Once again, the Toronto International Film Festival (aka TIFF) will take over King Street between University Avenue and Peter Street for its opening weekend from Thursday, September 8 to Sunday, September 11. Transit riders rank second to this Toronto event, one which is well-connected at City Hall and can elbow aside other users of the street to suit its purpose. Imagine King Kong descending from the CN Tower for his annual visit.
An attempted compromise that would have kept streetcars running on King during the weekday daytimes fell in place of the benefits of the festival. That’s the official story, anyhow.
Several routes will be disrupted by this arrangement:
- 504 King will be split into two routes with the eastern segment operating to the Church, Wellington, York loop normally the home of 503 Kingston Road Tripper cars. The western segment will use the 510 Spadina route’s short turn loop via Spadina, Adelaide and Charlotte to King. This is a change from 2015 when the western branch of the route turned north on Bathurst Street.
- 514 Cherry cars will operate as one route bypassing TIFF via Queen between Church and Spadina. This route already has problems staying on schedule, and the diversion will make things even worse at both ends of the line.
- 504 buses will bypass TIFF via Richmond and Adelaide (WB and EB) between University and Spadina.
- 304 King night car will be supplemented by a bus shuttle running from Parliament to Spadina.
The full details are on the TTC’s website.
This arrangement is further complicated by the continuing diversion of 501 Queen service between Spadina and Shaw via King for watermain construction on Queen Street.
The TTC notice says that:
Toronto Police will be positioned at key intersections to assist with traffic flow.
I hope so. The complete lack of transit priority signals to assist in diversionary routings is a long-standing problem for the TTC and produces no end of delays at intersections where turns across traffic must happen. This has shown up already in 2016 as queues of Queen cars eastbound at Spadina (to which the King cars will be added).
There are priority signals for turns off of Spadina to east-west streets, but not for turns onto Spadina. The situation is made worse by the number of electric switches that are out of service because it is the switch controllers that tell the signals when an extra phase for turning streetcars is required.
Diversions like this downtown are commonplace. Both the TTC and City of Toronto should do more to provide transit priority assistance for these as part of the standard installation at all major intersections where streetcars have to make turns during these events.
According to the TTC’s Brad Ross, TIFF is paying for most of this arrangement, although the TTC Ambassadors (extra staff to direct riders to the relocated services) will be covered by the TTC. It is unclear how much of the extra service the TTC will operate (and that’s assuming they do actually provide some) will come out of the TTC budget. This sort of thing is an ongoing issue for the TTC which is expected to arrange alternate services as a community benefit, but usually does not receive compensation for doing so. It is one of those hidden costs of doing business for the transit system.
Full disclosure: I am a regular attendee and donor at TIFF, but I do not agree with the degree to which they disrupt transit service on a major downtown route during workday hours.
Steve Munro 
Won’t someone think about the single-occupant automobiles? Sob…😢 Nobody at city hall cares about the hundred people onboard a streetcar.
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That’s asking too much. They don’t even do it for regular routings. The Bay and Queens Quay intersection is a disaster for bus and auto traffic. During rush hours and weekends, it can take upwards of 10 minutes for a bus to crawl from Harbour Street and make the turn on to eastbound Queens Quay.
There’s an advance green from eastbound Queens Quay to northbound Bay but nothing from southbound Bay to eastbound Queens Quay. Approx 20 seconds out of every 70 (less than 30%) of total green time is given to Bay. This causes major back ups in transit service because only 1-2 left turning vehicles can make it through the heavy pedestrian traffic during each cycle.
Having a bus stop outside the Waterpark Place office complex only complicates things as it forces buses to merge into the left turn from the right hand curb within the span of about 2 bus lengths.
I’ve come to the conclusion the TTC and City simply don’t care about little details like this on the streetcar system or elsewhere.
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Beyond TIFF, it seems like detours off King or Queen street downtown due to events, construction, or traffic incidents aren’t that rare, and having both 501 and 504 merge onto a single street gets messy. Has there been thought given to having (keeping?) tracks on Adelaide and Richmond as a permanent alternate routing available to either service?
Steve: The TTC has been very shortsighted in letting tracks on Adelaide fall out of use, and more recently being removed from Simcoe to York. It is quite clear that alternate routes to Queen and King are needed. From a planning point of view, this gets tricky because Richmond is also to host bike lanes. What is needed is an area-wide review of transit requirements including track, transit priority, parking, cycling and pedestrian facilities. The King Street study now underway will almost certainly not look far enough out from King to embrace this.
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I am very interested to see how they will handle that 504 bus supplement. If it is turning from southbound University to eastbound King, where will it stop to let people connect to St. Andrew station? It will be quite amusing if they now have to temporarily bring back a York Street stop!
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I heard that the cabbies are planning a surprise strike during TIFF. In light of that, should TIFF be cancelled this year? Or perhaps TIFF can be moved to another location like Mississauga where Uber is banned and hence no taxi drivers protesting. I don’t understand this because the cabbies initially said that they were protesting because Uber was illegal and now that Uber is legal, the taxi drivers are still protesting.
Steve: TIFF will survive the absence of cabs.
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All it would take is a couple hundred protestors and TIFF would give up on this crazy scheme…nothing ruins a premiere to a film like a couple hundred streetcar users crashing the party…everyone should just get off the streetcar, walk over to the media tent in front of Roy Thomson Hall…you blocked our Streetcar, we’re going to block a few SUVs….
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Steve, any idea why Richmond is being used instead of Wellington? Between the construction on Richmond at university and the somewhat significantly further distance from King (“twice as far”), it seems like Wellington is a much better answer. Never-mind that that’s where the westbound king cars are diverting anyways … a westbound transfer will involve a walk from King to Richmond, instead of no walk at all! It just seems like a much better option all around.
Dennon
Steve: Richmond/Adelaide are the TTC’s standard pair for the express buses thru downtown. Riders should transfer westbound at Church from streetcar to bus. It will be interesting to see if the TTC sets up an eastbound transfer point on Adelaide east of Spadina.
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Is it time to put a 3rd and 4th track along Spadina from King north to, say, College?
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I don’t understand why the event simply can’t be held along John Street instead. It would also position John Street in people’s minds as the major street connecting Toronto’s arts venues which is exactly what the city wants it to become (once it is re-imagined over the coming years).
Steve: The problem is that John Street has the front door of the condo, not of Tiff itself, as well as the entrance to the parking garage under the Princess of Wales theatre. I agree that more use should be made of John as the “festival street”, and this needs to be planned as an integral part of the redesign of King downtown.
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I can’t help but feel that we should have switched over to bi-directional vehicles with the new streetcar order and installed crossovers in (at minimum) strategic locations.
We’d obviously need police officers to direct traffic while they were in use, but that’s got to be better than the current system of having vehicles do strange detours miles away from the actual closures (and subway connections), or sitting in a dozen-streetcar-long queue whenever there’s an accident.
We’d have traded off additional cost (more complicated vehicles, installing & maintaining crossovers) and reduced seating capacity (from the additional cab and doors), but that seems worthwhile for the flexibility we would have gained. What were the reasons we didn’t do it?
Steve: Mainly because it would have taken many years to reach an all double-ended fleet (we still would be nowhere near that even if the cars were on time), and there would be extra cost both for the cars and for track changes. Would it be worthwhile? I’m not sure, and the expense might be better directed to improving the flexibility of the downtown trackage. Abandoning Adelaide was not a bright move, for starters.
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I agree that the track on Adelaide between York and Spadina/Charlotte is gone for ever but wonder if replacing the Adelaide track from Victoria to York (and adding the necessary curves) might be a useful thing. At the moment we have four WESTBOUND streetcar tracks between Church and York (King, Queen, Wellington and Richmond). We only have two EASTBOUND – King and Queen so when there are diversions eastbound congestion is virtually guaranteed. I do not think there ever was track on Richmond from York to Spadina and I wonder if replacing it on those blocks of Adelaide would actually help much. Of course, making York two way again from King to Queen would be useful too.
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On a street like King or Queen where would you put them and would they be facing point or trailing point crossovers? and near side or far side of the intersection. Try to visualize this happening in the height of the rush hour.
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Money would be better spent adding more turning options to reduce the length of diversion then replacing the track on Richmond and Adelaide to make a few diversion at little bit closer.
Steve: Given that eastbound service is turning back at Spadina/Charlotte, and westbound service at York, it is unlikely that any new turnbacks or diversion routes could be “a bit closer” without additional east-west track on parallel streets.
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Or simply move it to Scarborough and show us that you care about us. Ellesmere is wide enough to allow half of it for the festival.
Steve: If you really want to be ignored, try asking Tiff to come away from the Entertainment District.
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The disruption caused by excessive numbers of road closures for events in Toronto has gotten out of control and needs to be stopped. There are disruptive road closures almost every weekend from March to November. This is made even worse by the subway construction closures almost every weekend which make it a nightmare to get anywhere on weekends. Tory and City Council need to limit road closures to a few times per year for a very small number of major events and stop allowing any more than that. Road closures should never be allowed the same weekend as subway maintenance closures, and closures of streetcar lines, or Gardiner, DVP, and Lake Shore Blvd for events should be completely banned. Shutting down the busiest streetcar line in the city for any event, let alone in rush hour, is unacceptable.
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I don’t mind the city shutting down a street for a major arts festival — really the biggest thing the city does from an international perspective. But I don’t understand why the street can’t at least be kept open for morning service. It’s not like TIFF is doing anything on the street bwteen midnight and, say, 11 am.
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They might want to update the streetcar divisions of the change – the latest posting currently has the King car diverting in the same manner as in the spring.
Steve: I have just about given up on the TTC’s inability to match its operations with its public “information”.
BTW, by “posting” I assume you mean an internal notice for operators?
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Anyone in the TTC’s Communications Department needs to picture an imaginary member of the public who is older, mobility-challenged, not media-savvy (i.e. not constantly hooked up to a Smart Phone) and not familiar with the entire TTC system and its intricacies – whether subway, streetcar or bus and their connections. Or, even better would be to have said Communications representative mentally *become* that person trying to negotiate the interruption in order to understand what people need to know to get around while whatever disruption is taking place. One problem with working as part of a system for so long is that you don’t understand that people don’t understand the system in the same, intricate way as you do. They just know what they need to know on a day-to-day basis to get around and messing up this normal state creates unneeded anxiety for patrons who are now forced to “adapt to the system” instead of helping them cope with the change and enabling the system to become accessible and helpful.
The TTC PR folks need to make any messages that they put out for planned interruptions or revisions to routings or services – not emergency situations – are issued in as timely and *simple* a manner as possible. Like pretending that your grandmother, who has never visited Toronto, now has to make a transit trip through the area(s) affected by the change and not get needlessly frustrated.
I think that this empathy may be part of what is missing from the service, especially when bolstered by uncaring City Councillors and Mayors who penny-pinch with budget lines while still claiming Toronto as a “World Class City.” It’s not like TIFF is a surprise event: it’s been around since 1976 and was previously held in the Yorkville neighbourhood before moving to the Entertainment District. It’s just a very visible and repeated lack of “planning” and “coordination” on the part of the “City” – staff? Councillors? – to discuss and deal with the transit mess that will result *before* it happens – especially when one is aware of forecasted watermain work on Queen Street that will adversely impact transit.
Once again, in the eyes of elected officials and public servants, transit riders are forced to ride at the back of the bus.
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You are more than correct Steve. Yesterday I waited for the 514 at the Dufferin Gate from 1:50 to 2:30 waiting for a 514 to arrive. The notices all said it would not service the gate up until 2 pm due to the parade (which was finished at 1:30).
Not sure what time the first car came but I gave up and took the 193. I doubt it takes a half hour or more to get from Spadina to the Dufferin gate so obviously someone changed something or dropped the ball. Even the supervisors on the ground at the gates did not seem to care, nobody was telling anyone the 514 wouldn’t be coming anytime soon. I can only assume the 514 did not return until after the CNE closed.
Steve: Downtown, I saw people letting 504s go by who were clearly CNE bound tourists, and who knows when or if a 514 would actually show up. There isn’t enough service on it (even if it ran on vaguely a reliable headway) for it to be advertised as a CNE route.
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It’s disappointing that my local Councillor Cressy has gone along with this sell-out of transit, sigh. We MUST have superior transit, and that’s part of the sustainability package, and even though we’re spending lots and lots (sometimes), we aren’t doing obvious/good things that would help trim our emissions and instead favour a high-carbon-stinker, which the TIFF is with all those (uncounted) air travel emissions. We should ensure good transit, and by ignoring an opportunity for a Front St. transitway out to Etobicoke, (touching on Liberty Village on a route akin to the 1985 DRL), we have allowed intnsive usages etc. without the transit support.
World-last Moronto??
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I find it vaguely ridiculous that this event cannot be held at a festival plaza type venue. I understand the need for street space, but Toronto needs to get its act together, in terms of not having to disrupt what is now a very busy, and seriously overloaded transit route. CNE grounds could be re-imagined to host much of this, or as mentioned above, John street as a festival street. Disrupting auto traffic and parking into the area, should have much less of an effect that disrupting transit. It would make more sense to leave King Street open, suffer the loss of parking for all but the organizers, and transfer every flexity in the current fleet to this route for the duration of the event. Enhance transit for the party not disrupt. The event itself needs to make plans around keeping transit open, possibly close the balance of the street to traffic, but transit itself needs to flow through.
Granted keeping people off the tracks will be a challenge, but concrete barricades could be placed along the way to make it clear, with clearly noted crossing points, and security present to keep people aware. The TTC could then even provide rides within the corridor from University to Spadina free, much like Calgary Transit does in the transit/pedestrian mall on 7th ave in downtown Calgary.
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What I saw today made Latin American transit systems (from whence I have returned) the image of efficient and thoughtfulness.
The Queen car, which is on diversion for like forever, does not stop at Spadina and Queen. Your choices are Richmond and Spadina, or Peter and Queen. The skipped stop is not mentioned by the operator, while the automatic announcement tells us “next stop Queen Street”. Why is there not a far-side stop eastbound on Queen at Spadina? It’s a key intersection for riders. Come on, this is not rocket science.
Incredibly, 510 cars are still being short-turned at Charlotte–I saw 4414 going ’round as a 510 car. This means they take up the time that eastbound King and Queen cars need in order to turn northbound on Spadina. And even though the Spadina ROW might be free, Spadina’s car lanes are jammed, which means the cars eastbound on King, all of which seem to want to go north on Spadina, are blocking and backing up eastbound streetcars which sit in the line of left-signalling traffic.
And while the short-turning 510 car is trying to make it through the pedestrian traffic that’s crossing Spadina on the north side of King, the paid duty cop is studiously looking the other way, thumbs tucked into his reflective vest. All the while, a Guild Electric truck is blocking the eastbound King right-turn lane. The Guild guys had their heads inside the tall silver box that I presume controls the signals at King and Spadina.
At 3:30 PM today I expected a nice lineup of King cars on Wellington, but they seem to have vanished elsewhere. In the meantime, a westbound King car had picked up a good load by York, where it turned northbound to follow who knows what routing.
I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
Steve: The 514 Cherry cars (which might be signed as 504 Dufferin westbound) are going up York to Queen. If real 504s are doing this, who knows what is going on. As for PDOs, yes, I have noticed that some are very dedicated and skilled, while some are mere decoration.
I don’t think you will see anything approaching integrated service management from the TTC on this because they expected to have King open, and then were sabotaged by the Mayor and the local Councillor. That said, your description of a 510 killing time at Charlotte Loop shows someone is completely unaware of the effect that has on other routes. All they care about is getting that car back on time. Classic.
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Another disastrous 504 commute – and all I was trying to do was go east from Sherbourne. I don’t know how much of a mess it was, but I could see lots of streetcars heading into town, and nothing coming back!
This is absurd. We need to start verbally attacking the sponsors and stars who attend TIFF, and those that support this nightmare.
It’s not worth it.
Steve: When I get the September vehicle tracking data, I will be able to document just how bad things are.
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Perhaps it is time for John Tory to spend slightly more time than he did on his recent Kipling-Kennedy subway trip riding on a Queen St. or King St. streetcar from either Humber Loop or Dundas West Station, respectively, going from the west end to the east terminus (Neville Loop or Broadview Station), but this time not to experience the (lack of) air conditioning but rather assess the stupidity that passes for “good transit management” daily in this city and the lack of planning by city staff and Council. This would be the perfect opportunity to see the effect of bad transit funding, crammed-full vehicles on hot summer days, lack of enforcement for designated streetcar lanes on King, improper line/vehicle management and the result of diversions due to TIFF or construction or….
Where is the streetcar version of Bianca Spence to tweet out continuously to Mayor Tory and some of the transit-unfriendly councillors to goad them into coming down to street level to see what other – non-subway – transit commuters get to deal with each day?
Toronto: World Class City when hosting TIFF and other events. Slightly worse-than-3rd-class steerage when it comes to running a streetcar service on two of the busier above-ground routes….
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