There are few service changes planned for the remainder of the year.
Leslie Barns is scheduled to open on November 22, and operation of the low-floor Flexity fleet will transfer to that location. This will trigger some rearrangement of route allocations between Russell and Roncesvalles Carhouses, and the temporary storage of cars at Exhibition Loop will end.
Off peak schedule changes on 504 King will remove some of the excess running time in the schedules and improve service on weekdays.
“Run as directed” buses will be added to 501 Queen during peak periods to be used as needed to fill gaps in service. This is a temporary arrangement pending a major rewrite of the Queen schedules for January 2016 that will see some streetcars transferred from 504 King to 501 Queen, and more buses added to the 504 peak service.
Weekend schedules on 165 Weston Road North and 96 Wilson are substantially revised to implement the 10-minute network (this was done for weekdays in the October schedules), to reduce crowding during some periods, and to extend all day service to the 96F Thistledown branch.
Just before Christmas, the tunnel liner replacement project on the Yonge line north of Eglinton will be finished, and all late evening service will run through to Finch. The last day for the Eglinton turnback will be Friday, December 18.
New Year’s Eve will see the usual extended service throughout the system. The TTC has not yet announced whether free transit service will be provided that evening.
Steve Munro 
Is the tunnel liner completion confirmed or is that a TBD thing given all the past issues we’ve seen.
Steve: If they are changing the schedules, it’s real. This has been reported on in other places for some months now, notably the CEO’s report.
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So still no move of the St Clair West short-turn to Glencairn? We’re at the end of 2015. Is this one of those things that will be perpetually on the books for show, but never make it to operation?
Steve: There is no mention of this in the 2016 budget either.
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Leslie Carhouse is going to have plenty of room for a while….
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Leslie will be a good place to store all the junker CLRVs and ALRVs as they are withdrawn from service. They can rip off pieces to repair the about-to-be-junkers. Lots o track capacity and, with those prison-style walls, no one will ever see them.
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Better yet, why not stop junking them until the TTC actually gets some new streetcars! At this rate there are not going to be any streetcars left if they keeping scrapping them.
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Finally! Both 10 minute networks on 96 and 165 because those routes seriously need it! BTW, 41 Keele, 37 Islington to Steeles, 68 Warden to Steeles, 105 Dufferin North to Steeles, 195 Jane Rocket, 190 Scarborough Centre Rocket, 199 Finch Rocket, 60B Steeles West to Martin Grove, 54 Lawrence East to Rouge Hill, and 16 McCowan also needs 10 minute networks.
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Also, 123 Shorncliffe (both branches running 20 minutes or better), 110 Islington South, and 196 York University Rocket also needs 10 minute networks.
Steve: By the way, you, possibly under another alias, have made these points already.
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I note in the TTC document that we have Russell Carhouse, Roncesvalles Carhouse and Leslie Barns. Is there some subtle TTC difference between a barn and a carhouse?
Steve: Originally, it was to be the “Ashbridges Bay Maintenance and Storage Facility” or “MSF” for short. The change to “Leslie Barns” came through lobbying by Councillor Fletcher on behalf of local residents. If we hear the sound of horses pulling cars around the yard, we will know that the TTC has taken the name rather more literally.
It will be amusing to see whether the Metrolinx Eglinton-Crosstown facility will become something like “Black Creek Barns”.
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Could they store CLRVs and ALRVs in Leslie Barns?
Steve: Yes, although the site is not set up to maintain them there.
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I don’t really think 16 McCOWAN needs it. Huy/Paul, as a rider, they are fine 7-8 minutes during peaks. Especially, 15 minutes on weekends.
For clarity sake, what division will operate the 501 QUEEN gap buses? I may noticed a Mount Dennis bus was on the 195 JANE ROCKET, an Arrow Rd. route during the Pan-am Games. Can you tell me Steve, what is “run as directed” means?
Steve: Eglinton will run the gap buses. “Run as directed” means just what it says. The vehicles have no schedule and are dispatched as needed depending on the circumstances of the day. This plays havoc with Nextbus, by the way, because they are unscheduled, and unless the TTC is careful to put them into the 501 schedule, even as dummies, Nextbus won’t track them.
NB: Steve, I am aware that this “Paul Kingston” person is an alias for Huy Pham, a ordinary 16-year-old teenager from Markham, which he was possibly banned from here before, even CPTDB and RFD. I swear he rants the same thing all the time. He even got IP banned on the Wikipedia long ago for “sockpuppetry”. My humble apologies for the mess.
Steve: I figured that out a while ago. It had to be someone who was a serious fan, unlikely a well-informed rider, simply by the wide geographic coverage of the routes he lists.
If comments are vaguely reasonable, I let them through. If it gets out of hand, the “trash” button is easily pressed, or if even worse “spam”. Too many of the latter, and WP will learn what I want to do with posts like that.
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Jelo G. Cantos, 16 needs it because it’s one of the high volume routes like 43 Kennedy.
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It will be interesting to see what the totally revamped 501 routings and schedule will be like. We in south Etobicoke have been assured that our concerns about service on Lake Shore will be all assuaged then.
I also wonder if the “run as needed” buses will ever make it west of Roncesvalles. There’s a serious problem in that buses pretending to be Humber cars can’t actually turn around at Humber loop. The TTC has explicitly said that the 508 Lakeshore route is on complete hiatus because it could not be satisfactorily bustituted, due to Humber loop access issues.
(Trivia, there is a turnaround loop at High St. that lets westbound buses to double back to the Humber bus loop, and also turn around to head eastbound after coming out of the bus loop.)
Steve: My understanding of the new schedules is that they involve (a) more running time so that cars don’t have to short turn and (b) sending a 10 minute or better service to Long Branch making Lake Shore part of the “Ten Minute Network”.
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Logically, because of the 508 LAKE SHORE car is on hiatus or potentially “discontinued”, they could try to split the 501 QUEEN and have the streetcars running from Humber Loop to Long Branch under the resurrected 507 LONG BRANCH name, a route that hasn’t existed for 20 years now. Would the revived 507 work?
Steve: This has been discussed at length here for several years. Humber Loop is not a good place to split the route, and indeed any split needs to include an overlap so that even a short turned Queen car still makes the connection. One proposed scheme would take the 507 to Dundas West during off-peak times to preserve the link at Queen and Roncesvalles. Peak service would run through to downtown as the 508.
However, I believe that all that is happening now is simply to extend the Humber cars out to Long Branch during off peak so that there are no scheduled short turns when headways are wider, and giving all trips more running time.
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As far as I know, if the operator punches in a valid run number for the 501, it would be trackable on NextBus once it’s running on the route. Most of the bus substitutes for detours or accidents are also trackable (while not detouring) as the operator is required to sign in on TRUMP to the streetcar supervisor. It doesn’t matter how off schedule is that bus compared to the run number, it would be tracked as a late bus. It’s actually worse to include these extra “Run as directed” in the NextBus schedule. If the operator signs in with that run number. Before the first trip, it will appear as that bus will arrive at the first stop at the scheduled time. Once time reaches the scheduled time, Nextbus realized that bus won’t appear. It would probably cause more confusion then benefits as it’s probably better to have a bus magically appeared than having a trackable bus not show up. Multiple buses/streetcars with the same run number can appear on the same route. They will be tracked as separate vehicles with their own location and predictions. The TTC actually have done this with the Fireworks shuttle to Ashbridge bay by having them all on the 1st run of the 92 Woodbine South.
BTW, a bus and streetcar makes not differences on NextBus. Only those who are familiar with the fleet numbers would know the differences. The new streetcars are the only exception as the TTC demanded to have the accessibility symbol displayed. Otherwise it’s tracked like all other vehicles.
Steve: My info about putting dummy run numbers in the schedule came from the folks who run NextBus, but I can see how simply using an existing run number gets around having to make provision in the schedule. In my route analyses I gave up using run numbers, rather than fleet numbers, years ago because of ad hoc on street changeovers, but duplicate run numbers did show up from time to time as well.
However, if “real” run numbers are used for extras, and if the TTC is tracking “on time performance” as opposed to “headways”, they will get some really screwy data. I think it is essential for NextBus to display extras as otherwise riders will mistakenly think they have a long wait when a bus might be just around the corner. What is missing from the current implementation (and I’m not sure if it will be in the new system) is an interface to the destination sign so that NextBus could “know” where the vehicle claims to be headed regardless of whatever “schedule” it might be running on. I believe this feature was implemented for at least one other city.
As for symbols associated with fleet numbers, for the historic streetcars in San Francisco, an actual picture of the car, complete with the appropriate colour scheme (they are all different) shows up on NextBus. Have a look!.
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Is the long-awaited 501 schedule fix for January 2016 confirmed?
If it’s as successful at the 506 changes in September (at least for those of us east of Coxwell – suddenly we have reliable frequent weekend service) it could be popular. Though with less short-turns at Coxwell, I fear I’m gaining weight.
Steve: As far as I know, it’s to take effect in January, but the detailed schedule announcements won’t be out until mid-November.
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No thank you, I like it unchanged for now along with my number 2 route, 21 BRIMLEY until the Scarborough Subway extension affects the route. 43 KENNEDY already has been frequent from Kennedy Stn to Progress rush hours and midday.
Steve, my primary route doesn’t need the “Ten Minute” service the Huy/Paul told me right? I already read the document.
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Yes, that is true if we use run numbers for tracking. TTC have a habit of taking buses from busy routes to do streetcar/subway shuttles when incidents occur unexpectedly. NextBus could easily implement something like a dummy run number. By tying the run number to NextBus schedule eliminates the mistake that some operators don’t change their signs. It would be nice to have a new system that can dynamically schedule buses on the fly and when the supervisor requests a short turn, they can push a single button that changes the sign, communicates to NextBus that the bus will be short turning. The more things an operator needs to care about, the more likely they’ll forget.
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If the TTC were to go through with actually setting up the Jane St. LRT line, they could store the vehicles at Jane St. and Steeles Ave. in the “Black Creek Pioneer Village Barns,” complete with horse shoeing facilities!
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Yes, but can they do standard gauge horse shoeing as well as TTC gauge?
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Steve, let’s say hypothetically that Metrolinx did assume responsibility of key GTA transit commissions and amalgamated them: TTC, YRT, Brampton & Mississauga Transit – at the very least. (We all know this will never happen due to the sheer fact there are multiple transit unions #1).
What would the numbering/naming scheme look like? I’m sure we could all bet that they would muck it up anyway like the Crosstown station names.
Would TTC retain the 0-199 range and then from there each suburb gets a prefix like 200s, 400s, 600s, 700s, 800s, and 900s where light-rail would get the 500s (aka. Rob Ford’s hated streetcars), and night service gets the 300s?
Or would we actually amalgamate routes and just leave the different suffixes (i.e. TTC25 and YRT90 go back to TTC25 and TTC25D) and then the “rocket” buses could be converted to VIVA lines?
I figured since you’re tired of Huy/Paul coming up with zany 10 minute service schemes I would rather ask a “bigger picture” question since uploading service was once an idea given (very minimal) consideration by Metrolinx and the local agencies.
Now for Huy/Paul: I kinda like the zing of how 16 16th Avenue with the YRT sounds like!!! I waited for years for them to actually create such a route. Maybe we should amalgamate service so that your precious 16 McCowan gets renamed or absorbed into another service with similar headways and a common destination. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (*evil laugh*)
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If it were to ever happen I see them moving to a New York style numbering system where each city gets a prefix letter. For example, TTC’s 29 Dufferin would become T29, the T prefix identifying it operates in Toronto. Routes that cross city boundaries would have both prefixes, like the TTC’s 165 Weston Rd North bus would become either TY165 or TV165, the Y for York Region or V for Vaughan. The Y works better since it would reduce the duplication of M prefix between Markham and Mississauga. Either than or Markham can use the prefix “Mk” or “Mh”, similar to how Bronx uses “Bx” to differentiate it from Brooklyn.
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It would just be TY165 as Vaughan Transit hasn’t existed since 2001 when it was absorbed into YRT.
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Has the reorganization of the bus bays at Kennedy Station accomplished anything?
Steve: I will leave this for those who use the station regularly to answer.
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I thought the TTC was going in the direction of modifying the Wilson and Weston Road North schedules so that they had compatible headways that would basically cut the headway in half on the shared section of the route. Am I mis-remembering?
If I am remembering correctly, is this a change in direction, and if so, any insight on the reason (e.g., TTC tried it during some periods and it wasn’t possible to keep the headways even between the two routes, so they reverted back to setting headways separately for the two routes based on peak loading)?
Steve: Actually, if you ignore the Thistledown branch (96H) which is on a standard 30 minute headway all of the time, the rest of the service meshes more or less on paper.
Sat Early Morning: 10′ headway on the 165, 10′ combined headway on the 96 A/B
Sat Morning: 9′ headway on the 165, 9′ combined headway on the 96
Sat Afternoon: 7′ on the 165, 7′ combined on the 96
… and so on
This pattern also applies to Sundays.
The next question is whether the scheduled departures are blended, and how reliably the service merges together inbound.
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Wouldn’t the branches now have to be renumbered since you cannot have T29A, T29B, T29C to avoid confusion?
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I am wondering when or if the speed restriction on The Queensway between Windermere and Humber loop will be lifted? It’s been like that for months, and I think even expanding in length. I don’t see anything obviously wrong or different on that stretch, compared to other Queensway trackage. And how long should it take to fix open ballasted track (if that’s the issue)?
Steve: This is supposed to be fixed before winter, but yes the length of time bad track goes unrepaired around town says a lot about TTC maintenance priorities and practices.
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NYC has branches, like the Q20A/Q20B, or the M34/M34A.
That being said, it has far less routes per borough as it’s amalgamation is more similar to Toronto’s, not the entire GTA i.e. Brooklyn is more Etobicoke than Mississauga (NYC land area is ~790 to Toronto’s 630…whereas the GTA is anywhere from 2-7 thousand depending on what you include). Manhattan, for instance, only has 41 routes *including* all branches…whereas Toronto has 139, *before* including any branches.
All of that being said, I think it’s a very long time before we’ll need a prefix on any route numbers for Toronto or Mississauga or York region…The entire region would have to be under one controlling body for that to be needed (as otherwise it’s still the “ttc route 37” instead of the “yrt route 37”). And I suspect if that happened, a lot of lines would be re drawn…there’s no point in having 10+ MiWay routes end at Islington if there’s no more boundaries.
To be honest though, I think given tax implications etc, it’s better if the operations and transit agencies are kept separate and just use integrated fares / transfers…though distance / zone based fares or more significant federal / provincial funding would be needed to make that happen smoothly IMO.
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@Ed,
There is an ongoing design for a complete rebuild on this section. It’s been delayed because the TTC has been saying “we’d really like it like this” then saying “you’ve not considered enough alternatives”.
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Looking at the draft document for the January board for the 501 Queen route I’m quite surprised that they are proposing a split operation at Humber Loop. Basically a resurrection of the 507 route keeping the 501 designation, as well as a modified 508 Lakeshore with the 501 designation. CLRVs to be used on the Humber-Long Branch section and ALRVs for Humber-Neville Park. Of course equipment issues, including no equipment available will change this.
Steve, what are your thoughts on the split-I don’t think it’s a good service for the west end.
Also to note is that 510 Spadina is to be all LFLRVs (good luck) with keeping the Charlotte Loop branch. The division does not want to keep this as LFLRVs will screw up 504 service.
Steve: I have not seen the January board document and did not know that they intended to split the operation at Humber Loop again. Barring a major improvement in short turn activity at Roncesvalles/Sunnyside, this will result in long headways on The Queensway thereby defeating the shorter headways on “Long Branch”. Is there any through service that does not involve a transfer?
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The TTC would not re-instate the old 507 service or the one to Dundas West Station but they will split the 501 into two branches, one east of Humber and one west of Humber and then run run a modified 508 as a 501, bet they run to Queen and Church. BUT they will not run the old 507 service because that would be admitting they made a mistake. (I understand that they may have removed the 507 linens.) I wonder if they still have the old metal signs that they used to hang on the Short Turn signs that said Long Branch to make sure you realized the car was going to Long Branch and not Humber. This sounds a lot like the service they ran before Bloor-Danforth opened. Every thing old is new again. At least they won’t need the guy with the hand held farebox who boarded at Humber and collected zone 2 tickets.
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However, James Bow in a Transit Toronto article about the Leslie Barns said:
Perhaps he should have said all Flexity streetcar maintenance work?
The author also said:
Last week the facility still looked like a construction site, and on September 8, the tracks on Leslie Street were obstructed for light construction work.
Steve: The TTC expects to have partial use of the site from later in November as the Flexity fleet transfers there. I can’t answer for what is on Transit Toronto, but there is no way that the barns “opened” in August 2015.
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Sorry. I’ll fix.
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I have one thing to say about streetcar improvements. The TTC should operate 502 Downtowner 10 minutes or better all day, every day including weekends and discontinue 22A Coxwell.
Steve: The Downtowner car is already scheduled on a 10 minute headway at midday, although how it actually operates is quite another matter.
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Wow, making everyone change at Humber Loop starting in the dead cold of winter. Sounds like a PR disaster in the making.
Isn’t that a primary objective of the new 501 schedule – to virtually eliminate short-turns outside of major operational problems (accidents, etc.)?
I’m quite impressed on 506 since Labour day – an unscheduled short-turn has become very rare. However, I do now need to look for opportunities to get more exercise!
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The 506 has large loops at each end so cars that arrive early, or rather not late, can sit there and use their recovery time. Lines like 504 and 505 do not have the luxury of large loops that they can sit in so they end up blocking the street.
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I was scratching my head how there’s 10 extra buses running on 501, but nothing in the Service Summary. But there it is, hidden under route 701 “Run as Directed”.
I guess if nothing else, the bus shortage has ended. Shame they are having to use 31 buses now in AM peak because of the streetcar shortage, rather than on bus routes.
With the CLRV/ALRV fleet continuing to shrink as fast as the new cars are arriving (only 237 left at the end of October, down from 241 in mid-September), I wonder if there’s any way to slow down the disposals. Those 10 cars they recently got of, could have more than provided the extra 501 service – if they could have kept them functioning.
Steve: The early retirements are cars that were not fit for service and were of more use broken up for spare parts than as repair candidates.
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501 though has large enough loops, so should work well with turning.
Steve: Have you been to Neville Loop lately? It is smaller than Broadview Station.
I really don’t know how 504 is supposed to function at Broadview with the new cars, when you can only fit one (and perhaps the front door of a second) on the platform – I’m wondering how long before that shoe drops.
Dundas West doesn’t look as bad, though I use it so infrequently, I really couldn’t comment.
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Steve: Have you been to Neville Loop lately? It is smaller than Broadview Station.
True, but i guess I don’t see it as a big issue if cars back up before the loop. There’s nowhere left to go. Could easily park one in the loop, and another in the westbound stop at Neville Park, with a third eastbound between Neville and … uh … Neville. And a 4th between Neville and Kingswood if necessary. There aren’t the traffic issues here that there are around Broadview station or Dundas West station.
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