Dundas Car

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TTC’s Dubious Short Turn Statistics

In the monthly CEO’s Report, one of the KPIs (Key Performance Indices) is a measure of the number of short-turned streetcars. This used to be reported as an absolute count, but is now expressed as a percentage of all trips.

Here is the most recent version:

This chart is a fiction born of the Rick Leary era when, in theory, all short turns were banned and the stats were made to fit the objective. Like many KPIs, this suffers from a combination of system-wide consolidation across all routes and time periods, as well as under-reporting of what is really happening.

An easy way to get the true count is to look at tracking data and compare two points on either side of a short-turn location. For example, Woodbine Loop at Queen and Kingston Rd. is a favourite spot for 501 Queen and some 503 Kingston Road cars to turn back. Counting the number of vehicles crossing Coxwell (west of the loop) with the number at Woodbine Avenue (east of the loop) shows how many cars did not travel east of Kingston Road and, therefore, were short-turned.

The TTC claims that they better their 1% target for trips short turned, but it is clear that they rarely achieve this. In some cases, the value rises above 20% indicating that although much service does get to the terminal, there is a good chance that a rider will encounter a short turn. This is separate from frustrations caused by gaps and bunching.

Short turns happen for many reasons including traffic congestion, too-tight schedules, service blockages for collisions, medical problems, parades … it’s a long list. Riders really don’t care. The basic point is that service they expected to receive is not there, and usually with no advance warning.

The table below summarizes the statistics from the vehicle tracking records in November 2024 for the period from 6am to midnight. It is clear that even on an aggregated level, the proportion of short turns is much higher on these routes that the TTC KPIs indicate.

Updated Dec. 6/24 at 1:30pm: Short turn counts for 504 King eastbound, 507 Long Branch and 508 Lake Shore westbound trips added.

Note: The legends on the original charts in this post were misleading. They have been changed to better reflect what the columns and lines on the charts represent..

RouteLocationTotal TripsShort Turns% Short Turns
501 QueenWoodbine Loop EB35471985.6%
Roncesvalles WB35372477.0%
503 Kingston RdWoodbine Loop EB32521364.2%
504 KingSpadina WB64532564.0%
Roncesvalles WB327536411.1%
Church EB63191262.0%
Parliament EB61982043.3%
Dundas EB2943712.4%
505 DundasParliament EB30402127.0%
Lansdowne WB306239713.0%
506 CarltonCoxwell EB30312939.7%
Lansdowne WB325657217.6%
507 Long BranchKipling WB2074883.0%
508 Lake ShoreKipling WB193199.8%
512 St. Clair (*)Lansdowne WB206824912.0%
Oakwood WB21131225.8%

(*) For 512 St. Clair, only data from November 14 onwards when streetcar service was restored are included.

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Analysis of 505 Dundas: September 2024

This is the third in a series of reviews of various transit lines in Toronto. Although the streetcar fleet is not yet reporting passenger loads (automatic counter installation is in progress), it is still worth looking at the quality of service provided on some of these lines.

For 505 Dundas, I will look at seven days’ operation from Monday, September 16 to Sunday, September 22. The intent is to show that conditions on the route are not “one of” instances, but a continuing pattern. The article includes:

  • operating charts (sometimes called Marey diagrams after their supposed inventor well over a century ago),
  • vehicle spacing charts showing bunching and gapping of streetcars, and
  • headway summary charts for the month showing the range of headways at various times and places along the route.

An added topic at the end is a review of travel times on Dundas between University Avenue and Bathurst Street and the effect of parking restrictions that were implemented there earlier in 2024.

Items of particular note:

  • During some periods, streetcars leave terminals fairly evenly spaced, but do not stay in this condition across the route. The bunching and gaps seen by most riders are not as good as terminal-based stats might indicate.
  • Some periods when there is no specific event impeding service see pairs, and occasionally trios, of streetcars travel together for extended periods.
  • Terminal dwell times are adequate for a rest break in most periods, but there are times when this does not occur. Short turns, notably westbound at Lansdowne, become more frequent.
  • Two major delays/diversion occurred during the period covered by this article from demonstrations downtown. The after-effects on service lasted hours beyond the events.
  • Only one event, an early-morning “operational problem”, triggered the use of shuttle buses, at least to the extent that these were tracked and appear in the data feed.

There are a lot of charts in this article. For some readers, this will be a case of “TL,DR” but others really like all of the detail.

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TTC Board Meeting: July 17, 2024

The July 17 Board meeting was extraordinarily long thanks to three in camera items, plus extended discussions of the CEO’s Report and of use of buses as homeless shelters during the winter.

The confidential session dealt with:

  • A collective bargaining update for two small groups of customer service and operations supervisor employees.
  • An update on advice from External Counsel. On a recorded vote, this was adopted with all Board members except Councillor Saxe in favour. As of the publication of this article (July 28), there have been no leaks about the subject of this report.
  • An update on the fare modernization program including the status of the Presto contract. The report was also discussed briefly in the public session later in the meeting.

The public meeting included:

  • The July 16 storm, flooding and hardening of infrastructure against climate change.
  • New subway trains and federal funding announced earlier the same day (July 17).
  • Prioritization of State of Good Repair projects. This item received scant attention although the report contains much interesting background on capital plans.
  • Safety on the TTC.
  • Use of shelter buses.
  • Transit network expansion update.
  • Fare Compliance Action Plan: See the updated version of my previous article on this report which includes the debate at the Board meeting.

Not discussed was the issue of hydraulic fluid leaks from subway work cars of which one quarter are still out of service. A report is supposed to be coming to the Board soon. It is not clear how much this situation is affecting the TTC’s ability to stay on top of track maintenance issues and the growing list of slow orders for track that cannot be safely operated at full speed.

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505 Dundas Headways: April 2024

In the previous article, I reviewed travel times on 505 Dundas for the month of April 2024. Now, here are charts of the headway data.

Service on this route comes nowhere near meeting the TTC’s own rather lax standards for service quality. The TTC measures On Time Performance (“OTP”) with the assumption that if cars are on time, then regular service will take care of itself. However, there is considerable leeway in the words “on time”.

OTP is measured only at terminals and compares the scheduled trip time to the actual one. If a car leaves no more than 1 minute early or 5 minutes late, it is “on time” for the stats. There is no measurement of OTP along the route, and the spacing from terminals is rarely maintained.

The six minute window this provides allows service to be quite erratic, but still counted as “on time”. For example, on a route like Dundas with a 10 minute headway, cars could alternately be 5 minutes late and 1 minute early. This would produce the following departure pattern:

Scheduled12:0012:1012:2012:3012:4012:501:00
Actual12:0512:0912:2512:2912:4512:491:05
Headway4′16′4′16′4′16′

The cars on short headways would inevitably catch up with the cars on wide headways, and pairs 20′ apart would travel across the route. There is nothing in TTC standards to measure this. and reports will blissfully say that service is “on time”. In fact, the TTC does not even achieve its own lax standard.

There is also no metric for missed trips caused by absent cars. Conversely, a trip at a terminal can legitimately be missing if a car was short-turned to restore regular service. The TTC’s focus on OTP stats to the exclusion of any other metric is one reason for the no short-turn policy. This can do much damage by blocking legitimate service management techniques. In the article on travel times, there are many examples of short turns to preserve service on the central part of the route rather than letting vehicles pile up at terminals.

This article shows how service leaving the terminals of 505 Dundas is disorganized from the outset, and how this evolves along the route. For an organization that hopes to win back riders, this is not an ideal example of what service should look like.

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505 Dundas Travel Times: April 2024

On the Toronto Council agenda for May 22, 2024, there was a motion asking for Transportation Services to investigate changes in traffic regulations on Dundas Street in anticipation of coming work on Spadina Avenue and at Spadina Station. This will replace streetcars with buses for a period from late June to mid-December, 2024, and the buses will not operate on the streetcar right-of-way.

Community Council Decision Advice and Other Information

The Toronto and East York Community Council requested the General Manager, Transportation Services to report directly to the May 22, 2024 meeting of City Council on recommended temporary parking, loading and traffic amendments on Dundas Street West that would support timely and reliable streetcar service on Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street during construction at Spadina Station.

Summary

During the June to December 2024 closure of the 510 Spadina streetcar for construction at Spadina Station, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) wishes to enhance alternate routes for customer movement to and through the Chinatown neighbourhood. One key alternate route is the 505 Dundas streetcar. Unfortunately, this streetcar is frequently delayed by acute traffic congestion between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street. To improve timeliness and reliability of 505 Dundas streetcar service through Chinatown during the Spadina closure, TTC is requesting that Council temporarily modify left-turn prohibitions, reduce on-street general-use parking, and add no stopping restrictions in strategic locations and timeframes along Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street. Designated loading zones may also help to reduce conflicts with streetcar service while supporting local businesses.

Transportation Services has replied to this request with a recommendation for changes in parking, stopping and turning restrictions on Dundas between McCaul and Spadina. Current curb lane restrictions are for no parking or stopping only in peak periods, with a mixture of paid and unpaid parking allowed at other times. There are also various turning restrictions (see the reply for details). The proposed changes are:

  • Between McCaul and Spadina, Dundas would be a No Stopping zone in both directions at all times.
  • Between University and McCaul, the peak direction (eastbound AM, westbound PM) would be a No Stopping zone.
  • Left turns eastbound and westbound at Dundas and Spadina would be banned between 7 am and 10 pm on all days.

A coach loading zone will be preserved in front of the Art Gallery (south side of Dundas, west of McCaul), and “consultation will be undertaken with the Chinatown BIA to identify areas where loading zone could be designated”.

Council amended the staff recommendation to asked for a “report back to the Toronto and East York Community Council by the fourth quarter of 2024 on the effectiveness of these changes for streetcar operations and a recommended long-term plan for parking, loading and traffic regulations on Dundas Street West between Spadina Avenue and McCaul Street.”

How much these changes will contribute to the Dundas car’s operation remains to be seen. There are already peak period restrictions on Dundas, and so there would be no change at those times. As always, the question of enforcement in practice vs regulation in theory is a problem. Moreover, 505 Dundas service is much less frequent than the combined services on King, and transit’s presence on Dundas is nowhere near as dominant. At most times, the scheduled service is every 10 minutes, and the most frequent service, 7 minutes, is on Saturday afternoons.

There is much more to the 505 Dundas route than the short section east of Spadina, and any review of the route should look at it over all. The travel time between University and Spadina, even on “bad” days, is under 10 minutes and the likely saving of any restrictions will be at best 4 minutes, likely less. Focus on a single segment will not address wider problems along the route.

The remainder of this article looks at travel times for 505 Dundas cars in April 2024 as a “before” point of reference, and to high light other areas where cars are (and are not) delayed.

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East End Streetcar Diversions April 19-29, 2024

Once again, streetcar service in the east end will be disrupted for construction diversions, although this will not be as long lasting as projects in recent years.

Updated April 27, 2024: The diversion for work at the Don Bridge on Queen Street finished early and all streetcar routes returned to their normal routes today.

505 Dundas Late Night Diversion

On Friday, April 19 and Saturday, April 21, service after 11pm on 505 Dundas cars will divert both ways via the Carlton route (College, Carlton, Parliament, Gerrard) between Bay and Broadview. Replacement bus service will cover the missed portion of the streetcar route. This work is for track drain repairs at Mutual Street.

501/503/504/508/301/304 Don Bridge Diversion

From Monday, April 22 at 4am to Monday, April 29 at 4am, all streetcar service will divert via Dundas between Broadview and Parliament to bypass expansion joint replacement on the Queen Street bridge at the Don River. The work finished early and normal routings across the bridge were restored on April 27.

Shuttle bus service will operate on Queen between Carlaw and Sherbourne, and on the King route between Broadview Station and Sherbourne.

As of 7am on April 20, the TTC has posted a Service Change notice for King Street services (503, 504 and 304), but has not yet posted one for 501/301 Queen or 508 Lake Shore although these are also affected. The 501B bus service between Broadview and Bathurst should continue on its normal route. There is also an item on their News page describing this change.

Although not shown on this map, the diversion should not affect the 504A Distillery service.

Expansion joint replacement on this bridge occurs from time to time as this is a high traffic area, and the bridge can be damaged if the joint is in poor condition from vibration of passing streetcars.

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How Slow Is My Streetcar: Part I

At its November 2023 meeting, Council passed a motion proposed by Councillor Chris Moise whose ward covers the east side of downtown, and who also sits on the TTC Board:

1. City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, the Toronto Police Service, and the City Solicitor to review and report back to the Executive Committee in the second quarter of 2024, including:
a. an update on streetcar performance over the last five years;
b. suggested improvements to the public realm along King Street until the permanent capital project can be delivered; and
c. the feasibility of implementing automated traffic enforcement on the King Street Transit Priority Corridor, including details on what legislative amendments would be required to provincial legislation including, but not limited to, the Ontario Highway Traffic Act.

This article addresses point “a” with a review of streetcar lines over the past five years. It is important to go back to 2019 before the pandemic fundamentally shifted traffic and transit patterns downtown as a point of reference.

From time to time, there are calls to expand a “King Street” redesign to other parts of the network, but there are two “cart before the horse” issues to address first:

  • Figure out how to make King Street operate as it was intended and return at least to its pre-pandemic behaviour, if not better, as a model.
  • Understand how other streets operate including where and when problems for transit performance exist.

An update on transit priority will come to Council in February 2024, although this will look more widely at the city, not just downtown. In previous articles I have reviewed the growing problem of transit travel times as traffic builds on the proposed RapidTO corridors, some of which exceeded pre-pandemic levels some time ago. In future articles I will refresh these analyses with data through to the end of 2023.

An important distinction between most RapidTO bus corridors and the downtown streetcar system is the design of suburban vs downtown streets. In the suburbs, the streets are mostly wide, have relatively few points of access (e.g. driveways) or pedestrian oriented uses (e.g. shops), and travel distances tend to be longer. In the core, streets are narrow, mostly four lanes with no possibility of widening, access points are more frequent, there is a strong pedestrian orientation, and trips tend to be short. Even if buses were running, express operations would be almost impossible and would save very little time on the downtown routes.

There are exceptions such as some older parts of the inner suburbs that bring physical challenges for transit priority, but also the political challenge that the transit share of road use is lower as one moves outward from the core. King Street is a very different place from Steeles, and Dufferin is somewhere in between depending on which section one considers.

An important message in all of this is that “congestion” (put in quotes because it is so often cited as a get-out-of-jail-free excuse for all transit woes) varies from place to place and time to time. Simply putting transit priority everywhere will not solve all problems and could even be overkill (even assuming that it is true “priority” and not a sham to keep transit vehicles out of motorists’ way). It is simple to colour a bunch of key routes end-to-end on a map, but much harder to identify changes that will actually make a difference. Meanwhile, a focus on “priority” could divert attention from badly-needed improvements in headway reliability and more reliable wait times.

This article begins with a comparison of scheduled travel speed on each route, and then turns to actual travel speeds by route segment. In the interest of length, I will leave a discussion of headway reliability to future articles. This is an important component of total travel time, especially for short trips or trip segments.

I have also included tables showing the constant change in route configurations on the four major east-west corridors thanks to a never-ending procession of track and water main work, rapid transit construction, and overhead changes for pantograph operation. Some of this work was accelerated to take advantage of lighter traffic conditions during the pandemic, and some to bring forward work to keep staff employed.

However, the rate of route changes persisted well beyond the heart of the pandemic and threatens the credibility of transit service on major corridors leaving riders constantly wondering where their streetcar or replacement bus might be. Some changes occurred without the planned work actually taking place, or work started and ended later than announced (sometimes much later as in the never-ending KQQR project).

An important change over recent years, separate from the pandemic, has been the move to larger streetcars on wider headways. What might have been a tolerable unevenness in service when streetcars arrived every 4 or 5 minutes simply does not work for scheduled headways of 10 minutes with much wider swings. Bunching when it occurs leaves much bigger gaps between vehicles. A laissez faire attitude to route management, and especially the assumption that routes under construction cannot be managed, has led both to unreliable service and basic questions of how or if the TTC can recover the quality riders expect.

For all the talk of project co-ordination, the last people who seem to count are the riders. Simply studying raw travel times be they scheduled or actual does not capture the frustration, delay and despair from the ever-changing and unreliable services, be they by streetcar or bus.

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Downtown Route Changes Effective December 11, 2023 (Updated)

The City of Toronto will completely close the intersection of Bay & Adelaide from 7am Monday, December 11 to 7am on Saturday December 16 to all vehicles. Bay and Adelaide Streets will be open only for local traffic in the immediate area of the closure. This continues the work of (re-)installing streetcar track on Adelaide for the eastbound 501 Queen streetcar diversion around Ontario Line contruction.

Updated: Work at Bay and Adelaide actually completed on the afternoon of Friday, December 15 and the intersection reopened earlier than planned.

This will require diversion of the 19 Bay and 501B Queen bus routes.

The 19 Bay bus will divert via Dundas, Church and King both ways.

The 501B Queen bus which normally operates on Bay from King to Queen will use York Street for north/westbound trips and University Avenue for south/eastbound trips. Buses will operate both ways via King Street, and there will be no westbound service on Richmond Street

[Apologies for the soft images. They are from a City construction notice, and I used what is available.]

End of the King East Diversions

As the map for 501B Queen above shows, service is supposed to resume the normal routes east of Church with the completion of water main and Hydro work on the coming weekend which has a December 10 end date. This means that:

  • 501B Queen buses return to Queen Street east of Church
  • 503 Kingston Road streetcars return to King Street between the Don River and Church
  • 504 King streetcar service to Distillery Loop resumes

Updated December 11, 2023 at 4:15 pm

Another diversion has been added to the list. The 505 Dundas cars will divert both ways via Parliament and Gerrard. A 505 shuttle bus will run from Jarvis to Jones.

This diversion is required for track repairs, and will last until Thursday, December 21, 2023.

Updated: This diversion ended on Tuesday, December 19.

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Broadview Station Reopening Delayed

The construction work on Broadview north of Danforth has not run particularly quickly with a few intervals where nothing happened at all for over a week. This appeared to be not the TTC’s problem, but rather the contractor, Sanscon, who simply did not have anyone working on site at times.

As of November 16, they have only now reached the point of excavating the north end of Broadview Station Loop. Both track and concrete are incomplete, albeit progressing, on Broadview and at the loop entrance. Broadview Avenue cannot reopen until this track work has finished and the pavement is restored.

The reopening of the station for bus service is now expected in December (exact date unspecified).

The schedules for “normal” operation at Broadview Station are already in place, but service will operate in an interim configuration pending completion of work at the station.

  • 8 Broadview will operate from Broadview & O’Connor Mortimer to Warden Station. It will no longer interline with 62 Mortimer. [Corrected 6:35 pm, November 16]
  • 62 Mortimer will operate from Broadview & Mortimer to Main Station. It will no longer interline with 8 Broadview.
  • 87 Cosburn will continue operating to Pape Station via Mortimer and Pape.
  • 72 Pape will no longer provide replacement service for Broadview Avenue, but this will be taken over by a 504/505 shuttle. 72A Pape will no longer be interlined with 100 Flemingdon Park.
  • 100 Flemingdon Park will operate from Pape Station independently of 72A Pape.
  • The 504/505 Broadview shuttle will operate from Castle Frank Station to King & Parliament via Bloor, Danforth, Broadview, Queen and King, and it will use on-street stops at Broadview & Danforth.
  • 304 King Night Bus will operate from Castle Frank Station east to Broadview and then over the 504 King daytime route to Dundas West Station.
  • 322 Coxwell Night Bus will divert to Pape Station.

When Broadview Station Loop reopens, routes 8, 62, 87, 100, 504/505, 304 and 322 will resume their normal routes to that loop.

The TTC has not yet published information about on street stops for the temporary western terminals of 8 Broadview and 62 Mortimer.

Here are two views of construction work at the north end of Broadview Station on November 16.

Looking SW from Erindale to Broadview
Looking S into Broadview Station from Erindale

Streetcar operation to Broadview Station will resume in mid-February 2024 following sewer rehab work by Toronto Water.