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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.

13 thoughts on “Yet Another Streetcar Diversion”

  1. why isn’t the 504a diverting via parliament?

    /

    seems odd routing eastbound streetcars via broadview all the way out east to then turn westbound on king for distillery loop arrival.

    Steve: Via Parliament to where?

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  2. All of these piecemeal shutdowns for 5 days here, another 5 days there, all adds up to time that could have been used for a full tear down and replace.

    Without even waiting to see what will happen on Monday, I know sending the 501 on to Dundas to mingle with the 504, 505, and 508 is a bad idea. They had better pray there aren’t any additional problems on the 506 requiring diversions next week.

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  3. Let us guess. The cheapest solution to the track switch problem will be replacing the switches with the same single-point switches and with 20th century technology. The “go-slow” orders will continue afterwards.

    Steve: The project has always consisted of replacing the electronic controls, not the switches. The original problem was that throwing the switches when they shouldn’t move, or alternately not throwing them when they should, was an issue of the control system. Whether there are one, two or a hundred blades does not matter. A related issue is the curve radii at our intersections and the forces this places on the wheels and track when turning compared to the more graceful arrangements seen elsewhere, as well as the smaller radius wheels on low floor cars. Double blade switches would help, but would not cure the basic problem of geometry.

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  4. Any idea if the TTC is looking at rationalizing the downtown trackage for better diversion support?

    Steve: There are only a few key missing pieces, but none of them is on the radar for the short term. What has been disappointing is that a few locations where the once every 25-30 year rebuilds happened were missed opportunities to add curves. Budget limitations and a loss of corporate memory. The fact that Metrolinx/TTC are taking forever to complete the Richmond/Adelaide/York diversion has not helped, but also the long term loss of Victoria Street. An important issue is that diversions have, shall we say, leisurely schedules for completion of whatever project triggered them in the first place. There is no sense that getting in and out quickly is part of the agenda, and the riders can just suck it up.

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  5. Is there any particular reason why 501 streetcars don’t operate to Church and loop via Richmond, Victoria, and Adelaide?

    Steve: Possibly for a power cut on Church associated with work at King, but that’s only a guess. Could simply be that whoever designed the diversion didn’t know that was an option. If anyone knows definitively, leave a comment here.

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  6. Yes, in 2010 the TTC looked at possible new curves and selected some. Of course, when the time came (Broadview/Gerrard and Carlton/Church they forget!

    Maybe when King is rebuilt they will add an East to North at King/York. Continuing York south from Adelaide to King would be good too but I am not holding my breath. It would also help to finally open Victoria up from Queen to Dundas.

    The TTC silos seem to prevent those in route planning ever talking to (or knowing about?) those in track replacement.

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  7. Of course, when the time came (Broadview/Gerrard and Carlton/Church they forget!

    They also failed to add the new curves at the Bathurst and College intersection.

    When they reconstructed Parliament and Dundas they failed to add a south to east curve (but kept the useless east to south curve) so 506 diversions must use Queen instead of Dundas.

    The rebuilt Spadina and College also kept the near useless lone west to north and north to east curves in their respective quadrants.

    There is no method to their madness.

    Steve: Many of those curves are remnants of pre-Yonge subway routings. There is no master plan to review how the system operates today and what its needs are.

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  8. Continuing York south from Adelaide to King would be good too but I am not holding my breath.

    York & Adelaide intersection is already done, only awaiting overhead, so timeline for that would be next intersection rebuild (~15 years?).

    Worse still, the space on York between Adelaide and King where the southbound track would go has now been painted and signed for parking (the lane closest to the curb having been designated a southbound bicycle lane), so probably it will remain parking for the next 50 years.

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  9. Parliament / King can only route street cars South to West and East to North as there are no curves for South to East or West to North. Those curves are unfortunately not really feasible to add either. The nerd in me wishes they would add connecting tracks on River St with full T switches at King/River and Queen/River but alas ’tis but a pipe dream

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  10. At least they installed a brand-new never-before-available south to west curve at Kipling and Lake Shore. This means that the previously charter-special east-to-north curve to enter Kipling loop is now matched by a charter-special departure from Kipling loop.

    Not sure how it might help out with the incessant downtown diversions, detours, closures, detours on diversions, closures on detours, and diverted closure detours, but hey, if we need a Long Branch-Kipling streetcar shuttle, we’re all set!

    Steve: Actually, a Long Branch to Kipling shuttle shows up from time to time in the service alerts, and so that curve is used.

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  11. This has started, with not much evidence of much work actually going on. They seem to be digging up (yet again) the areas that you reported on last fall (?) (You had photos.

    The question is … will this repair last any better and maybe avoid yet another attempt to temporarily fix this before the full replacement of this intersection planned for fall 2025.

    Naturally, they will make no attempt to repair any of the ‘margins’ in the closed blocks of King – some of which are really quite dangerous – while the route is closed to streetcars. Doubtless the ‘Margin Repair Silo” @ TTC does not talk to the “Special Trackwork repair” group – or maybe even know that they exist.

    Steve: I think that margin repair may fall under City Transportation, not TTC.

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  12. Both yesterday afternoon and today about 2pm the 504 bus replacement along King east of Yonge was VERY bunched going eastbound. I thought I had missed one, which I did, but then two more arrived and we had a virtually empty bus all the way to Broadview! It will be interesting to see how this works on weekdays – but I will not try it myself.

    Steve: I was on the 504 bus myself today (Sunday). The trip into downtown was packed and left people at stops after trying gamely to use centre door loading to fit more people on. The trip home I had an almost empty bus, but there seemed to be a lot more of them including buses laying over at Broadview Station. Sadly we get no tracking data for these and therefore cannot do a post mortem.

    One thing that inbound trip showed was the folly of front door loading on a busy route which the TTC is actually contemplating as a countermeasure to fare evasion. The buses might drive as fast as they can between stops, but they sit at stops trying to get people on and off.

    Meanwhile at King and Church, I was not impressed with the amount of work that does appear to have been done given the length of the shutdown, and nobody was working there today.

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  13. “Meanwhile at King and Church, I was not impressed with the amount of work that does appear to have been done given the length of the shutdown, and nobody was working there today.“

    I passed by on a bus at 1:00 p.m. today (Monday) and no workers on site at all again.

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