This article is a follow-up to an early April review of the gains and losses brought by the St. Clair right-of-way and subsequent “transit priority” measures. When it was published, the TTC had just changed schedules on this route to shorten trip times in response to repairs on several traffic signal locations where that “priority” function was not working. Did these repairs actually have an effect? How well did the line operate with less running time?
Updated May 23, 2015 at 12:40 pm:
Data for weekend operations has been added to the end of this article.
Conclusions
- There was a definite increase in travel times in fall 2014 as compared with summer 2010 when the right-of-way operations west of St. Clair West Station began. The location and severity of the problem varied along the route with notable effects between Bathurst and Oakwood where there are many traffic signals.
- The amount of running time added in the October 2014 schedules was slightly more than the actual increase in average running time over the route from 2010 to 2014.
- Travel times were reduced after the repair of transit priority functions at several signals along the route, notably in sections with many traffic signals. This did not completely reverse the longer running times of 2014.
- Short-turns as a proportion of all service declined with the new schedules in place.
- The increased supervision produced more reliable headways.
- The improvements of October 2014 have been slightly reduced with the new April 2015 schedules that clawed back much of the additional running time.
For reference, here is a table from the first article showing changes in schedules for the route since 2007.
Generally speaking, the April 2015 changes reduced one-way running time by 6 minutes during most periods with a few, minor adjustments to terminal “recovery time”. Those “recovery” values are as much a rounding factor to make the headway come out to an even value as they are a calculated amount of time needed to deal with random delays.
Steve Munro 