Author: Steve

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Union Station & Rail Corridor Capacity

At the recent Metrolinx Board meeting, staff presented an overview of planning now underway for the future of Union Station.  One background report addressed the future levels of GO, VIA and other services at Union and the surrounding rail corridors.  This report makes interesting, if unsurprising, reading because it confirms what anyone with even a modest understanding of railway operations already knows:  there are severe capacity constraints at Union as it is now configured and operated.  Too much discussion focuses on a bright future of frequent service without considering how we will fit all the trains and passengers through the hub of the network.

The full report is not online at Metrolinx, but I have obtained a copy.  Due to its size, I will not link the entire document here.  If you just want the highlights, read the Executive Summary.  For more details including a description of the evolving simulations of various levels of service, read the main report.

USRC Track Study Executive Summary

USRC Track Study Main Report

The study considered various scenarios corresponding to stages in the growth of GO and other services over coming decades:

  • Base Case:  The existing service at Union, including a reservation of two tracks out of service for the reconstruction project.  This was used to calibrate the model.
  • 2015:  Construction at the train shed is completed giving two more tracks for service.  The only new peak hour service beyond the base case would be a few VIA trains and the Air Rail Link.
  • Electrification study base case:  This configuration was used as a starting point for the recent electrification study, and it assumes two-way service on all corridors.  Three variants of this were tested to refine operations and remove constraints triggered by service at a much higher level than today.
  • Maximum capacity:  This configuration attempted to maximise service on all corridors.

The study concludes that significant changes will be required both in the physical plant (track, signals) and in train operations which will have to be managed considerably more tightly than today.

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Metrolinx Toys With 3Ps

The Toronto Star reports that Metrolinx is considering the private sector option for delivery of some or all of the Eglinton LRT project.  This is not much of a surprise given that Queen’s Park has an entire Ministry, Infrastructure Ontario, dedicated to building stuff, and their standard delivery model is a partnership with the private sector.

Advocates and opponents of public-private-partnerships often take extreme views that these schemes are either the saviour of government services, or evil works meant to transfer control (and money) of vital projects from public to private hands.  The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Every project the TTC or Metrolinx undertakes has a large private sector component:  engineering, construction, provision of materials.  Delays and cost overruns can arise from poor planning and design, some of it carried out by those same private sector engineers, or from contractors who view changes and delays as a potential source of profit.  They can also come from a client who can’t make up its mind and changes requirements as the project unfolds.

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What is “Service Efficiency”?

Toronto launched its 2012 budget on November 28, 2011 with an overview presentation.  Much of this has nothing to do with transit, and I will leave analysis of the full budget to others.  For those who like the details, further information about the TTC’s Operating, Wheel-Trans and Capital Budgets can be found in the Analyst Notes.

The City’s Budget Committee will consider details of the TTC budgets on December 6, 2011, and the Commission will debate the final version of its budget on December 14.  Everything goes to Council on January 17, 2012.

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Only A Few Seconds More

Defenders of the coming service cuts minimize the effect by saying that riders will only have to wait a bit longer, a few minutes at most, for their ride to show up at a stop.  The attitude is that the change is trivial and, by implication, grumbling customers don’t know when they have a good thing.

In fact, when headways are short, a few seconds change can make a big difference.  The most striking example we can see every day is on the subway where only a slight extension of headways quickly translates to crowded platforms and trains, and long dwell times at busy stations.  The same effect on a smaller scale happens on bus and streetcar routes all over the city.

The change in peak period bus loading standards adds about 10% to the space between vehicles because the TTC now requires fewer of them to carry the same demand.  If a route runs every 5’00” today (300 seconds), it will run every 5’30” (330 seconds) in January, all other factors being unchanged.  This doesn’t sound like much until we convert the numbers to buses/hour.  The line would go from 12 buses per hour to 11, and one bus worth of riders would have to be absorbed into the remaining service.

However, the changes actually made on some routes are bigger than 10% because the TTC is compounding the new loading standard with a claw-back of “surplus” capacity.  For example, on 54 Lawrence East, the peak headways go from 3’00” to 3’30” in the morning, and from 3’20” to 4’00” in the afternoon.  Translated to buses/hour, that’s a change from 20 to 17 in the morning, and from 18 to 15 in the afternoon.  The new services are 86% and 83% of the old ones, respectively.  That’s more than a 10% cut.

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More Riders, Less Service (Update 2)

Updated November 27, 2011 at 7:00 am:  The section describing the variations from budget for 2011 has been updated.

Updated November 25, 2011 at 1:05 pm:  I have written an article for Torontoist on the pending service cuts.

Updated November 22, 2011 at 11:10 am:  TTC staff propose that the 145 Humber Bay Express bus be discontinued after February 10, 2012.  This route has never met the financial or performance criteria used to evaluate other services.  After two years of a charmed life as a local Councillor’s pet project, the route is finally being held to the same standards as the rest of the transit system.  When we are cutting services across Toronto, spending $150k/year to provide 70 people (140 trips) with their own bus service cannot be justified.

The original post follows below:

TTC ridership numbers for September 2011 are up 5.1% over 2010, a level 2.4% above the budget projection.  Under normal circumstances, this would be cause for celebration, but not in Rob Ford’s Toronto.  Here we cut service even when riding goes up, all in the name of wrestling with a fictitiously inflated City deficit.

The Chief General Manager’s Report tells us that riding will come in just a hair under half a billion at 497m for the year 2011, fully 10m more than the budget estimate.  Those riders generate more revenue for the TTC, but don’t expect to see this in service improvements.

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GO Kitchener Rail Service Starts December 19, 2011

As previously rumoured in comments, the Kitchener rail service begins on December 19.  GO will implement this with two trains a day.

In the morning, the existing 6:47 Georgetown trip will originate in Kitchener at 5:52.   A new train will be added leaving Kitchener at 7:10 and arriving at Union at 9:08.

In the afternoon, two existing Georgetown trips leaving Union at 4:45 and 5:45 pm will be extended to Kitchener arriving there at 6:42 and 7:42.

The line will be renamed the “Kitchener” line.

GO Schedule Changes Page

Kitchener Timetable

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Metrolinx Board Meeting November 23, 2011 (Part I)

The agenda for November 23rd’s meeting of the Metrolinx Board is now online and it includes several reports of interest.  Here I will deal with GO transit performance and capacity issues.  In a future article, I will turn to Presto (and the proposed TTC implementation which is also on the TTC’s agenda for November 23), the Air Rail Link, and planning issues at “Mobility Hubs”.

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Service Changes for October through December, 2011 (Update 2)

This article consolidates service change information for the three schedule board periods beginning October 9, November 20 and December 18, 2011.

Service improvements continue to appear on a few routes in response to growth in riding.  Whether these will survive into 2012 with the budget and service standards cuts remains to be seen.

Updated November 17, 2011 at 10:00 am:  Effective November 20, the Kingston Road 12A service to Variety Village will be split on weekends so that half of the buses travel via the original route 12B on Kingston Road east of Birchmount, and half via route 12A.  This restores service to Kingston Road between Birchmount and Danforth Ave.

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TTC Unveils New Streetcar Design and Mockup (Update 2)

Updated November 10 at 4:45 pm: Photos of the mockup have been added to this article.

This shows the mockup (actually three sections of the five-section vehicle) including street level (front door) and island level (at the second door with a ramp deployed) comparisons for boarding heights.

For more photos, scroll down to the bottom of the article.

See also coverage on the Torontoist, Urban Toronto and blogto websites.

Updated November 9 at 5:20 pm:  In response to questions that have come up in this thread and previous articles about the new cars, I have added information at the end regarding the issues of weight-per-axle and the Toronto requirement that the cars negotiate single-point track switches.

The TTC will display a mockup of the new streetcar fleet for public viewing.

TTC Hillcrest Yard
November 12 to 15, 2011
10:00 am to 7:00 pm

Additional information about this event and the new cars is on the TTC’s LRV Page.

39 years ago, the TTC decided to retain its streetcar system, and this will be the second generation of new streetcars.  Toronto joins the rest of the world with a modern car based on designs used in other major cities.

They’ve been a long time coming, and design changes have added almost a year to the process that TTC and LRT advocates expected when the order with Bombardier was approved.  When I have details of the delivery schedule, I will update this post.

For additional hi-res views of the new cars, visit the “Meet Your New Ride” page.  Something that’s immediately obvious is a family resemblance to the interior of the new Toronto Rocket subway cars.

Two observations about the TTC’s website:

  • Comments about the improvement of capacity on routes and the approach to scheduling service are now out of sync with statements in the TTC’s budget papers.  Originally, the TTC was committed to improving capacity on streetcar routes and keeping wait times reasonably short.  Today, this position is no longer as definite because running service above a full standard load is transit gravy.
  • The new cars will operate, according to the TTC, on new routes for the eastern waterfront.  Considering the foot-dragging on this project, the cost escalation and the low priority given to waterfront transit generally, it’s hard to say whether these routes will ever actually be built.

Updates regarding technical issues with the cars follow the break below.

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Sheppard Subway Inches Along (Updated)

Updated November 9 at 11:20pm:  The Toronto Star reports that Queen’s Park has told Mayor Ford that it will not advance any provincial funds from a possible “surplus” on the Eglinton project to jump start the Sheppard line.  This leaves Ford’s camp having to find money on its own if work on a first phase to Victoria Park were attempted.

The original article from November 8 follows:

The Toronto Star reports that Rob Ford’s Sheppard Subway proposal might creep eastward from Don Mills Station rather than bounding in one leap to Scarborough Town Centre.  An initial push east to Victoria Park might be a target for 2014, in time for the next municipal election, although the opening date would come later.

Considering that Ford was going to finance and build the entire Sheppard line in that time, this is a tad slower than promised during his election campaign.

The big problem, of course, is money.  Ford doesn’t have much and, as the Star points out, the engineering difficulties for an all-underground Eglinton line won’t leave much unspent of the provincial fund earmarked for that route.  For a route that was going to be financed by the private sector, Sheppard, or what we may see of it, is turning into a traditionally funded public sector project.

The specifics are no surprise.  Don Mills was always an odd place to end the Sheppard line, and this choice was dictated by available funding, not by network planning.  The proposed LRT connection into Don Mills is less than ideal, and a tunnel under the DVP would be required regardless of the technology.  The extra cost lies in continuing east to Victoria Park.

What we don’t know yet is whether this extension would include a Consumer’s Road Station, or just go straight through to the new terminal.

During the debates over possible adjustments to the Transit City network, a subway extension was one option proposed by some.  The typical reaction to this (and to any other schemes that would add to the cost of Transit City) was to reject the idea out of hand because the overall budget was already very tight.  However, now that Queen’s Park has decided that no price is too high to keep Mayor Ford happy, it’s much harder to argue against rethinking some Transit City options.

Victoria Park could be a good terminal for a Sheppard LRT, but there’s a problem of timing.  The “interim” subway terminal should be designed with provision for an LRT rather than subway continuation.  I suspect that no one at the TTC will be allowed to even discuss, let alone design such an option.  This will be a challenge for Councillors thinking ahead to a post-Ford era when LRT plans can be resurrected.

According to the Star, Gordon Chong should be reporting on a scheme to get the Sheppard line underway “before Christmas”.  Will Santa have a nice shiny subway train for little Rob’s stocking, or just a lump of coal?

Meanwhile for comic relief, Matt Elliot’s Ford for Toronto site reports how that pesky Don River just won’t get out of Ford’s way.