The 514 Cherry car has been running since June 2016. Although originally planned as a net new service, budget for the route fell victim to the 2016 round in which headroom for the “new” service was created by reallocating vehicles from 504 King. The purpose was to concentrate service on the central part of King where there is higher demand, but in practice, the original schedule did not work out. In November 2016 the headways on 514 Cherry were widened to compensate for longer-than-planned running times.
The 514 Cherry car has been something of an afterthought for the TTC in several ways. Planning and construction for it began years ago, but implementation was delayed until after the Pan Am Games were out of the way and the Canary District began to populate with residents and students in the new buildings. Another major blow has been the failure to build the Waterfront East LRT which is intended to eventually connect with the trackage on Cherry Street as part of a larger network. In effect, the spur to Distillery Loop is treated by the TTC as little more than a place for a scheduled short turn of the King Street service, much as trackage on Dufferin Street south of King is for the route’s western terminus.
Riders bound for the Distillery District face two challenges. One is that the older streetcars do not have route signs for 514 Cherry, only a small dashboard card wrapped over the “short turn” sign. Tourists might be forgiven for wondering if a 514 Cherry will ever show up. As new streetcars gradually appear on this route, this problem will decline, but it is an indication of the half-hearted way service was introduced that good signage was not part of the scheme.
New low floor cars now operate on 514 Cherry, typically two in off-peak periods and four in the peak. However, the TTC appears to make no attempt to assign these cars to runs that are equally spaced on the route, and so it is common to see both of them near one of the other terminus with a wide gap facing anyone who actually needs to wait for one.
Indeed, it is the same pair of runs that usually have a Flexity on them through much of December, and they do not provide evenly spaced accessible service over the route. The TTC is happy to crow about accessibility, but falls down in the execution.
Worst of all are the actual headways found on 514 Cherry. Although the schedule was revised in November, and cars should generally have time to make their trips, it is very common to see two 514 Cherry cars close together followed by a long gap. This problem originates at the terminals, the points where the TTC’s target for “on time” service is no more than one minute early to five minutes late. This six minute window is routinely broken by service on the route, and the problem only gets worse as cars move across the city.
In effect, the TTC has simply thrown out a bunch of extras for the King car and lets them run more or less at random providing supplementary capacity in the central part of the route.
Steve Munro 