Service Analysis

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“One City” To Serve Them All

Updated June 27 at 5:20pm:  I have written a political analysis of today’s announcement for the Torontoist website that will probably go live tomorrow morning.  A line-by-line review of the plan will go up here later the same day.

TTC Chair Karen Stintz and Vice-Chair Glen De Baeremaeker will formally announce a new plan called “One City” on June 27 at 10:30.

The plan already has coverage on the Star and Globe websites.  Maps:  Globe Star

I will comment in more detail after their press conference, but two points leap off the page at me:

  • The proposed funding scheme for the $30-billion plan presumes 1/3 shares from each of the Provincial and Federal governments.  This money is extremely unlikely to show up, especially Ottawa’s share.  From Queen’s Park, some of the funding is from presumed “commitments” to current projects such as the Scarborough RT/LRT conversion which would be replaced by a subway extension.  The rest is uncertain.
  • The “plan” is little more than a compendium of every scheme for transit within the 416 that has been floated recently in various quarters (including this blog).  What is notable is the fact that glitches in some of the existing ideas (notably the fact that the Waterfront East line ends at Parliament) are not addressed.  The whole package definitely needs some fine tuning lest it fall victim to the dreaded problem of all maps — once you draw them, it’s almost impossible to change them.

For those who keep an eye on political evolution, the brand “One City” surfaced in April 2012 in a speech made by Karen Stintz at the Economic Club of Canada.  This idea of a new, unifying transit brand appears to have been cooking for some time.

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Analysis of 36 Finch West for November 2011 & March 2012 (Part I) (Updated)

Updated May 28 at 17:35:  The graphs showing the “percent ontime” information have been updated to clarify some of the headings, and to add summary pages showing the percentages separate from the other displays.  Commentary about this has been added to the end of the article.

We hear a lot from the TTC about “customer service”.  A fundamental part of the TTC’s “product” is the actual movement of people to and fro in the city.  Clean vehicles, friendly staff, detailed and accurate web information — these are all part of the package.  But without reliable service at the bus and streetcar stops, the rest is window dressing, an elaborate stage set for a theatre without a show, a supermarket with stale food on half-empty shelves.

In many past articles, I have reviewed the operation of various streetcar lines, but it’s worth looking at some of the major bus routes too.  These are routes with extremely frequent service and heavy passenger demands.  Some are candidates for LRT.  How do they operate?  What is their service quality given that they are unconstrained by tracks and overhead?  Over the next few months, I hope to review a number of routes to see their similarities and differences.

This is a long and rather technical article, but I wanted to include a fair amount of detail as an alternative to simply saying “the service is screwed up”.  This affects how the service is operated, how it is perceived by riders, how it might be analyzed by the TTC, and most importantly that a catch-all explanation such as “traffic congestion” is too simplistic a response to complaints.

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Service Changes Effective June 18, 2012

The TTC will implement many service changes on June 18, 2012 mostly for seasonal changes in demand.  The lion’s share of these are service cuts, with a few increases.  These are detailed on the first six pages of the document linked below.

Construction will continue in many parts of the city notably affecting the streetcar system.

Waterfront / Spadina

The separate operation of 509 Harbourfront and 510 Spadina will continue into June, but the Spadina streetcar service will be replaced with buses running in mixed traffic to permit construction.  This includes both track repairs and changes to the safety islands in anticipation of the new LFLRVs and the implementation of the Presto fare card.

Service on 511 Bathurst will be increased to absorb some of the traffic that might otherwise attempt to use the 510 Spadina service.

Whether this arrangement, with buses stuck in the often-jammed traffic lanes of Spadina, will work at all remains to be seen.  I cannot help wondering why the work is not staged in such a way that buses could use the right-of-way for at least part of the distance with police assistance at merge points.

Welding of new rail for the reconstruction of track on Queen’s Quay is now in progress in front of the Redpath’s Sugar site.  Tentative plans have streetcar service coming off of the 509 Harbourfront car at the end of July for the beginning of construction.

Queen Street East / McCaul Street

Work will continue on Queen near Russell Carhouse, but the reconstruction of McCaul Street will close McCaul Loop.  During this period, the branch of the 501 operating from Russell to McCaul will be extended to Wolseley Loop at Bathurst Street.  Whether it will actually reach this destination in the time allowed is quite another matter, and I expect to see a lot of cars short-turning.

Dufferin Street

Dufferin Street will be closed to transit between King and Queen for track and water main work.  The branches of 29 Dufferin which normally operate to Dufferin Loop will be short-turned at Queen via Gladstone.  The branches which operate to the Princes’ Gate will divert via Queen, Shaw and King around the construction zone.

2012.06.18 Service Changes

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King/Bathurst Reconstruction Project (Update 8)

Update 8:  August 10, 2011 at 7:40 am:

Construction of the new safety islands has completed early, and the 511 is back to its normal routing.

Update 7:  July 26, 2011 at 8:00 am:

The TTC has revised dates for resumption of service through the intersection:

  • Wednesday July 27:  504 King and 508 Lake Shore routes return to King Street
  • Saturday July 30:  511 Bathurst route returns temporarily for Caribana
  • Tuesday August 2:  511 Bathurst route resumes diversion via Spadina
  • Monday August 15:  511 Bathurst route diversion ends

Update 6:  July 24, 2011 at 5:00 am:

An excellent overhead view of the completed intersection dated July 17 is available on Flickr.

Service on King Street through the intersection resumes on Monday, July 25.

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Roncesvalles Renewed Celebration (Updated)

Updated July 24, 2011 at 11:00 pm:  Links to archival photos of Roncesvalles Avenue from the City Archives have been added to the end of this article.

Apologies to those who expected to find the PCCs running on Ronces.  In turned out that one car had already been hired out for another event, and the second PCC was in the shop for repairs.  Two CLRVs don’t have quite the same effect.

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Service Changes in July 2011

In a previous post, I described the diversions that will begin on July 11 around the reconstruction of the King/Bathurst grand union.

Beginning July 18 and continuing until early September, the 506 Carlton diversion around the Gerrard Street bridge, originally announced for June 19, will actually get underway.  Trackwork on the bridge has been in rough shape with slow orders for some time.  The planned date for return of streetcars to Gerrard Street is September 11.

Westbound service will run via Broadview, Dundas and Parliament.  Eastbound service will run via Parliament, Queen and Broadview.  Cars have been added to the schedule to compensate for the added mileage.

Effective July 31:

192 Airport Rocket: On the northbound trip, buses will serve the upper level bus stop at Jetliner first, then the arrival level at Terminal 1 and the arrival level at Terminal 3.  On the southbound trip, buses will exit the Airport via the ramp to southbound Hwy 427.  These changes are intended to free up running time to improve service reliability.

504 King: Streetcar service will return to Roncesvalles Avenue, although King cars will continue their diversion around the track and overhead work in Parkdale via Shaw and Queen.  There are only minor changes to some off-peak headways so that the running times work out.  However, I suspect with the traffic congestion on Queen and the inevitable streetcar short turns, service on Roncesvalles will not be as good as what is now provided by a dedicated bus shuttle.

Runnymede Station: The construction at Runnymede Station is supposed to be officially completed now, and 71 Runnymede, 77 Swansea and 79 Scarlett Road will return to their normal routings.

512 St. Clair: Overhead between St. Clair and St. Clair West stations will be retrofitted for pantograph compatibility.  Buses will replace streetcars on this section of the route after 10:00 pm weekdays, and all day on weekends.  The TTC claims that there will be timed transfers at St. Clair West.  Regular service resumes on September 4.

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Streetcars Return to Roncesvalles, Sort Of

Work is now complete on Roncesvalles Avenue, and it is open for streetcar service.

Starting June 25, carhouse trips for the Carlton and Dundas routes will resume via Roncesvalles, but the 504 King bus shuttle will remain until July 30 because that is the next regular change in TTC schedules.  It is possible that some streetcar shuttles may appear, but the TTC’s press release is a bit vague on the details.  The TTC’s route diversion page for King has not been updated to reflect the change.

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TTC Meeting Wrapup May 2011

The TTC Agenda for May 11 contained a number of items of interest.  In a previous article, I reviewed the preliminary report for the Finch bus service improvements.

Items detailed below the break are:

  • PRESTO Update
  • Adam Giambrone’s Office Expenses
  • Station Ambassadors
  • Chief General Manager’s Report for January-February 2011
  • 510 Spadina Additional Service South of King Street
  • Additional Commissioners

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South Spadina Headways: What the Riders See

The matter of service on Spadina south of King has been before the TTC on two previous occasions, most recently in March 2011.

In brief, local riders and their Councillor, Adam Vaughan, complain that service is poor and riders are packed into streetcars.  TTC staff reply that the average load on a streetcar south of King is 29, and therefore additional service is not justified.  This matter was held down in March in order to get updated riding counts on the route.

The problem with the TTC’s analysis is that it looks at overall averages, not at the specifics of actual experience on the route.  Most importantly, if a service that is supposed to run every 7’30” is badly disrupted and unreliable, then wide headways will be common.  Because more riders accumulate waiting for long gaps than short ones, the “average” rider’s experience will be a long wait followed by an overcrowded car.  This situation exists on many TTC routes, but it is particularly troubling if that is the case on a short route with an entirely private right-of-way.

First, let’s have a look at how well behaved headways are in this area.  Before you even open the file, I will warn you that it’s a real mess.  The intention is to show the mess before attempting an analysis.

South of King Northbound Headways February 2010

Those of you familiar with my previous analyses of TTC’s vehicle monitoring data will recognize this chart as a scatter diagram of headways by time of day.  Each dot represents one car.  The vertical position on the chart is the headway as seen just south of King Street northbound, and the horizontal position is the time of day.

If the service were well-behaved, these points should be clustered on either side of the scheduled headway through the day.  However, the points appear as a cloud with little discernible concentration.  This means that the actual headways seen by customers are essentially random, and they are spread over a wide range.  Many cars run close together, and gaps over 10 minutes are common.

My next step was to break down this information based on the TTC’s standard that service ±3 minutes of schedule is considered to be “on time”.  Of course riders don’t care about the schedule, only the headway, and it is the headway that determines the wait time and average load on a car.  For the purpose of this analysis, I subdivided the information about each car into three categories:

  • Early (headway less than 4.5 minutes on a 7.5 minute schedule)
  • Late (headway greater than 10.5 minutes on a 7.5 minute schedule)
  • On time (headways between 4.5 and 10.5 minutes)

It’s worth noting that, assuming a uniform arrival rate for passengers, that a car carrying a 10.5 minute headway will have over twice the passengers than one carrying 4.5 minutes.

Headway Distribution ±3 minutes South Of King Northbound February 2010

There are four pages for this chart, one for each half-hour interval from 0700 to 0900.  The vertical bars represent each weekday, and the rightmost bar averages the values over the month.

The dark red portion of each bar shows how many cars were “on time”.  The cream and blue portions are the “early” and “late” cars respectively.

On a 7’30” headway, there should be 4 cars in each half hour, although minor variations may give us 3 or 5 where a car expected in one period actually arrived in an adjacent one.

Between 0700 and 0730, things are fairly well behaved, but the service becomes less reliable as the AM peak continues.  At least half of the service fails the TTC’s own “on time” test, even averaged over the entire month.  For some periods and days, most of the headways lie outside of the acceptable range.  This means that a large proportion of the riders on the south end of Spadina receive far worse service than is advertised, or even what is considered acceptable by the TTC’s own standards.

If we considered a tighter standard allowing only ±2 minutes, the situation is even worse.

Headway Distribution ±2 minutes South of King Northbound February 2010

When the TTC reports its riding counts, it does not include any information about the reliability of service.  Moreover, if short turn trips are mixed in, these may be counted and dilute the average even though they are not of use to all riders.

In the case of northbound service at King, this isn’t an issue.  However, short turns southbound do affect the quality of service on Queen’s Quay eastbound to Union Station, as well as westbound for riders wishing to travel northwest to locations on Spadina.  During the AM peak, almost all of the scheduled service reaches Union Station, albeit on an erratic headway.  However, starting about 9am, short turning at Queen’s Quay Loop becomes fairly common and disrupts service reliability on Queen’s Quay.

York Eastbound Headways February 2010

This chart contains five pages.  The first is the monthly headway scatter diagram similar to the one shown above for service northbound at King.  Once again we see a cloud of data points spread over a wide range of values.  It is worth mentioning what the scheduled headway is supposed to be here:

  • AM peak: 7’30”
  • Midday: 5’40”
  • PM peak:  6’00”
  • Early evening:  6’00”
  • Late evening:  6’00”

The next four pages of the chart break down the cloud of data into individual weeks and add trend lines for each day.  These lines show how the typical headways are, overall, higher than the scheduled value.  This is due to short turns at Queen’s Quay Loop.  The variation in headways with many values well over 9 minutes (the high end of the “on time” standard for a 6 minute headway) shows just how far actual service quality is from what the TTC advertises.

Soon, the bus network will switch over completely to GPS-based vehicle tracking, and the data stream is supposed to be made public.  Whether this actually happens depends in part on the success of TTC managers, who prefer to hide information about service quality, in convincing the new Commission of the need for this secrecy.  In our new era of “Customer Service” and “Transparency”, there will be no excuse, and we may finally start to see just how bad service is on the system as a whole.

Meanwhile on Spadina, TTC staff will again claim that there is lots of service.  The problem is that it does not run reliably.  Capacity could be provided out of thin air simply by spacing cars regularly so that wait times were predictable and loads accumulated more evenly.  However, that would require the TTC actually do something about its service rather than gripe about the cost of more service, the lack of equipment or traffic congestion.