The presentation includes a chart showing major construction plans in 2024. The overhead projects are for the completion of migration to pantograph-only overhead. (It is hard to believe that they would take Queens Quay and Fleet out of service during the CNE in Q3, but I’m not planning the City’s infrastructure projects.)
The overhead projects raise the question of whether they will actually occur on time. Past work has been scheduled, diversions implemented, and then nothing happened. Riders should not have to put up with disorganized project scheduling.
The only major track project (beyond completion of St. Clair West Station and the 501 Queen via Adelaide connection) is on King West from Dufferin to Shaw. In the Service Plan report, one set of diversion routes was shown for the 504 King, 29/929 Dufferin and 63 Ossington routes. This has been revised, and there are now two options under consideration, both different from the one in the report.
Here is the original plan which has two phases with the second being for the duration of the intersection replacement at Dufferin planned for June/July 2024. Note the removal of service on King west of Dufferin in this version.
For phase 1 (mid-February to late June, August to late October) there are two new options which preserve service on King between Dufferin and Roncesvalles by extending 63 Ossington buses west to Sunnyside Loop. In both options, the 504 King service diverts north via Shaw to Queen, but the difference lies in what happens at Dufferin Street.
In option 1 (left below), the 501A Queen cars divert south to Dufferin Loop. Service on Queen west of Dufferin is provided by the 504 King cars with the 504B service running to Humber Loop until late evening. Late evening service through to Long Branch will be provided by the 501C as it is today.
In option 2 (right below), the 501 Queen cars stay on Queen Street, and the 504B diverts south to Dufferin Loop.
508 Lake Shore cars operate via Queen and Shaw in both options.
The 29/929 Dufferin bus service only diverts for the period that the King/Dufferin intersection is closed (not shown here).
The TTC is conducting a survey to determine which of these is preferable to riders.
Service reliability will be addressed on various fronts. The phrase “expanding beyond on-time performance and adding emphasis on consistent, well-spaced, and completed service” is very gratifying. If the TTC actually pulls off this change in focus, it should repair many long-standing issues that the simplistic terminal departure metrics completely ignore.
With the change in ridership patterns, there are new periods requiring better service. Even with the system as a whole running at less that 100% of pre-covid ridership, there are routes and time periods that are over 100%. This is compounded by traffic congestion that is, in some places, worse than in 2019.
Budget Directions
The chart below shows two possible futures for TTC service. On the left is at best a stand pat scenario where service is trimmed to reduce the call on City subsidy and savings, if any, might go to reduce deficits, not to support operations. On the right is a scenario for improvement with better funding and service quality.
The 2024 budget will likely appear at the TTC Board in December, but the final choice will be up to Council and, indirectly, to other governments and their support for municipal spending.
The TTC is conducting its final round of consultation about its five year service plan covering the period from 2024 to 2028. This is a longer view of what the TTC might focus on over multiple years, a related but separate process from the Annual Service Plan for 2024 that will come to the TTC Board’s November 22 meeting. Although the range begins in 2024, in practice, 2025 will be the first budget year informed by the five year plan.
There is an online survey covering many topics, and I will review that it more detail later in this article.
Of particular interest as background to this process is the result of the third consultation round conducted in late summer. The TTC’s overview of the action plan and consultation includes detailed notes of feedback from various groups: online survey respondents, stakeholders (community groups and advocates), employees, riders, and youth ambassadors. There is a common thread through all of them about problems with information and communications, service quality and management. What remains to be seen will be whether the TTC has any appetite for addressing these issues rather than making superficial changes that sound good but achieve little.
I recommend reading those consultation summaries both to transit riders who might think they are lonely voices crying into the wind for better service, and to politicians who have only a tenuous grasp of what riders really want and need. Open the overview page for the service plan, and scroll down to Consultation Documents, Round Three.
Of course any major change depends on funding if more service is involved, but it also requires an organizational recognition that every transit problem cannot be blamed on uncontrollable, external forces. The issue of communications is entangled with the TTC’s organizational structure and the fractured responsibility for various aspects of getting the message out to riders.
The service plan itself echoes these limitations in that it talks about what might be done in general, but it is silent on basic matters such as how much service the TTC can physically provide (fleet size and availability, staffing limitations), and the magnitude of costs involved in changing service levels. Some issues, such as better management of service frequency and reliability require recognition that simplistic definitions for “on time” have little meaning in the real world faced by riders and operators.
The time is long overdue to stop the kudos for achieving “key performance indicators” that misrepresent the actual quality of operations. Lest this seem a rather broad indictment without background, I refer readers to the many articles I have written both on the content of the CEO’s Report and detailed reviews of day-to-day operations.
A review of the fourth round online survey follows below together with notes on information from this round of stakeholder meetings.
The TTC is in a very difficult position for capital planning because for many years it understated the size of the capital backlog and also tended to treat related projects, or even components of the same project, as separate items. This led to low-balled estimates of total costs and, in some cases, piecemeal execution of projects. Now that we see “all in” costs, the problems facing the system are perceived more seriously, but just at a point when new money to invest in existing subways is hard to find.
Although the TTC called for proposals for a replacement of the Line 2 fleet of T1 trains, with add-on provisions for system expansion, this was cancelled in June 2023 due to lack of funding commitments from either the Provincial or Federal governments.
The report proposes three scenarios depending on when new trains and facilities would be delivered and built at total costs ranging from $8.5 to $10 billion including inflation. Very little of this has committed funding.
This is not just a question of buying new trains, but of building, or renewing, many facilities:
Greenwood Carhouse dates back to the opening of the BD subway and needs to be modernized and rebuilt to handle a new fleet.
The signal system on Line 2 dates to the 1960s and must be replaced both to maintain reliability, improve operations and provide for service growth.
Additional trains for both Lines 1 and 2 will require more storage including a major new maintenance facility for Line 1.
The funding sought by this report does not include companion upgrades that have been flagged in the overall capital plan:
Running more frequent service requires more traction power on top of state of good repair work needed for both subway lines’ power systems.
More service means more passengers, and some key stations cannot handle additional demand between the platform and street without additional circulation capacity.
Moreover, there are major projects beyond subway fleet renewal that are either partly or totally unfunded even at the City level, never mind its partners:
Ongoing replacement of the bus fleet including electrification
Any provision for service growth to improve transit coverage and encourage a shift to transit riding especially in areas where it is not competitive with auto
LRT lines in the waterfront or Eglinton East
Platform screen doors to prevent access to track level
Even if the fleet and signal renewal for Line 2 finds much-needed financial support, this is only the beginning of the TTC’s search for capital, and I have not even mentioned the need for ongoing state of good repair.
In the short term, the TTC has been “saved” from a capacity crisis by the covid pandemic and the loss of subway riding. Only a few years ago, the concern was not empty trains, but platforms full of riders who could not move. Although the subway is not back at full demand, recovery is well underway. Here are historical figures and projections for the future from the report.
2041 might sound a long way off, but in the scheme of subway fleet planning, it is fairly near given both the lead time to buy new trains and their 30-year design life. What we plan for today will affect the system for decades to come.
This forecast will be updated with results from the current Transportation Tomorrow Survey and other planning work to provide an outlook to 2051.
These projections translate to service requirements on the two lines. Note that this is likely based on the historical ratio of peak to all day demand. Although work-from-home may shift some riding away from peaks especially on Mondays and Fridays, this would still leave the midweek days facing crowding. It would be dangerous to make plans for lesser demand as a short-term cost saving measure.
Line 1 has already been converted to Automatic Train Control (ATC) with moving block signalling that can handle more trains/hour. Note that the projected Line 1 service is at 36 trains/hour, or every 100 seconds. This will be challenging to sustain especially at busy stations and terminals.
The current signal system on Line 2 cannot support headways below about 140 seconds, the pre-pandemic peak service level on that route. This is equivalent to 25.7 trains/hour which gets us only to the 2032 projected requirement.
This translates into the following requirements for a larger fleet.
The 55-train replacement for Line 2 where there are now 61 trains is based on the capacity with new trains (similar to those now on Line 1) with about 10% more room than the old ones. This finally addresses the excess of T1 trains in the fleet ever since the TTC decided to run Lines 1 and 4 entirely with new “TR” trains and ATC, and relegated the T1 fleet to Line 2.
The Metrolinx options are for the Richmond Hill and Scarborough extensions. Growth trains are to permit the operation of more frequent service than the existing fleet can support.
Note that Line 4 Sheppard is not included here as it has a dedicated set of six 4-car trains that can handle projected growth on that line. Depending on the extension of Line 4, a future procurement of trains and storage facilities could be required.
In the remainder of this article, I will describe the scenarios and implications of choices the TTC, Council and its funding partners will make in the near future.
Recommendations
The report recommends that:
The TTC prioritize funding in the capital budget for:
New subway cars and related projects with a cost of $3.2 billion as the City’s share.
A 30-year state of good repair overhaul of the T1 fleet.
Risk mitigation activities for Line 2 related to fleet and signal system life extension.
Subject to confirmation of funding, the CEO issue an RFP for new trains needed on the existing Line 2 with options for extensions and demand growth on the system.
This will have effects not just for subway planning but for other TTC capital project funding and timing.
The 2024 Annual Service Plan will be presented by TTC management at the November 22, 2023 meeting of the TTC Board. It is a 219 page long document, and I have boiled down the highlights here.
This report really should have been subdivided into digestible parts because it simply will not be absorbed by even the most dedicated transit nerd, let alone by the Board and Council responsible for setting policy. In particular, there is no discussion of the budgetary implications and option of proposals in this plan, and therefore no basis for discussion in the pre-budget consultations now underway.
This plan’s origins go back a few years, and its size is partly due to being a compendium of past years’ proposals. Two large groups are associated with the opening of Lines 5 Eglinton and 6 Finch which were expected to occur earlier than 2024. Another large group arises from area studies in various parts of the city. Still others come from the analysis of poorly-performing routes, a process that has been on hold during the covid years.
Despite implementation delays, consultation continued with a variety of online and in person sessions going back to 2022, some in support of the upcoming Five Year Plan for 2024-28 (which I will review in a separate article).
Through many sessions, TTC heard a message loud and clear about what riders and their own staff want to see:
The key priorities include:
Service reliability – on-time service when expected and predictable travel times.
Frequency – vehicles come more often and reduced crowding and wait times on routes.
Safety – physical safety when travelling at night or during quiet periods.
Communication – accurate and clear communications, especially during service disruptions.
2024 Annual Service Plan at p 5
Poor communications are repeatedly flagged in surveys and Service Plan consultations, but reorganization and improvement of TTC’s various information channels lies outside of the plan’s scope even though it is badly needed.
Both riders and operators flagged crowding as a problem. There is an issue with the reporting of ridership that masks crowding by looking only at rolled up weekly or annual statistics, and routes as a whole rather than trips.
TTC reports its ridership recovery relative to pre-pandemic times on a weekly basis, and for budgetary purposes, on an annualized basis. This brings two problems:
Weekly numbers do not account for day-to-day variations. Midweek days are known to be busier than Mondays and Fridays due to work-from-home patterns, and weekends are already reported with stronger recovery. With two lighter days in the mix, the recovery will not be uniformly distributed, and crowding will be a greater problem on the busy midweek days.
In a recovery scenario, ridership growth over a year will mean that the revenue versus historic data will be an average from the start to the end of the year. This will understate the situation “now” in the fourth quarter, let alone the needs going into a new budget year.
The Service Plan report includes more detail:
For September 2023, ridership averages approximately 78% and revenue averages approximately 77% of pre-pandemic levels. In comparison to budget, ridership was expected at 75% and revenue at 74% of pre-pandemic levels.
Similar to pre-COVID experience and in line with seasonality, weekly ridership increased in September. However, September ridership increased more than expected, averaging ~5% above budgeted levels for the Period, with ridership likely to remain at these levels for the balance of year. During Period 9, 2023, up to 97% of unique PRESTO riders used the system each week. While riders have returned to the system, the travel frequency of the riders has dropped. For example, the number of unique riders classified as “commuters” (i.e. ride four of five weekdays per week) are at 65% of March 2020 levels, whereas riders who use transit less frequently (ride less than four weekdays per week) are at 121% of March 2020 levels.
Day-of-week use is highest and consistent across Tuesday to Thursday, averaging approximately 76% of pre-COVID levels for Tuesday through Thursday during Period 9. Weekend recovery is at approximately 90% of pre-COVID levels, consistently stronger than weekday recovery.
2024 Service Plan at p 22
Emerging travel patterns from changes to work patterns – downtown office occupancy has averaged at approximately over 50% through the first half of 2023, representing between 2 and 3 days of in-office work per week. Peak day office occupancy has averaged at almost approximately 70%. This creates variability in travel demand by day-of-week and resulting challenges in scheduling the right capacity.
2024 Service Plan at p 23
Too many politicians, budget hawks especially, look at the average numbers without recognizing the difference between these and the current day-to-day requirements.
The preliminary projections for budget show a range of ridership and revenue figures through 2024. Note that this shows a modest ridership increase, year-over-year, of only 2%. That affects both the available fare revenue (from a budgetary point of view) and the mindset behind service improvements, if any.
2024 Service Plan at p 27
The Service Plan echoes a familiar refrain from the Ford and Tory eras: service improvements will only come if they can be offset by savings elsewhere. Overall, planning is a zero-sum game and key changes such as rapid transit expansion can elbow aside other deserving services. Ridership growth brings more revenue, but not enough to offset the cost of more service. Unless Council allocates more money for subsidies, transit service remains mired in small-scale tweaks with little hope for network wide change.
Even worse, a decision to withhold funding at budget time echoes throughout the year. All the fine words about a return to service and the importance of transit ring hollow when the phrase “subject to budget availability” clouds every proposal. In 2023, the TTC had an unexpected budgetary nest egg with the unused headroom for Line 5 opening. That will not be repeated in 2024 and beyond
The report has an intriguing note about the Service Standards changes that came in with the 2023 Budget. This was a controversial action not just taken unilaterally by management before Board approval, but followed by stonewalling about what effects the new standards would have on service. It should not have required an FOI request to pry this information loose from management’s grip. Quite clearly, someone in this town did not want the effects of budgetary limitations to be known. “Transparency” was not a priority.
The 2024 Plan states:
In spring 2023, as the pandemic impacts on customer demand were expected to have stabilized, we realigned our transit services to pre-pandemic peak service standards with confidence that service levels will be appropriate for the customer demand. A temporary adjustment to the TTC Board-approved Service Standards was approved through the 2023 Budget. The realigned service plan protected periods of service and network coverage on all routes. As part of the ongoing service reliability program, schedules were adjusted to reflect actual operating conditions throughout the year.
This resulted in changes to 47 routes to match capacity to customer demand and to modify schedules to reflect current operating conditions and congestion. These changes represented a better calibration of scheduled service to today’s context. Demand-responsive service was also operated to protect for unforeseen changes to customer demand, travel patterns, and construction.
2024 Service Plan at p 14
What is not clear is when, or if, there is any plan to reverse this “temporary” change which saw off-peak standards revert to a level predating the ridership growth initiatives of Mayor Miller’s era. The 2024 plan talks about a review and update of the Service Standards as part of the Five Year Plan, but there has been no mention of this in the consultation sessions for that plan.
Meanwhile, the TTC acknowledges that it fails to achieve its current standards. Note that there are five daily periods from the AM peak through late evening, and a few hundred routes making a total of roughly 1,000 “periods” for comparison. A 92% figure may not sound bad, but much depends on the times and locations of that 8% (roughly 80 periods) that don’t make the grade. Beyond that 8% on average, a portion of trips on “acceptable” routes will be crowded thanks to uneven loads, gaps and bunching. This illustrates the danger of reporting averages rather than specifics.
It should also be noted that the “temporary” 2023 standards set off-peak crowding levels only slightly below peak levels as against earlier standards of a seated load, or seated plus 10%, that used to apply. This is a particular problem due to the extra space needed for baby carriages, shopping carts and mobility devices all of which tend to be seen more at off peak in anticipation of less crowding. The Service Standards make no provision for this type of demand and space usage.
2024 Service Plan at p 32
The 2024 plan explicitly states that the standards adopted in early 2023 will continue to be applied.
Service adjustments will continue to be consistent with TTC Service Standards, which were applied to the system-wide realignment exercise to match service to ridership demand in the spring of 2023.
2024 Service Plan at p 27
This puts Mayor Chow’s desire to restore full service in question, and shows how TTC management continues to resist proposing a more aggressive service policy.
This morning, after a ceremony at Leslie Barns, car 4604 entered service on 504 King. It is running as an extra and is not visible to tracking apps, but can be located with a vehicle-specific search such as this on Transsee.ca. As I write this just after 3pm on November 17, the car is headed back to Leslie Barns.
The second car of the new set, 4605, is in Russell Carhouse. The remaining vehicles in the 60-car order will be delivered from now through 2025.
The real question remains what the TTC will do with these cars. Of the 204 they already own, the peak service has rested at about 140 cars for a few years. In February 2020, pre-pandemic, it was about 160. This is not just a question of construction projects and bus replacements, but of the TTC’s operating budget and staffing levels which prevent full fleet utilization of any mode on the system.
Lacking in TTC budget information, especially notable at a time when Mayor Chow calls for open dialog and transparency, is a clear statement of how much service the TTC can actually operate at various funding levels.
It is convenient for management to point to system ridership at about 80% of pre-covid numbers, but this does not account for the unequal level of recovery through the week. Weekends are already a time of strong demand, and Sundays are running above pre-covid levels.
Weekdays might, on average, be lower than historical numbers, but a well-known issue is that Tuesday through Thursday are the busiest days when more people come to work. On average, weekdays might be below early 2020 levels, but the TTC does not report how this demand is spread by day, and complaints of crowding are common.
Openness in budget and service planning might aid the debate, but so far proposals have been more “business as usual” with an asterisk beside possible improvements due to budget constraint. The freshly minted TTC Board has yet to demand a wider range of options, the costs they would entail, and an analysis of the TTC’s ability to actually field more service.
The 2024 Service Plan is part of the TTC Board’s November 22 agenda, and I will report on it in a few days (it’s a thick agenda this month).
Two new cars with more to follow are welcome, but they will simply add to the 30% of the streetcar fleet that sit idle every day, far more than should be needed for maintenance spares. It is the classic budget problem: money for new capital purchases, but no money to operate them.
Although there was no regular TTC Board meeting in October, a CEO’s Report was issued for that month. It contains two separate sets of charts about ridership, one more recent than the other.
In the CEO’s commentary, data for the week ending October 13 are cited:
For the week ending October 13, excluding Thanksgiving Monday, the TTC’s average weekday boardings stand at 82 per cent of pre-COVID levels, or 2.55 million boardings. Weekend ridership continues to exceed weekday demand, being 96 per cent for this week. Bus boardings are leading recovery, at 96 per cent of pre- OVID levels, while streetcar boardings sit at 65 per cent and subway at 73 per cent. Wheel-Trans ridership is at 75 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
October 2023 CEO’s Report p 5
The chart of ridership only goes to the end of August, and reports an expected seasonal decline for that period. Fare revenue follows the same pattern.
October 2023 CEO’s Report p 10October 2023 CEO’s Report p13
The chart of boardings runs to early October, and shows September’s jump in demand.
CEO’s Report October 2023 p 25
Crowding levels continue to rise, although stats are reported only for the bus network. An important issue about this chart is that it reports all-day values. There are many routes with uneven demand by direction, and with more lightly-loaded trips at some times of the day or week. Even at the pre-covid demand of January 2020, only 27% of trips reported more than 70% of capacity. However, depending on where and when they are concentrated, they can have a disproportionate effect on the perceived crowding level. An empty bus at 10pm on Sunday evening is of little use to someone who cannot board a packed weekday bus on a busy route in the peak period.
CEO’s Report October 2023 p 26
There are two issues that might skew some of the quoted statistics.
First, with the conversion of the SRT from rapid transit to bus, an additional set of “boardings” is created. Boardings for the subway network are treated as a single event with no extra count for transfers between lines. With the SRT replaced by the 903 Scarborough Express bus, former SRT trips create an extra boarding for that leg of their journey. This will change again on November 19 when many bus routes formerly ending at STC will be extended to Kennedy Station, and that leg will no longer count as a separate boarding.
Second, boardings are counted based on the mode actually operating on a route. If buses replace streetcars, the riders count toward the bus total, not the streetcar total.
In January 2020 (pre-covid), the streetcar route service was provided by:
501 Queen: Streetcars from Neville to Long Branch, except for 6 bus trippers in each of the peak periods.
502/503 Downtowner/Kingston Road: Buses on a combined 503 route.
504 King: Streetcars
505 Dundas: Buses
506 Carlton: Streetcars except for 8 bus trippers in the AM peak.
508 Lake Shore: Streetcars
509 Harbourfront: Streetcars
510 Spadina: Streetcars
511 Bathurst: Streetcars
512 St. Clair: Streetcars
Over the past years, various construction projects, notably on Queen, have caused bus substitutions and diversions accompanied by declining reliability and challenges for riders in how to get from “A” to “B”. Comments like “I’ve given up on the TTC” are not uncommon, and yet for a large part of the city served by buses, demand is strong.
By October 2023, 503 Kingston Road and 505 Dundas had reverted to streetcar operation, 512 St. Clair operated with buses, and the bus trippers on 501 Queen and 506 Carlton had been removed.
Construction on Broadview causes the east end of 504 King to be replaced by buses, and 505 Dundas streetcars divert to Woodbine Loop. This is expected to end in February 2024. A partial or complete return date for 512 St. Clair service is not yet certain.
It is not clear when the TTC speaks of streetcar ridership recovery whether this refers to the network of streetcar routes regardless of the mode actually operating, or if only riders who are actually on streetcars are counted. I have a query in with TTC to clarify this.
Update: The TTC has confirmed that total riding on the streetcar network is agnostic about the vehicles actually used on these routes.
The TTC’s Planning page does include a chart of streetcar route boardings from 2019 to 2022, but does not reflect the substantial growth in system riding overall in 2023. Note also that these are annual totals that will not reflect current daily demand because of growth through the recovery years.
2023 figures, when they are published, will be affected by the number of construction projects that disrupted streetcar service and the constant wandering paths of some substitute services.
The TTC plans many service changes for November 19 of which the largest group relates to the Line 3 replacement bus service. Other groups of changes include the restoration of service at Broadview Station, the return of streetcar service to Long Branch, and the closure of Lawrence Station bus loop for accessibility retrofits.
Notable by its absence is any change in subway service.
Although the list of routes affected is substantial, there is little change in the total number of vehicles in service. Bus service during the AM peak gains 3 vehicles, and in the PM peak loses 10. Streetcars gain 8 due to the restoration of 507 Long Branch service. This is only a rebalancing of resources across the system.
Much of the additional service operated in 2023 was due to construction projects, while the basic service level on the system did not change much until late in the year. We have yet to see budget proposals for the 2024 service levels.
Starting on October 19 mid-afternoon, streetcar service on King Street east of Church was blocked by a sinkhole caused by a broken watermain. Streetcar service was diverted from King to Queen, and the 501B Queen bus was shifted south to King.
The sinkhole repairs completed a few days ago, and effective October 25, the diversions are only in effect until 7pm while water main repairs continue. While this arrangement does improve evening service, it perpetuates the operational problems caused by the total lack of transit signal priority and traffic management at key intersections.
Updated Oct 27 at 11:15pm: The modified routes will not be in operation over the weekend, but will resume on Monday morning, October 30 according to the @ttchelps X account.
A separate problem occurs at the transition back to “normal” service in the evening. The buses revert to normal or run back to the garage, but it takes some time for the congestion to abate and normal streetcar service to resume. This puts a large gap between the two services.
Diversion AnnouncementThis diversion announcement linked below has disappeared from the TTC site. As the TTC updates their info, I will amend this article.
Diversions in Effect Daytimes on 501, 503 and 504 Services
In summary, here are the normal (now evening only) and modified (daytime) routes through the affected area:
501B bus: Bathurst to Broadview/Gerrard
Normal: Via Queen, Bay, King/Richmond (EB/WB), Church to Queen
Diverted: Via Queen, Bay, King to Queen at the Don River (Both ways)
501D streetcar: Neville to York & Wellington
Normal: Via Queen, Church, Wellington/York/King loop
Diverted: No route change, but many Queen cars never get to York street and are short turned further east including to Distillery Loop during the most congested periods.
503 streetcar: Spadina to Bingham
Normal: Via King, Queen, Kingston Rd
Diverted: Via King, Church, Queen, Kingston Rd
504 streetcar:
Normal: From King West to Distillery Loop via King, Sumach and Cherry
Diverted:
Streetcars short turn at Church via Church, Richmond, Victoria, Adelaide, Church
Bus shuttle to Distillery looping downtown via Bay, Adelaide, Yonge to King
This arrangement has extremely severe effects on transit and traffic in general notably at locations where streetcars must turn. There is no Transit Signal Priority (TSP), no Traffic Warden (aka “Agent”), and no attempt to manage the conflicts between turning streetcars, other traffic and high pedestrian volumes at affected intersections. Concurrent work on Adelaide Street diverts traffic to Yonge Street and adds to congestion on streets used for the bus diversion.
Travel times of half an hour and more between Spadina and Church are common.
The situation makes total mockery of the City’s recent Congestion Management Plan by showing how they are utterly unprepared and unwilling to respond to an event that requires major reallocation of road space and time among various types of users, and active management in place of passive acceptance of chaos.
A fundamental part of traffic planning is to determine intersection capacity. This is not rocket science. If there are “N” green phases per hour, and in practice it is only possible for at best one streetcar to turn per cycle, this sets an upper bound on capacity. In fact, one per cycle is amazingly optimistic and could only likely be achieved with both TSP signalling (a “white bar” transit only phase) and a Traffic Agent to ensure the TSP was respected.
Service frequencies on the streetcar routes, and the equivalent cars/hour are:
This translates to the following demands by turning cars/hour:
King/Church
Eastbound left: 35
Southbound right: 25
Queen/Church:
Westbound left: 20
Northbound right: 20
Church/Richmond:
Northbound left: 15
A typical traffic signal cycle time is 80 seconds, or 45 times per hour. It is self-evident that attempting to turn 35 cars/hour would be a challenge. This is compounded by the fact that many cars will stop to serve passengers before turning and will almost certainly lose one cycle for that purpose.
Another source of delay is that the electric switches for turns do not always work requiring operators to manually set their route where some cars turn and others go straight through. This can also affect TSP signals where they do exist because the switch electronics “tell” the signals that a transit phase is needed.
This is a crisis-level example of why TSP should be installed everywhere that streetcars might need it, not just for standard scheduled movements (e.g. eastbound at Queen and Broadview, turns at King & Sumach). It is precisely during events where operations go off kilter that the best possible priority is needed. If the facilities were sitting there, they would benefit occasional diversions and short turns, as well as major service interruptions like this one.
The City’s plan is utterly silent on this need, and that must change. For its part, the TTC must insist on improved TSP for streetcar and bus routes. This is not a panacea, but an important contribution to transit reliability and credibility.
At its meeting on October 25, 2023, Toronto’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee will consider a report titled Congestion Management Plan 2023-2026. With a familiar refrain, the report begins:
The City is facing an unprecedented amount of construction road closures creating congestion issues for motorists, cyclists and pedestrians and surface street transit. There has also been a significant demand for special events in the City post-pandemic with the needs for road closures and more comprehensive traffic management strategies to minimize the impacts. This situation emphasizes the demand for better coordination of access to the right-of-way and the need for improved traffic management overall to help mitigate the impacts of congestion while maintaining safety for all road users.
[Congestion Management Plan 2023-26 at p. 1]
It goes on to talk about “refocusing” on four key areas:
Leveraging Technology to Better Coordinate Construction on City Streets and expanding the Construction Hub program
Establishing a dedicated traffic management team that will work with stakeholders such as Toronto Police Services, Toronto Parking Authority, TTC, Metrolinx GO, the Office of Emergency Management and City Councillors to improve traffic management planning efforts around major events while also coordinating with ongoing construction
Providing increased traffic management support for surface street transit for both TTC and Metrolinx GO to help mitigate the impacts of construction related route diversions
Investigating Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technology to better optimize traffic signal operations to help all modes move more efficiently and safely with less delay around the City.
[Congestion Management Plan 2023-26 at pp 1-2]
This appears modestly promising but for the fact we have heard many proposals before and, if anything, congestion becomes worse. If this is a “refocus”, one might ask what the City has been doing for the decade since the first Congestion Management Plan was adopted in 2013. In turn, that goes back to an October 2011 motion by Councillor Josh Matlow asking for “a report on the cost and feasibility of implementing a Synchronized Traffic Signal System”.
Looking back at years of reports, there is a common theme that changes are possible at the small scale with improvements of up to 10% in traffic flow at specific times and locations. However, these are one time effects in the sense that the improvement, once achieved, cannot repeated to cope with traffic growth.
Moreover, there is a finite capacity in the road system, and the major political challenge is to apportion this capacity among competing demands. Motor traffic, as the dominant use, inevitably must give up part of its share to give better service and space to others. This was a fundamental choice needed in the King Street Transit Priority Pilot scheme, and even there, the assumption was that some traffic could shift from King to parallel corridors.
[Full disclosure: I was a paid consultant on a project in 2014-15 to review the major east-west streetcar lines with a view to modifying traffic and parking rules to improve transit operations in the peak and shoulder-peak periods.]
Although Transit Priority is one topic in the report, there is no mention of the RapidTO program which appears to be stalled after the initial implementation in Scarborough on Eglinton-Kingston-Morningside. I am not counting the red lanes for the 903 Scarborough Express bus replacing the SRT as they came from a force majeure situation and would not otherwise have been implemented. Any of the RapidTO proposals will involve substantial change in allocation of road capacity, and they have not been well received in some quarters.
A related question is whether dedicated lanes can be justified in areas where TTC service is not as frequent as it once was on King Street, especially on a fully dedicated 7×24 basis.
In March 2020, the Covid lockdowns made a lot of traffic vanish, although as reported both here and elsewhere, traffic is now above pre-pandemic levels. This is particularly true in the suburbs where there are proportionately more jobs that are not suited to work-from-home arrangements, and where transit’s share of the travel market is hampered by service levels, route structure and trip distances.
The pandemic also triggered a move to accelerate construction projects both as a job creation program and to take advantage of the lower effect on traffic possible at the time. However, construction does not appear to have diminished, but the normal traffic level is back.
The basic problem of finite road capacity is made much more complex by the removal of significant chunks of that capacity for rapid transit construction, utility repairs, streetcar track maintenance (downtown), road and bridge maintenance, and curb lane occupancy permits for building construction. All of this might be “co-ordinated”, but the sheer number of affected locations and the duration of temporary capacity removal means that the road system is rarely at an optimal condition.
This also hampers schemes to reallocate capacity permanently for transit, cycling and pedestrians.
The current report includes only two recommendations:
the reconfiguration and expansion of zones served by “construction hubs” which are supposed to provide co-ordination between all projects by various parties in different sections of the city, and
expansion of the Traffic Agent Program (aka “Traffic Wardens”) by use of police officers and special constables.
Any other effects would come from continuation of work already approved or in progress, notably from the “Smart Signals” project which is already underway, but which is not yet fully funded.
Notable by its complete absence in this report is the recognition that some congestion cannot be easily “fixed”, and that active intervention in allocating road capacity will be necessary in the worst cases. That is dangerous political territory, especially in a City that has lived through both the Ford and Tory eras where transit did not rank first.
Moreover, there is a danger that a focus on “congestion” will reinforce the TTC’s typical behaviour of assigning all blame for poor service on external factors when their own scheduling and line management practices make a substantial contribution.
In the remainder of this article, I will review various aspects of the City’s plan and actions to date. This is mostly in the same order as sections of the report, with some consolidation to group related items.
This is the second part of my review of service quality before and after the substitution of buses for streetcars on 512 St. Clair in September 2023. Part I deals mainly with bus operations in September.
Until May 8, streetcars operated between St. Clair Station and Gunn’s Loop over the full route. Work on the GO bridge west of Caledonia was expected to start in May, and so on May 8 the streetcars were cut back to Earlscourt Loop and the 47A Lansdowne to St. Clair bus service was extended west to Gunn’s Loop.
The work did not occur as expected, and in response to problems with and complaints about service provided by the 47A, the streetcars resumed operation to Gunn’s Loop, but with no added running time, effective on July 4. That condition remained in effect until September 3 when buses took over the full 512 St. Clair route, and the 47A Lansdowne returned to its normal terminus at Earlscourt Loop.
The TTC has a lot to answer for here with the combined effect of service cuts and erratic operation of the service that remained while the line operated with streetcars. Buses look better by comparison because the streetcars, even with their dedicated lane, were so unreliable.
This was compounded by the effect of the long-running bus substitution on travel times discussed in Part I of this series, and by the inadequate preparation for transit priority as of day one of the bus replacement.
Steve Munro 