The original article from October 24, 2013, follows below.
The TTC has just published its headway reliability results for the third quarter of 2013. These numbers purport to show the percentage of service that operates within 3 minutes, give or take, of the scheduled headway on each route. The goal is that bus service does this 65% of the time and streetcar service 70% of the time.
On a daily basis, these numbers are rolled up to the system level, but this hides wide variations by route and time of day. Weekends are not reported on at all.
The system barely manages to achieve its goal on good days, and has little headroom to absorb events such as bad weather.
To simplify browsing the route-by-route data, I have consolidated the three quarterly reports into one table. The information is listed both by route, and ranked by the reliability index.
[The table originally linked here has been replaced with an updated version at the start of the article.]
There are many problems with these numbers:
- On routes with short headways, it is easy to be within 3 minutes of target. Indeed, it is difficult to get beyond that target, and even a parade of buses or streetcars may count as one “off target” and several (the parade itself) “on target”.
- There is no measure of bunching, nor is there any indication of whether all or only part of the scheduled service actually operated over most or all of a route.
- There is no definition of what part(s) and directions of the route are measured, or how this might skew reported values. Performance at locations beyond common short-turn points may not be reported, or may be masked by data from central parts of a route.
- There is no time-of-day reporting. From service analyses presented on this site, it is clear that across the system, service at evenings and weekends is much less well-managed (assuming it is managed at all).
- On routes with wide headways, on-time operation is more relevant to riders than headway because they must plan journeys based on the schedule. This is particularly important where connections between infrequent services are part of a trip.
The TTC acknowledges that the headway adherence measurements are inadequate, and they are working on “Journey Time Metrics” based on the scheme used in London, UK. This approach looks at typical trips and the time required including access, waiting, in vehicle and transfer times to better reflect service as seen by a rider. For example, a frequent service with well-regulated headways is useless if the buses are full. An advertised headway is meaningless if half of the service is randomly short-turned and wide gaps are a common experience. The effect of a big delay in someone’s trip is much more severe than a short one because this adds to the unpredictability of journey times.
How, exactly, this will be boiled down into representative journeys while still preserving a granular view into system operations will be interesting to see. I believe that a combination of metrics will be needed, and the managerial penchant for a single index to report the behaviour of a large and complex system is dangerous because of what it hides. (I say this also from personal, professional experience in another field.) Without the details, the organizational goal becomes one of “gaming” the system to ensure a lovely column of green tick marks on a scorecard that masks pervasive problems.
Steve Munro 
Why is headway adherence so low for the 503, the 508, and the 140-series bus routes? Is the service quality unusually bad on these routes, or is the fact that they don’t run all day somehow skewing the numbers?
Steve: The 503 Kingston Road car has been more or less a free spirit for the last few months. At the west end it turns back at Church, and in the east it turns at Woodbine Loop. It and the 502 Downtowner (also turning at Woodbine Loop) operate more as extras on Queen (and can be found at Neville Loop filling gaps) than as their own route. It will be interesting to see how service east of Woodbine Loop on Queen collapses once these cars go back to Kingston Road.
The 508 has a schedule but actually staying to it is a sometime thing. Inbound AM trips may be compromised by how these runs are crewed, and I suspect that they don’t reliably leave Roncesvalles on time. Outbound PM trips have the combined effect of traffic to reach their starting point and, again, possibly not leaving the carhouse reliably.
As for the express buses, it would be interesting to know how these numbers are calculated. For example, after a bus has left its last pick-up stop inbound, it doesn’t really matter what the headway is. Outbound, I suspect that having buses drive in from the suburbs to downtown where they get fouled in traffic plays havoc with their actual departure times.
Peak only operations generally don’t have quite the incentive to run on time as regular runs because they will go back to the carhouse/garage after one or two trips rather than having to fit into base service.
It would be interesting to hear from any operators who have a better feel for the on-the-ground behaviour of these services.
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Interesting stuff.
And really a shame that they can’t go after some of the low-hanging fruit. Take night buses for example. The stats on them aren’t terrible because of traffic congestion and construction.
They are terrible because they’ve never bothered to develop realistic schedules that can be achieved without having to frequently park the bus and wait for a few minutes (which is almost more infuriating than standing there at the stop 5-minutes early, and seeing the once-ever-30 minute bus vanish in the distance).
If you start looking at other GTA transit agencies – Mississauga for example, and you look closely at the schedules, you see that almost every run has a different timing – because they’ve altered the schedule on a run-by-run basis to match reality. TTC however has not ever attempted to do this type of scheduling – despite it’s greater resources, and now data about what really happens.
Sure, we’re never going to have 100% … but when is TTC going to start at least doing what other GTA agencies have no problems doing?
Steve: Once upon a time, the TTC published detailed schedules for the night routes showing the times vehicles would be at major stops along the way. There were protected connections at specific locations, and the regular riders knew where they were and how to make reasonably fast trip using them. When the network expanded into the suburbs (and the TTC killed off some of the downtown routes), they made no attempt to publish and enforce schedules let alone timed meets.
This sort of work is long overdue.
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The Q3 data shows greater reliability for the 124 Sunnybrook bus (73.1%) than for the 162 Lawrence-Donway bus (62.2%). My experience is that the 162 bus is much more reliable than the 124. A few times in the AM rush hours, all four 124 buses seemed to be bunched up at Lawrence Station while the 162 buses seem to be reasonably close to schedule. From personal observation, the 124 buses are off-schedule more often than the 162. (The 2 routes overlap on Lawrence Ave. east of Bayview Ave.)
Steve: It is possible that on an all-day basis, the stats come out differently. This illustrates how an obvious serious problem — having all of the buses at one point on the line — is simply not reported as part of the stats.
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I suggest that everyone read this blog article about this subject (which started with a comment made by you about the reliability of TTC service). I suggest we add in the metric of # of crush loaded buses and # of times short turns were needed. As a final comment regarding the customer service approach that Byford claims to adhere to:
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I agree with you that having one measure for a complex system is likely to give meaningless results or a false sense of accomplishment! One piece of information that would surely be useful would be information on % short-turns; a very useful metric, certainly on streetcar routes which are short-turned with alarming frequency.
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These stats always amuse me. I often wonder what the explanation for the 06:30 weekday 15-20 minute gaps on Queen would be. It can’t be traffic because there is none. From what I can surmise these runs are supposed to be coming straight from the yard but there’s nothing.
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Aside from the obvious direct benefits to riders of timed connections, it occurs to me that promising them implicitly forces a no-nonsense approach to schedule adherence. Both operators and managers know that if they don’t do their part (driving according to the schedule for operators, providing operators the tools and incentives to do so for management), it will be immediately and undeniably obvious. Contrast this with today’s regular parades, which could be significantly reduced by trivial no-cost management action (or even operator action, although I don’t blame operators for not caring if management doesn’t care).
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There was a comment, years ago, on the GO service, that the customers valued consistency over speed. You want to know that if you are on the platform, or street corner, at 7:55, you will be in your place of work before 9:00.
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I’m a bit curious about the TTC practice of short-turns. In many places where I’ve lived or visited, when I talk to the locals about how to use the transit system there, they are horrified when I describe to them the common practice here of short-turning a late vehicle, and the notion that you could get on a bus/streetcar that doesn’t end up traveling to the listed destination. How did short-turns evolve to be commonplace here, and what do other cities do about late service?
Steve: A big problem here is that the schedules don’t match actual operating conditions a lot of the time and, moreover, when there are short turns, they are often not managed so that the car/bus that turns back actually re-enters service to fill a gap rather than joining a through vehicle in a convoy.
There are two major issues in Toronto. First off, the “art” of line management was lost years ago when on-street route supervision was cut back, and there was a premise that someone sitting at a rather primitive computer console could manage routes. That assumes that anyone was actually even monitoring routes, and many don’t have any central supervision. Second, thanks to an ongoing problem with ops getting back late from their shifts, there is a heavy penalty for the TTC in overtime payment to ensure that workers finish more or less on time. This cascades because of the TTC’s ongoing budget problems to a mentality of keeping operators on time at all cost.
The entire situation is not helped by the poisonous relations between TTC management and the union representing operators. I have no sense that anyone wants to figure out a solution that can be applied system-wide, and it suits TTC management to keep portraying “congestion” as an insurmountable obstacle to provision of reliable service. There is a “not my problem” corporate culture at the TTC of which this is a sterling example. Couple this with service quality measurements that do not adequately portray the extent of reliability problems, and you have a recipe for inaction.
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It seems to be a frequent occurrence to see 34 Eglinton East buses westbound short turning at Bayview, i.e. not reaching Yonge. This is in spite of the fact that no Eglinton LRT work has started yet east of Yonge. Why does the TTC do this, instead of only short turning at the east end (e.g. turning buses at Victoria Park)?
Steve: Actually, all routes in that part of the world short-turn back eastbound from Bayview. In theory this should only happen when there are other buses going through to Yonge to maintain service, but at times it can cause large outbound gaps on a route like Flemingdon Park which does not run often in the rush hour to Eglinton Station (most of the service stays east of Don Mills).
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The Toronto bus network is unique in North America. Most people in other cities are freaked out to hear about short turns, because their buses do not operate as frequently as in Toronto.
I really don’t have much issues with the TTC bus system. As I have said before, there are some bus routes which consistently do not operate on time. The TTC seems to have addressed some of these with the last service change. But overall, I have to say the buses almost always come when scheduled whenever I take them.
I have also made extensive use of the night bus service in the past, and the service except for a once or twice in the all the years I have taken it, has always operated on time.
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I see route 6 is low on the list, even though it was very regular and reliable 25-30 years ago. Current poor performance was well demonstrated, this morning, as I took a bus from Bay/Bloor to Bay/Queen. One bus left the stop as I left my front door. No biggie I thought, I’ll catch the next one; that, of course, would be the one that sailed past the stop 15 seconds later. After waiting for about ten minutes, a bus appeared, going northbound. Immediately behind it was another almost empty bus, and yet another immediately behind that.
When the first northbound bus had turned around and picked us up, the second was right behind it, overtaking us just south of Wellesley. Evidently, the road works at the top of Bay Street were sufficiently problematic to separate the two buses.
If the TTC can’t get the headways even reasonably spaced at one stop from the route terminus, what hope is there?
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There is definitely some masking effect with the metrics, this becomes obvious when looking at only the streetcar service (chosen as a small complete group with similar working conditions and challenges)
510 ~82.3% – no surprise
SPADINA is a well-established operation, with frequent bunching and a shortened ROW
512 ~80.3% – no surprise
ST CLAIR is a robust line with five loops and featuring two regular short turn services
511 ~77.5% – this number can’t be right
BATHURST is slow moving, infrequent (stopped in the road) with no useful short turns
509 ~69.2% – impressive
HARBOURFRONT for a bus travelling through a disaster area, this number isn’t bad!
504 ~69.1% – this number can’t be right
KING – service is constantly short turned at Dufferin, only runs well after 7pm
506 ~58.4% – completely baffling
CARLTON two regular short turns, and less traffic than other routes, I’ve always found this to be a go-to through town (at least Coxwell to Lansdowne, usually Roncesvalles)
505 ~53.7% –
DUNDAS not surprising that it’s less reliable than 506/504 I’d think that moving north and west at the same time would make for a quick trip- one would be wrong
501 ~50.1% –
QUEEN our ‘legendary’ trunk line, with both yards and loops and short turn points available practically everywhere (even WOLSELEY is more useful to 501 than 511)
502 ~38.9% –
DOWNTOWNER while this service does exist, it barely does better than it’s ghost
503 ~36.5% –
KINGSTON ROAD the Queen supplementer does nothing for its namesake
508 ~17.9% –
LAKESHORE is a fictitious route that does not exist
It’s no surprise that SPADINA and ST. CLAIR WEST are listed as ~80% reliable, and that the Kingston Road cars (infrequent and/or missing) are listed as ~30% (unreliable), and that the 508 is part of some military spending secret (~14% shouldn’t be possible)
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Steve, because you are coming out to south Etobicoke this month….
I just saw (5 PM Friday) four 501 shuttle buses come by westbound at Thirtieth St. Four. There were one or two cars in between a couple of them, and that’s it. No dispatching, no headway control.
Granted, traffic west of Thirtieth is bad because lanes are closed for the rebuilding of the various islands. And I don’t know how bad Queensway and Park Lawn might be. But there is no reason for four buses to be travelling in a circus-elephant parade.
“Get rid of the streetcars, they bunch up too much!” Ha ha, no route control, even a stub 507-type bus service bunches more than you can imagine is possible. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen four streetcars that close together on Lake Shore.)
Steve: I hope to get some vehicle tracking data for October to analyze in advance of the meeting.
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As an Operator, all I will say is that there should be a heavy financial penalty to the TTC. If the (lack of) Service Planning Department would get their heads out of their backsides and actually update their out of date scheduling (some route schedules are 25 – 30 years old!!), you might find that reliability would improve. Compounding the fact of out of date schedules, we also had to suffer with the Ford administration’s (and Karen Stintz’s TTC Commissioner’s) cut backs and increased loading standards which have resulted in less frequent, more overcrowded vehicles.
After I have spent my day in the seat, it is more than reasonable for me to expect to finish more or less on time — ten or more minutes late is unreasonable in my mind. After ten minutes late, I am paid double time for my “late in” — this is not unreasonable as I have an expectation of having some semblance of a personal life outside of work!! Before people jump all over me for being “selfish”, keep in mind that during the winter major snowstorms, I arrive at work at least half an hour early (often leaving home 45 – 60 minutes earlier than usual) to make sure that my vehicle has heat and that the windows and mirrors are fully defrosted. Before myself and my Union are demonized, just remember that we give our all to deliver service; we are NOT responsible for the actions and decisions of the management, the Commissioners, or the politicians at City Hall!
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Gord, I must agree with you about the age of the schedules. Here is another prime example of service planning not even paying attention to the public or the drivers.
When the Malton 58 and Maple Leaf 59 were extended to Lawrence Station due to construction at Lawrence West Stn, service along Lawrence Ave West from Allen Rd to Yonge was the best it has been in years. What did it cost the TTC, two extra buses. The public was elated, as was told to me by numerous customer service reps who were getting 5-10 compliments per day about the service. How did the TTC planning respond to this. They put both routes back to the shortened Lawrence West Stn.
Now here is another interesting thing I have heard, the Malton 58 is being extended to Lawrence Station and the Lawrence West 52 is being cut back to Lawrence West Station, with a short turn service between Scarlett Road and Lawrence West using the buses removed from the Lawrence West 52C service. There is finally going to be two-way service along Culford, Gulliver, Ingram, Benton by the Maple Leaf 59 at ALL times (it only took 30 years to do this change since Maple Leaf has been going to Lawrence West Station when the Spadina subway opened). Right now there is only ONE-way service during rush hours along these streets that are serviced by 15 apartment buildings on one side and industrial on the other side of Keele.
If TTC planners were on the road, like I had to be when I was at Mississauga Transit, they would know what is actually happening in the field.
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As you note, these metrics are really not terribly helpful as they take no account of unscheduled short-turns – which seem to be more and more common on routes like the 504 King (where service east of Church is getting much worse, presumably because cars are turned back westbound at Church to help those living in King West.) One problem with short-turns is that the (generally very useful) NextBus displays do not tell one if a vehicle is going to ‘the end of the line’. Makes one wonder if they should not create short-turn route numbers (504A?) so that these would actually show up on the displays with useful information.
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Steve, in your post you asked about Operator’s “on the ground” experiences. I USED to quite regularly operate on the 143 Beach Premium Express (and to a lesser extent on the 144 and 141 when both were operating out if Birchmount Division); these routes are a nightmare for Operators!
In the AM, you would deadhead from Birchmount to Neville Loop to go into service; your first trip to downtown would depart on time and run downtown arriving on time at Adelaide/Simcoe. You would then head back to Neville for the second trip; most days you would never make it! Birchmount CIS would quite often “borrow” a bus from 64 Main or 92 Woodbine South to leave Neville on the scheduled time, meeting up with us somewhere like Coxwell/Eastern to do a street changeover in order to keep to schedule! There were 3 buses serving the 143 with 2 of the runs doing 2 trips and the other doing 3 trips.
Nobody ever arrived back at the garage on time. It wasn’t unusual to book 15 to 30 minutes late-in every day! The PM buses were just as bad. These were actually very long crews with substantial split times in between – you would do the 143 in the AM and then do a PM rush bus on a line such as 24 or other long route. I hit the point where I was just so fed up dealing with the mess of the Premium Expresses that I stopped signing these crews.
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The short turns on the 168 Symington are bad. Most of the people go from Bloor to St Clair. From St Clair to Weston Rd. you have the Keele bus. Southbound there is only the 168. I have seen many buses short turned southbound at Davenport and Symington with only 4-5 people on and when the next bus gets to Dundas West there are 10-20 people who cannot get on the bus. If they short turned northbound at St. Clair the only people delayed would be those going north of St. Clair who have the option of transferring to the Keele Bus.
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In my experience, 511 Bathurst route is not too bad. Yes it runs in mixed traffic, and is rather slow, but I did not encounter huge gaps in service. Same goes for 506 College.
505 Dundas and 501 Queen are definitely worse. When I was working in downtown, I quickly realized that waiting for them is not a good idea if you need to travel a short distance. I boarded them only if they were in sight, otherwise took subway or just walked.
501 suffers due to its length, and 505, probably due to extreme congestion on Dundas between Yonge and Bay.
510 Spadina and 512 St Clair are reliable, which can be expected as they run in dedicated lanes.
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Hi Steve:-
I ride the 300, BD Blue Night route every Sunday morning eb from Ossington in the 7:10 am area. I live at Danforth and Vic Park, so a well working line gets me home in short order and right to my apartment door. It’s actually better than the subway, then transfer. But 6 of the last 11 Sundays have seen my bus short turned at Main Street. Sometimes the wait for another bus is only a few moments as it may be right behind, but on two of the coldest mornings it has been over 10 to 15 minutes, and this after having waited 15 minutes or more to get on a sardine can of a bus in the first place. Main St. is a significant walking distance from my stop and after a full night shift on my feet, I’m not too keen on that kind of a hike.
This Sunday past was one of those windy cold mornings. The wait at Ossington was 17 minutes for an 8 minute service. The bus was jammed and not everyone at Ossington could get on. Some of the stops that had potential riders waiting were zipped past due to the crush. Then, still with a full seated load, we were short turned at Main. It was another 10 minutes before a bus came to be able to continue the journey, and it wasn’t a 300 but a 113.
You know, as a seasoned transit rider I can understand some problems, but this is well under 50% reliability. Turning a full seated load bus with none behind it is unconscionable and Transit Control is showing its inability to cope on behalf of their loyal riders.
Once is excusable, twice understandable, but less than 50% is sickeningly poor.
Dennis
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I read Dennis Rankin’s comments with a great deal of interest. It has been a while since I have operated any Sunday service as I typically take Sunday/Monday as my off days. I will, however, pass on some experiences and observations that may shed some light on what Dennis has experienced.
We must always keep in mind that Sunday service starts at 9:00 am; therefore, most “regular” bus routes start in the 8:00 to 8:30 timeframe to allow the first trip to the subway to enter an open station with trains running. Night buses start running in the 1:30 to 2:00 am timeframe (although night bus “crews” start around 9:00 pm) and typically finish around 5:30 am with the Operator finishing back at the garage by 6:00 am. On Sunday morning this causes a problem: how is service provided after the night buses finish and the subway starts? The TTC puts out night bus service (Operators colloquially call them “Baby Blue Nights”) that operate night bus schedules and then go on to provide “regular service”. Luckily (for me) I have, for the most part, been able to avoid the 300 and 320!
To give you an example using a route that I have done “Baby Blue Night” service on: Route 302 Danforth- McCowan. N/B service ends at 5:07 at Danforth/Danforth (DD) and at 5:37 at Steeles/McCowan (ST). “Baby” service provided by 45 run 16: 5:40 DD, 6:10 ST, 6:40 DD, 7:10 ST, 7:40 DD then deadhead to Warden Stn to enter service on 16. The other bus is 44 run 17 (previously 12): 5:10 DD, 5:40 ST, 6:10 DD, 6:40 ST, 7:10 DD, 7:40 ST, 8:10 DD then deadhead to Warden Stn to enter service on 17 (previously d/h to Victoria Park Stn to enter service on 12). I have operated both the 16/45 and 12/44 – total nightmare – not enough run time, high load volume, heavy traffic on the route, etc. Quite often, I was late enough coming off 303 that I was late entering service on 16 or 12!
So, in a very round about way, I’ll come back to Dennis’ question/comment. I spoke with a CIS Supervisor today about his situation. The “Baby Blues” are run out of Malvern until they go to their regular routes. Most “Baby Blues” are the “First Bus” on their regular routes; therefore, the priority is to get them to their regular route on time! If a 300 is short turned at Main, it is at least ten minutes behind time. The s/t at Main would put it back on time for its w/b trip.
Hopefully this brief explanation will help to clarify the messed up Sunday morning “Baby Blue” service. I could go into greater detail and give an awful lot of personal opinion here, but I just wanted to give a brief example (although it is quite a long post – sorry Steve).
Steve: Thanks for all of the detail. If, as Dennis suggests, a short turn is required a great deal of the time to accommodate the transition from Baby Blue to regular daytime service, then the schedule is screwed up. Yet another example of somebody missing critical details and providing bad service as a result.
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For what it’s worth Steve, the TTC could develop excellent service metrics if it wished. In the computer world, there’s something called a Monte Carlo simulation (like the casino), where you simply feed in a lot of test cases and take a look at the outcomes. Since the TTC has excellent location data for its fleet, it could run simulations of commuters against the data. For instance, it could have a commuter in Etobicoke trying to get to Yonge/Bloor, and leaving home at 6:00AM, 6:01, 6:02, 6:03….. and just see when each of those test commuters actually would have arrived. That can be run for any number of commuters with any number of trips to develop an “actual experience” metric (they need data about when vehicles are packed full and leaving people at the stops too, I’m not sure they collect that now). Have a set of test commuters that leave each stop in the TTC system and travel to every other stop, every five minutes. (Though really what you want is test data that is similar to actual user behavior.) This sounds like a lot of data crunching but it’s something that computers would make short work of. The problem areas would be instantly obvious. You could even run it as an ongoing thing during the day to make fixes on the fly.
Heck, the TTC could develop an app that people just install on their smartphones, that would tell them everything they need to know. Or even just ask Google, which is collecting this data (how fast the person is moving and where they are) already for its traffic/maps products.
The advantage of “actual experience” metrics is they would incorporate poor headways, bunching, short turns, all of that. If I’m waiting at a streetcar stop for 30 minutes, the reason may matter to the TTC but it doesn’t matter to me.
None of this would be particularly hard to do. They have all or almost all the data they need to do it.
Steve: The TTC is actually doing some of this, albeit on a smaller scale, now with their “Journey Time Metrics” that attempt to simulate the actual time a rider would take for various typical trips on the system. I understand unofficially that this has already revealed some problems with their current operations and schedules, but the issue then becomes what to do about it. In some cases, improved management of service will bring a change in effective capacity and reliability, but things like changing schedules to reflect actual road conditions, or running more vehicles to deal with actual demand cost money that the TTC, especially in our penny-pinching era, does not have.
Equally concerning is the fact that their detailed findings have not yet been published to give politicians and riders/voters a better sense of the true state of the transit system and what will be needed to put it in better shape.
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What are the odds that the TTC could start by trying to give the information to drivers to actually depart terminus locations on the indicated headway? (Basic start signal for drivers). Say start with Bathurst, and see what the impact was on capacity and service quality.
Perhaps they could do the same on a couple of other routes. Also track the number of missed signals. If there were no bus present to run the route at the scheduled headway it would be important to know why. If there is always a bus or more there, and drivers ready that too would also be important. There is a need for additional resources, however, it is equally important that the resources available be used correctly, and Gord’s previous point about borrowing buses from another route to make headway is an indication of a resource allocation issue to start with.
Management needs to be making the case for what it can do to improve headway management. Congestion would explain there being too few buses, but not buses running on top of each other only a few stops from the terminus.
Steve: There is a big problem with the limitations of the existing communication and vehicle tracking systems on buses. The hardware and software are decades old and suffer from functional limitations. Upgrading this system finally made it into the approved capital budget this year, but we will wait several more to see it actually on the street. What is definitely needed is more finely grained management of routes, but that requires (a) an acknowledgement of the problems and (b) a recognition that better service will not be “free” as long as managing it is labour intensive and uses outmoded technology.
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Could they not just provide a basic transit signal. There must be ways of making a small start without updating the entire system.
As for updating the complete system, better service would still not be free, but could likely be had for a much smaller investment than the alternatives. Also the current situation strikes me as being extremely destructive to relations in general, public, labour and customer. Fixing it, even with a much improved communication and control system will still require that someone actually cares, but at least it will be reasonably possible. Why irritate the customer? or place the driver in the line of fire?
Perhaps the TTC could start publishing headway distribution curves for each route, especially at terminus points, both for departures and arrivals (should thereby also highlight short turns in the outliers). Tightness of distribution around schedule could then be a point of discussion.
Steve: There is an ongoing problem within the TTC that Operations has not wanted Service Planning to tell the world just how bad the service is on the street. As for headway management, this is needed not just at terminals but along routes to break up bunches that form. The existing system already has the capability of telling drivers whether they are ahead of or behind schedule, but not where they are relative to target headways. This system is also complicated by the fact that it is driven by the “old” original tracking system that does not use GPS and frequently loses track of a vehicle’s actual position especially when it short turns or diverts off route.
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Agreed, however, if the bunch is not broken up, it should appear in the arrivals information. The notable blip at either end of the distribution curve (both at the short and long end of headway) at the terminus would then be something to be highlighted. It would also be very informative in terms of cause if the departures were much smoother than arrivals, however, in the current state I would be surprised, and would not expect either to appear normally distributed (although at least departures should be on time or late, with a somewhat tighter distribution).
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Hi Steve:
I was watching a clip on City News @ 6 and saw you on tv. Here’s the link:
Observe the guys on the bikes past the 2 minute mark —->lol
Steve: We were saluted at Broadview quite regularly, although because of the camera direction, this was out of the shot. Think of it as audience participation.
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Steve with regards to the new buses and headway management. How much of the current most serious overcrowding on some buses is due to headway management, and how much is due to a simply inadequate fleet?
Steve: It’s a combination of the two. If the TTC would maintain more reliable headways, then the demand would be better spread out and we would not have half-empty buses and streetcars following packed ones.
That said, we are now starting to see references in the service change memos to service improvements that are not being implemented for various reasons including availability of operators and the number of vehicles dedicated to construction relief services, not to mention the usual “budgetary limitations”. They are all tied together. If the budget says we are only going to run X amount of service, then the operator workforce is sized accordingly as is the fleet, garage space and maintenance staffing. Unless as a city we make a conscious decision to fund better service, we are going to be faced with the usual battle of the right saying “you have more than enough if only you would manage it properly” while people freeze in the cold waiting for a bus to show up that they can board.
Better management and realistic schedules (which can cost money because more vehicles may actually be needed to cover service over a longer route) might, and this is a very important “might”, provide one time improvements on selected routes, but they will not forestall the need to beef up service in response to growing demand.
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Steve clearly there would have to be some need, as simply having that high a loading standard and having it met or exceeded on an average basis would be a concern, even if load were near perfectly distributed, which it is clearly not. However it begs the size and rate of fleet increase required to provide reasonable service.
By the way what type of peak vehicle loading data does the TTC keep. This along with actual headway would be great to see on a distribution. Would love to see the shape of the curve. What is the incidence of loads on a bus over 55, over 60, over 70 … during peak what is the incidence of loads under say 40 and 30. Does not relieve the need for fleet growth in the face of growing ridership, but does speak to how attractive the current service is, and what it can be improved beyond just adding fleet. Good governance means providing required resources and making best possible use. Add the buses and drivers to achieve a better loading standard and management to ensure it is not just achieved on an average basis.
Steve: The TTC does keep loading stats, but they have been spotty in past years because of the expense of doing detailed counts. At one point, the “daily ridership” for the Queen car did not change for four years in the annual reports. Service Planning claims that they have other data they use to flag cases where more service is needed, but this doesn’t help when someone looks at published reports and sees out of date data. More recently, the TTC has buses equipped with automatic passenger counters. By cycling these around from route to route, they can get current data more easily. Again it is not published, but is available for bona fide research on request. The problem here is that it is not a 100% sample, and therefore cannot be directly tied to the level of detail available from the vehicle tracking system.
Averages, as you note, don’t work very well to deal with demands that arrive erratically at stops. A good example would be the Dufferin Bus at Bloor Street. Even if the buses were properly spaced, the relative difference between the subway headway (2’20”) and the bus headway (3’30” effective next Monday with artics) means that some buses will get the load from two trains while some get loads from only one. If there is a subway delay (a not unknown problem), some buses may get nobody from a subway transfer.
Other examples are surge loads from schools or any event that releases a large number of potential transit riders in a short time.
Unless there is a high ratio of demand to capacity, the peak is not uniform. Anyone riding the subway knows that the crowding of trains varies over the peak even though the service does not. If the TTC schedules service to meet the “superpeak” (which may last only half an hour), they will appear to be “wasting” service at different locations and times. Moreover, a route can have more than one peak location and direction, and these do not necessarily happen simultaneously.
The result is that even in an ideal situation where all service runs like a clock, the demand does not follow such orderly behaviour. The problem arises when a short term overload is allowed to grow into a chronic situation by extension in time through the entire “peak” and by erratic service. Without question, variations in demand are going to affect vehicle speed and spacing, but when buses leave terminals on uneven headways and little effort is made to correct this enroute, then the situation just compounds itself.
Presuming that we can “fix” this, remember that any effective gain in capacity is a one-time improvement and cannot forestall service adds forever. Indeed, not improving service can snowball because a small, occasional overload becomes chronic and impossible to manage. TTC planning staff have made the point that running with lighter loading standards can actually help service by avoiding stop service delays, but the Commission and Council only care that there is room for more riders “on average”.
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The answer is simple. Change the traffic lights so that it will give buses and streetcars signal priority as they approach intersection. Problem solved. Not hard at all.
Steve: This is not quite as easy as it seems especially with closely-spaced signals, very busy streets and frequent transit service. If transit vehicles run every 2 minutes (that’s an average of 60 seconds either way), there will always be a bus or streetcar approaching an intersection and it would almost never give a green to the cross street. The problem is compounded by near side stops where it would actually be advantageous for the transit vehicle to get a red when it arrives (provided that there are passengers to board or exit), but there is no mechanism in the current system for an operator to signal a green request, preferably just in advance of the completion of loading. For added complexity, there are intersections with competing transit demands.
The basic points here are that (a) a more sophisticated signal control mechanism is needed and (b) for frequent service in a downtown street configuration, there are limits to what can be done. That doesn’t mean that we “give up”, but that each location be understood for its possibilities and limitations.
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Steve is this not a spot where larger vehicles really could help run a more reliable service. If you have a 2-3 minute full light cycle you cannot practically run frequency higher than that regardless of demand, right? (Although you could in theory deliberately mimic a larger vehicle by running vehicles on top of each other, near simultaneous arrival).
However, could a larger vehicle in theory not run at or near the limit of the light cycle? So with a 3 minute full light cycle (start of green to start of green in the same direction) could you not in theory reset the light with the streetcar as long as you were working reasonable hard to hold headway? A light could in theory even be made to only provide priority if it had not been reset within a certain period, correct? The practicality of running this in 2 directions on the same street, or on multiple crossing routes would require a fairly complex approach would it not (two vehicles facing each other, light should wait until 2nd is nearly ready)? Would not transit in a high service area sometimes still find itself waiting on a light triggered by another transit vehicle?
However, reducing the number of vehicles triggering lights would make this much easier no? but would still require a very active management approach/system?
So my understanding is that with a lot of active management in dispatch and light control, along with enforcement on the street to make sure cars were not blocking intersections, you should be able to substantially improve service quality using light priority, as long as you have large enough vehicle to match load. Does this make sense?
Steve: The first problem is that the actual cycle is shorter than 3 minutes at downtown intersections. The reason for this is that a long cycle (such as is found on some suburban streets) would produce too long a queue of traffic on the cross street. Second, the peak headway on King is now 2′ in the AM peak. This will get a bit wider with the new cars, but nor proportionately as there is a backlog in requirement for more capacity. Third, it is the stop service times that are unpredictable for a variety of reasons.
As Robert Wightman points out in the following comment, there are only certain cycle lengths that are used for traffic signals, and these will not likely match the scheduled headway (let alone a situation where two routes cross).
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What about the pedestrians that are part way across the street. The design time for pedestrians is 1 second for every m of road to cross after the hand starts flashing and there is talk to increasing it to 1.1 or 1.2 s/m. Most downtown roads are about 16 m wide so there is a 16 second delay to finish the walk phase plus about 4 s for amber and 2 for the all red phase before it goes green. That is 22 seconds before the light can change unless you just want to strand the pedestrians in no man’s land. Spadina and University are even wider.
Then there is the problem of intersection with street cars or buses in all directions. Who cancels whom? The TCRP (Transportation Co-operative Research Project) says that minimum headways should be at least twice the cycle time of lights. In Toronto it is much less on many routes so it is not possible to give every transit vehicle priority at every intersection; however, it should be possible for a street car or bus to request a turn signal at the start or end of a green cycle so it can make a left hand turn.
The TTC and/or Toronto traffic has to get their act together on the lights and make sure they work properly. The white bar at Queen’s Quay and Spadina used to turn on for all three directions at the same time causing a south bound 510 to T-bone and derail an eastbound 509 one fine Labour Day to completely screw up service along the waterfront and to the Ex.
Giving priority to one vehicle is relatively simple but to give it to ALL transit vehicles on EVERY light is not so easy. Having run gaming theory simulations as MS says on traffic light simulations, it is quite easy to totally screw things up if [you] do not put restrictions on the use of priorities for different vehicles, especially on the TTC’s headways.
Vehicles can be dispatched on whatever headway you want by whatever automated means that you can dream up but as soon as they hit the first traffic light their effective headway between consecutive vehicles will be a multiple of the light cycle time. If you run a 120 second headway and the traffic lights are on a 90 second cycle then the time between service will be 90, 180, 270 or 360 seconds and not every 120 seconds. If a car or bus misses a light because of a large load then the following [one] catches up to it. It is completely impossible to operate exactly to schedule that is not a multiple of cycle times in mixed traffic. It is possible to operate a smoother service with fewer convoys than the TTC manages. It is not like there are submarines waiting to torpedo them. When clearing a large gap the TTC should look at sending some buses express with a full load for a ways down the line instead of trying to squeeze more passengers on and creating a long line at each stop. For street cars, especially Spadina, and for some buses they should send one or two cars through the loop and onto the street empty to clear those waiting at surface stops. This would allow the following cars to operate faster instead of trying to cram even more passengers on board.
Steve: I have occasionally seen empty cars sent out southbound from Spadina Station to do just what is suggested here, but this tends not to happen out on the street.
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Based on a 90 second light cycle then, the TTC needs to run large enough vehicles to allow for a 3+ minute headway right? Are the new cars large enough to allow for this on King? Are the blocks large enough to permit a still larger version? (I understand Bombardier builds a similar 7 section 43 metre car for some European cities).
Also why has the TTC not moved the CLRVs to Queen and reduced headway, and used ALRVs on King to try and hold a more manageable headway? Or given they are not really planning on managing headway is this a moot point?
Steve: The last time the TTC published a detailed fleet plan was in fall 2013 as part of the budget papers. I summarized this in a post including a table which shows plans as they then were for each mode. The last page of the table is a calculation of the relative capacities and headways for each route based on the number of new cars that would be used. King is a bit tricky because it operates a mix of “regular service” (cars that operate over the entire route) and “trippers” (cars that operate a partial trip) in the AM peak. You can see that the headway will be under 3 minutes, and the route’s capacity will be increased by about 50%. However, this won’t happen until 2017 or so (the rollout is already late compared to the schedule shown in that plan).
I too have wondered why the ALRVs are on Queen and the CLRVs (mainly) on King, but the basic issue however they are allocated is that more service is needed on both routes, and every working car that the TTC has is on the street. Alternative service configurations that I have proposed usually included a “507 Long Branch” service operated with CLRVs, but the TTC is adamant that this is not a workable scheme. Oddly enough, they discovered that the Queen car runs much better when it is not through-routed, but don’t hold your breath for a new route configuration.
We will probably first see a disappearance of the ALRV trippers on King as the new cars come into service on Spadina, and then later the conversion of Queen to CLRV. The fleet plan as published makes no provision at all for the fact that it shows ALRVs retiring at a faster rate than CLVRs will be made available from new car rollouts to replace them on an equivalent capacity basis.
The TTC’s fleet planning has always been, shall we say, dubious in that they seem unable to actually count vehicles needed for service or the implications of changing vehicle types on a route. I remember a time when statements at Board meetings implied that they did not understand that faster trains/cars do not increase line capacity if they still run the same number of trains/hour. This may reduce fleet size and give passengers shorter trips, but it does not increase capacity. (This gem came out in early days of discussion of the benefits of new signalling systems.)
Oddly enough, the TTC has steadfastly refused to examine “high rate” operation with faster acceleration to reduce the fleet requirements. This goes back to problems with the H-1 series trains running in high rate. I remember making a proposal for high rate as a way to cut fleet requirements at a TTC meeting, and the apoplectic reaction showed clearly that it was the TTC’s job to order as much equipment from Bombardier as possible.
TTC subway fleet plans originally presumed that all cars would come in pairs, and that some T1 trains would remain in service on YUS. However, with the TRs and the advent of ATO (which would be prohibitively expensive to retrofit on the T1s), those extra T1s cannot be used on YUS. There is no room for them (in running shorter headways) on BD, and the TTC is now scrambling to create extra storage for them at Kipling, Keele and Greenwood. By the time BD headways can be reduced with a new signal system, the T1s will be due for retirement.
Any time I attempt to engage the TTC in discussions about their plans, I hit a brick wall.
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How much difference would it make if the Long Branch service was actually converted to a closed ROW (I know portions of route are 29 metres or less wide so potentially hard to create ROW, but) on the western portion, so it remained in a closed ROW once it got onto the Queensway (westbound), and remained so all the way to Long Branch ? Or is most of the issue in the area on Queen from Roncesvalles east?
Steve: Most of the issues are east of Roncesvalles, but the very long route combined with two separate services has two effects. First, operators tend to take rather long breaks at Long Branch having driven a very long trip across town from Neville. Second, there is no management of the merging of services eastbound at Humber, not even an attempt to space them when they reach Roncesvalles. Irregular headways are the inevitable result.
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It will be that exact multiple if all the vehicles depart at the same point in the light cycle, e.g. each one leaves as soon as the light turns green. But a sufficiently intelligent system can adapt by giving a slightly earlier red for one vehicle (to proceed at the very start of the next green), then holding a green for another vehicle (to proceed at the very end of the current green). Basically, in a 90 second cycle, there are ~35 second windows for the vehicle to depart. That means that two vehicles could be from 55 seconds to 125 seconds apart, depending on just when in the cycle they proceeded.
Of course maintaining this kind of offset for a whole stretch of signals would be tough.
Steve: Not to mention frustrating for motorists controlled by the same signals.
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There are cars in Budapest that are 7 sections and 174 feet 9 inches long, I can’t remember the metric length. These cars go on forever and operate on a semi-circular route as Buda has a radial plus concentric circle polar grid. The street they run on makes University Avenue look narrow. The cars run on a headway of about every two minutes. They get into and out of service on some more conventional and narrower streets. When one of them comes along it is quite an imposing sight on a street the width of Queen. This is the equivalent of 2 CLRVs and an ALRV operating as a train. They would be very problematic on anything without it own right of way.
Also not all signals are the same cycle time; suburban lights and those along some parts of Front and Lakeshore are much longer. See answer to Ed below.
This is assuming they always leave each light at the same point in its phase. All that you need is one perturbation per car per total trip and this is all shot to hell. Also not all green phases are the same length and not all light cycles are the same length. Just go down to Front and Spadina, Lakeshore and Spadina or Lakeshore and Bathurst and check out the cycle lengths. Your proposal might work in a perfect world with perfectly behaved passengers, motorists and operators. This ain’t a perfect world so it will not happen. The effective time between consecutive cars or buses will be effectively an integer multiple of the headway and zero is often a common integer in these situations.
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The cars I was inquiring about, I believe are a measly 142 feet long!! I was kind of thinking however, that these too would be an issue, and that therefore, actually following the suggestions on headway, and meeting expected capacity requirements would be somewhat of an issue on King. I would love to see one on King Street just for the show. I do not think they would be likely practical, and the King Car will ultimately be stuck with some conveys and 3 minute gaps regardless of how well the TTC manages headway. However, if the next car is in sight when the overcrowded one appears at a stop, that should not cause too much stress. The issue will be keeping them to reasonable time between when these conveys do happen on King.
I do think however, that if they ever do build a Waterfront West and East LRT, they should be looking at these larger cars if they are running single vehicles. Especially if by some miracle (or tunnel) the eastern section were to somehow find its way onto Kingston Road going to and beyond Guildwood, and the western end running to West Mall.
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That they would take long breaks is to be expected, and should frankly be built into the recovery time, and there should be some dispatch control here. The balance, again sounds like a basic route management/dispatch issue. Need to be able to tell drivers to slow down, or that they are running behind, and have some way for the drivers to provide feedback (yes I am running behind, and there is nothing that can be done).
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Further to the Budapest super trams; they have two pantographs because they draw so much power. They are only 6 sections long but oh what big sections they are. See a picture of them.
They are 54 m long and each section has one truck under it and I believe that at least 4, if not all 6, are powered, thus the need for 2 pans. They can carry 360 people and I can vouch for that as they were always crammed when I rode them. On a 2 minute headway that is over 10,000 per hour per direction for running ONLY single unit service. The Budapest tram system is quite impressive. They also have the second oldest subway in the world to London built in 1896. The cars are low floor cars of a unique design, 3 section 4 truck articulated with no passage between sections. See this page.
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I took part in a Jane’s Walk [in memory of Jane Jacobs] in May some years ago along Lakeshore Blvd. West (LBW), west of Royal York Rd. in the “New Toronto” neighbourhood. Most of the folks on the walk were from that neighbourhood, with the walk leader talking about history, housing and development in the area and also transit.
One of the discussion points raised by a couple of the participants was how the Fear of God had been put into the local residents by Emergency Services staff in attendance at a recently held public meeting when the possibility of a St. Clair/Spadina-style closed right-of-way had been proposed along the existing tracks. Apparently, the additional time it could take for a fire truck to get to an “unblocked” intersection to allow it to turn around, when required, would be “significant” and the risks were clearly implied.
This assertion had certainly attracted the attention of this couple, to the point that the closed right-of-way was pretty much the stupidest thing they’d ever heard. If this point of view was and still is shared by others in the New Toronto area, the possibility of a right-of-way could be a non-starter, never mind what the attitude towards streetcars or LRT might be.
(As an aside, setting up a south-to-east access point at Eighth Street and LBW for the one south Etobicoke fire station situated on Eighth St. (just north of LBW) may not work as an LRT stop – and opening in the “wall,” given that Islington Ave./7th Street just to the east would likely get priority for a dedicated stop.)
How was this issue dealt with on St. Clair and on Spadina?
Steve: And we won’t mention that an opening was created on St. Clair for its fire hall. There is no fire hall on Spadina.
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