Day: July 11, 2024

by

Yet Another Streetcar Diversion

The TTC will be making repairs to the track at Church & King, a location that has needed serious tender loving care for some years. This project will run from 11pm Friday July 12 to 4am Wednesday July 17.

This event and the confusion it will add for downtown travellers is a direct result of delays in complete replacement of the intersection, compounded by the Queen Street closure for the Ontario Line and the still-incomplete work on the Richmond/Adelaide diversion around Queen and Yonge that limps along with a vague “fall” completion date.

501/301 Queen:

  • Streetcars in the east end will operate only to Parliament Street and will loop back via Dundas and Broadview.
  • The 501B shuttle buses will operate westbound via Richmond and eastbound via King between Church and University.
  • Night service will be provided via streetcars diverting onto Dundas as shown in the map below, and night service on the 301 bus covering the central part of the route on the same path as the 501B daytime service.

503 Kingston Road:

  • 503 Kingston Road cars will operate as far west as King & Sumach, and then turn south to Distillery Loop.

504 King:

  • 504A King Dundas West to Distillery: Cars will divert both ways via Spadina, Queen, McCaul, Dundas, Broadview, Queen, King and Sumach/Cherry to Distillery Loop.
  • 504B King Humber to Broadview Station: Cars will divert on the same route as 504A to Broadview, then run north to Broadview Station.
  • 504 buses will operate from Broadview Station to Bathurst over the regular King route.

508 Lake Shore:

  • 508 Lake Shore cars will divert via the same route as the 504B King cars.

How well any of these services will operate remains to be seen especially the 504A route that will be much longer than normal.

by

Reserved Bus Lanes for Spadina?

Updated July 11 at 4:20 pm: The TTC has confirmed that planned overhead replacement on Bathurst shown on TOInview will not occur. They also confirmed that 2025 work on the west half of 506 Carlton will be done in stages, but have no further details at this point.

In response to the snafu with Spadina bus operations and traffic backlogs for the Gardiner Expressway, Toronto & East York Council has approved a proposal to implement a reserved bus lane between Queen Street and Queens Quay southbound. This must go to the full Toronto Council at its meeting of July 24.

The west curb lane would have all parking and cabstand space removed south of Queen. It would be reserved for transit vehicle and bicycles except for areas 30.5 metres north of King Street, Front Street and Fort York Boulevard which would be south-to-west right turn lanes. Between Richmond and Queen, stopping would be permitted outside of peak periods.

Speaking on CBC’s Metro Morning, Deputy Mayor Malik, sponsor of the motion, noted that planning for this type of event must substantially improve. The TTC was clearly caught out by the level of congestion on Spadina, something anyone who ventures downtown would know about. This did not appear overnight. A further question about the reserved lane proposal, which will be in effect at all hours, not just for the PM peak period, is how it will be enforced and what effect it will have on traffic feeding into this area.

A larger problem remains with the TTC’s planning for construction projects, and especially for streetcar replacements. In recent years, they have seemed quite willing to suspend service for extended periods in the interest of getting a lot of work done with a single closure. In practice, some of these have gone on far longer than they should have, and there have lengthy periods without any visible work.

The work on Spadina between King and Queens Quay, and later between College and Bloor, involves rebuilding the streetcar overhead to be fully pantograph compliant, as opposed to a hybrid pole/panto system. Some streetcar track repairs are likely during the streetcar replacement. This work should not take six months, the planned Spadina closure. This was originally announced as running only to October, but now to December. At Spadina Station the first stage of streetcar platform extension will occur taking advantage of excavation for a nearby condo project.

The City’s infrastructure plan viewer, TOInview, shows two other pending overhead replacement projects.

  • In 2024, Bathurst Street from Fleet to St. Clair
  • In 2025, College Street from Dundas to Yonge

Updated July 11 at 4:20 pm:

I asked the TTC if/when these projects will occur, and they advised that Bathurst will not be done in 2024. TOinview will be updated. College will be done in sections in 2025, but no further details are available yet.

It is not clear why at least the north end of Bathurst was not rebuilt while the St. Clair line was shut down for its own conversion and other projects along that route. This would have allowed streetcars to be based at Hillcrest as they were during previous roadworks on Bathurst. Do riders on St. Clair face another round of bus substitution?

College Street went through its own gyrations with substitute bus service during track replacement not long ago.

Many years have passed since the TTC streetcar system was entirely operating with streetcars, and the TTC seems to be happy to have some part of the network out of service almost all of the time. It certainly is not a question of vehicle availability, although their staffing is probably at a level where they could not field full streetcar service. This has implications for streetcar service levels generally, and for the resources more-or-less permanently “borrowed” from the bus network.

Consultation for the TTC’s 2025 Service Plan is about to get underway, and one topic planned for this is “construction”. Indeed, “doing diversions differently” is one goal of the current plan. On Spadina, that looks like an “own goal”.