Service Analysis

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6 Bay and 94 Wellesley Service Analysis for January 2016 (Part II)

In previous articles, I reviewed the operation of 6 Bay and 94 Wellesley for the month of January 2016. This post updates that review with a different way of looking at headway statistics over the route and by time of day. The new chart format consolidates information previously shown only in separate chart sets.

In earlier analyses, I presented information for headways (the time interval between vehicles) at a point over a month in charts like this:

6 Bay Headways at Charles St. Southbound

This set of charts includes several pages of detail showing individual vehicle headways, day-by-day, with statistics for the entire month at the end. This is useful for looking at behaviour at a point, but another way to summarize the data is to bring the stats for all timepoints on the route onto a single set of charts.

The new charts use the data shown on the weekday, Saturday and Sunday statistics pages from each timepoint set (such as the one linked above) and merge them on a single chart for each direction and type of day.

6_201601_MonthHeadways_TPSummary

94_201601_MonthHeadways_TPSummary

On each chart, the average headways are shown as solid lines while the standard deviation values are dotted and use a lighter version of the same colour as the corresponding averages.

The first page for 6 Bay shows weekday statistics from the south end of the route at Jarvis & Queens Quay to the north end at Bedford & Davenport. The line for Bedford (purple) breaks away from the other values because half of the service is scheduled to short turn at Yorkville during the peak periods. Generally speaking, the averages for each timepoint will stay close to each other except during transitional periods between service levels (the change does not necessarily complete within the same hour over the entire route) and in the case of major disruptions or diversions.

What the charts show, however, is the magnitude and evolution of the standard deviation in headways along the route. This is a value that measures the degree to which data values are close to or scattered around the average value. If the SD is low, then most of the individual values are close to the average, and therefore the headways are all close to the average value. If the SD is high, then headways are erratic. The average may be well-behaved and fit the schedule, but times between individual vehicles can vary considerably. Typically, about 2/3 of the data points will lie within one SD either way of the average. Therefore, if the average is 5 minutes, and the SD is 8 minutes, 2/3 of the data points lie between 2 and 8 minutes. The rest are beyond this range.

This has some relation to the TTC’s own goals for headway reliability. Until fairly recently, vehicles were considered to be “on time” if they were within 3 minutes of their scheduled time. On occasion, the TTC would report this value relative to scheduled headway, rather than to the timetable, to acknowledge that riders care more about reliability than the “on time performance” of individual vehicles. This measure has been replaced with a new target in which vehicles should leave terminals no more than 1 minute early and no more than 5 minutes late. This is ostensibly the same 6 minute window, but with three important differences:

  • The measure is always to timetable values, not to headways. Service can be operating on a regular spacing, but be off schedule, and therefore rank poorly. However, “on time” performance is a TTC goal because it minimizes overtime payments.
  • The measure is only at the terminal point on the assumption that if service begins its trip in good shape, this guarantees reliable service further down the line.
  • Measurement at the terminal will expose excessive short turning because vehicles that do not reach the terminal cannot be counted as part of the “on time” metric.

This sounds good in theory, but the idea runs aground on two important factors.

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Analysis of Service on Route 94 Wellesley Bus for January 2016

This is the second of two articles reviewing the operation of a comparatively short downtown bus route to see how it behaves in comparison to longer and busier routes. The first article covered 6 Bay for the same period.

The schedule for 94 Wellesley was adjusted in September 2015 to provide added running time, and to improve service so that the eastern part of the route was in the “10 Minute Network”.

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Analysis of Service on Route 6 Bay Bus for January 2016

In previous articles reviewing the quality of service on various routes, I have concentrated on long, major lines such as Queen, Dufferin, Finch West and Lawrence East. However, a review of a few shorter routes has been on my “to do” list for a while because the problems that beset longer routes should not be present.

This brings me to routes 6 Bay and 94 Wellesley (the subject of a future article). Both of these routes are quite short, and they operate in the “old” city of Toronto mostly south of Bloor Street.

6 Bay went through the travails of construction at Union Station and, to a lesser extent, on Queens Quay, but that is now finished. 94 Wellesley didn’t have construction to deal with, but until September 2015, it had an old schedule which the bus operators could not meet.

How are these routes running today?

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New Service for the Waterfront and King Street

At its meeting on March 23, 2016, the TTC Board will consider two reports on major revisions to transit service in the Waterfront and on King Street.

The changes will address a backlog of route and service issues in one package:

  • Through routing of the 72 Pape bus from Pape Station, suspended during construction at Union Station, will be restored, albeit on a different route.
  • Additional service will be provided on Queens Quay East by the 72C Pape to Union Station branch, although this is likely to be infrequent.
  • A new route, 121 Fort York – Esplanade will be created composed of the former Esplanade portion of the 72 Pape (later 172 Cherry) bus route plus an extension serving the Railway Lands and Fort York.
  • A new streetcar route, 514 Cherry, will operate as an overlay to the 504 King car replacing some or all of the supplementary bus service between Dufferin Loop and the new Distillery Loop on Cherry Street south of Mill Street. This service will operate with Flexity streetcars, subject to availability.
  • The conversion of 511 Bathurst to low floor operation will be delayed by about three months.

The changes will be implemented on June 19, 2016. The detailed service plans have not yet been published, but there is some information in the staff reports.

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Charlotte Street Reconstruction

The TTC will be rebuilding the track at the intersections of King & Charlotte and Adelaide & Charlotte beginning on March 29. Charlotte Street forms the eastern part of the loop used by 510 Spadina cars at King Street.

For the period from March 29 to April 10 while King & Charlotte is under construction:

  • 504 King streetcars will divert eastbound via Spadina, Queen and Church, while westbound service will divert via York, Queen and Spadina.
  • 510 Spadina streetcars will all operate at least to Queens Quay loop.
  • A 504 shuttle bus service will operate between Strachan and Church diverting around the construction via Richmond westbound and Front eastbound.

For the period from April 11 to 26 while Adelaide & Charlotte is under construction services will operate on their normal routes, although 510 Spadina cars will continue to operate to Queens Quay rather than turning at Adelaide.

 

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Reviewing the New Schedules on 501 Queen for January 2016 (Part II)

In January 2016, the TTC implemented new schedules on route 501 Queen making the following changes:

  • The route was split into two sections with an independent Humber to Long Branch service (in effect, a return of the long absent 507 Long Branch route), and
  • Running times were increased so that scheduled and real-world travel times were better matched and short turns could be reduced.

The first article on this subject reviewed headway behaviour (the space between cars) with the new schedules. This article turns to running times (the time required to get from A to B) and service behaviour at terminals.

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Reviewing the New Schedules on 501 Queen for January 2016 (Part I)

Effective January 3, 2016, the TTC introduced a major revision in service on the 501 Queen route. The changes included:

  • Substantially more running time was allocated for almost all periods so that cars would not fall late thanks to congestion and heavy demand, and most of the service could reach the terminals.
  • The route was split at Humber Loop (see note below) so that the Humber-Neville service operated independently of the Humber-Long Branch service, the arrangement that had been in place until March 1995. This is supposed to be “temporary” pending the availability of enough cars to operate the full line with the longer ALRVs or new Flexitys. Service to Long Branch operates with CLRVs (the shorter streetcars) except for some runs that are through-routed from the main part of the route.
  • The section of the route west of Humber Loop was added to the “10 minute network” so that it is guaranteed frequent service at all hours (except overnight).

(Note: Due to the condition of the “Long Branch” side of Humber Loop, the service captive to the west end of the line was discontinued for the last week of January, and “Long Branch” cars ran through to Roncesvalles Carhouse as their eastern terminus.)

The “before” and “after” service designs are summarized in the following table.

501_ServiceHistory_201601

In this article, I will review the operation of the 501 Queen route in December 2015 and January 2016 with a focus on headways (the time between cars), reliability (variation in the headways) and the quality of service on outer ends of the line (the compound effect of reliability and short turns). In the second part of this article I will turn to the effect of additional running time in the schedules.

General Observations

Service in January 2016 is much more reliable, especially on the outer ends of the route as the need to short turn cars simply to stay on schedule is much reduced. On the west end of the line, service on Lake Shore is considerably improved both because this is now part of the “10 minute network” and because cars are now dedicated to serving the segment west of Humber.

Short turns still do occur, although for the most part this is now due more to local incidents such as collisions than congestion. In other words, short turns occasionally spike at a specific time and day rather than being chronic throughout all days and hours of service.

Weekend service was particularly bad in December partly because there is less (or no) unscheduled extra service to fill gaps, and partly because line management seems to apply to weekends with the focus being on “on time” performance rather than actual service levels. This problem is reduced but not eliminated in January.

Wide gaps in service and the complementary effect, bunching, were much more prevalent in December than in January, but unreliable headways are still a problem, albeit at a lower level. Combined with the higher likelihood that cars will run through to their advertised destinations, the length of time a rider must await a through car, and the anguish about whether one will ever appear, is improved.

Cars depart inbound from terminals more reliably, generally within the TTC’s goal of a six minute “on time” window. However, this goal still allows for uneven spacing relative to a six minute scheduled headway, and by the time cars reach Yonge Street, the unevenness of terminal departures is magnified. On Lake Shore, headways are uneven at times even with the dedicated local service simply because cars do not leave terminals on a regular spacing. A six minute “on time” window allows most of these to hit the target, but they still contribute to uneven service

The added running time allows more service to reach its scheduled destination, but during some periods it also contributes to noticeably slower operation. If the schedules are padded, then it should be possible to space service midway along the route. From a traffic viewpoint, the question then becomes whether it is better to have streetcars sit killing time at key locations rather than dawdling along the route to burn up excess time in the schedule.

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Does More Running Time Improve Service?

[This is a long article, and I won’t hold it against anyone for failing to read all the way to the end, or not looking at every page of every chart. The issue here is a system-wide one of how service is scheduled and managed using routes where the TTC is attempting to improve operations as a reference.]

At the TTC Board Meeting of December 2015, Chief Service Officer Richard Leary gave a presentation “Performance Based Service” outlining the work done to date to improve the reliability of surface routes. [A YouTube video of the presentation is also available.]

The focus of changes made to several schedules has been that end-to-end running times should reflect actual on-street conditions rather than presenting drivers with an unattainable goal that cannot be met during typical conditions, let alone anything unusual such as poor weather or unusually bad traffic congestion.

The changes to date are summarized in the table below.

201512_Leary_AddedRTT

In some cases, the extra running time is provided simply by widening the headway. For example, if a route takes one hour, and it has a bus every 10 minutes, that’s six buses. Extending the headway to 11 minutes would change the round trip to 66 minutes with no added cost. In theory, if this allows vehicles to stay on time, better service might actually be provided because all buses would show up as planned. That, however, depends on them being properly spaced so that their capacity is evenly used.

In other cases, where the problem is not just scheduled time but also capacity, more vehicles can be added. In the example above, a seventh bus would allow the headway to stay at 10 minutes while the trip time went up to 70. With the long-standing problems of a constrained fleet, this is only possible in off-peak periods, or by raiding other routes for vehicles.

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501 Queen Service Design Effective January 3, 2016

The TTC has now split the 501 Queen route at Humber Loop on a temporary basis to allow concentration of the larger “ALRV” streetcars (the two-section articulated cars) on the main part of the route east of Humber, while “CLRV”s (the standard one-section cars) provide service from Humber to Long Branch on a more frequent service than before.

The “507 Long Branch” route is back in everything but name except for late evenings when some cars from Neville run through to Long Branch.

Service between Humber and Long Branch Loops is provided by a dedicated fleet of five or six cars operating at a 10 minute headway until mid-evening every day. Early evening service is provided by five cars on all days.

Starting at about 10:00 pm, some of the service west of Humber is provided by through trips originating at Neville Loop. Three cars remain on a Long Branch to Humber service with generous recovery times to make the integrated 9 minute headway work properly. It will be interesting to see how well managed these cars are (or not) and whether they actually split the gap between cars to and from Neville, or run close behind them. If the latter, then the advertised “ten minute headway” on Lakeshore will fall apart late in the evening.

Eastbound from Humber, there will be a mix of cars from Long Branch as well as Queen service scheduled to turn back at Humber. This is, in effect, the current schedule with every other inbound car originating from the two terminals. Again, an essential part of service reliability will be that these cars leave on the scheduled 9 minute spacing, not with a pair every 18 minutes.

The service transitions occur at different times depending on the location and direction of travel:

  • First car from Neville destined for Long Branch: About 9:00 pm
  • First car from Yonge destined for Long Branch: About 9:30 pm
  • First car from Long Branch destined for Neville: About 10:40 pm

During the late evening, service at Humber will be provided on two separate platforms for each direction:

  • From roughly 11 pm and 1 am, eastbound service from Humber Loop will be provided by a mix of cars originating from Long Branch, and cars from Neville terminating at Humber. These use different platforms because of the track layout. It is not yet clear whether the cars from Neville will load on the outbound track (as they did 20 years ago) or on the poorly paved area beside the inbound track.
  • From roughly 10 pm to 2:40 am, westbound service from Humber Loop will be provided with some service on the “Long Branch” side of the loop and some on the “Humber” side outbound. For some reason, the TTC has scheduled the last outbound car, weekdays, on the Long Branch side at exactly the same time as a car on the Humber side, so that there is a scheduled pair of cars westbound to Long Branch. The weekend schedules work better.

Some of the information on the published schedules for the new service is wrong in that some running-in trips to carhouses are mis-identified, and Long Branch trips do not appear on westbound timetables for the east end of the line implying considerably worse service than is actually scheduled. The complete schedules are accurately available in the TTC’s Open Data feed, but making sense of this requires some scripting to assemble the raw information into a comprehensible format.

Concurrently with these changes, running time increases are provided over much of the route to improve schedule performance. The table below shows a few of the changes as examples.

Neville to Humber Round Trip    Travel   Recovery   Total
                                 Time      Time
Weekday Midday
December 2015                    136'       12'      148'
January 2016                     158'        7'      165'

Saturday Afternoon
December 2015                    136'       14'      150'
January 2016                     172'       10'      182'

Sunday Afternoon
December 2015                    126'        6'      132'
January 2016                     164'        7'      171'

How well the service will operate under the new schedules will depend a great deal on line management. It is one thing to stay “on time” and quite another to maintain spacing, especially where services merge as at Humber Loop. In theory, being “on time” should ensure this, but the TTC’s interpretation of that phrase has enough leeway to accept very erratic service as “on time”.

Meanwhile, thanks to a technical foul-up with the schedule feed to NextBus (which might be either at the TTC or NextBus end), vehicle position displays and arrival time projections on this route are totally unreliable as of the launch date, January 3. None of the service west of Humber, and much of the service east of there is missing. This makes tracking of line performance by observers, let alone use of NextBus by riders, impossible. (Displays for other routes with new schedules, notably 510 Spadina, are also affected.)

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TTC Surface Route Statistics 2011-2014

The TTC recently published statistics for its surface routes for 2014, adding to the online collection including 2011 and 2012.

For convenience in comparing figures from the three sets, I have consolidated them into a pair of tables.

Stats20112014

This table is ordered by route number and contains the following fields:

  • Route number
  • Route name
  • Weekday ridership
  • AM Peak vehicles
  • PM Peak vehicles
  • Vehicle Hours per day
  • Vehicle Kilometres per day

Notes:

  • In 2011 and 2012, some route statistics were consolidated whereas in 2014 they are shown separately.
  • Data were published for weekends, night and downtown express routes only in 2014.
  • Riding counts are not updated every year on every route. Where the same value appears in two years, most likely there has been no new count.

Stats20112014Summary

This table consolidates the information by type of route.

  • The “14x” routes are the downtown express buses for which data were only published in 2014.
  • The “19x” routes are the “rocket” express buses.
  • “Riders” are unlinked trips or “boardings”. One continuous trip can produce multiple boardings depending on the number of transfers.

The total number of riders by type of service can be subject to error if a considerable proportion of the routes do not have new riding counts (e.g. streetcars in 2012). Note that some of the 2011 counts are also from previous years.

The ratio of riders to service provided is expressed relative to AM Peak vehicles, to Vehicle Hours operated, and to Vehicle Kilometres operated.

The vehicle speeds are based on the reported hours and kilometres operated. To the extent that the hours include layovers (which on some routes can be a considerable proportion of the scheduled time), the speeds could be understated although this would be more likely to show up on a route-by-route calculation. This particularly affects night routes where running times are extended to be a multiple of the 30 minute headways.

Note that despite the importance placed on “express” buses (the 14x and 19x series), the vast majority (95%) of bus trips is carried on local services. Productivity of the downtown express routes is particularly poor.

Streetcar routes operate in more congested areas with higher passenger loads and more frequent stops. Their boarding ratios per peak vehicle and per vehicle hour are about 50% higher than for the bus routes reflecting the higher capacity of streetcars.