Day: October 6, 2019

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King Street Update: September 2019 Part II

This article continues the analysis of King Street transit operations during September 2019 with a focus on the effects of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

TIFF opened on Thursday afternoon, September 5, but the diversions were in place from the start of service at 5 am. For the period when diversions were operating, there were three services on route 504:

  • Dundas West to Church diverting eastbound via Spadina to Queen and then returning south to King via Church; then westbound via King to York, York to Queen and south to King via Spadina.
  • Distillery to York Street looping via York, Queen and Church back to King Street.
  • Broadview Station to York Street looping via York, Queen and Church back to King Street.

The effects of this arrangement were quite severe with extended travel times and wider headways across the route, not just downtown.

The fundamental policy issue here is the takeover of a major street for an event like TIFF for an extended period. There were four days of complete diversions (September 5 to 8), and three further days of ad hoc street closures (September 9 to 11). The TTC attempted to operate service on 504 King with the usual complement of scheduled cars, but on routings that required considerably more travel time, maintaining normal headways was impossible.

The effects are not confined to the immediate TIFF district, but extend to service over the entire route, as well as to travel times and service reliability on 501 Queen. This is not simply a matter of residents of the condos near TIFF putting up with an annual upheaval in their neighbourhood, but of an effect across two major corridors on transit and road traffic.

If this type of “service” is planned in the future, then either the event itself should pony up the cost of supplementary service, or the city should make an explicit contribution through the TTC’s budget for extra service. Preferably, King Street would be kept open on weekdays, and adequate service would be operated on weekends to offset the TIFF effect which is not as severe then.

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King Street Update: September 2019 Part I

This article is an update on the behaviour of transit service on King Street which I last reported six months ago in three articles:

In this article, I will review travel times across what was once called the “King Street Pilot” area between Jarvis and Bathurst Street. In Part II, I will turn to the effect on travel times caused by diversions for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on both King and Queen Streets. Part III will review service capacity actually provided at various points along the King route.

This will be the last article in which I conduct a detailed review of the “pilot” operation unless there is a significant change to warrant returning to the issue. It is clear after two years that the improvement in service on King Street is permanent and stable.

TIFF is quite another matter, and its effect on both King and Queen Streets is quite severe, particularly on the opening two days. This is an issue for a policy decision by Council on whether the economic benefit of closing the street completely on weekdays outweighs the effect on transit services and riders.

Service on the central part of King Street consists of two primary routes, branches of the 504 King car, supplemented by two other part-time services:

  • 504A King between Dundas West Station and Distillery Loop
  • 504B King between Dufferin Loop and Broadview Station
  • Effective September 2019, the new 508 Lake Shore tripper was added with five trips in the peak direction between Long Branch and downtown via King. This only affects service capacity charts which will appear in Part III.
  • The 503 Kingston Road route (operating with buses) has been consolidated with 502 Downtowner for the duration of the reconstruction project at Kingston Road and Queen Street. This route operates only during weekday daytime, and it is not included in the analysis because it does not operate across the full width of the “pilot” area.

These charts contain the same data as in previous articles up to March 31, 2019, and data for the six months to September 30, 2019 have been added.

To view any chart at a larger size, click on it. Full chart sets are available as PDFs at the end of each section.

Travel Times Across the Pilot Area

These charts plot the 50th (median value) and 85th percentiles for travel times between Bathurst and Jarvis. In both cases the screenlines used are in the middle of the intersection so that the start and end times used are measured when vehicles crossed, not when they arrived at or departed from stops.

The vertical shaded areas refer to periods when service on King was affected:

  • Red: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, Early September Annually)
  • Purple: King service diverted via Queen for track work (Spring 2016)
  • Yellow: Queen service diverted via King for track work (Fall 2017)
  • Green: King Street Pilot begins. Transit Signal Priority (TSP) deactivated (November 2017)
  • Blue: TSP reactivated (July 2018)

As previously reported, the major effect of the new traffic arrangements on King is the reduction in the variability of travel times shown by lower 85th percentile values so that service was much less likely to be erratic.

TIFF produced a severe impact on travel times for streetcars. This shows up as a spike in the charts in early September 2019, and more detail of the effects appears in charts in Part II. The effect in 2019 was worse than in 2018 especially on TIFF’s opening day, Thursday, September 5.

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