Transit

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Service Analysis of 39/939 Finch East, October-December 2021

This article continues a series reviewing major east-west routes in Scarborough that began with:

Service on Finch East is provided by two routes.

Route 39 Finch East operates from Finch Station with three branches:

  • 39A to Neilson Road
  • 39B to Morningview Trail
  • 39C to Victoria Park & Gordon Baker Road (peak only)

The schedule was unchanged through the October-December 2021 period.

Route 939 Finch Express operates between Finch West Station and Staines Road with three variations. Service east of McCowan serves all stops, while for the section west to Yonge the 939s run express.

  • 939B operates from Finch West Station to Scarborough Town Centre Station weekdays until mid evening, when it becomes the 939A and terminates at Finch Station.
  • 939C operates only during peak periods between Finch Station and Morningside Heights.
  • On weekends until November 20, the service was split between the A and B branches as shown below. This operation was suspended on November 21 as part of the fall 2021 cutbacks. There was no compensating change in the local service, and the weekend service has not yet been restored.
  • Weekday early evening service was improved by the addition of 939A service on November 22.

The Finch corridor is among those proposed for “red lane” treatment in the RapidTO program between Yonge and McCowan.

The scheduled headways on the 39 and 939 routes would not blend even if they kept to their schedules, and so this analysis looks at each route on its own.

As with the previous article on the York Mills service, there is data missing from the period immediately after the cyber attack on the TTC in late October and into early November. However, this does not prevent analysis of the overall pattern of service.

In Brief

  • Erratic headways are common on both the local and express services. These generally result from bunching in terminal departures or at route merge points, not from pervasive traffic congestion.
  • During the period reviewed here, missing buses appeared to be rare, and they fell generally in the latter weeks of the year. There does not appear to be an effort to space service to allow for the missing bus, and rather a double-headway travels across the route where the absent bus should be.
  • Average travel times over the proposed “red lane” section of the route between Finch Station and McCowan differ by about five minutes for local and express services.
  • Where there are congestion effects, they tend to last for a few days or weeks at a location, and then disappear. This implies that they are caused by short-term factors such as construction projects rather than being inherent to traffic patterns on the street. This has implications for red lane operations because there is no single location where transit priority will “fix” a long-standing problem.

For a detailed description of how to read these charts, please see Understanding TTC Service Analysis Charts: A Primer.

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KQQR & Dundas West Update: April 2022

Work on the reconstruction and reconfiguration of the King-Queen-Queensway-Roncesvalles (KQQR) intersection and approaches to it resumed in April after a winter hiatus. Work has also begun at Dundas West Station for the reconstuction and realignment of the streetcar loading platforms.

King-Queen-Queensway-Roncesvalles

April 4, 2022

A significant change at KQQR is the removal of the “slip lane” which allowed eastbound traffic on The Queensway to “slip” past the intersection onto King Street without stopping. However, this created a safety hazard for pedestrians trying to reach the south sidewalk and the bridge to Sunnyside Park. The first four photos below show the construction of the revised junction from various points of view.

The fifth photo looks west on The Queensway at Sunnyside showing early stages of converting the mix-traffic streetcar lanes to a right-of-way matching what is already in place from Parkside westward.

Looking NW on King to The Queensway
Looking W across King at The Queensway
Looking W along The Queensway across King
Looking SE to King from The Queensway
Looking W on The Queensway at Sunnyside

April 20, 2022

By April 20, two weeks later than the photos above, work had progressed to complete the new south sidewalk and to concrete all of the King Street approach. That leg now awaits the asphalt top layer.

In the view SW across the intesection there is a mixture of permanent and temporary poles and signals, as well as the beginning of the spiderweb that will hold up new overhead for the junction. Some of the new traffic signals have been hung, but they are hooded or faced away from traffic pending the changeover from the temporary ones.

On both sides of Roncesvalles north of Queen/Queensway, work has begin on bases for new overhead poles.

West of Sunnyside, work has begun on track installation, but this will be done in stages as road traffic is shuffled around between old and new lanes. In the eventual configuration, the streetcar lanes will be reserved and protected with a curb east to Roncesvalles except where needed for lane crossings.

The TTC has not yet announced a date for resumption of streetcar service to Sunnyside on King and on Queen, nor further west on The Queensway to Humber and Long Branch.

Looking E on King Street
Looking W across King to The Queensway
Looking SW across KQQR
Roncesvalles N of The Queensway (former Edgewater Hotel)
Looking E on The Queensway toward Sunnyside (N side)
Looking E on The Queensway from Glendale (S side)
The original right-of-way west of Claude has been used as a staging area for construction materials.

Dundas West Station

The existing King streetcar track has been demolished and excavated for a new foundation. Track for the Dundas cars will be shifted and a new longer loading platform will be provided here.

Looking W through Dundas West Station streetcar loading area
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The Cost of Running Line 5 Crosstown

At its meeting on April 14, 2022, the TTC Board will consider a report about the arrangements with Metrolinx for operation of Line 5 Crosstown. This line, at least from a budgetary standpoint, is expected to open late in 2022.

There is a long agreement between Toronto and Metrolinx about how the costs are shared and who does what, and a much longer Project Agreement between the province and Crosslinx, the private consortium that built and is responsible for maintenance of the infrastructure and equipment.

Within the TTC report, these two documents are referred to as the “TOFA” and the “PA”.

Even with Toronto keeping any revenue the line generates, the net result will be an increase in the TTC’s costs. On an annualized basis, the net new cost to Toronto is $62.6 million annually. This is not surprising, but a fascinating point about this table is that the maintenance contract and other non-labour costs total $52.8 million while the labour and benefits for TTC staff (station, on-train, supervision) amounts to only $26.4 million.

This illustrates the substantial cost of owning and maintaining infrastructure as opposed to running the trains.

Responsibility for aspects of the route are divided among the parties as shown below.

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TTC Ridership and Financial Update, April 2022

The TTC Board agenda for its April 14, 2022 meeting includes two reports that show the current status of ridership, as well as the financial situation both for 2021 and 2022.

It is possible that some of this will be updated in the staff presentation at the meeting, and if so, I will revise this article.

Ridership

With various waves of Covid-19 and associated shutdowns, ridership has not been recovering at the rate hoped for when the 2022 budget was prepared. That budget was amended during its trip through City Council to take into account lower projected demand through at least the first part of 2022.

Through early and mid-2021, ridership was below budget, but caught up again later in the year. This still left 2021 overall with a shortfall.

The effect of Omicron shows up in comparing the originally budgeted ridership (yellow) with the projected approved by Council (red) and with actual results to date (blue). Depending on the evolving health situation, the actuals could catch up to the original budget sooner than expected, but this could also leave a deficit for the year as a whole depending what happens in coming months.

The ridership habit is changing for the better in a small way. The proportion of riders using passes or who tapped 10 times or more per week rose in February from 16% to 19% with a corresponding drop in occasional or infrequent riders. The pre-covid proportion of frequent riders was 32%, and so the system still has a lot to recover within that group.

Ridership by mode has improved in early 2022 although it is still not back to fall 2021 levels. Bus ridership has consistently been the strongest reflecting the type of trip and traveller in areas served by buses where work-from-home is a less viable option.

Overall, the TTC expects that the March stats will see them crossing the 50% line for current-vs-prepandemic boardings, and this will trigger a build-up to former service levels through the year.

Bus crowding continues to be an issue, although the TTC does not break down stats by route and time of day. The proportion of trips at various capacity levels has grown back to late 2021 levels by the end of March 2022. This does not reveal how crowding is concentrated, and the percentages can be diluted by trips at off-hours and on routes that typically do not have very heavy demand.

There is also the question of uneven headways that can lead to crowding variations as I have discussed in many articles here. The basic point is that although a total of 40% of trips run at less than 30% capacity, the remaining 60% of trips have more riders on them, and the average riding experience is determined by what they see. (For example, if 60 riders are distributed between two buses with 45 on one and 15 on the other, a poll of all riders will reveal that most riders see a crowded bus even though the average load is only 30.)

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Scarborough RT Express Bus Replacement Plan

After extensive study and public consultation, TTC staff will present a plan for bus replacement of the Scarborough RT to their Board at its April 14, 2022 meeting. Although it is a long report, much of it has appeared before during the consultative process and in an interim report to the Board. Interested readers can browse the full version, and I will only touch on the major points here.

My apologies for the resolution on some of the drawings included here. The versions in the TTC report online are not good, but if better renditions show up in the future, I will replace the originals here.

The Scarborough RT is on its last legs and, frankly, should have been replaced years ago. Let us not get into the whole subway/LRT debate as that train has left the station. However, the constant delay in making any decision has now pushed the opening of any replacement service well beyond the reasonable lifetime of the existing SRT fleet, and even that will require work to keep it operating until bus facilities are ready.

Various dates for the SRT shutdown are proposed, and these depend on completion of alternate bus terminal facilities. Thanksgiving weekend would certainly be an ironic cutover date.

The candidate dates for Q4 2023 would mean the last day of train service could be: Saturday October 14, 2023; or, Saturday November 25, 2023. If construction is complete ahead of schedule, a September closure date could also be possible, on Saturday September 2, 2023.

TTC Report at p. 15

The Recommended Option

When the need to close the SRT before the Scarborough Subway Extension opened became apparent, the first thought was that riders would be consigned to buses plying the roads from Scarborough Town Centre to Kennedy Station for many years.

To no great surprise, there was a better idea that emerged during the consultations: use as much of the existing SRT right-of-way as possible for a bus roadway bypassing local street and intersection congestion and providing a direct access to Kennedy Station. That is the scheme that has been recommended, named in the report “Option 1 Hybrid Line 3 ROW” (Right-of-way).

As shown in the map below, the bus service will operate from STC station to Kennedy on street to Ellesmere Station and then on a new road in the existing SRT right-of-way to Kennedy Station. Stops will roughly match the existing SRT, except for McCowan. A new stop will be added at Tara Avenue, ironically a proposed station location decades ago when the SRT was to be built as a conventional LRT line.

The frequency of service is such that aggressive transit priority measures will be needed for the on-street portion.

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Dundas West Station Reconstruction (Revised)

The TTC will begin work on reconstruction and expansion at Dundas West Station Loop on Monday April 11, and the project is planned to be mainly completed by June 18. The full notice is on the TTC’s website.

The timing of various stages of the work has changed from the original plan discussed in a previous article.

The original plan was to replace the trackwork on Dundas north from Bloor including the special work at the loop entrance first, followed by the track on Edna Avenue (the north side of the loop), and finally within the loop itself including expansion of platform used by 505 Dundas.

In the revised plan, the area within the loop will be done first working from west to east, followed by the track on Dundas Street, and finally the track on Edna Avenue.

The new phasing also changes plans previously announced for diversion of connecting surface routes.

During phase 1 (April 11 to May 7), the loop will be closed and all surface routes will divert:

  • 40 Junction, 168 Symington and 312 St. Clair Night buses will loop on street stopping on Edna Avenue.
  • 504C King shuttle buses will divert via Bloor to High Park Station and will serve Dundas West Station with on street stops a Bloor & Dundas.
  • 505 Dundas and 306 Carlton Night cars will divert to High Park Loop.
  • 402 Parkdale Community bus will divert as required (TBA).

During phase 2 (May 8 to June 18), some of the diversions will change:

  • 505 Dundas, 504C King and 402 Parkdale will continue as in phase 1.
  • 40 Junction and 168 Symington will divert to Lansdowne Station via Dupont and Bloor Streets respectively.
  • 312 St. Clair Night bus will divert to Keele Station.
  • 306 Carlton Night service will be replaced with buses and these will operate to Keele Station similarly to the 504C service.

Effective June 19 most routes will return to normal except for two that must await completion of new overhead wiring at Dundas West Station:

  • 505 Dundas will continue to operate to High Park Loop.
  • 306 Carlton will continue to operate as a bus service, but will terminate at Dundas West Station.

Additional work to be undertaken includes:

  • Emergency track repair on Dundas south of Bloor.
  • Construction of a “bump out” pedestrian area at the eastbound stop on Dundas just east of Roncesvalles.

There is no effect on subway service, and the station will remain open for access to trains.

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“Snowmaggedon” and the Dufferin Bus

On January 17, 2022, a record snowfall hit the Toronto area. Yes, this is Canada, and it does snow here, although people who live in areas without the moderating effect of Lake Ontario rarely have much sympathy on that score.

A post mortem report on the event will be discussed on March 29, 2022, at the Infrastructure & Environment Committee. As the City’s report on the event summarizes:

On January 16-17, 2022, the City of Toronto experienced an extraordinary winter storm that involved extreme cold temperatures, very rapid snowfall, and an ultimate snow accumulation of 55 centimetres in just 15 hours. The below freezing temperatures that followed the storm and lasted for more than two weeks created a unique set of challenges for storm clean up.

The effects on transit routes were severe, and there was little or no service on parts of the network for an extended period.

Snow clearing took a very long time:

Ultimately, 179,442 tonnes of snow were removed from 3,471 km of roads, requiring almost 60,000 truckloads. Removal was conducted over a 30-day period; however, operations were suspended when additional snow events occurred, meaning snow was removed on a total of 23 non-consecutive days.

Toronto’s snow clearing practices tend to focus on major streets and often do not include physical removal of snow. This effectively narrows roads and limits their capacity until the snowbanks eventually melt. A history of warmer winters and fewer severe storms has contributed to a somewhat laissez-faire relationship to winter that failed Toronto in 2022.

The report speaks to several changes in approach to major storms that will be implemented in early 2023, and I will not go into these here beyond noting the effect on transit.

Two related problems do leap out.

First, the responsibility for various aspects of snow clearing fall to different groups. Roads and sidewalks were plowed by multiple contractors. Sidewalks were, until this year, the responsibility of property owners, but the city’s fleet of sidewalk plows was not yet at full strength, and subject to breakdowns. Bike lanes might or might not be plowed especially if they are simply painted and have no protective barriers.

The result is both a “who does what” clash and a war for space where snow can be dumped before it is carted away, if ever.

Second, the reduction in road capacity causes congestion both by taking lanes out of service, and by parked cars, to the extent motorists can navigate the snowbanks, encroaching beyond the curb lane. This is a particular problem on streetcar routes, but is not confined to them.

Plowing, when it does occur, may not be accompanied by aggressive towing, or at least by temporary relocation of parked cars so that the curb lane can be fully cleared.

Toronto has a network of designated snow routes for major snow events. Most of the territory it covers is in the old City of Toronto with some outlying areas. When a major storm condition is declared, parking is banned for 72 hours (or more if need be) on the streets shown in red below. Most of the suburban city is not included.

The map below is dated October 2013, and it is due for updating especially if Toronto plans to be serious about the quality of transit service and meaningful schemes for transit priority across the city.

In Brief

The major snowfall on January 17 disrupted transit service, and the effects continued for a few weeks after the event. In some cases, buses had not returned to “typical” pre-storm travel times into February.

The location of congestion problems on routes reviewed here was not distributed along them a a general delay, but could be found at specific locations and times where the effect was “net new” after the storm. This suggests that a detailed study of storm delays will reveal key locations and conditions that should be avoided in the future.

On Dufferin, a major location for delays was northbound to Yorkdale Mall, and this persisted for some time after the storm. Normally, problems on routes like this are assumed to arise from their hilly nature, but that was not always the case in late January.

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Ontario Line Station Renderings

On March 27, 2022, Premier Doug Ford and a very chilly bunch of his political colleagues gathered near Exhibition Station for an official “groundbreaking” for the Ontario Line. Never mind that Metrolinx will not award the first of the main construction projects until late April, and the posed set of excavation machinery sat idle in the background. This was very much an event plugging the Tories’ overall platform and positioning construction, wherever and whatever it might be, as an economic engine for Ontario.

Concurrently with the press conference, which revealed absolutely nothing new, a new set of renderings for Ontario Line stations was released. In some cases these were quite large and were intended for media use. I have downsized them where needed to work better online.

Absent from these renderings are any of the development schemes that Infrastructure Ontario has proposed under its Transit Oriented Communities program.

The Premier’s speech contained a basic error in math when he claimed that the Ontario Line would add more than 50 per cent to the Toronto subway network. No. it is the four Ford “priority projects” announced in 2019 that will do this. It’s in the press release. Some speech writer screwed up.

Probably the most annoying part of the press conference was a statement by Metrolinx CEO Phil Verster who spoke glowingly of how well Metrolinx had worked with communities both in Riverside and in Thorncliffe Park to create an acceptable design. This materially misrepresents the very contentious relationship with both communities, and continues Metrolinx’ gaslighting of critics to give the impression that all is well, and it is the critics who are out of step.

If Metrolinx had been truly involved with communities along the line while it was being designed, a great deal of contention could have been avoided.

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Service Analysis of 95/995 York Mills, October-December 2021

This article begins a series reviewing the major east-west corridors in Scarborough and eastern North York. Although there are several proposals ranging from BRT-lite red lanes all the way up to a full scale subway for these streets, none of them is going to see much change for the coming decade. Rather than waiting forever for the promise of a new transit dawn in the east, Toronto really needs to focus on making transit service we have today work.

Minutes of community meetings are strewn with “improve the bus service” as a common, long-standing complaint. But nothing substantial happens.

For two years, everyone including the TTC has been preoccupied with the pandemic. For a time, the usual excuses about poor service, notably traffic congestion, really didn’t wash, but now we are on a rebound. Now is the time for TTC management to look at the service they are offering and ask whether it really is the best they can do, that it will attract riders back to the system.

The period covered by this article runs from October 1 to December 31, 2021. Most of this was during a period of ridership recovery, and the effect of Omicron-related drops in demand and in traffic came in the later half of December which is traditionally a slow period anyhow because of the holiday season. Data are missing in late October and early November because of the cyber-attack on the TTC, but there is more than enough to show the overall patterns of route behaviour.

Service on York Mills and Ellesmere

The 95 York Mills and its express counterpart, 995, run east from York Mills Station at Yonge Street.

The local service has three branches:

  • 95A runs east via York Mills, Ellesmere and northeast on Kingston Road to Port Union.
  • 95B splits off from Ellesmere at Military Trail and terminates at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC). This branch operates only during periods when there is no 995 express service.
  • 95C runs only as far east as Ellesmere Station on the SRT. This branch operates weekdays during peaks and midday.

Scheduled service for route 95 York Mills changed on October 10 when the 95A service was extended via Kingston Road to a loop at Port Union Road.

The service summaries for the two periods are below. During many periods, one bus was added to the service for the extension but headways remained the same making the round trip time longer. However, the scheduled speed also went up slightly.

Schedules for this route have not changed since October 2021.

The express service has only one branch:

  • 995 runs to UTSC via the same route as the 95B local service. These buses operate as locals between UTSC and Markham Road, and express from there west to York Mills Station.

Service to UTSC operates as the 995 express weekdays during the peaks and middays. Early evenings and on weekends, it operates as the 95B local.

The scheduled service for 995 York Mills Express has not changed since June 2021.

In brief:

  • Service on 95/995 York Mills operated on the same schedules from mid October 2021 through to year end.
  • Bunching is common. Generally, but not always, it is caused by “blended services” that actually run as pairs of buses.
  • There is little or no evidence of supervisory intervention to break up bunches of vehicles. Some bunches form at terminals where service spacing should be comparatively easy.
  • Cancelled runs were not a problem on York Mills because average headways generally lie at the scheduled values, although individual headway values were widely scattered during all operating periods.
  • The difference in average travel time is only about 5 minutes between the local and express services during most periods when both are offered.
  • Terminal layover times are generous especially at Port Union on the 95A service. Recovery from minor delays enroute should not be a problem.
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Ontario Line Environmental Assessment Open Houses: Part IV – Thorncliffe Park

This is the fourth and final article in my series about the Ontario Line Open Houses. See also:

Many issues affect the Thorncliffe Park section of the Ontario Line, to the point where I have split this off into a separate article.

Listening to all of the debates, I cannot help seeing that many problems arose from Metrolinx’ trademark secrecy coupled with a piecemeal approach to planning in a large, important neighbourhood.

The transit line was, in effect, dropped out of the sky as a line on the map fitted as best it could (depending on one’s definition of “best”) through the community without advance consultation. Many wider needs were beyond the project’s scope, and yet it is clear that Thorncliffe Park requires an integrated plan for its future including many elements:

  • The future of lands south of Overlea including an aging mall and its parking lot.
  • Whether low-rise commercial/industrial buildings north of Overlea will remain in the long term, and if not, what will this area become?
  • What should Overlea Boulevard look like as the main street of a future Thorncliffe Park? There is already a plan for the east end of Overlea, but what of the entire street?
  • How will a growing population be served both for public facilities such as schools and businesses providing local, walkable access?
  • What is the target population and demographic? Will Thorncliffe’s growth be driven by a forest of high-priced condos, or a mix of building types and affordability?
  • How will open space and parkland be provided in an area where parking lots are a dominant feature?
  • What is the future of lands in the Leaside Industrial area and how can redevelopment there be linked with the needs of Thorncliffe Park, including the MSF yard’s location?

I fully expect the response to be “this is an important transit project and we cannot wait for an overall plan”. That would be the response of a construction agency eager to do its master’s bidding, not of a city-building agency with a wider outlook. An area plan would be an iterative process that could identify key elements up front, but guarantee a wider scope for the neighbourhood’s future. Most importantly, it would occur in public to bring trust that there was no hidden agenda or deliberate sidelining of community concerns.

The remainder of this article consolidates the Q&A sessions from the online open houses.

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