Part I of this article presented some of the background and construction photos of the Spadina streetcar line which celebrates its 20th birthday on July 27, 2017. In Part II, a look at Spadina in the early months of operation.
Much of the northern part of the street has not changed very much over the years, but the south end with its booming condo district is very different and changing still.
On Sunday, July 27, 1997, the new 510 Spadina streetcar route replaced the venerable 77 Spadina bus. This conversion was over two decades in the making.
Back in 1973, fresh from the political victory of saving the streetcar system from its planned retirement in 1980 [when the Queen subway would open (!)], the Streetcars for Toronto Committee (SFTC) proposed that the Spadina route be converted back to streetcar operation.
The Spadina streetcar was abandoned in 1948 with the retirement of the small fleet of double-ended cars serving it (there were no loops, only crossovers at Bloor and south of King), although track between Harbord and Dundas remained in use until 1966 by the Harbord car.
It is intriguing to look back at the rationale we of the SFTC had for this conversion at the time:
- Provide the basis for future rapid transit needs between Metro Centre and the Bloor and Spadina subways.
- Provide more comfortable transit service now with increased interior vehicle space, elimination of lane changing, and reduction of vibration, noise and air pollution within vehicles.
- Provide a basis for comparing the light rapid transit mode of intermediate capacity rapid transit with a test “guideway” mode being constructed at the Canadian National Exhibition.
- Release needed buses for suburban service by replacing them with currently surplus streetcars.
We were rather optimistic, and hoped that service could be operating by 1974. Of course this assumed that a lot of the existing infrastructure would be recycled, the loop at Bloor would be on the surface, not underground.
At the time, there was a proposal for a large commercial development on the Railway Lands known as “Metro Centre”, although it never came to be in the form originally planned. The area is now full of condos (and the Dome), but they came much later.
As for “intermediate capacity rapid transit”, the guideway under construction at the CNE grounds never amounted to more than a few foundations for support pillars and the loss of some trees. The development project for what would eventually become the Scarborough RT technology was killed off before the test track could be built. Meanwhile, Queen’s Park had mused about using their technology on streets like Spadina, but were careful to provide illustrations showing the guideway from a distance in front of open space, not the massive infrastructure that would be needed at stations for tracks, platforms and vertical access. There was another problem: the province’s recommended design would have stations no closer than about 1 km apart, a huge difference from the bus service with many local stops.
The idea received approval in principle, but quickly ran aground for various reasons including the unsuitability of Clarence Square for the south end loop (SFTC had proposed looping at Adelaide via Charlotte and King with buses continuing to serve the then-industrial port area). The TTC wanted the streetcars to match the existing bus route which looped around the square. At the north end, a surface loop was not practical because of land constraints.
A decade later, the scheme resurfaced as part of the Harbourfront redevelopment, although only the Queens Quay service was built initially opening in 1990. This created the track connection from King to Queens Quay as well as a loop at the foot of Spadina that the original western end of the Harbourfront line. (Track was added on Queens Quay from Spadina to Bathurst in 2000.)
Further north, some merchants objected to the road changes a streetcar would bring including the reduction of parking (changing from angle to parallel parking), and the barrier effect of a streetcar right-of-way that would, it was claimed, prevent garment racks from being moved across the street between businesses. (This was a fictional recreation of New York’s garment district as the City demonstrated by conducting a survey to count this “traffic”. There was none.)
Thanks to the TTC’s presentation of the streetcar as a rapid transit line to the pending development south of King, there were fewer stops on their proposed route than were eventually built. (For the record, the SFTC proposal included all of the stops that were in the final version.) Combined with a curbed right-of-way, this was seen as a move creating a “Berlin Wall” down the middle of the street. As a result the original design had no curbs in some locations leading to many collisions with errant motorists, and the curbs appeared as a retrofit. Today, ironically, the streetcar right-of-way acts as a refuge for jaywalking across Spadina, a dubious and dangerous practice before the streetcar’s return.
This article is a photo gallery of the line’s construction. In a second installment, I will present a gallery of the line in operation.
In these photos, what is so striking is how little many parts of Spadina have changed and the low-rise street character is much the same today as it was in the 1990s, although change is spreading north from the condo district at King.
For more on the history of streetcars on Spadina, see Transit Toronto.
The TTC and the City of Toronto have a joint road and watermain reconstruction project underway on Dundas between Yonge and Church. For a few months, 505 Dundas cars have diverted around the workarea via Bay and College/Carlton, and they are currently returning south via Church. The service is so well established that it has streetcar stops on Church where there has not been regular transit service for decades.
Church and Gould looking S 2017.06.07
The intersection at Dundas, Dundas Square and Victoria is unusual in that it is triangular, the result of a jog elimination at Yonge Street in 1923.
This post documents the track reconstruction as it progresses.
Last updated July 25, 2017.
Almost all of the service changes at the end of July are connected with construction projects.
At Kennedy Station, construction of 5 Eglinton Crosstown will shift several routes into a temporary terminal in the main parking lot. Extra running time has been added to the schedules to compensate, and service levels on the affected routes will return to fall levels now rather than in September.
At Wilson Station, construction on the upper level of the bus terminal will cause a rearrangement of routes including the use of a temporary terminal in the parking lot. There are no changes in service levels or running time.
For both projects, the temporary terminals will be part of the paid area.
At Coxwell & Queen, water main construction will cause services on Coxwell and on Queen to divert around the intersection. Coxwell-Queen Loop remains operational and will be the eastern terminus for 506 Carlton during construction on the east end of this route.
The 503 Kingston Road Tripper changes back to bus operation, and it will use the standard downtown loop via Wellington and York Streets.
The recent TTC Board meeting was over quickly, but contained a few nuggets of interest in the agenda.
The TTC Board met on July 11, and the public agenda contained little that prompted extensive debate. The entire meeting was over in 75 minutes, a quite unusual situation reflecting the onset of the summer break at City Hall.
The status of the streetcar order from Bombardier prompted a spin-off discussion of the subway. CEO Andy Byford had noted that reliability on the Yonge line’s fleet of TR (Toronto Rocket) trains has reached a world-class level, and it is quite substantially better than that of the T1 trains operating on Bloor-Danforth, although their performance is reasonable for cars of their age (about 15 years) and technology.
This prompted a question from Vice Chair Alan Heisey who asked when the TTC should be making plans to replace the T1 fleet. Chief Operating Officer Mike Palmer replied that “we probably had to order the cars last week”. (See YouTube video of meeting.) This came as something of a surprise to the Board thanks to the way that planning for the Scarborough Subway Estension (SSE) and Line 2 BD in general have been handled, with information dribbling out bit by bit, and with plans in the TTC Capital Budget not fully reflecting future needs.
I wrote about this in a previous article, but as an update, here is the status of various projects related to the BD line’s future.
Summary
There are four major components to upgrades facing the TTC for subway expansion on Line 2 Bloor Danforth. Here is their status:
This is not simply a matter of TTC management providing a rosy view of capital needs, or of the City choosing to ignore the scope of the problem. When projects of this scale don’t appear in the “to do list”, they are not considered any time another government comes calling with a funding offer. Many projects that will receive money from Ottawa’s infrastructure fund (PTIF) are on that list because they were acknowledged as part of the TTC’s outstanding requirements.
Keeping the full needs of the Bloor-Danforth subway out of view short-changes the TTC system and the riding public, and politicians are surprised to find that the “ask” for transit spending is a lot bigger than they thought. Meanwhile new projects make claims on “spending room” that might exist only because needs of the existing system have been downplayed.
TTC management plans to bring a consolidated report on the renewal of the Bloor-Danforth line to the Board in September 2017.
With Toronto Council’s approval of a pilot project to give more priority to transit on King Street, it is worthwhile to understand how travel times behave today, and what a “best case” improvement might look like.
This article reviews TTC vehicle tracking data for the first half of 2017 on King to illustrate the variation in travel times for the Jarvis-to-Bathurst pilot area, smaller segments within the pilot, and the segments beyond. Advocates for transit priority on King routinely cite congestion and longer travel times as major issues that the pilot can deal with, and indeed journey time reduction is one of the goals of the project. However, the 504 King service operates in a more complex environment than just a congested central section, and that context must be understood in evaluating the benefits any change will bring.
In brief:
Riders complain that the King car can be challenging to use, but the transit experience entails more than just the in-vehicle time from point “A” to “B”. First, one must walk to a stop and await a streetcar’s arrival. Then one must hope that there is room on the car to board. Finally one speeds (or not) along the route. Transit studies regularly find that of these factors, the time spent in motion on board is the least critical in terms of perceived trip length because, finally, the rider is “on the way”. Time spent waiting, let alone being passed up by a full vehicle (or kicked off one that short turns), weighs more heavily in the “why am I still taking the TTC” question unless the in-vehicle time is a substantial portion of the trip overall.
Any scheme to improve King that looks only at travel time, but ignores service reliability and capacity, will miss out on important components of what makes service more attractive, and in doing so risks limiting the potential for increased demand.
In previous articles, I have reviewed the reliability and capacity of service on King Street.
The TTC has no plans to add service to 504 King during the pilot, although they will begin to replace shorter cars (CLRVs) with longer ones (new Flexitys) in December. This will gradually add to capacity of the route, if not service frequency. At this point, the service design for September when streetcars will return to Queen Street has not been announced, and the degree to which buses will operate on King at least in the early days of the pilot is unknown. The bus trippers claimed by the TTC to be “supplementary” service in fact replace streetcars, generally at a lower capacity.
As for reliability, reduced and more regular travel times through the core will be a benefit to the King service provided that the TTC actually manages headways. There is an ongoing problem with irregular service during the AM peak when there is little congestion as an excuse, and this irregularity plagues riders, especially in Parkdale, Liberty Village and Bathurst/Niagara.
The King Street Pilot transit priority scheme was approved, with amendments, by Council on July 6, 2017. Changes to the street will begin to appear in early fall (once the shutdown for the film festival is out of the way), and they will last, with changes likely along the way, for at least a year with an evaluation report back to Council after the 2018 election.
This article is not intended to revisit the design (see King Street Redesign Goes to TTC/City for Approval), but as a commentary on the debate at Council.
Among the more bizarre positions taken by some Councillors was the concept that public consultation for this change should have explicitly reached out to suburban residents. In response to a question from Cllr Karygiannis, Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmaat advised that about half of the responses to the study came from the core and half from surrounding areas. This is a bit of a fudge because, of course, a good deal of the catchment area of the King car is not in the core, per se, but is still in the old City of Toronto, not Karygiannis’ home turf of northern Scarborough. Although we know that a majority of Scarborough residents either commute downtown by transit, or do not work in the core, the restriction of auto traffic on King was portrayed as a burden deserving of consultation in northern Scarborough.
Much later in the meeting, Cllr Layton joked that he would hold a meeting in his ward to consult on the McNicoll bus garage project (which is in Karygiannis’ territory).
Cllr Holyday, from Etobicoke, spoke about the mix of trips now taken on King Street noting that 60% of road users are from outside of downtown. Again the issue of just what “outside downtown” means here was never clarified. Keesmaat and others observed that many who live within the pilot area already walk, cycle or take transit, and so the proportion of auto trips by “outsiders” will automatically be high.
TTC CEO Andy Byford noted that the King corridor is at 124% of capacity today, although no additional service is planned for the route. Some improvement, he expects, will come from better service once the pilot is operating, and some from the introduction of larger vehicles (the new Flexitys) on King starting in December 2017.
Cllr Bailão asked about the times when problems occur on King, and about the safety of bar patrons who might be seeking taxis late at night. Keesmaat replied that there is activity throughout the day and evening, and that pedestrian volumes on King are higher than in other parts of the city. Bailão asked whether the City’s General Manager of Transportation Services, Barbara Gray, would support allowing taxis to drive through the pilot area at night. Gray replied that this is a “transit first” project and its main goal is to improve transit. Andy Byford argued that it was his job to advocate for TTC customers, and he prefers to maintain the “purity” of the trial as proposed with no exemptions.
Cllr Pasternak complained about the high cost of the pilot, $1.5 million, and about its funding from City and Federal monies. He asked whether this would more appropriately be paid for with charges against developments along the area, especially considering that these developments must provide a transportation study to review their effects. Keesmaat replied that these charges are mainly for improvements at each development site, and there was never an assumption or intent that these payments would cover large scale capital projects. She further observed that King Street is “regional” infrastructure serving the core, whereas the buildings on King in the pilot area do not generally contribute to the transportation problems. It is growth outside the area that add traffic both to the road and the transit network.
Cllr Mihevc asked whether the scope from Bathurst to Jarvis is “bold enough” and whether the pilot should be extended further. Gray replied that the City might look at other corridors, but the pilot area is a good place to start. The evaluation report will also include analysis of extending the changes east and west on King, and to other downtown routes. Not mentioned, but quite important, is the fact that the pilot area has multiple parallel routes to which auto traffic can shift, and this is not true of either the western part of King nor of other east-west streetcar routes.
Cllr Kelly asked whether planners have looked at the effect on parallel streets. Gray replied that, yes, this has been taken into account and detailed modelling of the network is underway. By year end, the City will have a “more robust” model of travel downtown. Kelly asked whether there will be measurements in place to determine if the pilot is untenable. Gray replied that staff will be looking at trend lines such as travel times on King and parallel routes, and that the TTC Board has asked that concrete metrics be in place before the pilot is launched. There is a draft “dashboard” for reporting the pilot’s status included in the report.
Cllr Grimes asked whether data from the pilot will feed into the Waterfront West LRT study. The implication here is that parts of a future WWLRT might include creation of new reserved streetcar lanes, and that the King Street experience might inform proposals elsewhere. Byford replied that, yes, this would be done. (In fact, the “Waterfront Reset” study now underway will actually report to Council in fall 2017 when the pilot has barely started, but King Street’s experience could affect later discussions.)
Cllr De Baeremaeker asked if there is constant frequency of streetcars throughout 24 hours, or if this varies through the day. Byford replied that service is more intense in the peak periods, but is “pretty intense” throughout the day. Taxis are 25-33% of traffic during the day rising to 38% in the evening. Jacqueline Darwood, TTC’s Head of Strategy and Service Planning, noted that the AM and PM peak periods extend beyond the usual 7-9 and 4-6 windows. Barbara Gray noted that the midday period from 10-4 is as busy as the AM peak, and that King is a consistently busy street.
Here are the service levels scheduled as of May 7, 2017 (click to enlarge):
These schedules correspond to the point where bus trippers were removed from King with the conversion of 501 Queen to all-bus operation for summer 2017. As I have mentioned in previous articles, TTC claims that buses “supplemented” streetcar service on King are false. The bus trippers replaced streetcars (at lower capacity) to compensate for the streetcar shortage. They did not provide additional service. This is a fiction oft repeated by TTC management.
Cllr Campbell asked about improvements the TTC might have seen on the three right-of-way routes now in operation. Byford replied with the following:
Campbell and Byford agreed that St. Clair was probably the most appropriate comparator for the King Street pilot, although of course King will receive a less exclusive “priority” treatment, and over only a portion of the route.
An important point worth mentioning here is that 504 King and its sister route, 514 Cherry, are unusual because of the mix of neighbourhoods they serve. There are 65k riders per day on this corridor, but unlike some routes, they serve multiple employment and academic districts and enjoy strong counter-peak demand. This allows a high number of riders to be carried relative to the level of service. Combined with the entertainment district and the growing residential density, there are multiple sources of demand travelling over different parts of the route throughout the day.
A common observation is that would-be riders can walk faster than taking the streetcar. That statement does not necessarily mean that the streetcar moves at less than walking pace, but that the combined delays inherent in waiting for one to show up and to have space to board add substantially to trip times. (Overcrowded cars also take longer to serve stops, and irregular or inadequate service capacity can compound travel times growth.) If streetcars arrived regularly and with capacity for would-be riders, travel times would be reduced even if actual travel speeds did not change much. Moreover, riders would have greater certainty about when or if they would reach their destinations.
The goal of a transit priority scheme is not just to make streetcars move more swiftly, but to show up frequently and predictably, not in randomly spaced bunches, and with room for all who wish to board.
Mayor Tory proposed that the staff recommendations be amended:
1. City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services to implement a late-night exemption from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. for licensed taxicabs from through-movement prohibitions in the King Street Transit Pilot area to aid in safely and effectively dissipating people from nightlife activity on King Street West.
2. City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services to, as part of the detailed design process, work in consultation with the taxi industry to identify and implement approximately double the number of existing taxi stand spaces throughout the length of the pilot project.
3. City Council request the appropriate City officials to complete a review of all side streets in the area bound by Niagara Street, Queen Street West in the East, Front Street West and The Esplanade (East of Yonge Street to Lower Sherbourne Street), and Sherbourne Street to consider appropriate locations for on-street paid parking in association with the implementation of the proposed King Street Transit Pilot between Bathurst Street and Jarvis Street, and report to Toronto and East York Community Council with any proposed amendments.
4. City Council request the Toronto Police Services Board to request the Chief of Police to work with the General Manager, Transportation Services on a strategy for education and enforcement of the King Street Transit Pilot.
Tory argued that this pilot will “move greatest number of people in best way possible”. With respect to concerns about capacity on parallel roads, he claimed that there are no plans for work on parallel streets in 2018. (Both Tory and other City staff appear unaware that the eastern part of the Wellington reconstruction between Yonge and Church has been delayed to 2018 thanks to work planned by Toronto Hydro in fall 2017.) Tory observed that the City has allowed massive development west of downtown and must address the problems this creates. It is “something a 21st century city must do”.
Cllr Karygiannis asked whether Tory felt the taxi industry had been consulted properly, and Tory replied that the City “didn’t do as good a job as we should have”. Karygiannis moved an amendment to Tory’s motion that the start time for taxi exemptions be changed from 10 to 9 pm “for people catching dinner or a show”. For the record, shows in the entertainment district start at 8 pm or earlier, and people generally dine before. There is a separate demand to the club district primarily on Thursday through Saturday, and this traffic picks up mid-evening. Tory did not accept this as a friendly amendment arguing that the best balance between competing interests is a 10 pm start time. (Karygiannis’ amendment lost.)
In the discussion of available cab stand space, nobody mentioned how many existing spaces are actually designated. They are:
Doubling the number of official cab stands may not make much difference relative to the space taxis now occupy, but it is likely that the total number of spaces will be spread over a wider area than they are today. This decision will also affect available space for other curb lane uses such as pedestrian and loading zones. Until the detailed design is available later this year, we will not know just how this arrangement will look, or what effect the pro-taxi decision will have on the original goals for street redesign.
Cllr Holyday argued for “the guy from central Etobicoke” that there should be more provisions for left turns and for routes through the network using both a map of downtown and a chart of the human heart to illustrate his case.
Holyday proposed that City Transportation be asked to study a means of aiding these turns, but his motion was voted down.
(a) City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services to develop a plan for timed left turn prohibitions which will improve streetcar and general traffic flow along King Street within the study area, and report to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. (Lost)
Holyday also argued for a traffic bypass around King using Front Street.
(b) If motion a by Councillor Holyday fails, that City Council define Front Street as the motorist bypass for the King Street Pilot Study area and City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to take steps to optimize Front Street and the Bathurst Street road linkage between King Street and Front Street to reduce motorist encumbrances including signal timing and design, turn prohibitions, pedestrian signals and parking regulations. (Lost)
The Councillor appeared to be unaware that Front Street narrows between York and Bay Streets in front of Union Station where it has already been redesigned primarily for pedestrian and taxi use. Moreover, Front can be badly congested whenever there is an event at the Rogers Centre. It is hardly an arterial bypass of the sort he seeks.
Cllr Pasternak observed that there is always a concern when parking spaces are lost that there will be a decline in parking revenue. This begs the obvious question of whether the need for such revenue should preempt improvements in the design and usage of road space. In any event, the Toronto Parking Authority has already reported on this issue, and will propose that a number of currently free spaces on adjacent streets be converted to paid parking.
Cllr Ford thanked staff for their detailed reports, but is not convinced of the merit of this pilot from the perspective of residents of northwest Etobicoke where his ward is located. He bemoaned the added congestion brought on by the demolition of the York Street off ramp from the Gardiner Expressway, but appeared unaware that this capacity will be replaced by a new Harbour Street off ramp that has not yet been built.
Cllr Perks, responding to Holyday’s illustrated lecture, gave a short talk on the relationship between parking and prosperity noting that cities which have much parking (and by implication a lot of auto-based commuting) tend to have lower prosperity.
Cllr Wong-Tam urged that Council be “bold and ambitious – this is King Street”. She felt that over the years, Council has asked planners to “be meek”, but that there is a new generation who are not meek. Wong-Tam wants Council to support this ambition, including for the next big project downtown on Yonge Street, not be “meek with modest adjustments”.
Cllr Layton talked about people waiting for the streetcar, and how the City has not done much to improve their lot by addressing the capacity issue and bunching. He also mention the Waterfront LRT as an example of the City not doing what it could, of not increasing capacity to keep pace with population growth.
TTC Chair Colle wants Toronto to be “bold”, and felt that with streetcars operating at 13 km/h, the city is playing catch-up to its citizens’ desire for better transit. In fact, the scheduled speed of the King car over its entire route, never mind just the core area, is less than 13 km/h during many operating periods. The challenge will be to maintain consistency of running times and service.
In a future article, I will review actual travel time experiences on 504 King and in particular the variation in their behaviour by time of day and season. A related issue is the the pilot covers only part of the route, and there are service management, capacity and congestion issues outside of the pilot area. The Bathurst-to-Jarvis trial will be useful not just to show what can be done in that segment, but what remains to be done (and not necessarily through lane reservations) elsewhere on the route.
Further to my report on a community meeting regarding early morning and late evening service on Cherry Street to Distillery Loop, the TTC has announced that full service will resume on Saturday, July 15.
Metrolinx has published ridership stats for the Union Pearson Express to the end of March 2017.
These do not break down trips between various points on the line to show what portion of ridership is end-to-end Union-Airport traffic, and what portion travels to or from stations along the way.
In this chart the blue line traces daily counts and these show a regular weekly cycle. The total ridership grows after the fare reduction of early 2016 and peaked in September 2016. Except for that peak, and a winter dip from Christmas 2016 to mid-February 2017, the average number of daily riders (on a weekly rolling average, orange) has remained slightly below 8,000. This appears to be the new stable level of ridership with the current fares and service pattern. A related issue is that with some trips on busy days reporting standees, growth during certain periods will be constrained by available capacity.
The original projection for UPX was that it would reach 5,000 daily riders after a year’s operation. This it would have abjectly failed to achieve but for the revised tariff. The gray line prorates that projection from the opening week to the first anniversary in June 2016, and then continues on the same rate of increase until March 2017.
In the Metrolinx financial statements (to be discussed in a separate post), it is not possible to separate out information for the UPX division, and for management and accounting purposes, this has now been rolled into GO Transit.
A note to anyone at Metrolinx who is reading this: When you publish data like this, make it available as a spreadsheet (as well as PDF for general consumption) so that the numbers can easily be extracted and analysed without the need to “scrape” the PDF.
Steve Munro 