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”.
Steve Munro 
I think you mean College from Dundas to Carlton not (College from Dundas to Bay)
Steve: I have changed the post to read “Dundas to Yonge” which is better understood. Thanks for catching that.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Do you think they could reopen Queens Quay loop till they are ready to do the work?
Closure of this loop has impaired the operation of the 509 cars.
Logic would dictate you work on the line north of the section insulator north of Lakeshore Blvd. west first, and leave the loop open till the second week of September.
Steve: This is an example of poor planning by the TTC: shutting down everything rather than looking at a step by step process.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Two random thoughts:
What a crazy governance model Toronto has, that a simple change like creating a transit lane for a few blocks must go to full council. No wonder it’s so hard to improve transit in this city – we have micromanagement by committee.
Did you notice Ottawa is about to close their one and only (rail) transit line down for two full weeks for “annual maintenance”? That’s even crazier!
As always, a sincere thanks for this terrific web site and all the research you do.
Steve: Traffic regs like parking, etc, are handled by local councils except when they are on transit streets in which case they go to full council for approval. This is to prevent a less transit supportive part of the city like Etobicoke from throttling transit. Mind you the full council is fairly good at that some times anyhow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If it wasn’t for the quite new fleet, I’d say the TTC was on the verge of allowing the streetcar system to close through benign neglect like what happened with the Scarborough RT. If the current fleet was 20-25 years old like the T1s on the Bloor line the system’s future would likely be in question right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Serious question: has the streetcar network *ever* been completely operational since the turn of the century? I feel like it hasn’t been since the late 1990s to early 2000s that every route was operating continually along its full length (and I realize this takes into account the reintroduction of Spadina streetcars in 1997 and the Harbourfront line in 2000).
Steve: Conversions go back to the CLRV era when they didn’t have enough working cars to make service. I think they fell into bad habits then. I think the last time every line was operating with streetcars, including the trippers, was May 2015.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Without trying to sound like a boorish Canadian, I’m going to say it’s because a lot of the planning people (construction, route, etc) need to follow Leary out the door in a few weeks.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Will have to watch the city council meeting on July 24th on this item (Item – 2024.TE15.59) for the tactics by unsupportive transit councillors. Will want to see which councillor will argue for single driver in their oversized SUV over the possible 40 people inside each of the 510 SPADINA bus.
LikeLike
L.Wall says: “I’m going to say it’s because a lot of the planning people (construction, route, etc) need to follow Leary out the door in a few weeks.
That may well be so and the lack of thinking outside their silo seems to infect the whole organisation. Last year they had several closures of parts of King but only seemed to think of fixing one thing for each closure (wires or rails or concrete or track drains). If they actually worked or planned as a team they would have been able to do several things at same time and reduced the number of closures. The initial plans for the Spadina bustitution were so clearly going to cause chaos and gridlock that one has to assume nobody at TTC actually knows the City. If they did they would know that Spadina gets VERY gridlocked every day – particularly south of Front.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have to agree with the sentiment from @daveings. There should be a mechanism where staff can institute temporary changes without all of this hoopla. Maybe they get to do something for 3 or 6 months, and simply have to report at the next council meeting that the thing was done. Council can then vote to make it a more permanent change.
If such a process were in place, the buses could be out of traffic by Monday. It would have also benefitted drivers who waited weeks while the process creeped forward to reopen the Jameson on ramp to the Gardiner when the latest phase of that project occurred.
I’m sure astute observers could point to other examples where a blindingly obvious solution was delayed for weeks or months due to the obsession with bureaucratic processes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Are 301 Queen streetcars still diverting on Spadina Avenue between Queen and King Streets? If so, this would suggest that the tracks on Spadina are still useable south of Queen. Thus, wouldn’t it be quicker to have a shuttle streetcar on Spadina between King (Charlotte Loop) and Queens Quay instead of building reserved lanes for buses – at least until the overhead there needs replacement?
Steve: The TTC seems hell bent on not putting streetcars back on Spadina until 2025.
LikeLike
Johnny Metric here. 30.5 m? Really? There is no way that anyone involved in this project under age 60 or so did not learn to measure using SI in school, and yet, we have to use multiples of the length of King Charles’ foot to measure out turn-lane exceptions to bus lanes.
Heaven forbid they run the buses on the Streetcar RoW …
The measurement thing is minor compared to to the rest of the idiocy that is documented here so clearly and frequently, but it does indicate something. They probably can’t figure out video conferencing either.
Yours disgruntledly,
Johnny
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is this on top of the proposal to have southbound Spadina buses turn left on Front and right on Blue Jays Way to return to Spadina?
Or does the bus lane replace the looping short turn?
Or will they do both? If so I wonder how easy it will be for operators to make 3 lane changes from the bus lane to the left turn lane, with the additional congestion presumed from going from 3 general lanes to 2 general lanes.
Steve: The bus lane replaces the Front/Blue Jays loop.
LikeLike
There are a few sad stupidities about this.
Much of the nightmarish traffic congestion south of Queen could have been avoided IF we had had some sense for a surface Relief project in the form of a Front St. transitway, as per 1985-ish plan, and quite ignored in the Front St. Road Folly proposal despite most of the participating levels of government having nice statements about climate/transit etc.
When a group of cyclists, Spirit of Spadina, tried to get Motoropolitan Tyranno to find the room on Spadina for bike lanes; nope. Transit priority Must be in the middle, and we couldn’t think of having a busway at each side of the road, with bike lanes between it and pedestrians, and the rest of the roadway for whatever derby the cars wanted to play. So by doing this only-transit change, we’re avoiding discussion about how the road does and doesn’t work, and yes, it remains dangerous for cyclists, tho the northbound feels more nasty/deadly than the southbound, and the two cyclists killed by passing trucks on Spadina were northbound, sigh.
Now, it remains worse with the Ontario Line incursion/takeover, and it’s a nasty pinch point going north past Queen, and billion a km but not $10K for road paint of a bike box going northbound and some sharrows/signs.
And will the TTC manage to grind down the extra concrete height all along the trackages which totally jolt cyclists crossing eg. Richmond/Adelaid and Harbord, College seeming a bit better?
Carservative mismanagement runs deep, and runs over much else.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That certainly is a very Toronto “solution”. Reserved bus lanes that aren’t reserved and let cars into the lanes at the points they are most likely to slow the buses. Why not just crane in Jersey barriers to keep the cars out and forbid right turns south of Queen? While we’re at it, set up cops to ticket all violators. One thing that is clear is that drivers, especially suburbanites, are quite willing to break the rules and impede everyone else for their own convenience.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is not too late, the Gardiner “Expressway” still belongs to the City. Before Doug Ford & gang take over, the City ought to close all the westbound on-ramps east of Jameson. It is not just Spadina, but all south and west downtown streets that are hopelessly jammed. Gardiner lane closures for three years more. What else can Toronto do? Road tolls are not an option that Toronto is allowed.
LikeLike
Could cyclist and bus only mixed lanes co-exist? Cyclists could pass buses when they are in their bus stops with their laybys, but there would be none on Spadina. Also, buses could accelerate faster than cyclists, posing a congestion problem with stops far apart, but the stops on Spadina are not that far apart. With right-turning single-occupant pickup trucks and SUVS, wouldn’t the buses be travelling s-l-o-w-l-y, as well as the cyclists.
Steve: Yes, I have a problem with the concept of a shared cycling/bus lane but also with other aspects of this proposal which I don’t think is well thought out.
LikeLike