Service Analysis

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Comparison of Streetcar and Bus Operations on 501 Queen

The summer 2017 conversion of the entire 501 Queen streetcar route to bus operation presents an opportunity to compare the behaviour of the two modes on this route.

Apologies to readers in advance for the length and number of charts, but that’s the nature of the subject.

Background and Data Sources

The raw data for this article comes from the TTC’s vehicle tracking system, CIS, for which much thanks, but the processing and interpretation are entirely my own. The machinery behind the digestion and presentation of TTC data is explained in Methodology for Analysis of TTC’s Vehicle Tracking Data.

In this article, there are data from two separate time periods:

  • April 1-30, 2017: At this time, 501 Queen service consisted of two overlapping routes. 501 streetcars operated from Neville Loop to Roncesvalles, while 501L buses operated from Dufferin to Long Branch. A local shuttle, the 501M, provided service on Marine Drive in the Humber Bay area, but it is not part of this analysis.
  • May 7-31, 2017: All service on the 501 operated with buses on two branches. 501L buses ran between Neville and Long Branch Loops, while 501P buses ran between Neville and Park Lawn Loops. Buses alternated between the two branches so that, in theory, there would be a 501P half way in between every 501L east of Windermere and The Queensway where the routes diverged.

Many readers will be familiar with charts on this showing the distribution of monthly headways (time between vehicles) and link times (time required to travel between two points). In addition to the detailed data, these charts include summaries of values by hour including averages and standard deviations. The latter values indicate the degree to which actual values differ from the average, and the higher the SD value, the worse the dispersion of individual values. This translates to “bunching” of vehicles which, in the worst case, sees buses running in pairs and trios.

For the purpose of this article, I have created charts pulling together the statistics for streetcar (April) and bus (May) operation. In the case of May, only data from the 7th onward when the route had been converted are included.

Are These Data “Typical” and “Representative”?

In the process of working through the data, I became concerned at the gap between bus and streetcar times. In order to verify whether the April 2017 streetcar values were typical, I also pulled the values for January through March and found that travel times were generally lower for streetcars, although there remain periods (notably evenings) when the bus times over the route are shorter than the streetcar times. However, the difference is not as great as the April 2017 streetcar data implies.

The chart below shows the travel time from Roncesvalles to Silver Birch by month from January to May. (Silver Birch is used as the origin rather than Neville Park because vehicle layovers at the end of the route sometimes occur west of that street, and measurements from that point could include layovers.) May data is bus only, and the other months are streetcar.

This chart shows clearly that April (blue) was an unusual month, and streetcar travel times are higher than for previous months. The May (green) data is for buses which are slightly faster in the evenings, but which lie in the same travel time range as streetcars for the months of 1Q17. The same data can also be shown as a percentage difference relative to the May (bus) data.

Where the values fall below the 0.00% line, the streetcars are faster. As we will see in the detailed charts for April and May below, the advantage varies over the route and by time of day.

The differences westbound are not as striking, but they are still an improvement over the April-to-May comparison.

The moral of the story here is that a data comparison may not be what it seems, and a few weeks’ data are not necessarily representative. For example, if the first part of September were used as a reference, this would be during the traffic mess downtown brought on by TIFF and especially the 504 King diversion. This would not be representative for either mode.

Similarly, the situation under poor weather may not produce the same comparison as under the generally fair weather experienced in May, the base month for the bus comparison here.

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TTC Service Changes Effective Sunday June 18, 2017

The TTC’s June 2017 schedule changes bring the summer schedules with cutbacks in service on many routes. The effects of lower than expected ridership numbers, fleet and budget pressures show up in the following comment in the covering memo for details of pending changes:

The total number of weekly hours of regular service planned for the June board period will be approximately 2,600 hours below the level specified in the planned 2017  Service Budget for June (August 3, 2016 version). This is a result of current bus and streetcar fleet limitations as well as deeper summer cuts than originally budgeted for.

To put this number in context, the budgeted hours were 175,410 compared to the schedule hours of 172,807, a reduction of about 1.5%.

Scheduled hours to deal with construction-induced delays and diversions are also down from a budget of 38,022 to actual of 24,365 over the first half of 2017. This translates to savings partly in the Operating Budget (costs the TTC absorbs itself), the Capital Budget (service operated to deal with projects like the TYSSE) and recoveries from other parties.

At some point, the fleet limitations will cease to be a valid explanation for service levels, and the TTC will face increased costs simply to operate the service its own standards dictate. Worth watching for will be the fall 2017 schedules and the degree to which the summer cuts are actually restored. TTC’s recent mixed messages complain of lower ridership while observing that service on some major routes is well below the level of demand.

2017.06.18_Service_Changes

Streetcar Diversions

The rider challenge for this summer will be to figure out where all of the streetcar services are actually running.

  • 501 Queen continues with bus operation over the entire route due to various construction projects. Streetcars will return to parts of the route in stages through the fall, but will not operate over its full length from Neville to Long Branch until January 2018.
    • Streetcar service resumes between Connaught (Russell Carhouse) and Roncesvalles in September.
    • Streetcar service will return to Neville in mid-October, but there will be a diversion around trackwork at McCaul & Queen until late November.
    • Streetcar service resumes west of Roncesvalles in January 2018.
  • 502 Downtowner remains as a bus operation at least until mid-fall.
  • 503 Kingston Road Tripper will continue with streetcars in June/July, but will revert to bus operation thanks to construction at Coxwell & Queen later in the summer. Construction on Wellington requires a continued extension of the route westward to Spadina.
  • 505 Dundas will continue its diversion via Bay, College, Carlton and Church around water main and track construction east of Yonge Street until October.
  • 506 Carlton will have two diversions. Bus shuttles will cover the gaps.
    • In the east, for June/July, overhead work requires a diversion via Queen between Coxwell and Broadview/Parliament (EB/WB).
    • In the west, completion of City roadwork begun, but botched by the contractor in 2016, triggers a diversion via Bathurst and Dundas until October.
  • 504 King, 509 Harbourfront, 510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst, 512 St. Clair and 514 Cherry remain on their regular routes with streetcar operation.

504 King

Some of the peak period trippers now operated on King are being removed because of the “on-going delivery of new Low Floor streetcars”. The line is still scheduled as CLRV operation although many ALRVs, freed up from 501 Queen, now operate there at all hours. The real question, of course, will be what will happen in the fall when streetcars return to Queen and the ALRVs are not available for King. Moreover, current plans are for the Flexity cars to go next onto 512 St. Clair, and it is unclear just how the growth of the new fleet removes the need for trippers.

This ties into plans for a King Street transit priority scheme to go into effect late in 2017. It will be counterproductive for the TTC to cut back in service on 504 King just when better priority might be provided.

Keele Yard

The yard east of Keele Station (originally named “Vincent Yard” after the former Vincent Loop) has not been used for revenue vehicles for many years, but the shift of all of the T1 fleet to Line 2 BD has forced the use of all available storage. The TTC will shift four trains to Keele Yard, with remaining capacity (the yard extends underground beside Dundas West Station and can hold eight trains) to be used by work cars. Moves to and from the yard will occur at the beginning and end of service providing added maintenance time in the overnight break in service.

This yard is in a residential neighbourhood, and with its long inactivity the TTC is aware of the potential for disturbing the neighbours:

Morning service train preparations and noise control

Each night, four trains will typically return to Keele Yard at around 2 – 2:20 a.m., when crews will run system checks to ensure the trains are safe-ready for morning service. The trains will then leave the yard between about 5:45 – 6 a.m. Currently, the first westbound train is scheduled to travel past Keele Yard at 6:01 a.m. Local residents are likely to hear two short horn sounds – required for safety – whenever a train is about to move inside the yard, as well as the sound of trains moving. Efforts to minimize noise will include ongoing noise monitoring, regular reminders to staff at Keele Yard to keep noise to a minimum, sounding subway horns only when necessary for safety and ensuring that the warm-up periods of subway workcars parked on outside storage tracks is kept to a minimum.

Subway workcars will generally leave Keele Yard shortly before the four passenger trains arrive at the yard for the night, and workcars will return to the yard minutes before the passenger trains leave the yard for morning service. Workcar storage in the yard will fluctuate depending on scheduled work in the west. [From TTC Notice]

Presto Effects

A new section has been added to the service memo listing changes that will require new Presto transfer definitions. For June 18, this section reads:

506/306 CARLTON – streetcar diversion/shuttle bus operation requires customers transferring between cars and buses for through travel

There are many cases where Presto cannot deal with legitimate transfers, and the TTC expects operators and riders to know how the rules vary from route to route. Even their own web site is inconsistent on this point:

On the main Presto page, they say:

Transfers using PRESTO

If you have a PRESTO card you no longer need a paper transfer. This is because a transfer is applied to your PRESTO card when you first tap onto a card reader. The transfer for your one-way continuous journey is valid for two hours from the first time you tap your card on a reader. Standard transfer rules apply.

More extensive descriptions of bus-to-other mode transfers are on the bus Presto page. Again, the rule is that no transfer is required.

But on a completely different page, the general one for bus routes, the TTC tells riders of an exception:

PRESTO card customers require a paper transfer on the following routes.

Transfers must be shown to station staff when entering Union or Royal York stations and to operators when boarding these buses. Please make sure you obtain a paper transfer at the start of your trip.

15 Evans
121 Fort York
72 Pape
48 Rathburn
73 Royal York
76 Royal York South

This information does not appear on the pages for the individual routes, nor does it appear on the pages describing fare rules.

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Reconstruction of Dundas & Parliament Streets

On Monday, May 15, the TTC began demolition of the intersection of Dundas & Parliament for complete replacement of the special work. By the morning of Saturday, May 20, most of the new track was in place although much of the concrete pour remains to be done as well as installation of the approach tracks connecting the neighbouring tangent rails to the intersection.

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Congestion on King Street Downtown: Spring 2017 Update

The King Street Transit Pilot study will hold its next public meeting on May 18 to review the proposed design for that street. As background to that study, this article includes a review of travel times over the King Street corridor in recent months.

Important issues raised by these data include:

  • Travel time issues on King are not restricted to peak periods or to weekdays.
  • Problems in the PM peak are generally worse than in the AM peak.
  • Conditions can be perfectly “normal” one day and severely upset on another. Some weekdays are consistently worse than others, but “abnormal” days occur often enough that they are part of the landscape, not rare exceptions.
  • Congestion is not confined to the pilot study area between Bathurst and Jarvis, but some portions of King Street see little effect from congestion. A “one size fits all” approach will not deal with all of King’s problems, and could produce little benefit in some areas. Expansion beyond the pilot area, if any, requires detailed understanding of just where and what the problems might be.

This is a chart-heavy article intended as background material for readers interested in what the route looks like today.

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The Reliable Unreliability of TTC Service

In a recent article, I reviewed the TTC’s Service Standards Update. These standards included targets for headway reliability which are extremely generous and allow the TTC to claim that services operate “to standard” when actual rider experience is less than ideal.

Reliability of service is a top concern for TTC riders, and it has also been identified by TTC staff. Where the problem lies is that the targets offer little incentive to improve or measurement of just how bad the situation really is.

When the TTC talks about reliability, they inevitably trot out excuses about traffic congestion and the difficulty of operating service in mixed traffic. This has been a standard response to issues with streetcar routes for as long as I can remember. However, the typical TTC rider is a bus passenger, and this group has flagged service reliability, frequency and crowding as issues just as important as for streetcar riders.

Regular readers will know that over the years I have published many analyses of route performance looking mainly at the streetcar system, but also at selected bus routes. Recently, I decided to expand this to a number of routes in Scarborough where the quality of bus service often comes up in debates about the Scarborough subway extension, and to revisit some of the routes affected by construction on the Spadina extension which has now pretty much wrapped up. Apologies to readers in Etobicoke because this gives a central/eastern slant to the routes reviewed here, but I have no doubt that route behaviour in our western suburb is similar to that on the rest of the network.

This post may give some readers that dreaded sense of “TL;DR” because of the amount of material it contains. It is intended partly as a reference (readers can look at their favourite routes, if present), and partly to establish beyond any doubt the pervasiveness of the problem with headway reliability facing the TTC. This problem exists across the network, and setting performance targets that simply normalize what is already happening is no way to (a) understand the severity of the problem or (b) provide any measurement of improvements, should they be attempted.

The data here are taken from January 2017. The analysis would have been published sooner but for a delay in receiving the data from the TTC, a problem that has now been rectified. As always, thanks to the TTC for providing the raw material for this work.

Although January is a winter month, the level of precipitation, and particularly of snow, was unusually low for Toronto, and so weather delays do not lead to anomalies in the data.

Toronto Precipitation and Temperatures for January 2017

The TTC’s current attitude to service reliability is to focus on conditions at terminals with the premise that if service leaves and arrives on time, then there is a good chance it will also be in good shape along the route. This is a misguided approach on two counts.

First and most important, there is little indication that service from terminals is actually managed to be reliable, and the “targets” in the standards provide a wide margin by which unreliability is considered acceptable. In particular, it is possible for services to leave termini running as bunches of two or more vehicles and still be considered “on target”.

Second, any variability in headway from a terminal will be magnified as buses travel along a route. Buses carrying larger headways (gaps) will have heavier loads and run late while buses closely following will catch up. The result can be pairs of buses operating at twice the advertised headway, and with uneven loads. Without active management of service at points along a route, the problems become worse and worse the further one progresses away from a trip’s origin. Again, the generous standards allow much of this service to be considered acceptable, and so there is no need, on paper, to actually manage what is happening.

TTC operators are a great bunch of people, overall, but the laissez faire attitude to headways allows those who prefer a leisurely trip across their route to run “hot” with impunity. The worst of them are, fortunately for riders, only a small group. The larger problem is the degree to which irregular headways are a normal situation across the system.

The balance of this article looks at several routes primarily for their behaviour near terminals as this matches the point where the TTC sets its targets, such as they are. To recap the Service Standards:

The TTC standards vary for very frequent (less than 5′), frequent (5′ to 10′) and infrequent (above 10′) services.

  • Very frequent services target a band of ±75% of the scheduled headway.
  • Frequent services target a band of ±50% of the scheduled headway.
  • Infrequent service aims for a range of 1 minute early to 5 minutes late.

The charts which follow look at actual headways, not scheduled values, and it is clear throughout that the typical range of values exceeds these standards.

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501 Queen Construction Projects for 2017

The TTC has announced the timing of various projects affecting the 501 Queen route through the 2017 construction season.

Previously announced work includes:

  • Reconstruction of The Queensway from Parkside to Humber Loop including the bridge deck at the Humber River
  • Reconstruction of Humber Loop and installation of a new substation to improve power on Lake Shore west of the loop
  • Reconstruction of track on Lake Shore to Symons Road (surface layer only) to replace rail prematurely corroded by electrolysis
  • Reconstruction of track on Lake Shore from Symons to Dwight (full reconstruction)
  • Toronto Water construction from Spadina to Bathurst
  • Replacement of the pedestrian bridge west of Yonge over Queen

Starting on Sunday, May 7, route 501 will be operated by buses with a structure similar to the streetcar service before it was split at Humber Loop. The turnback point for half of the service will be Park Lawn. This arrangement will be in place until Sunday, September 3 when streetcars will return to the central portion of the route.

Streetcars displaced from 501 Queen will be used on 511 Bathurst, 504 King (trippers) and 503 Kingston Road Tripper. 502 Downtowner will remain a bus operation.

Additional work is planned through the year that cannot be scheduled concurrently with City activities over the summer, and this will trigger other diversions and bus shuttles later in the year.

Toronto Water work on Coxwell will affect the intersection at Queen, and the 503 Kingston Road Tripper will revert to bus operation in August.

Track replacement at Coxwell will occur in September. Although streetcars will return to 501 Queen, they will only operate between Connaught Avenue (Russell Carhouse) and Roncesvalles. Shuttle buses will operate from Neville to Carlaw, and from Roncesvalles to Long Branch. It is unclear whether this actually means a return to shuttles as far east as Dufferin, or if the TTC plans some other scheme for the eastern terminal of the “501L” service. This arrangement will remain in place until October 14. Streetcar service to Neville will resume on October 15.

Track replacement at McCaul will occur in October/November, and this will require the familiar Church, King, Spadina diversion of all 501 cars around the site. Shuttle buses will operate between the Church and Spadina via Queen. This schedule will be in place until November 25, although if past history is repeated, the streetcars may come back to Queen once the work at McCaul is completed and the concrete has time to cure.

Streetcar service beyond Roncesvalles will not resume until the end of 2017.

 

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King Street Pilot: Public Meeting on May 18, 2017

The study for a pilot of changes to the central portion of King Street has reached the point where a recommended configuration is ready for public view and then on to Council.

Turnout for the first meeting at Metro Hall was huge with a substantial spillover into a second room, and so the coming session will be held in larger quarters.

Thursday, May 18th, 2017
6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
InterContinental Toronto Centre, Ballroom
225 Front St W, Toronto
(Front St W. & Simcoe St.)

Project Website

A media briefing is planned in advance of this event, and I will post details of the new proposals when they are available.

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TTC Updates Flexity Roll Out Plan (Updated)

The TTC has issued an updated plan for implementation of the new Flexity streetcars.

This is taken from a Briefing Note that details recent revisions to the plan plus details of the service to be operated on 512 St. Clair once it is fully converted to the new cars.

As of mid-2016, plans were somewhat different for the conversion of routes to the new cars:

  • By the end of 2016: 510 Spadina, 509 Harbourfront, 514 Cherry, 511 Bathurst, 505 Dundas and 501 Queen (part)
  • By the end of 2017: 501 Queen (complete) and 504 King
  • By the end of 2018: 512 St. Clair and 502 Downtowner (part)
  • During 2019: 502 Downtowner (complete), 503 Kingston Road and 506 Carlton

The 512 St. Clair line has moved up in the sequence with conversion beginning in September 2017 and finishing (assuming Bombardier’s deliveries stay on schedule) in February 2018. This route is now overcrowded and needs more capacity. The only way this can be provided is with more and/or larger cars.

The planned service level will use fewer cars, although they will be much larger than those now in service on St. Clair, with the result that greater capacity will operate on the route. The scheduled capacities shown below are based on 74 passengers/car on the existing CLRVs and 130/car on the new Flexitys.

It is worth asking here how many other TTC routes are in this condition, and why a report detailing the degree of the shortfall was not an essential  part of the budget when Toronto was told that the TTC’s planned service was adequate to meet demand.

What does exist in the Capital Budget (albeit in the detailed “Blue Books” which are issued after the budget is finalized) is the fleet plan. Although the timing of route conversions has changed, what remains constant is the planned peak vehicle requirement for each route.

In the table below, the CLRV and ALRV figures are the PM Peak scheduled service for various dates when these routes were operating entirely with streetcars and with no diversions.

Date CLRV ALRV Flexity Capacity Ratio
501 Queen / 508 Lake Shore Mar 2016 6 33 34 1.1 (*)
502 Downtowner Sept 2015 7 8 2.0
503 Kingston Road Sept 2015 6 6 1.8
504 King May 2017 33 7 24 + ALRVs (*)
505 Dundas Jan 2017 19 19 1.8
506 Carlton Jan 2017 29 24 1.5
509 Harbourfront May 2017 8 N/C
510 Spadina May 2017 16 N/C
511 Bathurst Sept 2016 11 11 1.8
512 St. Clair May 2017 22 18 1.4
514 Cherry May 2017 9 N/C

Notes:

  • The actual capacity change on Queen will be greater than 1.1 because many of the “ALRV” runs are now operated with the smaller CLRVs although there has been no adjustment in the schedule to reflect the reduced capacity of the route.
  • The capacity change for King will depend on how many of the 30 ALRVs that will be overhauled for service until 2024 are assigned to this route. The fleet plan indicates that these ALRVs will have to be replaced in a future order. If the TTC were to operate 24 Flexitys plus 20 ALRVs, this would add approximately 65% to the route’s capacity. Other gains might be obtained through transit priority measures now under study, but the actual quantity remains to be seen.

The total of Flexitys in the table above is 177 vehicles which, allowing for 15% spares (a relatively low level for the TTC which uses a higher number for its bus fleet) brings the total to the 204 vehicle fleet now on order. A five percent increase in the spare factor is equivalent to 10 more cars.

Additional cars will be needed to handle ridership growth, replacement of the ALRV fleet, and new routes in the Waterfront. The Fleet Plan provides for 15 Waterfront vehicles, but this number was based on a smaller version of the LRT network than may eventually be built considering the Unilever site development and plans for the Western Waterfront line.

The Fleet Plan notes that the 264-car combined capacity of Leslie, Russell and Roncesvalles will be exhausted by 2027 when a new carhouse will be required. This would not likely be a large facility and could be more of a satellite storage yard. The TTC will have to begin thinking about its need for more streetcars and storage within this decade.

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Reconstruction of The Queensway and Humber Loop (Updated January 28, 2018)

Updated January 28, 2018: Construction photos added for Humber Loop.

January 28, 2018

The track for the new Queen car loop is substantially in place, and there is one major change – the conversion of what was once a passing track intended for use in coupling PCC trains (50 years ago) to a tail track long enough to hold a Flexity car. It is unusual in two ways. First, the TTC has systematically removed tail tracks everywhere they existed. Second, it is a dogleg shaped track so that a car sitting on it will not be in a straight line.

The Long Branch side of Humber Loop is still a construction site, although the new substation is now physically in place.

On The Queensway, concrete is complete all the way into Humber Loop, but the overhead supports have only been installed as far west as the South Kingsway underpass.

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Buses Vs Streetcars on 501 Lake Shore Service

The year 2017 brought a long-term shutdown of the 501 Queen street service west of Sunnyside Loop to permit various construction projects on The Queensway, at Humber Loop and on Lake Shore Boulevard. Although work will not be seriously underway until the weather improves, the year-long shutdown also gives the TTC some breathing room in its ongoing problem of streetcar fleet availability as it awaits the long-overdue Bombardier Flexity order.

City TV recently reported that riders on Lake Shore are very pleased with the replacement bus service. That’s little surprise considering how much more frequent the buses arrive compared to the streetcars. A well-known aspect of service evaluation is that riders are much more sensitive to waiting time, especially in bad weather, than to in-vehicle travel time, especially if riding conditions are moderately comfortable.

There is also the question of comparative travel speeds with bus operations versus streetcars. Do the buses make better time than streetcars and, if so, when, where and why?

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