King Car

by

Service Changes Effective August 2, 2009

For mid summer, there are only a few schedule changes on the TTC network, and they take effect at the start of August running through to Labour Day weekend.

Changes for September are much more extensive, and I will deal with these in a separate post.

Bingham Loop Reconstruction

Due to the reconstruction of Bingham Loop, routes 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road Tripper will be replaced by buses.  Combined streetcar service of 7’30” will be replaced by bus service of 6’00”.  The off-peak 20’00” headway is unchanged.

Diversions at Bingham Loop will change from time to time as construction progresses.  This also affects the 22A Coxwell, 12 Kingston Road, 322 Coxwell and 324 Victoria Park Night Buses.

Roncesvalles Reconstruction

Running times on the Roncesvalles shuttle bus will be increased at some times to compensate for actual start of construction and the diversion of southbound service via Dundas, Lansdowne and Queen.

501 Queen

The test of a modified step-back crewing operation will end, and normal crewing will resume on this route.

77 Swansea & 71 Runnymede

Running times on these interlined routes will be increased.  In the AM peak and midday, this will be done by reducing recovery times scheduled at terminals.  In the PM peak and evening, headways will be increased.  PM peak headways on the common section of the route will go from 10′ to 11′ with a change from 20′ to 22′ on the Runnymede branches.  A similar change will occur in the early evening, but at that time only half of the service runs south of Bloor.

Caribana

Additional service will operate for the parade on Saturday, August 1 on 511 Bathurst, 509 Harbourfront and 29 Dufferin, as well as express buses from Keele, Dundas West and Lansdowne Stations.  The 329/316 night routes will divert around the CNE grounds as described in the next section.

Additional service on 509 Harbourfront, 510 Spadina and 6 Bay is also planned for the Sunday, August 2 events on Toronto Island.  Whether these will actually occur given that the civic strike has shut down the ferries remains to be seen.  All of the added service is operated “at the divisional level”, meaning that the work is easily cancelled or reassigned if the party ends up at a new location.

Canadian National Exhibition

Additional service will operate on all of the usual routes including 511 Bathurst, 509 Harbourfront, 193 Exhibition Rocket and 29 Dufferin.  Overnight service on interlined routes 329 Dufferin and 316 Ossington will not operate through the CNE grounds, but will connect via Fraser and Liberty.

by

Construction Season 2009 (Updated)

This morning, I took a ramble around the city to have a look at various projects affecting the streetcar system.  For those who don’t see all of the sights, here’s a roundup.

Updated 5:20 pm:  A link to a more recent design layout for St. Clair Phase 4 (west from Caledonia) has been added.

Updated 6:20 pm:  John F. Bromley provided a route history for the Roncesvalles Shuttle which I have added to this article.

St. Clair

The now-and-forever St. Clair project is beginning to look as if it might complete in our lifetime.  Eastward from Dufferin, new track is under construction, and the excavation is completed all the way to Oakwood.  Once this section is connected at both ends, there will be continuous track once more from Yonge to just west of Caledonia.  It’s a start.

Meanwhile, road and sidewalk construction is underway on the south side of St. Clair east of Winona, and Oakwood is less of a disaster area albeit not yet completely opened.  West of Caledonia, utility and sidewalk work progressed west from the Newmarket Subdivision bridge, and is further along on the north than the south side.

Some comments on other threads here suggest that the design will change the underpass between Old Weston Road and Keele.  Any proposal to widen the road here would certainly not be a quick project.  The plans shown in the EA involve no widening (see detailed layout part 1, page 2), nor is any shown in the February 2009 version (see pages 5 through 7).  If someone has other, definitive information, please let me know.

Dundas

Work has just begun on watermain construction west of Bathurst Street.  This is supposed to end for September, but I will be astounded, given recent experiences with construction delays, if this happens.

All Carlton cars run to Dundas West Station, while the Dundas car goes to Bathurst Station, and a Dundas bus runs from Keele Station to Wolseley Loop.  Dundas streetcar service eastbound from Bathurst depends on how many cars actually reach Bathurst Station because short turns would miss the connection completely.

Roncesvalles

Overhead has been removed on Roncesvalles from Dundas to north of the carhouse except at the Howard Park crossing which now only has the east-west tangent wire for the eventual return of the Carlton car.

The streetcar track will be removed over the next two months to simplify watermain work, and will be replaced in 2010 on its new alignment as the street itself is rebuilt to the new design.  Considering that there has been streetcar service on Roncesvalles since 1908 (first a shuttle, then the Queen car, finally the King car), the absence of track and overhead will be a strange sight indeed.

Proposed changes at Queen and Roncesvalles are on hold, I believe, pending resolution of design issues including the eventual route of the Waterfront West LRT in this area.

Queen

Due to watermain and track construction, service on the Queen and Downtowner cars began diverting today as previously reported.  (For those who carp, with justification, about TTC signs, the diversion notice calls the route “Downtown” with a map showing the eastbound diversion running on Lombard, not Adelaide.)  This is expected to be in place for eight weeks.

Meanwhile, utility work west of Gladstone has reduced Queen to a single lane westbound through the underpass, and west from Noble (one west of Dufferin), construction occupies both curb lanes.

It will be interesting to see whether cars still take extended layovers at the ends of their trips, or simply short turn a lot.

Meanwhile, although the work is not visible from Queen, riders on the rail line above can see the considerable progress on the excavation of the new Dufferin Street approach from the north that will eliminate the jog at Queen for all traffic.  Just getting rid of the left turn queues in both directions should improve the streetcar and bus operations here.

History of the Roncesvalles Shuttle from John F. Bromley

RONCESVALLES

Operational periods: 1908; 1909-1911; <1914-1921

Continue reading →

by

Restructuring the Queen Car

The TTC Agenda for July 9 included a report on Queen streetcar operations.  Most of this deals with line management techniques, and is discussed in the preceding article on this site.

For the period October 18 to November 21, 2009, the TTC will experiment with splitting the line in one of two ways.  The specifics have not yet been decided.

  • Split the route at Humber Loop into the original 507 Long Branch and 501 Queen routes.
  • Create two overlapping routes with Long Branch cars operating east to Church or Parliament, and Queen cars operating west to Bathurst or Shaw.

Implementation of an overlapped service is constrained by the number of available cars as well as by track layouts and the location of electrified switches for turnbacks.

There are arguments to be made for either configuration, but the first one does have the problem that if Queen service is disrupted in the west end, the link to Long Branch will be lost as most Queen cars will turn at Sunnyside.  Conversely, an overlapped route will force anyone travelling from west of the overlap area to east of it to transfer. Continue reading →

by

When Is A Park Not A Park?

Those of you who know Broadview Station will remember the years of construction we who live nearby suffered through as the station gained new streetcar platforms, elevators, an enlarged lobby, a lot of fixes to leaky ceilings, and now roof repairs.  Through much of this the triangle of land between the streetcar loop and sidewalk was transformed from a park to a construction staging area and then, miraculously, our park came back, somewhat gentrified, last year.

That property had been held by the TTC for years in anticipation of, yes, redevelopment, although everyone nearby thought it was a park.  It wasn’t.

Until now.  This week, the TTC will officially declare the land surplus to its needs, and set in motion a transfer to the City Parks Department.  I’m not sure that there will be dancing in the streets, but at last our park is safe from being turned into a rather oddly shaped condo.

by

Roncesvalles Redesign Public Meeting (Update 2)

Updated March 28: 

I have received reports from various sources that the recent public meetings on this project were a bit of a mess because the project’s representatives could not explain how their preferred option would work, and even supporters were left scratching their heads.  This option is explained, although not illustrated, by a post on the Roncesvalles Village BIA’s website.

The big problem is that the “new” scheme was so recently added to the mix that the project doesn’t have proper illustrations for it, only engineering plan views (looking straight down, in two dimensions, with no sense of how the street would actually work or look for people on it).  There is a somewhat clearer illustration on Bike Toronto’s site, although their drawing does not show clearly how the bike lane would ramp up to sidewalk level at transit stops.

Another surprise, lost in the shuffle, is that almost no parking will be eliminated by this plan.  Roncesvalles, unlike major streets such as St. Clair, has comparatively little traffic, and converting curb lane space to permanent parking and loading zones bounded by sidewalk “bump outs” won’t seriously affect traffic flow.

John Bowker of the BIA writes:

Torontoist is reporting broad opposition at the meeting to the City/TTC proposals. The truth is that the presentation was regrettably weak and unclear. The City and TTC even managed to confuse their own supporters. Many members of the supposedly angry crowd asking about the proposals were actually Roncesvalles Renewed members, all of whom support the pro-transit values underlying the concept proposals. Torontoist also falsely claims the sidewalk plan would eliminate right turn lanes, but anyway …

Lisa Rainford from the Bloor West Villager describes the meeting more accurately, emphasizing confusion over hostility.

The City/TTC presented a plan that reduces parking losses from 26% to eight percent – just 19 spots. And that’s during the day. During the evenings and on weekends, when loading zones are not in use, the plan reduces parking by less than five percent – a mere 11 spots. And the City and TTC were able to do this without affecting traffic flow or greatly altering the original vision of new and enhanced public spaces. This is incredibly good news (at least for businesses), and no one at the meeting even knew. This plan comes as close to having your cake and eating it too as anyone could have hoped.

Update 1, March 26:  The presentation boards and slides are now available on the project’s website.

The City of Toronto will hold a public meeting tonight to present the recommended design for the revitalization of Roncesvalles Avenue.

The meeting will be held

Monday March 23, 2009
6:00pm – 9:00pm (presentation at 7:00 pm)
Howard Jr Public School, 30 Marmaduke St.

Further information is available on the City’s project website and on the Roncesvalles Village website.

by

Getting From Union to the CNE — How Fast Is Our “LRT”?

Last week, as I was polishing up my comments on the Waterfront West LRT Environmental Assessment, I started to wonder about the comparative running times between the CNE grounds, the comparable location on King Street, and the core. How much time does one route save over another? What benefits do we see from the “LRT” operation on the 509 compared with mixed traffic on the 504?

We have already seen service analysis data from the King car in the original series of posts last year, and the Harbourfront line was in my sights as a companion analysis to the Spadina car. I will turn to the 509 in a separate post, but for now, let’s look at the two routes between roughly Strachan Avenue (the east end of the CNE) and downtown.

In my previous analysis of the King route, I used Crawford Street as a “time point”. This is one block west of Strachan and stands in for the “CNE” on King Street. The downtown time point is Yonge Street.

On the Harbourfront route, the CIS times at Exhibition Loop are not reliable for departures, but the arrival times are. At Union, the times are reliable. Therefore, I have used the link from Union to CNE westbound, but from the Bathurst/Fleet intersection to Union eastbound.

[“CIS” is the TTC’s vehicle monitoring system. Data from this system for December 2006 has appeared in many other posts here. In this analysis, for reasons I will detail in the Harbourfront post to follow, all points at Exhibition Loop from Strachan through the loop are considered as one location because of data limitations.]

509 Westbound from Union to CNE
509 Eastbound from Bathurst to Union

504 Westbound from Yonge to Crawford
504 Eastbound from Crawford to Yonge

In the Union to CNE charts for the Harbourfront route, there are consistent running times in a band 4-5 minutes wide clustered around the 15-minute line with a slight rise in the late afternoon on weekdays. Saturday data is flat at the 15-minute line, and Sundays have a bit more scatter possibly due to slightly longer layovers that have not been eliminated from the data.

The Bathurst to Union charts show a bit more scatter as well as evidence of a morning peak that slightly extends the running times. Running times cluster fairly reliably around the 13-minute line.

On the King route, the westbound times from Yonge to Crawford show a greater scatter as well as the clear effects of peak period congestion and stop dwell times. On Friday, December 22, the early rush hour before peak period traffic restrictions are in effect causes running times to more than double the usual values.

The band of data ranges from five to over ten minutes in width and lies generally around the 15-minute line with a rise and fall through the pm peak.

The eastbound times from Crawford to Yonge show strong effects in the peaks, especially the afternoon when congestion through the financial district causes much delay to service. The width and location of the band of data is roughly the same as for westbound trips, but with a much worse pm peak spike in times.

Comparing the two routes, the broad averages in times are in the 15-minute range for both lines. King is much more affected by peak conditions, but outside the peak its behaviour is similar to Harbourfront. Any benefit in speed the 509 might get from its right-of-way is negated by the close stop spacing, winding route and traffic signal delays. The big difference between the routes is that the 509 does not have to deal with traffic congestion, only with unfriendly traffic signals.

Indeed, this is one reason the WWLRT proposes to take an alternate route to Union via Fort York and Bremner Boulevards. This will save some time, but even a 1/3 reduction would only get the average time from the CNE to Union down to about 10 minutes. Considering that the Bremner service will handle demand from the many condos lining the route, such a reduction may depend as much on all-door loading with new vehicles as on the “faster” alignment.

by

A New Look For Roncesvalles

John Bowker of the Roncesvalles Village BIA (Business Improvement Area) passed on a link to information about the TTC’s new design for Roncesvalles Avenue.

At this point, it is unclear whether this will actually be built in 2008 or 2009 (my own guess is 2009), but this gives an idea of what the TTC would like to do with streetcar stops in locations where the incursions into the road are possible.  At all stops from Dundas down to just north of the carhouse at Queen, sidewalks at stops will be widened out to the tracks to provide a step on-and-off configuration.

Various schemes are used to deal with intersections where there are turns either by using farside stops or moving nearside ones back to leave enough room for a right turn bay.

The PDF with the design is very long and narrow — it really belongs on a roll of paper — but the one drawing covers the entire length of the projecvt.

The community appears to be strongly in favour of this scheme, and within a few years we may see a very new transit and pedestrian friendly street.

by

Getting From “A” to “B” — Is There More Congestion?

Those who have come to this site in the past year to read, among other things, detailed analyses of route operations on King and Queen Streets may not be aware that this has been done before.  Back in May 1984, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee organized manual observations of the major streetcar routes for three days.  A detailed post on the subject appeared here in April 2006 and it makes interesting reading for any who think that service problems are new to the system.

At that time, we documented a very high proportion of cars short-turning in the afternoon peak and a systemic problem that the actual times required to make trips across the system was higher than the scheduled time.  Short-turns were poorly managed and contributed to the general chaos in service.  Not much has changed, although the headways are a lot wider now than they were in 1984, and the reliability of service much lower.

Considering how much store the TTC puts in “congestion” as the explanation for all its woes, it is worth looking back two decades to see what changes have been made in the schedules. Continue reading →

by

What Can We Do About the Queen Car?

The Rocket Riders will devote their December 4 meeting (Metro Hall, 6:30 pm) to a discussion of the Queen Car, its many problems and ways to fix them.  In support of this, I will start publishing analyses of that route’s operation here based on the CIS data from December 2006.

Yes, I have let that whole project slip out of sight in past months for a variety of reasons.  Mea culpa.

Here is an overview of my past writing on this issue:

Route Structure

The amalgamation of the Queen and Long Branch services was a disaster from the day it started, but the TTC has never acknowledged this problem or studied alternatives, publicly, in detail.  One extremely long line is impossible to manage.  The schedule includes a huge amount of padding for “recovery time” that is actually counterproductive because operators can basically run on any time they please and still have time for a lengthy break at the end of the line.

Service on the Long Branch section is very spotty with very long gaps quite common.

Service on Kingston Road is compromised by the difficulty of integrating the 502 and 503 services and by the very wide off-peak scheduled headway.

My proposed route structure is not definitive, and I am sure others will come up with various schemes.  The underlying theme is to shorten routes and to provide overlaps so that short-turns will not totally devestate service.

  • Queen car from Humber to Neville
  • Lake Shore car from Brown’s Line to downtown via King (Monday to Friday until early evening)
  • Lake Shore car from Brown’s Line to Dundas West Station (M-F evening, weekends and holidays)
  • Kingston Road car from Victoria Park to a single downtown destination

Peak Period Operations

A major problem exists on both King and Queen with the morning peak where many cars enter service off-schedule.  This plays havoc with service at the ends of the lines due to short turns and causes ragged headways at a time when there is no traffic congestion to blame for this situation.

The peak period Lake Shore trippers to downtown do not operate at predictable times even there is no possible way that “traffic congestion” can interfere with on-time operation.

Vehicle Allocation

[Note:  An ALRV is the 75-foot long two-section streetcars commonly seen on King, Queen and Bathurst.  A CLRV is the 50-foot long car seen on the system overall.]

The 501 operates with ALRVs on wide headways while the 504 runs with CLRVs on close headways.  The TTC should reverse this arrangement so that ALRVs are used on King where their greater capacity is badly needed.

Equally important will be that we actually see ALRVs where they are scheduled.  The number of times in the past year when I have seen CLRVs operating ALRV runs on Queen, overcrowded because they are carrying an ALRV headways, is quite ridiculous.  In my review of the King car, I found that the peak period extra ALRVs that are supposed to build capacity inbound through Parkdale in the morning are more often operated with CLRVs.

The TTC seems to be utterly incapable of assigning larger vehicles where they are required.

Service Levels

On Queen, the change to CLRVs on closer headways would improve the frequency of service even with the inevitable short-turns.

On Lake Shore, the change to CLRVs will improve scheduled headways, and integration to a single downtown destination will avoid the problems inherent with a few rogue trippers.  Combined with a shorter, easier-to-manage  route, this should make service in southern Etobicoke much more attractive.

On Kingston Road, consolidation of the 502 and 503 would provide one common, frequent service during the peak period that would have some hope of reliability outbound from a single downtown location.

On King, the change to ALRVs would provide additional capacity provided that current headways are maintained.

Summary

The Ridership Growth Strategy seeks to improve service quality, but little attention has been paid to the streetcar network on the grounds that the fleet is fully committed already.  This is certainly not true during off-peak periods, and the TTC needs to account for the large number of spare cars during the peak.

Proposals for transit priority must focus on “micro” changes to individual intersections and neighbourhoods with parking restrictions and signal improvements.  The “macro” scheme for reserved lanes through the business district does not address major sources of congestion, and diverts attention and effort from overall improvements to route operations.

There is no question that improving service level and quality on these major crosstown routes will cost more.  There should be a huge incentive for the TTC to improve line management.  Sadly, they will more likely trot out their usual complaints about congestion as the source of all troubles.  The cheapest service improvement comes from managing what we have properly.

by

Transit Priority on King at Community Council

The King Car will be up for discussion at Toronto & East York Community Council next Monday (September 10), just two days before the TTC itself meets to decide what may happen with fares and service in 2008.  Item TE8.41 on the agenda includes both the TTC’s original request which was met with some considerable opposition by area merchants and some counterproposals that were tabled for discussion (item TE8.41a).

These proposals, viewed jointly with the work I have done analyzing operations in the route, raise a number of questions. Continue reading →