Updated September 19, 2023 at 6:40 pm: According to the Financial and Major Projects Update on the TTC Board agenda for September 26, 2023:

Detailed Design Review (100%) for the Spadina Station – Streetcar Platform Extension is underway and expected to be completed by Q3 2023.

Nearby redevelopment planned to occur in the near future will provide access to the tunnel structure for platform expansion.

Regular riders of the 510 Spadina will be familiar with long, sometimes very long, intervals spent waiting in the tunnel outside of Spadina Station just for their car to move onto the platform and discharge passengers.

This is the compound effect of several factors:

• The Flexity streetcars are too long for two of them to be on the platform at once (as the former CLRV cars could be) with one loading and the other unloading.
• The Flexitys cannot selectively open doors, except for the very front one, to serve riders while only partly on the platform.
• A common situation at this station is for a car to wait on the platform while the operator takes a bathroom break or waits for a relief crew to show up.
• The running times on the 510 schedule are generous enough that there is usually time to sit at Spadina Station rather than leaving immediately.
• During some periods, service that would normally operate to Union Station is cut back to Queens Quay or Charlotte Loop giving cars even more surplus running time.
• When service on Spadina is bunched and a parade of cars reaches Spadina Station, only one car can use the platform while those behind wait in the tunnel.

This situation cries out for better line management and scheduling, including shifting away from a strict adherence to “on time” cars and a move to dispatching on a regular headway to avoid backlogs. Step back crews would be essential in allowing cars to leave as quickly as possible while operators had their breaks. (Note that breaks are generally not taken at Union because it is a busy station serving two routes.)

As things are, much of the benefit for riders of a reserved lane on Spadina can be undone by the operation at Spadina Station.

During the month of August 2023, 510 Spadina service to Union did not operate on the following days so that all service at Union could be provided by 509 Harbourfront cars to Exhibition Loop:

• Saturday, August 5 from about 8am to 8pm during the Caribbean Carnival.
• Friday, August 18 onward from about 10am to 8pm during the CNE.

In an attempt to see just how bad this problem was, I built a fine-grained “map” of Spadina Station Loop for my usual route analysis programs. This includes screenlines at:

• The loop entrance where the north and southbound tracks divide
• The east end of the station platform
• The west end of the station platform

This allows plotting of how long cars spent queued in the tunnel, and how long they sat on the platform. Unfortunately, it is not possible to resolve the difference between cars sitting at the loading area at the west end of the platform and those almost, but not quite, on the platform to unload.

(The reason for this is that the TTC’s “Vision” tracking system does not accurately map car positions inside the station. Indeed, cars sometimes appear to reverse within the station according to the GPS data. This is likely due to the problem of getting accurate GPS info underground.)

This is a route that should have more reliable service given its operation entirely in reserved lanes, and it certainly should not make riders wait five minutes or more just for a car to reach the platform at Spadina Station.

The TTC’s Real Estate Investment Plan includes an item for expansion of the platform at Spadina Station, but it is not clear that this applies to the streetcar platform. With the current tight budget it is hard to see this sitting near the top of the pile for funding.

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