Two proposals before City Council attempt to deal with congestion issues downtown brought on by the King/Church water main and track reconstruction.

MM31.17 – Speeding Up Streetcars: Traffic Amendments on Adelaide Street, King Street and York Street – by Mayor Olivia Chow, seconded by Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik

This motion proposes the relocation of parking and loading zones from Adelaide Street to nearby streets to free up capacity on Adelaide.

Currently, the Financial District Business Improvement Area and their stakeholders use loading zones on the south side of Adelaide Street West, from Yonge Street to York Street, between 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. Based on the travel time data, streetcar operations are negatively impacted when the loading operations are in effect.

In consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, Transportation Services and the Financial District have agreed that temporary loading zones will be established on the west side of York Street, between King Street West and Wellington Street, and on the north side of King Street West, between Yonge Street and York Street.

Delivery drivers will queue in the new loading zones, where Traffic Control Persons will marshal the delivery drivers into the loading bay only when it is clear. With the temporary loading zones in place, stopping will be prohibited on Adelaide Street West from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday to Sunday.

Mayor Chow proposed an amendment to her own motion authorizing payment “to deploy additional paid duty officers at seven locations near the King and Church worksite to manage traffic flow”.

MM31.18 – Re-Opening King Street for Business: Keeping Toronto’s Downtown Core and Canada’s Financial District Moving – by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Stephen Holyday

This motion proposes the reopening of through traffic on King Street where streetcars are not operating during the construction diversion.

City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to make any necessary changes to reopen the portion of King Street between Spadina Avenue and Church Street to vehicular traffic for the duration of the King Street East and Church Street intersection closure, where streetcars are not currently in service.

Mayor Chow proposed an amendment limiting the reopened area to portions where “streetcars and buses” are not operating. This effectively neuters the motion because the only portion of King with no transit service now is east of Yonge Street.

The debate was mired by a combination of political rivalries, lack of familiarity with the affected area and transit services, and disinformation either through ignorance or misrepresentation.

The Mayor’s motion MM31.17 and amendment carried on a show of hands.

The Mayor’s proposed amendment to MM31.18 carried by 16-5. The motion as amended carried on a show of hands.

The debate was hampered by the absence of basic information such as a map and detailed information on items such as existing transit services, traffic pinch points and loading zone locations.

In support of his claim that King Street could be reopened, Councillor Bradford showed a photo looking west on King from Simcoe with the street completely devoid of traffic. The photo was taken at 6:30pm on Monday.

• Monday is a very light day for office-bound traffic due to work-from-home patterns. This is also reflected in day-of-the-week travel time differences shown later in this article.
• The theatre district (Roy Thomson Hall, Royal Alexandra and Princess of Wales Theatres, TIFF) are dark on Mondays, and there is little tourist traffic. There was no major event at the Rogers Centre.

Although an empty road can be found at times, the photo is deeply misleading, and Bradford should know better.

Among the most striking pieces of disinformation was the claim that replacement bus service carries far fewer riders than the streetcars did along the King Street corridor. When asked, staff gave riding figures of 24,000 on the King Street replacement bus, and 60,000 per day for the streetcars. These are all day values for the entire route, not for riding on the King Street transit corridor itself. At no point was there any discussion of the frequency (and hence capacity) of service. These numbers were cited by various Councillors to claim that transit priority was not needed on King because so many fewer people were riding there.

City staff should be chastised for failing to correct this point and for giving an answer that did not properly illuminate the comparison between service levels.

For the record, the scheduled service on the central portion of King Street with streetcars and buses is shown below. Note that there is substantially less scheduled capacity with the replacement bus service. Buses on King are quite crowded, and service is bunched and erratic.

It is quite likely that there are fewer riders on the buses than on the streetcars, although a major contributing factor will be the level of service provided by the TTC. From a capacity viewpoint, a service of 18 buses/hour with 50/bus (greater than the Service Standard level) would be 900 riders per hour past a point. The streetcar service would have a capacity more than double that level.

PM Peak Service	Streetcar Service (Apr/25)	Bus Service (June/25)
504A Distillery-Dundas West	10′ (6 cars/hour)
504B Broadview-Dundas West	10′ (6 cars/hour)
503 Kingston Road (EB from York)	10′ (6 cars/hour)
508 Lake Shore	20′ (3 cars/hour)
504D Broadview-Bathurst		5′ (12 buses/hour)
504C Distillery-Bathurst		10′ (6 buses/hour)

In the course of the debate, Mayor Chow noted that work at King & Church is progressing well and should be finished by August 8. This may allow the road to reopen, but resumption of streetcar service depends on the TTC finishing their work including reconstruction of streetcar overhead at that intersection and along King Street East.

The remainder of this article updates previously-published charts about streetcar travel times on Richmond and Adelaide Streets.

Since early May, all streetcar service normally on King has diverted via Queen between Spadina and the Don Bridge. In the core, streetcars have used the Ontario Line diversion via Church, Richmond/Adelaide and York Streets. In June, traffic conditions changed with the closing of the King/Church intersection. This diverted replacement bus service between Jarvis and Yonge, but also changed traffic patterns on nearby streets as motorists could not drive through King/Church.

The charts below compare travel times between University and Jarvis in three periods. 501 Queen data are used because this route did not change over the period and provides “pre” and “post” data (except for the week of April 28 when the Queen car itself was diverted).

• Pre-construction while King was still open (April 21-25, May 5-9).
• Streetcar diversion via Queen, but with King/Church open for motorists (May 12-30).
• Streetcar diversion via Queen with King/Church closed to all traffic (June 2-20).

Eastbound from University to Jarvis Weekdays

Note that travel times are less erratic from June 2 onward. From personal observation, an important change was that with Church Street closed at King, the queue of northbound traffic on Church trapping eastbound streetcars (and hence traffic on Adelaide) was reduced.

Westbound from Jarvis to University Weekdays

Although there has been a lot of focus on Adelaide Street, Richmond is not without its problems particularly in the PM peak and early evening, although like the eastbound travel times, these have improved since June 2.

The very long travel time on Thursday May 29 was caused by a medical emergency. No eAlert was issued for Wednesday May 28.

Weekends Westbound

Weekends Eastbound

Eastbound travel times are particularly bad on Saturdays from mid-afternoon onward through the late evening. This is an example of how a focus on weekday peak periods for hands-on traffic management is not sufficient to deal with all problems.