Subways

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There’s A New Subway On The Way (6)

From time to time, the question of just what constitutes “subway demand” comes up in various threads on this site. As a matter of comparison, here is the TTC Scheduled Service Summary for April 7, 1964.

Headways on the Bloor-Danforth service itself were quite impressive. Two-car trains of PCCs, roughly the equivalent of the new Flexity cars, ran throughout the day until mid-evening, and the peak headways shown below are for trains.

                          AM Peak         PM Peak
                          Hdwy   Veh      Hdwy   Veh
Bloor route                      100             110
  Jane to Luttrell        2'30"           2'30"
  Jane to Bedford                         4'00"
Danforth route                    30              48
  Bedford to Hillingdon   3'20"
  Bedford to Luttrell                     3'00"
Combined                         130             158
  Bedford to Hillingdon   1'26"
  Jane to Bedford                         1'32"
  Bedford to Luttrell                     1'22"

Jane Loop was at Bloor & Jane.
Luttrell Loop was on Danforth between Main and Victoria Park at the old city boundary.
Bedford Loop was at St. George Station.
Hillingdon Loop was at the east side of Danforth Carhouse east of Coxwell.

The Bloor-Danforth streetcars could not carry all of the demand into downtown, and that work was shared with many parallel routes.

  • 2’00” Bathurst car from Vaughan Loop (at St. Clair) to Church & Adelaide
  • 1’30” Carlton car
  • 1’40” Dundas car from Runnymede & Dundas to City Hall
  • 2’30” Harbord car from Lansdowne & Davenport to Pape & Danforth via Dundas & Yonge
  • 1’20” King car
  • 2’00” Kingston Road car (now “Downtowner”)
  • 5’00” Kingston Road Tripper car (Victoria Park to Roncesvalles & Queen)

The streetcar system required 640 cars in the am peak, 684 in the pm peak.

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There’s A New Subway On The Way (5)

The new subway would bring major changes in travel throughout the transit network.  The TTC produced a large poster, the size of a two-page foldout in newspapers of the day explaining many features of the line and its operation.

BDNews1

Probably the largest reorganization of routes in the TTC’s history accompanied the opening of the new subway including the change or removal of several streetcar lines. This was to be the beginning of a gradual dismantling of streetcar operation leading to the opening of a Queen Street subway in 1980.

BDNewsRoutesw

Lest passengers be confused about the destination of their trains with the integrated subway service, platform signs would indicate where the next train was headed. The signs remain on many platforms with their displays fixed to the now-standard destinations.

BDNewsDestSignsw

The two-zone fare system still existed, although its boundary would not be punctured by the subway until the extensions beyond the old City of Toronto opened. The fine boundary line is visible in the route map below.

BDNews2

Adult tickets were still a common method of fare payment, and the TTC exhorted travellers to switch to the mode used by “seasoned subway riders”, tokens, at the princely price of 6 for $1 in handy cardboard holders.

TokenHolder6

For the opening, a special commemorative token holder was issued.

TokenHolders1

The subway had its own pocket route map.

BDMap660226B

BDMap660226A

Six months later, this would change to the routes we know today.

BDMap660904B

BDMap660904A

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Demand Projections for Relief Lines

The City of Toronto Planning Department has published a set of demand projections for various combinations of the (Downtown) Relief subway line, SmartTrack, and the proposed northern extension of the Yonge line to Richmond Hill.

This document makes interesting reading because it shows both the status of the evolving master transit plan that went into the modelling, and the vital point that additional capacity into the core area is essential to prevent complete gridlock on the subway system. Both SmartTrack and the Relief Line are essential to a future transit network.

That said, the report raises several issues in part by what it does not talk about, specifically some of the network configurations that have already been presented in various studies.

Alignment Options for the Relief Line, and Other Model Variations

This question of the Relief Line’s alignment is subdivided into two parts: what is the scope of the line, and which route will it take to link Danforth to the core area.

The big options include:

  • A “little J” route from Yonge Street to Danforth
  • A “big J” route from Yonge Street to at least Don Mills & Eglinton, possibly beyond
  • A “little U” from Danforth to Bloor West via downtown
  • A “big U” with northern extensions of one or both arms of the “little U”

Work has focussed on the “little J” because that is the scope for a Relief Line so long discussed, and approved for study by Council. Therefore the model numbers do not show any effect of taking the “little J” further north to intercept more traffic bound for the Yonge line. This has already been reported by Metrolinx as a very beneficial extension to the RL.

Within all of the options, there are permutations of a Danforth to Downtown route:

  • The north-south segment could lie on either Pape of Broadview.
  • The Don River crossing could be at Queen, or further south to allow the line to serve the Unilever site.
  • The route into the core could be via Queen or King.

A northern route via Queen makes for a simpler river crossing, but the southern route picks up a major new employment district. The King Street route into downtown also attracts more riders than a Queen route.

City Planning staff have erroneously talked of a King route as if it could only exist as part of the southerly Unilever site alignment, when their own study clearly shows the option of a route crossing the Don at Queen, and then veering into King Street. The more northerly crossing is preferred because it will be easier to build under the river at a narrower point.

RLAllCorridorsWeb

The following permutations were modelled to see how they would perform:

  • Broadview to Queen
  • Broadview to Queen to King
  • Pape to Queen
  • Pape to Queen via Unilever
  • Pape to Queen to King
  • Pape to King via Unilever

Of these, the two most promising were the Pape to Queen options with the only variation being whether the line ran to downtown via Queen or via King after crossing the Don at Queen Street. For this article, these are the only two whose demand projections I will discuss.

Further east, there is the question of the Scarborough Subway extension and SmartTrack. Model runs were performed with three variations:

  • No SmartTrack
  • SmartTrack on a 15 minute headway (4 trains/hour)
  • SmartTrack on a 5 minute headway (12 trains/hour)

The SmartTrack cases used a modified land use plan that assumed SmartTrack itself would cause growth that would not otherwise occur. This causes increases for the Relief Line’s projected demand when it is matched with a the lower level of SmartTrack service (4 trains/hour) because the latter does not attract as much riding as the Relief Line.

All model runs used a Scarborough Subway (SSE) with its original three stops, not the “optimized” version serving only Scarborough Town Centre. The disconnect between what is modelled and what is proposed indicates that some of the plan’s elements have changed very recently. The model is supposed to catch up to the plan in future iterations.

None of the SSE or ST figures are included in this report, and so we cannot see how the model divided up demand between them, albeit with the “wrong” station configuration.

Finally, the Richmond Hill extension was added to the model networks to see how it would affect demand on the critical downtown segment and Bloor Yonge Station.

All of these numbers must be taken with awareness of the limitations on what has been modelled, notably:

  • With the RL ending at Danforth, the potential benefit (and hence RL demand) of the “big J” is unknown.
  • The five-minute service on SmartTrack, identified in a previous study as essential to attract riders, may not be physically possible given constraints on sharing the network with GO.
  • It is unclear whether SmartTrack will actually operate at no fare premium above local TTC services, another essential component of making this service attractive to riders.
  • The effect of SmartTrack in the downtown segment, including the degree to which it would duplicate an RL at the Unilever site, depends on the ability to operate frequent ST service.
  • The relative roles of the Scarborough Subway and SmartTrack in attracting riders is unknown because the now-proposed station layout has not been modelled.

That is a long list of variables. Many of these will be addressed in updated model runs expected in coming weeks, but readers should be careful not to take the current model output as definitive.

Nonetheless, the report concludes that treating SmartTrack and the Relief Line as options is misguided because both will be required to accommodate future demand to 2031 and beyond. Addition of the Richmond Hill extension to the mix will exhaust the Yonge line’s capacity by 2041. This makes further study of the “big J” quite important.

The findings in this Summary Report make clear the importance of the Relief Line. It is apparent that both the Relief Line and SmartTrack will be required in the future to ensure the efficient operation of the existing and proposed future transit networks. Additional work is required to assess the potential benefits of extending the proposed Relief Line north of the Bloor-Danforth subway to Eglinton Avenue and potentially to Sheppard Avenue. [p 3]

Continue reading →

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There’s A New Subway On The Way (4)

February 1966 saw the opening of the Bloor-Danforth’s Keele-to-Woodbine stretch, and an extension to North York was already in the cards, albeit only to Sheppard Avenue. Like the BD extensions to Scarborough and Etobicoke, this segment would itself grow another two kilometres. The original plans called for the line to be built parallel to and west of Yonge Street just as the route south from Eglinton had been, but demolition of a swath of homes through North Toronto was not in the cards. The alignment eventually chosen lay directly under Yonge with a bored tunnel north to Sheppard. (The Finch extension would later be built cut-and-cover through the then much less-developed Willowdale.)

Progress Report 6 includes a few choice items including the coin changer at an automatic entrance (fares were 6/$1.00), the speed ramp linking the temporary Bloor streetcar shuttle platform at Keele Station to the eastbound platform, and a reference to Metro Toronto’s “balanced transportation system”. That was the standard buzzphrase used to sanitize a combination of subway and highway building in the 60s, and the Spadina Expressway project was very much in the foreground at the time.

The integrated service with trains running through the wye between the BD and YUS routes was now described as a six-month trial to be followed by a similar test period for separate routes.

The extensions were well underway, and the original balance of lengths east and west had been abandoned in favour of a more sensible Etobicoke terminal at Islington.

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There’s A New Subway On The Way (3)

By mid 1964, the University subway had been running for over a year, and the Bloor-Danforth line’s opening was set for early 1966. Extensions to the east and west were already approved, although the Etobicoke segment ended at Montgomery Road on the east side of Mimico Creek. This would later be changed to Islington, and the stations at Prince Edward and at Montgomery were consolidated into a single stop at Royal York.

With most of the line built by cut-and-cover, work was underway in many locations simultaneously, aided by the final added funding contribution from the Metro Toronto government. Unlike more recent projects, where political wrangling and tax saving measures dictated that construction run as slowly as possible, the BD line’s construction was a high priority in its day.

Yorkville became the centre of Toronto’s 60’s culture, complete with an endless stream of tourists driving through to gawk at the hippies through closed windows. The name had such an unsavoury reputation for up-tight pols that in time the station would be renamed “Bay” with “Yorkville” as a subheading. Now it is one of the poshest areas in the city.

A fleet of 164 subway cars was on order. These were the “H-1” trains as they would be known after their manufacturer, Hawker-Siddeley, at what is now the Thunder Bay plant of Bombardier.

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A Rainbow of Rapid Transit

In Toronto’s never-ending fascination with new transit maps, the City Planning department has released a vision for our rapid transit network as it will be in 15 years.

201602_15YrPlan

Despite much talk of “evidence-based” planning, this is a very political map, and I cannot help remembering then-Premier David Peterson’s announcement of 1990 (not long before he lost an election and Bob Rae wound up as his much-surprised replacement) that amounted to a chicken-in-every-pot map.

There is nothing wrong with network-based planning, and indeed I have been beating a well-worn drum on that subject for years. But let us also remember that the Scarborough Subway exists because of the political clout of Brad Duguid, a former City Councillor, now Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development. Mayor John Tory, in Toronto Life, cites Duguid as saying that “if anyone tries to cancel the [Scarborough] subway, they’ll do it over his dead body”. “Evidence” apparently includes having a large cudgel to keep wandering pols in line.

The map also includes the Mayor’s pet project, SmartTrack, and it’s no wonder that he steers clear of the Minister’s position given the need for a provincial agency, Metrolinx, to accommodate SmartTrack on their network.

All of this is part of the “Motherlode” of public consultation sessions now running in various places around the City, and through Metrolinx in the wider GTHA. Background information and links to related material are available at Toronto’s TransitTO web site.

Continue reading →

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There’s A New Subway On The Way (2)

As construction progressed on the Bloor-Danforth-University subway, the TTC issued progress reports from time to time.

Progress Report 3 predates the opening of the University leg of the project. By this time, a funding contribution from Queen’s Park brought the then estimated completion date back from 1969 to 1967.

The first batch of aluminum 75-foot cars, a form that would become standard for Toronto, came from Montreal Locomotive Works. All subsequent orders went to the plant in Thunder Bay now owned by Bombardier.

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There’s A New Subway On The Way

With all the hoopla about yet another new transit plan for Toronto, it’s time to remember that the 50th birthday of the Bloor-Danforth subway is coming up in a week’s time. Depending on which event you consider the “real” birthday, it will either be Thursday, February 25 (the anniversary of the ceremonial opening) or Friday, February 26 (the first day of revenue service).

Over the next week I will post some ephemera from that era when Toronto launched on a major subway building project.

The handout below was a publicity piece for the Bloor-Danforth-University subway project. Among items of interest are:

  • The expected construction time was 9 years broken down as the University Line (3.5), Greenwood to University including Greenwood Yard (4), and the remaining pieces east from Greenwood to Woodbine, and West from St. George to Keele (2.5). Almost all of the line was built cut-and-cover , and the city expropriated a swath of houses along most of the route to the north of Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue. This strip is now home to parking lots, a few parks, subway entrances, and the occasional new building sitting right on top of the subway.
  • The original completion date to the terminals at Woodbine and Keele was planned to be 1969, but work was accelerated thanks to additional funding from the Metropolitan Toronto government and Queen’s Park.
  • The paintings showing what the new stations would look like date from 1956 and 1957, before the project had been approved by Metro Council.
  • The map of the route includes the original names for most of the stations including Vincent, Walmer and Yorkville. By the time this was printed, “Willowvale” Station had already changed to “Christie”, but the park to the west retained its original name.

The station illustrations are by Sigmund Serafin whose work also shows up in samples of the original Yonge line station designs. Of the four stations shown here, none was built exactly as shown. You can see the full set on Transit Toronto. The eight water colours were rescued from a housecleaning binge at the TTC in the late 1960s when much material went into various private collections lest it simply disappear. These paintings are now back with the TTC who plan to issue them as posters later this year, and the originals will go to the City Archives.

Here is Bloor-Yonge Station in all its mid-50s glory, with Gloucester trains, no Hudson’s Bay building and a lot of Bloor-Yonge streetscape that has vanished over the years.

Yonge_Station_Serafin_1957w

For a detailed history of the Bloor subway, visit Transit Toronto.

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TTC’s 2016 Customer Charter Reviewed

The TTC has released the 2016 version of its Customer Charter listing a number of areas in which they promise improvements through the year.

First Quarter:

  • Ensure that 510 Spadina is served by fully accessible streetcars: Mostly done already with a few of the high-floor ALRVs still in service but the majority of runs operated with low-floor Flexitys.
  • Apple Pay at collectors’ booths: In progress.
  • Reduce streetcar short-turns by a further 20% over Q1 2015: New schedules on 501 Queen effective January 3 make a big contribution to this coupled with the milder winter weather.
  • Start subway service at 8:00am on Sunday: Done effective January 3.
  • Add service to Line 1 (YUS) during off-peak: Not done yet, but the schedules going into effect at the end of March have not yet been announced. (Note 1)
  • Establish a Local Working Group for Donlands Station second exit project: Done.
  • Add five new express bus services: Planned for late March.

Second Quarter:

  • Wifi at 22 new stations (Note 2).
  • Roll-out of new fare gates with Main Station as a pilot: Work at Main in progress.
  • Improve bike parking at 5 stations.
  • Add 20 bike repair stops at subway stations: Subject to outcome of a pilot.
  • Install notice boards in 12 busy stations to inform passengers about planned/unplanned closures.

Third Quarter:

  • Ensure 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst are served by low-floor streetcars: With delivery of new cars, Harbourfront is already planned to ramp up beyond two assigned Flexitys in mid-February. Delivery rates for new cars are supposed to be up to 1/week by the end of March and this should make conversion of 511 Bathurst an easy task provided Bombardier manages to stay on track.
  • Pilot high capacity bike parking at one station.
  • Replace T1 trains on Line 4 (Sheppard) with 4-car TR sets: The order for these cars is in progress at Bombardier with delivery expected later this year.
  • Improve 28 Bayview South and 101 Downsview Park routes to be part of all-day, every day service. This will bring services to two park-based areas. The Bayview South bus serves the Brick Works from the west (Davisville Station), but service from the east (Broadview Station) will still be operated by a free shuttle bus.
  • Add 3 trains to Line 1 (YUS) to improve AM peak service. It is unclear whether these will be “gap” trains used to supplement service when things go wrong, or an attempt to slightly shorten the average headway over the entire line. Gap trains generally make a bigger difference for situations where holes in service at peak times and direction need to be filled because the extra train is used specifically where it is most needed.
  • Add peak service to 25 busy bus routes.
  • New streetcar service on Cherry Street: (Note 1) This service could most easily be implemented by converting the 504 buses now scheduled from Dufferin to Parliament back to streetcars as a Dufferin to Cherry operation. Peak vehicle requirements would probably go down, but the off peak service on Cherry would be a net addition. This change is related to whatever modifications the TTC will make to the 72 Pape and 172 Cherry bus routes.
  • Begin revamping the east parking lot at Finch Station.

Fourth Quarter:

  • Widen 25 bus stop pads to improve accessibility: Locations TBA
  • Install external route announcement system on all vehicles: Work in progress.
  • Add two new elevators at Ossington Station: Work in progress.
  • Install customer info screens at Union Station mezzanine and platform levels: An overdue follow-up. This work should have been an integral part of the station renovation.
  • Install customer info screens at Dufferin, York Mills and Lawrence stations.
  • Install transit signal priority at 15 intersections: Locations TBA
  • Complete PRESTO roll out to the entire system: Bus fleet conversion in progress; new fare gates will finish PRESTO subway access as they are installed.
  • 10 additional WiFi stations: Locations TBA (Note 2)
  • Lengthen 10 bus pads for compatibility with articulated buses: Locations TBA
  • Start construction on a bus queue jump lane: Location TBA
  • Introduce a new Wheel-Trans qualification process: Details TBA
  • Install new, “more informative” stop markers at over 3,000 surface stops.
  • Review schedules on 32 bus and streetcar routes to improve reliability and travel times.
  • Reduce subway delays by 10% (counted as both incidents and minutes of delay). See What Causes Subway Delays?
  • Consult with riders and other stakeholders to revise service in three neighbourhoods around routes 40 Junction, 54 Lawrence East and 116 Morningside.

Note 1: Some items in the Charter are not yet funded in the City’s budget. Whether they will actually operate depends on the TTC’s ability and desire to squeeze money out of other parts of their operation.

Note 2: The WiFi rollout in the subway is limited to internet access only because the major telcos – Bell, Rogers, Telus – will not provide service over the incumbent provider’s network. Even the internet access has its problems due to login requirements recently introduced that require signon to a sponsoring site such as Twitter. This state of affairs can be traced to a bad system and contract design by the TTC who appear not to have contemplated the difficulties of the “big” players refusing to come onto, and thereby financially support, the network.

I cannot help feeling that a lot of this “Charter” is a shopping list of the low hanging fruit, things the TTC planned to do anyhow, but repackaged in a “look at us” format where green tick marks will gradually fill up the boxes. What is missing, and this is as much a political discussion as a managerial one, is a “what could we be” dimension and aspirational goals that might not be achieved, certainly not in a one-year timeframe.

Of course, when there are members of Council and the TTC Board who would rather count paperclips than address fundamental issues of just what  “good transit” really is, this situation is almost inevitable. Good news, but as cheaply as possible, and so we aim low.

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What Causes Subway Delays?

The TTC’s Andy Byford recently committed to a major reduction in subway delays by 2019 thanks in large measure to the introduction of a new signal system on Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina.

Can this level of reduction actually be achieved? To get a sense of this, we must look at the actual delay reports from the TTC to see the location and type of service interruption. If a problem only account for one quarter of all delays, then a three-quarter reduction in delays cannot possibly be achieved simply by eliminating this class of problem. Similarly, if half of the delays are on one line, and a new technology is implemented on another, then nothing has been done to address delays on the untouched part of the system.

The TTC reports overall reliability statistics in the CEO’s report, but these are (a) not subdivided by cause and (b) use a measure of service “reliability” that would give a perfect score even if a large proportion of the service were missing. As long as trains are close enough to each other, even if there is one gap leading the pack or all of the trains crawl along the line, they do not count against the metric the TTC used for years to report service quality.

The counts below were calculated by reviewing all of the TTC eAlerts for service interruptions on the four rapid transit lines for January 2016. Anyone who reads these alerts and rides the system regularly knows that some delays never make it to an alert, but this is the best we have for published information.

Type of Delay                    Line 1    Line 2    Line 3    Line 4

Passenger Alarm                   6  16%   14  23%    2  18%
Signals                          11  30%   11  18%              3  60%
Mechanical                        1   3%    4   7%    8  73%    1  20%
Track                                       3   5%
Switching                                   1   2%
Security                          5  14%    6  10%              1  20%
Police Investigation              3   8%    4   7%
Fire Investigation                3   8%    8  13%    1   9%
Medical                           3   8%    4   7%
Power Off                         4  11%    3   5%
Unauthorized at Track Level                 1   2%
Late Clearing Work Zone           1   3%    1   2%
Unspecified                       0         1   2%

Total                            37        61        11         5

The details of the incidents are in the following table.

201601_SubwayDelayStats

This is only a one month sample, and there are bound to be somewhat different numbers for other periods, but this gives the flavour of the situation.

Signal problems, annoying though they may be, account for only 30% of the delay incidents on the Yonge line, and 18% on the Bloor line for January 2016. That said, these tend to be the most long-lasting incidents and so their effect is greatly out of proportion to their number. Moreover, the incident count is higher on the Bloor-Danforth line by a wide margin. The new signals on Yonge-University will certainly improve conditions on that route, but delays overall will not be a thing of the past.

If the TTC is going to shoot for improvements, then they must start reporting their delay statistics at a more granular level so the a link will be visible between the type of “fix” undertaken and the location and type of delay whose stats go up or down. This would be a much more useful measure both of service quality and of the effects of management programs to improve the quality of transit service.