Author: Steve

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TTC Contemplates Fare Evasion (Updated)

Updated July 22 at 11:10am: A section has been added at the end detailing the discussion and actions taken at the TTC Board meeting of July 17.

At its meeting of July 15, the TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee considered a staff report on the efforts underway and proposed to deal with the problem of fare evasion. This report, with amended recommendations, goes to the full TTC Board on July 17.

The debate video goes on for nearly three hours, and it revealed some troubling issues with the ARMC:

  • There is an overwhelming emphasis on recovering “lost” revenue with little sense of what target might actually be achieved, or the cost of reaching that level.
  • At least one member of the committee, a Commissioner since early 2021, does not know how the “Fair Pass” program for low income riders works.
  • In response to a question about how the Two Hour Transfer works, something any Board member or transit rider should know, management provided incorrect information about riding past the two hour line. In turn, that interpretation appeared to justify actions by Fare Inspectors that violate TTC policy.
  • There was no acknowledgement that the TTC Board, when it acquired vehicles with multiple entrances (including articulated buses and streetcars) and implemented Proof of Payment (aka POP), was quite aware of the tradeoff between vehicle utilization, service efficiency, labour costs and potential fare evasion. Some Commissioners act as if they just discovered this problem.
  • It was quite clear that some Board members have little sense of the dynamics of passenger movements on TTC vehicles, notably problems with congestion at the front of buses due to baby carriages, shopping carts and other impediments, and the need for centre door loading simply to allow riders onto vehicles.
  • There was also no acknowledgement that some riders do not tap immediately on entry because they do not have their card at hand, but do so after they have boarded, and not necessarily at the location where they entered. Discussions about ways to increase payment rates through constrained entry and monitoring were based on a faulty view of actual passenger behaviour.

Overall, the level of day-to-day knowledge of the transit experience was poor, and management was not particularly helpful in correcting assumptions made by Board members.

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60,000 Comments and Counting

Over the past weekend, the count of approved comments on this site topped 60K! That’s all thanks to the many readers who add their two cents, and often a lot more, to the articles I write.

Sometimes we agree, sometimes not. The conversation and the additional info adds to the articles, and that’s a valuable part of this blog.

To all of you who chime in regularly or rarely, thanks for participating. It tells me that “out there” are readers who care about public transit.

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Bus Service to the Eastern Waterfront

For many, many years, there has been talk of expansion of the streetcar system into the eastern waterfront. The “Waterfront East LRT” would branch off of the Bay Street tunnel at Queens Quay and running east initially to Villiers Island and eventually link with a southern extension of Broadview via the new GO/Ontario Line station at East Harbour.

Anyone waiting for this service will age considerably before it opens at the now tentative date of 2036. This was supposed to be a “Transit First” neighbourhood, but the history mocks all the fine talk of “Transit Oriented Communities” we hear today. Meanwhile, any attempt to actually use transit to reach this area is, putting it mildly, challenging. A collection of overlapping bus routes with infrequent and irregular service fight their way through chronic traffic congestion.

The route structure changed on May 12, 2024 as shown in the TTC maps below from 2023 and June 2024.

2023
June 2024
  • 19 Bay
    • 2023: From the central business district south on Bay and east on Queens Quay to loop at George Brown College near Sherbourne Street.
    • May 2024: Route shortened to loop via east on King, south on Yonge, west on Front and north on Bay.
  • 72 Pape
    • 2023:
      • 72A service from Pape Station to Eastern.
      • 72B service to Union Station from Pape via Commissioners, Cherry, Lake Shore, Queens Quay and Bay. The route changed from time to time as the area was rebuilt to create Villiers Island.
      • 72C service from Pape Station to Commissioners Street peak periods only.
    • May 2024:
      • 72A service to Eastern peak periods only.
      • 72B replaced by 114 Queens Quay East.
      • 72C extended west from Pape to Saulter Street and operated as the all day route.
  • 114 Queens Quay East
    • May 2024: New route from Union Station to Carlaw replacing the south end of 19 Bay and the west end of 72 Pape.

Two routes were not changed:

  • 65 Parliament:
    • From Castle Frank Station south via Parliament and west on Queens Quay to George Brown College.
  • 75 Sherbourne:
    • From Sherbourne Station south via Sherbourne and west on Queens Quay to Jarvis returning north via Jarvis and The Esplanade.

There is also the seasonal 202 Cherry from Union Station to Cherry Beach. Like the 72 Pape bus, its route has changed from time to time due to construction in the Villiers Island area.

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Spadina Replacement Bus Shifts to St. George Station

The City of Toronto will be closing the intersection of Spadina and Bloor to all traffic from 5am Monday, July 15 to 5am Monday, July 22 for complete reconstruction. This is the west end of a project that has been working its way along Bloor Street for months.

TTC bus service will divert to St. George Station. Whether this will alleviate the bus congestion at the north end of the route remains to be seen.

Because this is a non-standard route, transit prediction apps will not work for locations off of Spadina, and southbound predictions will only work for stops and buses that are south of Harbord.

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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.

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Reserved Bus Lanes for Spadina?

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”.

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510 Spadina Bus Modified Diversion Tracking

Southbound 510 Spadina bus operations changed on July 8. Between 3 and 7pm on weekdays, buses do not operate south to Queens Quay, but instead loop east on Front, then south and west on Blue Jays Way to Spadina.

The charts presented here were generated by Darwin O’Connor’s TransSee website. Basic functions of that site are available free, and some chargeable features are free for Toronto streetcar routes. O’Connor uses the NextBus data feed as his source on a real time basis whereas the analyses I publish here use a monthly data extract provided to me by the TTC from their Vision system.

This article will be updated from time to time to show the evolution of travel times on the 510 Spadina replacement bus operation.

There are two locations of interest where congestion occurs:

  • Southbound approaching Front Street
  • Northbound approaching Bloor Street

Updated July 16 at 6:50am: Data for July 15 added.

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512 St. Clair Streetcars vs Buses: June 2024

With the June 23, 2024 schedule change, buses were replaced with streetcars running from St. Clair Station at Yonge to Gunn’s Loop west of Keele Street. Buses operated mostly in the regular traffic lanes, not on the streetcar right-of-way.

This article reviews the travel times on the 512 St. Clair bus and streetcar services to compare travel times over the route.

Although the streetcars in week 4 of June (beginning on June 23) are overall faster than the buses they replaced, the degree of this advantage varies by location and direction.

This is a companion piece to my review of the streetcar-to-bus change on 510 Spadina that happened at the same time.

The overall observation here is that although travel times are now shorter for many riders, headway reliability is very poor and gaps can undo the benefit of a faster trip.

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510 Streetcars vs Buses: June 2024

With the June 23, 2024 schedule change, streetcars were replaced with buses running from Spadina Station at Bloor to Queens Quay. Buses operated in the regular traffic lanes, not on the streetcar right-of-way.

To no surprise, during periods when Spadina Avenue is congested, primarily with traffic queued for the westbound Gardiner Expressway ramp at Lake Shore, the buses made glacial progress. This was not, however, the only place where buses were delayed by traffic.

The TTC has announced that it will change the south end loop in an attempt to speed service during the PM peak. No buses will operate between Blue Jays Way and Queens Quay, but instead they will loop via Front eastbound, then south and west via Blue Jays Way to Spadina. Traffic Wardens will assist with the turn at Front Street.

However, the congestion on the south end of Spadina can extend north to King and sometimes beyond Queen Street. It is not clear whether the new loop will address much of the problem. Buses will not be using the streetcar right-of-way, even though it has no centre poles north of Bremner Blvd. to bypass the traffic jam.

The TTC advises that this is an interim arrangement, and that they are working with the City on further, unspecified, changes to the bus operation.

It’s Not Just the Gardiner

An effect unexpected by some, I am sure, was that at uncongested parts and times, the buses make faster trips than the streetcars had only a week before the changeover. Anyone who rides the 510 Spadina car will know of their glacial progress through intersections thanks to the system wide slow order on all special trackwork. Spadina has many intersections. This type of pervasive delay is seen all over the streetcar system, but is worst on rights-of-way where one would expect streetcars to operate as quickly as possible.

Buses have a further advantage in that they are stopping nearside, and therefore can serve stops while awaiting a green signal, and then leave without a second farside stop.

The absence of priority with extended green phases for Spadina transit service affects the modes differently because an extended green would allow streetcars to reach their stops before a signal turns against them. Even if bus is caught on the nearside of an intersection, it will be stopping to serve passengers.

The left turn phase for auto traffic that blocks streetcars also blocks buses, and so this particular delay is common to both modes.

In addition to congestion at the south end of the route, buses also encounter problems during some periods approaching Bloor Street northbound.

The remainder of this article reviews travel times and service reliability on the main part of the 510 Spadina route over June 2024. (There is a companion article about the return of streetcars replacing buses on 512 St. Clair.)

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Correction: New Subway Trains for Line 2

Normally when I amend an article, I only do this inline to the text and do not issue a separate notice about the changes which are typically minor. However, an article published earlier today contained a serious error which I have now corrected.

Many readers are notified about articles by email subscription, and they do not get notices of changes. This article is intended to alert them.

In my review of the evolution of new train requirements, I had flagged the big jump in train costs, but missed the November 2023 TTC report in which this was incorporated in capital plans. This produced my inaccurate surmise that the replacement trains for Line 2 might be affordable even without the requested Federal subsidy.

That was not correct, and for this I apologize to readers. That error is not up to my standards.