Author: Steve

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Upcoming Transit City Open Houses

The following open houses have been announced for June 2008:

Sheppard LRT

Tuesday, June 3 at Agincourt Collegiate (Midland north of Sheppard)

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Scarborough RT Extension

Wednesday, June 4 at Malvern Community Centre (Sewell’s Road east of Neilson)

Thursday, June 5 at Scarborough Town Centre Station

Don Mills LRT

Tuesday, June 10 at Rosedale Heights School for the Arts (near Castle Frank Station)

Tuesday, June 17 at East York Town Centre

Wednesday, June 18 at Don Mills Station

Details are available on the project websites (linked above).

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Routes 501/502/503 in January 2008: Blended Service? (Updated)

Update:  The charts in this post have been updated so that each route has its own colour.  Thanks to a reader, Brent, who spotted the problem with rendering them only in B&W.

One of the little myths of TTC schedules is that routes with branches, or streets with overlapping routes, actually have something like “blended” service where some care is taken to even out vehicle spacings.

In some cases, the schedules do make an attempt to do this with identical headways on different services, but after that, the service is pretty much left to its own devices to “blend”.  For many years, the 502 and 503 services on Kingston Road had similar but slightly different headways.  This would mean that there were large scheduled gaps followed by pairs of cars during periods when the departure times at Bingham were almost in sync.  As it happened, this problem was at its worst right at the peak of inbound travel.  Poor service by design, and in time this was fixed.

An example of overlapping routes where the blend is troublesome lies on Eglinton Avenue east of Yonge where many services run together:  34 Eglinton East, 54 Lawrence East (with two branches of its own), 100 Flemingdon Park, 56 Leaside, 51 Leslie and 103 Mt. Pleasant North.  The 103 doesn’t overlap for long and there is no service on the 51 and 56 at some times (although this will change if the proposed Ridership Growth Strategy full-service standards come into effect in November 2008).

On Eglinton there are three major services, each on its own headway.  This causes scheduled bunching and wide gaps.  Given the different requirements of each route, this is inevitable, but it’s important to remember that many riders will see packs of buses and wide gaps and wonder just what is going on.

Down on Queen Street, there are three services merged westbound between Kingston Road and the Don River, and two services between the Don and McCaul.  It’s not uncommon to see cars from different routes running in pairs, and I started wondering just how frequently this happens. Continue reading →

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Thoughts on Taking Down The Gardiner East

On Friday, Waterfront Toronto announced a plan to relocate the Gardiner Expressway from Jarvis to the DVP into a surface road parallel to the rail corridor.  For reasons that are unclear, the Environmental Assessment for this project will take four years — even longer that the infinitely tedious transit EAs for simple lines like Cherry Street through which many of us have suffered.

(The issues about how long or short an EA should be are complex in their own right and I won’t dwell on them here.)

In brief, the scheme replaces the elevated road with an at-grade eight-lane divided street, with  University Avenue cited as the prototype.  The new road would be north of the existing expressway structure allowing all of the land south of the rail corridor to be reconfigured and redeveloped.

Traffic projections indicate a slight rise in travel times for trips through this area.  Not unexpectedly, the motoring lobby already predicts at least doom and gloom, if not fire and brimstone for good measure.  I have no sympathy for them at all. 

The eastern part of the Gardiner is lightly used.  Even during the AM peak, the traffic flowing south on the DVP past my apartment (just north of Bloor) is rarely bumper-to-bumper because so many cars leave the road further north.  Jammed traffic means there has been an accident, not that there is no capacity.  Northbound backlogs on the DVP are inevitably caused by accidents much further north, by early closings downtown on long weekends, and by the end of major sporting events.  The queue rarely reaches to Dundas Street.  Lowering the capacity west of the Don will have little effect on overall travel times because the main areas of congestion lie elsewhere.

The new configuration will simplify the work on rearranging roads at the Don Mouth where a knot formed by Lake Shore, Cherry, Parliament, and Queen’s Quay (not to mention the Gardiner) is a very pedestrian-hostile environment.  Moreover, with the new “Waterfront Boulevard” being a street, not an expressway, connections with local roads will not require ramp structures, only traffic lights.

Why we have to wait eight years for this wonderful new arrangement is a mystery, but I am sure that many consultants will retire, or at least buy a nice house in the country, on this project.

Mixed in with Friday’s announcement are two other items of more than passing interest.

The York Street Ramp

Although we don’t have any details, there is a plan to realign the York Street off ramp, the corkscrew that occupies much of the northeast corner of Queen’s Quay and York.  When I can find out what exactly is involved, I will publish details here.

The neighbourhood groups along Queen’s Quay have been pushing for this for some time, but until we know the details, we won’t see whether all we get is a larger parkette but also a new off-ramp fouling up some other intersection.

The Front Street Extension

This road is now about as dead as it can be without  the requisite wooden stake through its heart.  Even Councillor Joe Pantalone, long an advocate for this road, says it is something for another generation, according to media reports.  Meanwhile, former Councillor Dominelli, a landowner in the Liberty Village area long reputed to be pushing for the FSE, has actually stated he just wants a local road, thank you, so that he can get on with his redevelopment.

Considering how long many people have tried to get just that proposal on the table and been rebuffed at every turn, this is a very strange development.  Finally, we can get on with properly designing and building roads to serve the community from Bathurst to Dufferin, rather than an off-ramp to the expressway serving commuters from Burlington.

In deference to his long battles on this front [you can groan here], I propose that the new road be called Hamish Boulevard.

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Routes 502/503 Downtowner / Kingston Road in January 2008

This is the second part of my analysis of service on routes 502/503, both of which provide weekday daytime service on Kingston Road.  For general comments about the route, please refer to the previous post.

Service in January was not as badly affected by snowstorms or shopping-related congestion as in December.  Except for the week after after New Year’s Day, there were no major storms disrupting service or creating barriers of cars parked foul of the tracks.  Even so, service on Kingston Road was far from ideal. Continue reading →

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Route Supervision on Queen?

I received a note from Pete Coulman in the Kingston Road thread, and moved it here as a separate item.

Quick comment on Queen service also.

Yes, a supervisor is in the loop at Neville (AM&PM only).  These are timings made at Queen & Lee the other day (May 29).  What do you make of these?

On one hand 13 cars in an hour seems good, on the other hand, the actual headways, especially with a supervisor there, seem all over the place.  As most readers will know, Lee is Stop 6 WB from Neville and on a bad day, one-way travel time from Lee to Neville is about 3 minutes tops.  Check this out.

Car    EB   WB

4244 607 618
4233 608 624
4203 616 627
4212 618 632
4251 620 639
4206 625 648
4208 634 650
4224 6xx 654
4240 651 701
4213 651 702
4238 657 707
4237 700 713
4214 700 718

WB headways are : 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 1, 5, 6 and 5.

Traffic is not an issue at this hour, there were no accidents, clear morning, AND a supervisor at Neville.

I don’t know what to say …

Supervision?  What supervision?  What is particularly striking are the long round-trip times from Lee to the loop for some runs.  The erratic departure times may be as much an effect of padded running times as anything.  When running times are too long, operators know that (a) they can make up for a long layover and (b) leaving strictly on time means a dawdling trip across the city at a time when there is little traffic.

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Routes 502/503 Downtowner / Kingston Road in December 2007

The Kingston Road streetcar services are often forgotten by the TTC.  The service itself is highly unreliable, and for no apparent reason, this street has much worse service during weekdays than in the evening or on weekends.  Yes, the riding is a shadow of its former self, but with the almost complete lack of service at times, it’s no wonder.

In the recent review of the Queen car, the TTC totally ignored the question of Kingston Road.  How often should service run?  Should the Downtowner and Kingston Road Tripper be combined into a single route?  Is the line mismanaged, or worse, simply left to its own devices?

In this post, I will look at the service operated on the Kingston Road routes in December 2007, and I will follow up later this weekend with a review of January 2008.

Continue reading →

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Rapid Transit Service Changes Effective June 22, 2008

Yonge Subway Early Closing

Effective June 22, the Yonge subway will close early north of Lawrence Station.  This will allow work on tunnel liner replacement and repair to proceed at a faster pace than before and to complete while the condition of the tunnel is still acceptable for regular service operation.

This arrangement will be in place until February 14, 2009.

The following service changes are planned:

Yonge Subway

Monday to Friday, Sundays and Holidays (but not on Saturdays), service north of Lawrence will end at about 12:30 am.  On Saturdays, regular service will run until the normal closing time.

The bus terminals at York Mills, Sheppard and Finch stations will remain open.

North York Centre station, as well as the York Mills south entrance, and the Poyntz and West entrances to Sheppard station, will close when Yonge train service ends.

Sheppard Subway

After about 12:23 am, to allow the Yonge line platform to be closed, all Sheppard trains will load from the north platform which can be reached directly from the bus loop and station entrance.

Replacement Bus Service

Buses on 36 Finch West, 39 Finch East, 53 Steeles East and 60 Steeles West will operate to Lawrence Station.  The 97 Yonge bus, which normally goes to York Mills via Yonge Boulevard, will be extended from York Mills to Finch and will operate through Lawrence Station both ways.

The combined service on Yonge from Lawrence to Finch will be between two and three minutes.

Other Service Changes for June 22

Seasonal Subway Service Reductions

On the Yonge line, two of the four AM gap/standby trains will be removed.  This has no effect on the headway.  In the afternoon peak, six trains will be removed (four scheduled plus two gap trains) and the headway will widen from 2’31” to 2’46”.

On the Bloor-Danforth line, seven trains will be removed from the AM peak service widening the headway from 2’24” to 2’53”.  Five trains will be removed from the PM peak service widening the headway from 2’34” to 2’57”.

On the Scarborough RT, the running time will be increase “to improve reliability in hot weather”.  The round trip will change from 21 to 23 minutes and the headway from 3’40” to 3’50” during peak periods, and from 5’30” to 5’45” at off peak.  Step back crewing will be dropped, and the extra time is needed for the longer terminal time this causes.

The RT will close at midnight every day to permit continued work on the power rails, and frequent bus service will run in place of the RT.  This arrangement continues until August 29, 2008.  The shuttle service will not operate into Lawrence East station, and all intermediate stations will close after the last RT train.

I am not going to list all of the surface route of which there are many in the usual pattern of cuts to routes serving post-secondary institutions, increases for seasonal traffic to the waterfront and CNE, and general cuts in service to adjust for lighter peak loads in the summer.  The details of these will appear on the TTC website in due course.

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New Carhouses for New Cars (Updated)

The TTC Supplementary Agenda for May 21 includes a report on the Master Plan for new carhouses.  These will be needed both to house the replacement fleet for the existing downtown network and for the far-flung Transit City system.

In brief, the proposed scheme involves the building of five new carhouses:

  • One in either the Portlands or in New Toronto to house the downtown network’s fleet.  The New Toronto option is mentioned only once in the text  (with “new” in lower case), and the map shows only the Portlands location.  This would be the primary carhouse for the core area routes, but Roncesvalles and Russell would continue to have a role as regional yards for new cars once the CLRV fleet starts to retire.
  • A Sheppard East carhouse would initially operate the Sheppard line, but later take on the Scarborough/Malvern and part of Eglinton once the Malvern link was in place.
  • A Finch West carhouse would serve that line and, eventually, part of the Jane line as well.
  • An Eglinton West carhouse would serve the Eglinton line initially, and later the Jane and, possibly, the St. Clair line.
  • A Don Mills carhouse would serve the Don Mills line and possibly part of Sheppard.  By the time we get this far into the plan, there will no doubt be more Transit City proposals on the table and it’s anyone’s guess what the real carhouse needs will be.

The four Transit City carhouses are estimated at about $770-million (reference year not stated), while the new downtown carhouse is estimated at $330-million due to the larger fleet it must house.    It’s clear that the long-term status of the existing Russell and Roncesvalles buildings is dubious both because they are not suited to house and maintain the new cars, and because of building code issues if they were to undergo major changes.  However, these properties provide a few advantages over a consolidated operation in the Portlands.

  • If they are used as yards with basic servicing facilities, the dead-head time for cars entering and leaving service will be shorter than if everything funnels back to a Portlands carhouse.
  • As riding grows on the existing system, the TTC needs somewhere to store more than the initial 204 low flow cars they plan to order this year.  The existing yards will provide an overflow.  Whether both of them are needed once all of the existing CLRVs and ALRVs are retired is another question, but that’s almost a decade away.

Note that the map used in this report is the original Transit City map and does not reflect any of the optional changes that have cropped up in discussions about some routes.  It also doesn’t show the new Waterfront East lines, nor the Kingston Road project.  With luck, one of these days, the TTC will start using a new base map for all of its surface rail project reports.

Updated May 21:

The dates for new carhouse availability are driven both by the expected arrival of the new fleet for the downtown system and for the opening dates of the Transit City lines.

The demonstration prototype cars are to arrive at the end of 2010, and it is likely they will be temporary stored and serviced at Hillcrest.  The first 20 production cars will arrive by the end of 2012, and they will need a carhouse and shops.  This sets the date for the Portlands carhouse to be available.  The complete replacement fleet arrives by the end of 2017.

There are seven Transit City lines (not to mention other plans such as Waterfront East and Kingston Road).  The startup dates and estimated fleets for each of these lines are:

  • Sheppard East:  2012 / 35
  • Finch West:  2013 /37
  • Eglinton:  2015 /129
  • Waterfront West:  2015 / 23
  • Don Mills:  2016 / 46
  • Jane:  2017: /41
  • Scarborough Malvern:  2018 / 53

At least 90% of this fleet, possibly with the addition of cars for the St. Clair line, will be housed in the four new carhouses all of which should have room to accommodate growth in requirements.

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Sheppard East LRT / Scarborough RT EA Meetings in June

The next round of meetings for the Sheppard East LRT and Scarborough RT Extension Environmental Assessments have been announced.

The Sheppard East LRT meetings are on June 3 (Agincourt Collegiate) and June 4 (Malvern Community Centre).  They will include presentation of:

the recommended design for the Sheppard Avenue East LRT, including stop locations, the proposed grade separation of Sheppard Avenue at the Agincourt Go Line and the preferred option for making the LRT/subway connection.

The Scarborough RT Extension meetings are on June 4 (Malvern Community Centre, jointly with the Sheppard EA) and June 5 (Scarborough RT Station).  They will include:

The rationale for selecting the preferred network: an SRT extension to Malvern Town Centre, and SRT alignments to be considered for detailed evaluation.