The St. Clair streetcar route has seen its share of political battles over the years. Back in 1972, it was the heart of the fight to save the streetcar system from a plan that would have dismantled all routes by 1980 when, wait for it, the Queen subway would have opened. As a first step, trolley buses (remember them?) displaced from the North Toronto’s route 97 Yonge were to take over St. Clair with buses replacing streetcars on a 1:1 basis, a huge cut in the line’s capacity.
An ironic point about this plan shows how riding patterns can shift depending on other aspects of the network. Before the Bloor-Danforth subway opened in 1966, St. Clair had very frequent service (every 1’00” between Oakwood and Yonge including the Rogers Road cars), and the line carried many people east to the Yonge subway. Vaughan Loop was a major transfer point to the Bathurst cars which ran into downtown via Adelaide Street, returning on King.
After BD started running, many riders shifted to north-south routes to reach the new subway line and its connection to a route downtown via the uncrowded University subway. Demand and service on St. Clair declined. Years later, with the opening of the Spadina subway, many riders shifted back to the streetcar because it provided a direct link to the University line with one less transfer. More recently, the population along St. Clair is growing adding to demand on the line.
Unlike most streetcar routes in Toronto, 512 St. Clair operates on a street with more than four lanes. The TTC proposed conversion to a reserved right-of-way in the early 2000’s and this was approved by Council in 2005. The actual construction took forever thanks both to a legal attempt to block construction and to fouled-up co-ordination between various agencies and meddling by local Councillors in the timing of work. (You can read the whole sad story on Transit Toronto’s website.)
By spring 2007, the first segment from Yonge to St. Clair West Station was completed, and streetcar service returned, briefly between St. Clair Station and Keele Street. Summer 2007 saw the launch of work on the western portion of the line, and it did not fully reopen until summer 2010.
Recently, the TTC has been messing around with the schedules on this route and adding supervision in an attempt to provide reliable service, a sad situation given that the route is entirely on reserved lanes. The evolution of schedules from 2007 to 2015 is intriguing, and speaks to the failure of what should be a showcase route.
The information in this table is organized with the impending March 29, 2015 changes at the left and progressively older schedules moving to the right. Only the January schedules are shown for 2011-2013 to save on space during a relatively quiet period for service changes on this route.
- April 2007: The line operated over its full length, but with a right-of-way only on the eastern leg.
- June 2010: Service resumes over the full route with shorter running times, particularly on weekends, and more frequent service than in most periods in 2007.
- January 2011: Service during some periods on Saturday and Sunday has been improved by 2011 to handle demand on the route.
- January 2012: Weekday midday service has improved over 2011, but there are no other changes.
- January 2013: Peak service has improved slightly, offset by some weekend service cuts.
- January 2014: A 2012 service cut on Sunday afternoons was partly restored during 2013.
- July 2014: Slightly wider peak service (typical for summer) with improvement in Saturday early evening and Sunday morning service.
- October 2014: Running times substantially increased in response to a large number of transit priority signals being out of order (13 along the route)
- March 2015: Running times reduced (but not all the way to July 2014 levels) in response to repair of most (9) of the non-working TSP locations, and experience from a higher level of route supervision implemented in fall 2014.
It is worth noting that during almost all schedule periods, the allocated running times in October 2014 were equal to or longer than those used in April 2007 when most of the route ran in mixed traffic. Some of this was due to added recovery time (weekday schedules), and some to added travel time. In effect, the benefit of the right-of-way on scheduled speed was almost completely undone. This is partly, but not completely, corrected with the March 29, 2015 schedules, but there is still generally two minutes more running time for the route compared with most schedules from 2010 onward (presumably for the residual effect of non-working TSP locations).
A related problem on St. Clair has been irregular headways. The TTC’s stock response to complaints about this sort of thing is that “traffic congestion” is the root of all evil, and reliable service is impossible. In fact, as has been demonstrated by repeated analyses on this site, the real problem lies in uneven departures from terminals and from intermediate time points along the route. This cannot be explained by saying that operators are adjusting to known conditions because these irregular headways appear under all seasons, days of week and hours of the day.
In the fall of 2014, the TTC added route supervisors on St. Clair to act as dispatchers and regulate the service. This had some effect, but the level of on-street supervision cannot be afforded across the system. Indeed, there is no reason why dispatching on headways cannot be achieved centrally and at least in part automatically. This problem is not confined to streetcar routes, and it is a fundamental issue that TTC management must address particularly as the effects of larger vehicles and wider scheduled headways accentuate the problem on streetcar and articulated bus routes.
How has the actual service evolved over the years? For this we must turn to the TTC’s vehicle tracking data. As regular readers will know, I have been looking at routes on a selective basis since 2007. The discussion below includes data from April 2007 (pre-construction), July 2010 (full line re-opened) and September-November 2014 (pre/post implementation of longer running times and more aggressive supervision).
April 2007
The purpose of this section is to establish a “before” behaviour against which post-construction operations can be compared.
The data here come from the era before the TTC implemented GPS on its vehicle tracking system. Instead, they used a set of location beacons scattered along routes together with mileage clocking from the vehicles to estimate a car’s location. This was subject to various errors including the effects of wheel slip and of unexpected short turns. Because the system assumed a car would behave as scheduled, the direction of travel was assumed to match that schedule.
The location data transmitted from vehicles was “signpost number x + distance” with no directional information. A car might be travelling opposite to its scheduled direction from a short turn, but the tracking system would not react to this until the car passed not one, but two signposts that confirmed the real location was somewhere other than the computed one. A car might be “tracked” as moving west when in fact it was going east. This produced no end of problems for the “CIS” (Communications & Information System) users including central route supervisors and operators of vehicles whose on time displays were meaningless.
The tracking data for St. Clair are reasonably well-behaved, but not at as granular a level as the GPS data available by the time of the 2010 and later operations discussed below.
The charts here show the headways westbound and eastbound respectively for Wednesday, April 4, 2007 as seen at various points along the route. Various typical behaviours are visible:
- AM peak headways leaving St. Clair Station stay in a tight band under 6 minutes because the scheduled headway is short (3′) and there is usually little to disrupt the service at this time of day.
- Headways at Caledonia and points west in the AM peak are wider because of the scheduled short turn at Earlscourt Loop.
- After the AM peak, headways become less reliable and this condition continues throughout the day. Note the many situations where a long headway is immediately followed by a value close to zero indicating cars travelling in pairs originating at the terminals.
To get a better sense of what is going on, here is a chart of vehicle locations by time.
This chart breaks the day into eight three-hour chunks and shows the movement of cars back and forth across the line. Because the source data come from the old signpost-based system, the locations of the cars are not reported as frequently as they are today with the GPS system (see later charts for examples), and so the lines tracking the cars are fairly smooth.
Time moves from left to right over the eight pages while vehicle positions move back and forth from west (top of the page) to east (bottom of the page)
Points to note here:
- Mainly on the second page (after 7:00 am), the short turning cars at Earlscourt Loop are clearly visible turning through the loop on a regular basis.
- At about 9:30 am, there is a delay eastbound at about Vaughan Road. Some cars disappear from view at Christie Street probably because they went out of service, while others have extended times between Christie and Bathurst as shown by the difference in the slope of the lines). There is a very large gap eastbound to Yonge between roughly 9:25 and 9:55 am (at Yonge). A parade of cars arrives eastbound just before 10:00 am. This parade travels back west more or less intact with only one of the cars short turning westbound at Lansdowne, and another eastbound at St. Clair West Station at roughly 10:20 and 10:55 respectively. The original pack of cars is not fully broken up until about 11:15 westbound from Yonge.
- Two of these quickly form into another pair eastbound from Keele at 11:50, and by the time they are westbound from St. Clair West at 12:45 the pack has four cars in it. This group continues for two full trips and is only disassembled by about 3:45 pm.
- However, by then a new pair has formed eastbound that eventually evolves into a parade of nine cars westbound at Bathurst just after 4:30 pm.
- It takes until about 8:00 pm for all of the pairing to settle down, if only because the scheduled headway is much wider.
Another way of looking at the headways is to chart all of a month’s operation into one collection.
512_200704_Up_YongeSt_MonthHeadways
512_200704_Down_KeeleSt_MonthHeadways
These charts consolidate headways westbound at Yonge and eastbound at Keele for the month of April 2007 into one set of charts for each direction. The pages contain:
- Weekday data for each of four weeks.
- All weekday data plotted on one page.
- Saturday and Sunday data each on one page.
- Averages and standard deviations for weekday, Saturday and Sunday data
On the weekdays, the trend lines lie generally in the same part of the chart except for Friday, April 20 westbound from Yonge. What is notable about data for each weekday is the range of scatter of the data points on either side of the trend line (which roughly approximates the scheduled headway if almost all of the service is present). The TTC claims a goal of ±3 minutes to the scheduled headway, but it is clear many runs miss this target.
When all of the weekdays are combined, the data points are smeared over a band from 0-10 minutes with several points well above that value.
Weekends see much more chaotic service with many examples of very wide headways.
The statistics pages show the behaviour of the data reduced to averages (blue lines) and standard deviations (orange). The SD values are often close to the averages indicating periods when many cars are running as pairs, and the high SD values on weekends show that much of the service is operating over a wide range of headways. Ideally, the SD values should be low indicating values in a narrow band.
The situation for eastbound trips from Keele is similar to that shown for Yonge westbound.
July 2010
The St. Clair line has just reopened from Yonge to Keele, and it operates entirely on reserved lanes. Also, by 2010, the CIS system is using GPS to track vehicles, and so their locations are much more precisely known. The data supplied by the TTC includes a record for each vehicle every 20 seconds rather than a record each time it passes an intersection. This permits a more finely-grained view of operations along the route.
As a sample of operations, I have chosen July 14, a Wednesday in a week uncomplicated by holidays, and a day without significant disruptions of the service. (In all of the following files, “Up” and “Down” refer to the direction of travel which, for 512 St. Clair, are “west” and “east” respectively.
The time-distance chart shows most trips operating the full length of the route. Of note:
- There is no major delay for the entire day.
- There are some short turns, mainly at Lansdowne. All service is scheduled to Keele unlike 2007 with scheduled short turns in the AM peak.
- Most trips have layovers at both ends of the line.
- GPS position resolution allows the chart to show short delays at intersections (both near and far side) related to signals and stop service. No location consistently appears as a source of delay.
The headway values are somewhat better for July 14, 2010 than on April 4, 2007, but mainly because there were no service disruptions to produce large gaps. What is common to both sets of charts is the regular pattern of very short headways followed by longer values indicating that cars tend to run in pairs. This behaviour originates at the terminals, not as a result of congestion encountered enroute.
These charts show the travel times over segments of the route, and they are best case numbers taken from an ideal weekday without major delays. Travel times are fairly consistent for all links and directions over the entire day. (One spike – westbound from Tweedsmuir to Bathurst at 10:25am – is caused by a car taking a layover at St. Clair West Station on the spare track. It then ran out of service.) What is particularly notable is that there is little sign of a “peak period” where running times deteriorate. Put another way, there is little “congestion”, that bugbear of TTC operations, and yet the headway reliability is still poor.
Comparing April 2007 to July 2010
An important difference between the “before” and “after” right-of-way measurements is the length of a trip from Yonge Street to Keele Street. (I have used this measure rather than attempting to decide when a vehicle actually “leaves” a terminal loop, a problem that is particularly challenging for 2007 with less fine-grained resolution of vehicle locations.)
512_200704_Up_YongeSt_KeeleSt_MonthLinks
512_200704_Down_KeeleSt_YongeSt_MonthLinks
512_201007_Up_YongeSt_KeeleSt_MonthLinks
512_201007_Down_KeeleSt_YongeSt_MonthLinks
Each of these files has a common layout. The first four or five pages (depending on the calendar) show weekday data followed by a page consolidating all weekdays on one sheet. This provides a day-to-day and week-to-week comparison of values so that “normal” behaviour is easily separated from unusual situations. Saturdays and Sunday/Holidays have their own page. (Street festivals and other events causing service replacement create oddly behaved charts on a few days, and these curves should be ignored.) Finally, the data are summarized with averages and standard deviations for each type of day.
For westbound service, comparing the weekday stats pages shows two important differences: the running times are lower by 3 to 5 minutes throughout the day, and the visible PM peak in 2007 is “shaved off” in 2010. Also notable is that Saturday and Sunday average times are reduced reflecting the congestion that plagued the route on weekends before it had a right-of-way. Nonetheless, the 2010 data points are dispersed over a band about 5 minutes wide showing the cumulative effect of small delays to some trips along the route. This is an important distinction for “average” versus “scheduled” running times, and the role of recovery time at terminals.
Eastbound data show a similar behaviour, although the running time saving is slightly less than westbound on weekdays. Again weekends benefit a great deal from the right-of-way.
October 2014
By Fall 2014, service on St. Clair was still ragged, and running times had increased to the level of pre-right-of-way operations in 2007. This was due, according to the TTC, to the fact that 13 traffic signals along the route no longer provided transit priority – the adjustment of green times to favour transit, something that is particularly important for the farside stop placement on this route. As much as possible, streetcars should not have to stop twice – once for a red signal and again to serve passengers.
In mid-October, the TTC changed the schedules and instituted more aggressive supervision on St. Clair. Running times were increased, and supervisors at both terminals ensured that vehicles left on time on a regular headway.
The change in operations can be seen by comparing three days:
- Friday, October 10: The last weekday on the old schedules and with no supervision
- Tuesday, October 14: The first weekday of the new schedules and supervision
- Monday, October 20: The start of the second week
These days were generally free from major delays that would disrupt comparisons.
The westbound service leaving Yonge Street on October 10 shows the same pattern of unreliability we saw in earlier years’ data above. Plus ça change. Some wide headways westbound at Yonge (1200 to 1500) are shortened at Bathurst by short turns filling gaps at St. Clair West Station, but many other gaps travel untouched across the route. This can be seen easily by stepping from page to page of data and watching the pattern of long and short headways shift slightly in time at each point further west. This is a typical situation, and even with a completely private right-of-way, a short route, and a natural mid-point where service can be evenly spaced, it is clear that nobody is “minding the store”.
On the following Tuesday October 14 (Monday was Thanksgiving), the route is operating with new schedules and, more importantly, new supervision. The situation westbound at Yonge Street is completely changed with headways staying very close to each other during the peak periods. Middays are a bit more scattered and late evenings don’t show much change. By Monday October 20, things have improved again, notably for midday service. This shows that headways can be managed if someone makes the effort, but the story is not all as good as we might hope.
The service westbound at Oakwood, although better on October 20 than October 10, still shows a fair amount of scatter in the headways, and this appears to have developed between Bathurst and Oakwood (compare the behaviour of headways between the two adjacent charts). This suggests that problems with variations in travel time lie in this segment of the route. (I will return to that issue later.) Once the headways are back to the long-short pattern with pairs of cars running closely together, this is perpetuated westbound to Keele although the spikes are not as marked after Thanksgiving as before probably because the service started out in better shape from the eastern terminus and, to a slightly lesser extent, from St. Clair West Station.
For eastbound service there is a similar pattern starting at the west end of the line (which is at the end of the 10-page set of charts for each day). Service leaving Keele eastbound on October 10 has very wide gaps. Although these are filled in part by cars originating at Lansdowne (note the much lower peak headways from Lansdowne eastward), the values still swing widely with many close to zero (pairs of cars following each other).
On October 14, the service eastbound from Keele is quite well-behaved and the absence of short-turns at Lansdowne is evident because the chart at this location is so much like the one at Caledonia just to the west. This situation continues on October 20.
Again an evident problem is that the service leaves the terminal well-spaced, but by the time it works its way across the route, pairings of cars form placing actual headways beyond the TTC’s goal of ±3 minutes of scheduled values.
(In the preparation of this article, I reviewed data from September-November 2014. September behaves more or less like the sample day of October 10, and nothing would be added to this article by a detailed examination. Similarly, November behaves like the sample day of October 20. In other words, the change seems to have “stuck” at least while there is route supervision to enforce it.
The situation on weekends is not as pretty.
These charts are for Saturday and Sunday, October 25-26. Particularly on Saturday, the usual pattern of fluctuating departure times from St. Clair Station that was evident in the “before” data shown above is still very much here “after” the fact. The line is running with more running time, the common demand from operations staff, but the service is quite ragged. What is missing is the supervision to enforce the headways.
I am afraid that this does not say much for the general ethos of the operating personnel on this important route.
Another way to look at the request for more running time is to examine the time spent at terminals. For St. Clair I have examined the round trips from Yonge Street to St. Clair Station, as well as from Keele Street to Gunn’s Loop.
512_201410_YongeStClairStn_TerminalLinks
512_201410_KeeleGunnsLoop_TerminalLinks
These charts are in the same format as the monthly link time charts shown earlier for the trips between Yonge and Keele, but they measure round trips at terminals to a nearby reference point.
The schedules changed on Sunday, October 12, and that is where we expect to see a difference in values.
At the east end, Yonge Street, for the first two weeks, the trend line is fairly straight with values in the 6-7 minute range. However, some data points lie near 3 minutes and these show the minimum necessary to speed into and out of the loop. Many data points lie considerably higher.
In weeks 3-5 the pattern changes completely with the shortest of times coming generally at the end of the peak periods. Even so, it is clear that cars have more time to spend at the eastern terminal.
On Saturdays there is much less change from the “before” (Oct. 4 & 11, red and yellow lines) to the “after” (Oct. 18 & 25, green and blue lines). The lower bound remains at about 3 minutes, but few values go above 10.
On Sundays, there is only one “before” day (Oct. 5, red) and the “after” days show generally longer times, but again, like Saturday, not as much variation as on the weekday operations. Thanksgiving Day (Oct. 13, green) stands apart from the Sundays showing the different conditions on this holiday.
The data at the west end, Gunn’s Loop, show some changes in the “after” conditions, but not as much as at Yonge. One might be tempted to think that, given the chance, operators would prefer to take their layovers at Yonge Street.
The additional running times, coupled with the already generous recovery times, have allowed most of the short-turning on St. Clair to be eliminated, but headway reliability still depends on supervision as we can see from weekend and evening operations.
Comparing Average Headways By Week and Time of Day
Another way to see the effect of the new supervisory regime on short turns is to look at the average headways at Yonge (east of the St. Clair West short turn), Bathurst (mid-route) and Caledonia (west of the Lansdowne short turn).
In these charts, the average headways are shown for each half hour of the day (separate horizontal lines) and for the months of April 2007, July 2010, and September-November 2014. Average headways are affected primarily by the scheduled values and the degree of short-turning. Although the operating environments in 2007, 2010 and early fall 2014 were different, the behaviour of the headway averages doesn’t change much until the implementation of new supervision in mid-October 2014.
At Yonge Street:
- Headways from 6:00 to 9:00 are fairly consistent. The jump at the end of April 2007 is caused by a major delay on one day in a short week. This shows how with a comparatively small number of data points, a single event can produce distortions that are not as evident when more data are consolidated. The blue line (6:00 to 6:30) stands higher than the others because scheduled service in the early part of the day is less frequent.
- Between 9:00 and 12:00, there is a marked change for the intervals beginning at 9:30, 10:00 and 10:30 indicating that more cars reached Yonge Street with the new schedules. This reflects a common problem on routes after the AM peak where much short turning occurs to recover from the peak period.
- Between 12:00 and 3:00, the averages become more consistent with the new schedules, and there is an improved headway in the 14:30 half hour.
- Between 3:00 and 6:00, the change after the new schedules are implemented is quite striking, and the improvement continues through into the mid-evening.
At Bathurst Street:
- There is much less change in average headways with the new schedules, although the averages through the PM peak are slightly better behaved.
At Caledonia Road:
- The data here show a similar pattern to the Yonge Street values with improved average headways for the weeks following the mid-October change in supervision. These changes are most notable after the two peak periods when under previous circumstances a great deal of short turning occurs to “fix” the effects of the peak.
Comparing Running Times Over The Route
This chart compares the weekday running times for five different months westbound from Yonge Street to Keele Street. The months are:
- April 2007: Before construction of the right-of-way west from Bathurst (red)
- July 2010: After re-opening of the line over its full length (yellow)
- September 2014: Current operations on the “pre change” schedules (green)
- October 2014: A mix of “pre/post change schedules (blue)
- November 2014: “Post change” schedules (purple)
Note the improvement for the line in July 2010, but that all of this has been lost again by fall 2014. The October schedule changes did not affect actual average running times which, for the three months in 2014, are almost identical.
Future Update
The next change took place on March 29, 2015 with running times cut back in response to repaired signals. I will update this post when I have the April tracking data available. In advance of this, I will cull through the July 2010 data for comparison with 2007 and 2014 data to identify the route segments where the greatest time savings occurred in 2010, and where it was lost again by 2014. This will prove an interesting comparison to the April 2015 data where we should see the effect of all of those “fixed” transit priority signals.
Steve Munro 
I may have missed it, but what ended up being the reason the area around Bathurst is less reliable?
Steve: That will be the subject of a future update. I wanted to push the article out the door as I have been working on it for some time and the item is topical given the TTC’s report about service management. Once the April data come in, I will add this information and an analysis of what the line looks like now that the traffic signals have been repaired.
Fantastic article, loved reading it. It brought up so many questions I have, many too early in conception to be well formed. But how does bringing cars in and out of service affect things? Why ISN’T the St Clair route one of the showcase routes? And how is it possible that between all of the automated tracking available, they need supervisors actively there (as the weekends show) to maintain somewhat accurate headways? I’m normally against driverless transit operation given my one horrible experience just outside new west station on the Skytrain in Vancouver**, and some transit drivers can be fantastic – I recently got the pleasure of riding with a streetcar operator who got everyone on the streetcar to cheer, greet and say goodbye to anyone who got on or off – all smiles the whole ride for every rider on board. But automated or partially automated operation seems more and more warranted, and easier and easier to implement … particularly in cases where the streetcars have their own right of way, the lights give them priority, the headways are clearly dictated to the operators … it would not be difficult for a computer to hit that +/- 3 minute goal.
**(Pulled out of New West station, Westbound. ~200 meters outside the station we pulled to a stop, the doors chimed and opened. It was late at night, only about 10 people on the train, and we all just sat there expecting things to fix themselves. About 3 minutes later, a train pulled into the station behind us…when it closed it’s doors, we pressed our emergency stop. The operator on the other end cheerfully asked, “What seems to be the problem?”… not reassuring at all, to say the least.)
Steve: I have a big problem with the idea that we need to fix a basic issue of management of service with automation. For far too long, the TTC’s attitude to service reliability has been “we can’t do it because of congestion”, and this brings an abdication of basic responsibility. Couple this with the unending debate about on time performance versus headway maintenance, and we have a recipe for finger pointing rather than actual improvement. For what it’s worth, the new computer based system now in development will allow better central monitoring, but there must be a willingness to actually use it.
Of course St. Clair should be a showcase route, but it’s easier to blame problems on external factors such as the traffic signals while ignoring basic problems with line management. As the July 2010 data show, even when the right-of-way was brand new, yes there was lower running time, but still ragged headways.
Cars running in and out of service bring their own problems, but they are simple to deal with. When a car enters service, it needs to be slotted in on the correct headway. On St. Clair this is simple because there is no problem with holding the car at Bathurst or in St. Clair West Station. Running out of service, there can be problems with cars running early not just on their carhouse trip, but on the trip before. This happens all across the system and produces big gaps on routes with wider headways in the evening.
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The idea that TSP should still not be working for an extended time is a huge issue, and needs to be addressed. This needs to be a core service capability for Toronto generally, and especially in areas with dedicated ROW. Should be able to rely on this service, and this should be one of the choice routes, where transit is better faster and more preferred than car by almost everybody, except when you are having to carry a large amount of stuff.
Again, this is a question of basic service management, as you point out. I really hope that the new metrics will highlight the issues around this to TTC management, council and the public at large. Where they have the ability to hold cars, and can run reasonably fast, they should be able to completely control headways at dispatch, which is one metric I would love to see published regularly. Yes the TTC needs to get consistent signal priority, and enforcement help, but they should be able to control dispatch.
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This analysis is incredibly detailed and informative, but do the real decision-makers (who can make improvements), and those capable of holding them to account, have the patience to really wade into it? I wonder about the feasibility of graphically summarizing Steve’s findings in a convenient way (simplified graphs, colour-coded maps, etc.) to get the message across.
In any case, the findings here echo what I have (anecdotally) observed on Dufferin, which also came under “active supervision” in October 2014. Things improved dramatically for a while, and have since slipped. On the surface this looks like a “when the cat’s away, the mice will play” situation, and reflects really poorly on TTC operators.
Steve: Over the years, I have wrestled with how to boil this down to something “politician sized”, and what inevitably happens is that consolidation of data smooths out the irregularities that are the source of so many complaints.
I think the TTC means well at the senior level, but is unwilling to get down to the detailed operating level to address the problems, at least on an ongoing basis.
(For what it’s worth, the amount of data and charts I have available is huge compared to what is published here, and I need all of that detail to find suitable examples. The TTC is starting to do some analyses like this itself, but what is badly needed is a change in the ethos, the philosophy of what “good service” should look like. It should not require a supervisor on every street corner.
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Mustn’t forget the 71A Runnymede providing service between Gunns Loop and Runnymede Road, and 79B Scarlett Road providing service between Runnymede Road and Scarlett Road. Both on St. Clair Avenue West, but adding two additional transfers instead of continuing the 512 St. Clair westward.
They have some sort of continuous service on St. Clair Avenue West, but only in the early morning on the 312 St. Clair Blue Night bus, between Yonge Street & St. Clair and Jane & Bloor. If they can have a Blue Night bus, why can’t they extend the 512 St. Clair to Jane Street (or Scarlett Road)?
Steve: Simple: Cost. Not exactly a high priority project. Maybe the people out there should demand a subway.
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I always wonder whether it would be better to actually look at counting the out of bounds conditions. So if your headway allowance was 3 minutes, count the number of times there was a gap of more than say 5. The count flows one way only. Also count the total number of times you will in excess of say those 5 minutes. At least then it could not get averaged down.
Also I think you would need to focus on the problem (worst) routes, at any given time. So if you had a route with 10 minute headway, that 400 instances of excess of 5 minute gaps, you would have a positive event count of 400. You could then plot the event count during the time of day and days of week. Clearly the absolute number is not right (ie 5 minutes). Could do the same thing once they have load data, keep count of number of times a bus less than 80% through its route was over say 55? . These as well would be events, and the higher number may well be enough to discourage boarding.
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PS Steve to clarify, a 10 minute expected headway route, would have an allowance of up to 15 minutes between buses Over that would be an event. Likely want to track a another at say 20+.
Also the 55? The number would need to be basically just short of crush load (TTC shows I believe 36 sitting and 12 standing for 48 on a bus in 2012. Likely the number would need to be a little higher than 55, but a number that was a little too tight, and another that was clearly too tight.
In essence the downside only report card would then track 4 numbers – the higher the number the worse the service. Likely would in effect be double counting between 2 events, ie long headway and overloaded bus, but well so be it.
I am sure you have a better idea, however, something is required to allow the counting of failure as well as success, and a sufficiently low event count would be success.
Steve: I have always felt that some degree of disaggregation is needed, and the score cannot be a simple “pass/fail” based on a threshold. We don’t grade school children that way, and we should have more flexibility with transit. Scores need to be subdivided by route segment and by time of day. If you don’t do this, then effects such as bad weekend line management or erratic evening service are buried in the much higher number of events during prime time. Someone who waits half an hour for a bus at 10:30 pm does not care that all of the buses were on time at 3:00 pm.
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I’m interested that Tory announced a “big data” initiative for Toronto Transport…hopefully storing and analyzing this data will be part of it…
I was also reading on Urban Toronto about how some of the newer transit priority systems that think more than one intersections ahead of vehicles are less useful with the current GPS systems on the TTC (due to the 20 second reporting limit etc.) – I’m wondering if the TTC has any plan to decrease the reporting to <5 seconds, this would help with intersection analysis.
I've also still got nowhere with them putting a list of working/non-working transit priority intersections up on OpenDataTO…do we have any idea how long the ones on St Clair were out and why – I would think that the local councillor should be on these things….
Do we have any word on what routes the central monitoring will be rolling out on? Definitely would suggest that they start with easy "protected" routes like Spadina and St. Clair before attempting King…do we know what features etc. are being looked at? Have they got a vendor?
Steve: The answer to most of your questions is “no”, or “I don’t know”. As for a modernized TSP, I don’t think this has proceeded too far especially for vendor selection let alone definition of the functionality. There is still some disagreement about just what “priority” means, and there is still too much emphasis on “on time” measures without considering other day-to-day operational complexities.
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Management must manage. Plain and simple. Supervision works as proven with 29 Dufferin Bus and also with 512 St.Clair Car. It needs to be continuous and ongoing. Not a one-time effort.
If necessary create a supervisory position for line management A “starter” person at each end point and on long routes or difficult ones like Dufferin and perhaps St.Clair at midpoint. A vehicle should not be permitted to leave early. Not ONE minute. 3 plus or minus is BS. On Time is On Time. If a starter is mid-route say, Dufferin and Bloor a major traffic connection. If necessary to fund these positions eliminate one bus/car. Since Operators cannot be trusted to obey schedules let them suffer loss of these runs.
Another problem is bunching. We have all seen buses running in packs. It seems they don’t want to be lonely! This happens when one vehicle gets delayed and the next one or two or three run early because the first guy is full to the doors. This too needs to be dealt with. There is nothing more aggravating than standing on one corner waiting for a light and seeing multiple buses going through the intersection bumper-to-bumper. One can see buses fighting for curb space. This needs to stop. 2nd or 3rd should wait in bus bay for a change of the light.
I would first meet with the union and ask for their members’ co-operation. Give them 30-60 days to improve schedule adherence. If no significant improvement then cut jobs to fund starter jobs. Maybe then other Divisions will get the message.
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According today’s Globe & Mail, the TTC claims it has recently solved reliability problems on the St. Clair streetcar line. Here are 3 paragraphs from the article.
So, is the problem solved?
Steve: Not at all times, and certainly not on weekends. This morning there was a lot of bunching, but NextBus was not displaying all of the runs and so it was difficult to know what was up with the route as a whole.
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Wasn’t St Clair built as private right-of-way originally? And gradually taken over by the highways dept.?
Malcolm’s suggestion about only reporting headways over a certain level: what about the bunching cases? There could be one headway of 15 minutes, followed by 7 of 30 seconds.
Steve: Yes, originally the line had a right-of-way, but it was removed between 1928 and 1935.
I agree about headways vs bunching. This is a typical stats problem for service where simple formulae can hide problems. Taking your example further, pairs of cars could run every 15 minutes, but only one of them would be on a 15 minute headway. On paper all of the trips are operated (no short turns), but the reliability is crap.
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I think that the scores would need to be collected by route, also you certainly could also look at time of day, where a sub score would be looked at. The concern of course is it gets harder to understand. However, I do believe that there should be exception reporting, so it would be reasonable to also highlight routes that say had particular time of day, or day of week issues.
Again however, you would need to come up with a system to pull out these particularly troubling issues. I was suggesting that the scorecards be done by route, and sorted so the most troubled routes were highlighted. You however, face a problem that any system that is complete, and tells a full and nuanced story, will also be not be able to be read at a glance. Need to basically decide what portion of the story must be brought to the fore.
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Yes, however, if the headway was supposed to be say 7.5 minutes, in the logic I was suggesting, after 12.5 minutes you would have an event (5 minutes past the suggested headway). Here you would actually be triggering an event every other time slot. If however, your scheduled headway was 10 minutes, you would not record any events. You would have a huge waste of cars, and shitty service, just not so bad as to trigger events. However on a route like King, where the 5 minute rule was being used – yes you could run incredibly bad service and never trigger an event using this rule should be a car every 2 minutes, if you ran a trio every 6 you would not trigger an event. So clearly the events themselves need to be carefully considered, and applicable to the line in question.
Also – I wonder whether we should not be encouraging Executive Information System. Good total score, could still be highlighted for troubling underlying data. (Things like really short headways in large concentrations should be setting a flag in such a system). Commented under “A new way to measure service quality”
Steve: Here is the problem: 2 cars running together produce the same “one car over headway” as 5 cars running together because only the lead car is in a gap. You cannot count just the gaps, but also the number of trips that provided useful service rather than just being the tail of a parade.
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The scorecard approach is necessary, and I understand the complications involved with selectively extracting data. However, I also think a graphical representation would be helpful (even if necessarily incomplete).
I am imagining something like a map of the 512 route with colour codes along it, indicating something like “% of passengers waiting more than X minutes for a car” (or a related passenger-focused metric — I understand one needs ridership data to fold in passenger numbers). Then animate this graphic to show the time axis. This would illustrate the problems nicely for those who are scared of numbers (many people are).
The idea that these routes need continuous supervision has merit, but the fact that we have to discuss it at all is ridiculous in a way. Take one cheap Android smartphone, add a cheap all-you-can-eat data plan from one of the new cell providers along with one of the many free TTC tracker apps, and anyone at any location in the city can instantly know where all the TTC vehicles are on any given route at any moment in time, with very good spatial and temporal resolution — so this “data acquisition” part is already worked out (and has a cheap solution). The idea that you actually need a supervisor to be physically present at route termini (looking over operators’ shoulders, as it were) to make the schedules work is disappointing.
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Yes, agreed, hence also need to count track the instances of really short actually headway as well. 4 cars in a single minute, is a situation of 3 cars in a really short headway. If they are happening with any sort of frequency, on a given line this too needs to be reported/flagged.
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512 route’s ridership don’t justify a streetcar. There are bus routes currently which have much more ridership and so I don’t see why 512 streetcar should not be replaced by an articulated bus system. Most streetcar routes in Toronto do have the ridership to justify streetcars but not 512.
Steve: The 512 ridership is comparatively low because it is shorter than other streetcar routes — it only runs west of Yonge Street. However, the service runs more frequently than all of the downtown lines except for Spadina and King.
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While I would grant you it is not terribly high for a streetcar route, 32,400 riders is respectable for a surface route. There are routes being touted as subway candidates that do not have higher ridership. Sheppard West is at less than 1/2 this, Sheppard East beyond the subway is below it. Most of the bus routes that have higher ridership, really are candidates for LRT, Don Mills, Eglinton, Finch West, Jane … except of course poor Lawrence East … perhaps there should be a campaign to elevate it, instead of dropping the 512.
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The important metric is not total ridership but ridership per route km. From the March 2014 stats. St. Clair is 11th but it carries 38,000 over a 6.25 km route for over 6000 per route km. Eglinton West carries over 48,000 but it is over 21 km long for about 2400 per route km. If you only took the densest part it might go up to 4000 passengers per route km but it is still below St. Clair. Spadina carries 44,000 over 6 km of route for over 7000 passengers per route km. Compare items that measure the same thing before you complain about the 512.
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Then why on Earth would we have underground LRT for Eglinton West? Just because it runs through some very high heeled areas?
Steve: How many times do we have to tell you? The only reason that part of Eglinton is underground is that the street is too narrow for a right-of-way. Enough with crap about “high-heeled areas”.
Thank you Steve. Now why would no one claim the same for the Sheppard subway? The Sheppard subway has low ridership numbers because the route is very short. Even the heavily crowded Bloor Danforth subway would have poor ridership numbers if it only ran a small comparative distance say between Castle Frank and Woodbine. It is time to extend the Sheppard subway to at least McCowan so that the line can gain its full potential.
Steve: Well, no, the Sheppard Subway has low ridership because it has low demand.
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This is exactly what I was getting at with the automated operation. It’s very sad that every customer in the city can *clearly* see when bunching, poorly spaced headways, etc occur – and with that very same smart phone see if real time traffic is the cause – and yet the ttc seems blind to it without having to have people right there, effectively babysitting paid employees!
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I think it would also be important too discuss a couple of other metrics, one would be the number of passengers at peak hour peak point, the other being the rate of ridership growth. Some of you may have noted the large difference between the initial number I cited and the one Robert did. This is the difference between the numbers cited in the estimated daily 2012 ridership and the 2013 ridership levels on the route. Please I think when the daily ridership has grown by 5700 in a single year, this is a route worthy of maintaining as streetcar, and focusing some service improvement on.
Steve: You have to be careful with those ridership numbers. On busy routes, the counts are not updated every year and then there is a big swing that might be multiple years’ effect all in one. Also, these are one-day samples and they can be affected by conditions on the day they are taken.
I look forward to the time when this info is collected much more regularly and automatically.
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Passengers per route-km is still tricky, since it depends on how far riders go. I would expect a local on/off route like King to have much higher passengers per route-km than, say, the 191 Highway 27 express, which is a line-haul route. And it is not always obvious which route acts like line-haul. The Kipling South 44 is, for significant parts of the day, a line-haul route between Kipling station and Lake Shore. The TTC recognizes this, and is proposing a Kipling South express.
Likewise, long-distance suburban routes will have lower passengers per route-km, since seats are take for a longer time by riders going further–thus necessitating more vehicles than the ridership metrics may indicate.
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This version of a Scarborough Subway Extension would serve me better, but I’d still be against it. Sheppard is a wide road with fair sized boulevards. There is plenty of room to run it at surface level.
As for demand, it’s a vast majority from one end to the other with near nil use in-between.
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Your logic doesn’t make sense. If you have 10 passenger riding for 5 km or 50 passengers riding for 1 km. The first bus is nearly empty and affects 10 passengers. The second bus is nearly full and affects 50 passengers. The lower count is because of lower demand, not because of the length of route.
Steve: The measure you seek is passenger-km per route-km, a surrogate for utilization. 50 passengers may all ride 10km, or 1km spread out over 10km of route. The passengers per route-km is the same in both cases, but the utilization is much lower because the 50 riders are not all on the bus at the same time. King is a good example of a route with many overlapping local demands. Hardly anyone (other than the occasional tourist or railfan) rides all the way from Dundas West to Broadview Station. There are at least four distinct demand patterns on the route, and the weekend pattern is not the same as the weekday one. If all of the passengers who ride some part of the King route were on the vehicles at the same point, they would need seats on the roof plus a trailer. Service is planned and scheduled based, of course, on the peak load, not on the end-to-end boarding count.
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What are you talking about? In the evening rush hours for example, the buses are packed at Don Mills and the crowding gradually eases a bit at almost every stop going east. Nearly NIL use in between? If you don’t support subways in Scarborough, then simply say so but don’t make things up like “near nil use in-between”. “This version of a Scarborough Subway Extension would serve me better” No, it would not as if it would, then you would know that it is not “near nil use in-between”. You are simply trying to pretend to be from Scarborough to lend more weight to your anti-Scarborough subway views. If it was “near nil use in-between”, then let’s have almost every 85 bus an express bus service with almost no stops between the endpoints.
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@Patrick – what you are in effect suggesting is that Sheppard subway ridership would be largely current Sheppard bus ridership. This in effect destroys the case for the subway. I believe Matthew is suggesting that most would come from a substantial redirection of current ridership that might currently use other routes and be new riders to the system. I believe that assuming subway to STC vast majority of new ridership boards there. If most possible subway riders currently are on that one bus route – why build subway, it is not even as busy as Don Mills bus, or Finch East or West etc.
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Looking at the station usage numbers for the Sheppard line are:
Yonge – 47,930
Bayview – 9,380
Bessarion – 2,550
Leslie – 5,880
Don Mills – 33,140
How would you describe the non-terminal station usage? I didn’t say anything about bus usage or east of Don Mills. Believe what you want about where I live, as I guess it gives support to your “anti-Scarborough subway” rhethoric to say anyone that doesn’t agree is lying about where they live.
What I was saying is that subway makes sense where there is a capacity need and/or constrained surface space. Sheppard doesn’t have either of these, so building a subway, not a LRT, is a vanity project and waste of money.
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This is why it is so important the the voter pay attention, so that they know when a project was the idea of a council member, a mayor (or candidate) or an MPP and when it came from city planning as a city plan driven notion. Toronto has allowed itself to get sidetracked by politically driven transit proposals, and as a consequence has not managed to build what is required.
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First of all, I think a fully informed electoral base is far fetched. If people aren’t getting paid for it and it’s not a specific interest, people are not going to follow the ins-and-outs of the transit file or any of the others. At best, you can hope for a political awareness NGO/NPO to keep track of this information and make it easily accessible and digestible. At worst, you can hope individual politicians will trumpet the successful projects that they were involved in.
Even then, the lines are often blurred. A project can arise from City/TTC planning, but then take on a political life that changes it beyond all recognition. For example, the Scarborough Subway Extension is basically now a political catch-all name that will involve all three words but with no specific route, cost, or end points. Another example is the UPX which started it’s life as a private project, but became a political bauble.
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Yes, however, I ask not for a fully informed and versed electorate, merely one that pays a small amount of attention. SSE arose in the run up to a provincial election, anyone in the province would have had this cross their radar (interested or not), ST arose in the midst of a municipal one. One would not need to be fully informed — merely able to think or question and not comatose to tell the difference on some of them.
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On the surface of things, ST is a good idea. It is only with detailed knowledge that the complete misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the underlying facts becomes obvious. Likewise, Rob Ford became Mayor on a narrative of “stopping waste”, which was believeable on the surface. Once he got into power, the actuality of the situation came home and it became apparent that there wasn’t enough “waste” to fulfill his plan.
As an example of only being moderately informed, I know how many EMS stations there are in Toronto and I can look up their locations. I don’t know their staffing/vehicle levels or the rate each gets called out (for example, a neighbourhood with more crime or seniors probably needs more EMS). Without detailed knowledge, I can’t say where would be a better place to build the next one or where there is redundancy that can be cut back. I have to either invest the time or trust in those I believe to be honest and informed to tell me about the issue(s). What for transit is a non-biased group that people will believe on the issue.
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I am not arguing that the average person should be able to off the cuff make a detailed argument against ST, rather, be aware enough to question as to why this notion would not be coming from the planning groups, and therefore show a very healthy skepticism.
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In reading what you said about how ridership has gone up on the 512 since the Spadina subway has opened, it makes me think of how the Rogers Road line might be like had it been allowed to survive. I know I’m beating a dead horse here but it’s just one of those things.
Steve: The other related point, however, is that St. Clair has started to redevelop, but I doubt we will see increased density along Rogers for decades, if ever.
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Having only seen what’s happened on the part of St. Clair where the 512 runs I have yet to see what, if anything, has happened west of Gunn’s loop or even between Yonge and Mt. Pleasant. I understand about the cost and lack of priority in extending the 512 anywhere west but surely any redevelopment west of Gunn’s should be justification for an extension west but Hell will freeze over before that ever happens.
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TSP should be just that, transit first. Having TTC vehicles sit while cars are turning left doesn’t speed things up, TTC vehicles should get the opportunity to go first instead of waiting, it could speed up the run time considerably
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