With Toronto’s Congestion Management Plan in the news, we hear about various ways to improve the movement of cars and, oh, by the way, maybe speed transit vehicles too. Toronto talks a lot about “transit priority” but this more often means giving transit vehicles the leftovers, the spare time that can be shaved at some locations from competing traffic, not absolute priority for transit vehicles.

This shows up particularly where transit vehicles have a dedicated lane, but they must wait patiently while other traffic, typically left turns, gets out of the way. This has the perverse effect of making transit slower particularly when combined with the “double stop” effect of farside stops. At these locations, the nearside space a stop would normally use is occupied by a left turn lane, and traffic in that lane has first claim on a green cycle.

Two routes with this as a near-standard stop configuration are 510 Spadina and 512 St. Clair. The Spadina car only recently returned, and I will leave comparative analysis of bus and streetcar operation there until more data have accumulated. A preliminary look is not complimentary to the streetcars because, unlike them, the buses are able to combine waiting for green signals with loading passengers.

On St. Clair, streetcars returned in Fall 2024. This article reviews tracking data for March 2025. In brief, a common situation along the route is that streetcars spend more time waiting at intersections than they do serving stops once they cross to a farside platform. The traffic signals are not organized to favour streetcar movements, and the configuration with farside stops is counterproductive.

To be fair, one cannot simply throw a red signal in front of cross traffic every time a streetcar appears as this will affect both auto and pedestrian crossings that require a minimum time. When both the St. Clair and Spadina lines were designed, a concern was the frequency of streetcar service and the high probability that there would always be a streetcar demanding priority. However, the larger Flexity cars combined with TTC service cuts makes this claim less valid.

Pre-emptive streetcar signals could be challenging at some locations, but there is the separate issue of timing of the phase for left turning autos. Should it come before or after streetcars are allowed to cross the intersection? Streetcar-only phases are only provided at some locations on Spadina where cars are turning across traffic lanes, but not for through movements. There is a streetcar-only phase at Lansdowne and St. Clair westbound, but otherwise left turning auto traffic always has priority.

A related problem lies in TTC’s glacial streetcar speeds through special work which would require a lengthy transit phase to allow streetcars to clear intersections on Spadina with streetcar junctions. With streetcars crossing on the shared north-south green, this does force motorists to wait for streetcars to get out of their way.

The data on St. Clair show a common pattern: streetcars spend more time waiting to cross intersections than they do serving the farside stops. They may operate in their own lane, but the combination of farside stops and signal design works against transit operations. This has implications for the soon-to-open “LRT” lines on Eglinton and Finch.

If we are not prepared to give transit vehicles true priority over cars, how do we expect to attract more riders to the system and, in theory, reduce overall road demand?

The remainder of this article describes the methodology behind my analysis and shows the behaviour at individual intersections along St. Clair.

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