Service Analysis

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St. Clair Follies Fall 2009 Update

Word reached me this morning that plans for the St. Clair car continue to fall short of announcements, and that design screwups are still with us.

Opening to Keele

Although service will be extended to Earlscourt Loop at Lansdowne on December 20, service to Gunn’s loop is not expected to resume until August 2010.  The reason for this is that construction delays and design changes have pushed work well into the winter, when it is impractical and/or very expensive, and the west end of the line won’t be finished until good weather returns in the spring.

Oakwood Loop

This loop will not be available for streetcars because the overhead fittings are not available.  The TTC has been building the overhead on St. Clair to be fully pantograph compliant.  Why?  Because at some distant future time, they actually think St. Clair will become part of the Transit City network operating with Transit City cars from Black Creek Carhouse.

There is no connection between St. Clair and Eglinton, but this would be included in the Jane LRT.  There are two small problems:

  • The Jane LRT is not yet funded, and is unlikely to open before 2020.  Current plans show 2016, but that date assumed a more generous ongoing source of transit capital than we now have.  Moreover, it is unclear whether the southern part of the Jane route will be underground, and this would affect an interchange with an extended St. Clair route.  Indeed, the Jane route may never extend south of Eglinton and could operate as a branch off of the Eglinton LRT. 
  • There is a strong possibility that the Transit City network will be built to standard gauge.  If so, its cars will not be able to operate over the TTC gauge St. Clair route.

It is unclear whether the TTC is attempting to sever the St. Clair route from the rest of the “legacy” system to avoid operations on the Bathurst Street hill.

Dufferin & St. Clair

This intersection was the source of much debate during design.  At one point, the eastbound stop was going to be nearside due to constraints on the sidewalk a farside stop would entail.  However, the desire for a left turn lane east-to-north prevailed, and the stop was built farside.

There is a small problem.  The platform is wide enough (it was built extra-wide in anticipation of heavy use at this stop) and the roadway narrow enough that large vehicles cannot easily make the north-to-east turn.  The brand new stop will be rebuilt and narrowed so that the intersection can work properly.

A similar problem lurks in the design for St. Clair and Old Weston Road where the farside westbound island will constrain the ability of Keele buses to make the south-to-west turn.  Why the 41 Keele is not permanently rerouted via Rogers and Weston Road is a mystery (the express branch uses this route already, and there have been construction diversions of the local service).  The 168 Symington would continue to provide frequent service on Old Weston Road.

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The TTC Responds: TTC Times 2 / Riding Around Loops

Recent comments in the thread regarding the split operations on 501 Queen, as well as a reported incident where an operator was unaware that GO Transit could be used as a “bridge” between two TTC routes, led me to send questions for clarification to the TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, Brad Ross. 

Here, with my comments, are the replies.  The questions have been slightly reformatted so that they can stand outside of the context in which they were written. Continue reading →

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Trial Split of 501 Queen Car (Updated)

Updated October 22 at 10:25 am:

Brad Ross, TTC’s Director of Corporate Communications, advises that effective 9:30 am today all Queen operators will carry passengers around the Shaw/Dufferin and Parliament/Broadview loops, and tell passengers of the layover that may occur.

Also, for those who like to know the internal trivia, the east and west ends of the route are known as “500” and “507” respectively so that they can be scheduled and managed independently.

Original post:

Today, the TTC begins a five-week test of operating the Queen car in two overlapping sections, weekdays only.

  • East end cars will operate between Neville and Shaw, looping via Shaw, King and Dufferin.
  • West end cars will operate between Long Branch or Humber (alternate cars) and Parliament, looping via Parliament, Dundas and Broadview.

Without rehashing many previous posts on this topic, here is a preliminary look at the issues:

  • The design of the overlapped routes may not be ideal, and I hope that it will work well enough that TTC staff don’t reject any alternative arrangements.  Part of the problem is a tradeoff between the number of cars and operators available and the amount of additional service on the route.  A long term arrangement may require a different route configuration and/or even more service.
  • Scheduled service to the outer ends of the line has been cut to provide for the overlap.  The premise is that with more reliable headways and fewer short turns, the actual service provided to Neville and Long Branch will be better than on the unified route.  However, the AM peak is not, for the most part, affected by congestion and short turns were comparatively rare.  Will the reduced service be able to handle demand outside of the overlapped section downtown?
  • Overlapped TTC services have a long history of badly managed integration.  This can be seen with the  behaviour of 502 Downtowner cars that often pull out from McCaul or Kingston Road right behind a 501 Queen and carry as few passengers as possible.  How many times will we see pairs of east and west end cars travel across the central part of Queen together?
  • Both turnbacks involve on-street loops.  Cars waiting for their scheduled departure times may be pushed out by other services, or may simply create congestion of their own while laying over in the middle of the street.
  • On the brighter side, both scheduled turnbacks are  far enough away from Yonge Street that even a short turn (say westbound at Bathurst or eastbound at Church) will maintain service in the heart of downtown.

With shorter routes, the need for recovery time should be reduced as operators won’t face a 90-minute more trip between termini.  For the east end service, recovery times are no more than 4 minutes (peak periods). 

In the west end, recovery times are longer, but these are mainly intended to make the schedule merge at Humber work properly — the difference between Humber and Long Branch trip times must always be a multiple of the headway.  For example, in the early evening, the Long Branch cars get 13 minutes “recovery” so that their round trips differ by one hour (four times the 15-minute headway) from the Humber cars.  Later in the evening, the difference in round trips is only 38 minutes (two times the 19-minute headway), and the Long Branch runs get only 4 minutes recovery.

This thread is intended as a repository for observations and comments about the split route operation, and I am particularly interested in hearing from regular users of the Queen car on their day-to-day experiences.

I have asked the TTC for their vehicle monitoring data for the months of October and November for the 501 and will publish an analyses of route behaviour comparing the unified and split operations.

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Streetcars Return to St. Clair

Streetcar service will return to route 512 St. Clair on December 20, 2009.

Streetcars will operate from St. Clair Station to Earlscourt Loop at Lansdowne, and buses will operate from Oakwood Loop to Keele (Gunn’s Loop).  Buses will run in the curb lanes except for the stop eastbound at Oakwood.

Service on the streetcar route will be improved relative to pre-bus operations (see detailed chart).  Headways at all times are more frequent than the April 2007 streetcar schedules, and the widest headway is 10 minutes.  That is operated only late evenings on weekends.

Round trip times between Yonge and Lansdowne were 60 minutes in the AM Peak 2007 schedules, but this has been reduced to 50 minutes in the new 2009/2010 schedules.  The longest running time in 2007, for Saturday afternoons, was 84 minutes (to Keele).  The time (to Lansdowne) has been reduced to 47 minutes in the new schedules.  (A round trip from Lansdowne to Keele likely took at most 16 minutes, not including layover time, in 2007.)

Work on the Bathurst Street underpass at Dupont will be completed before December 20, and streetcars will operate from Roncesvalles Carhouse rather than Hillcrest.

The service planned for St. Clair is clearly an improvement both in frequency and speed over that which operated on the route before it was rebuilt.  The new schedules go into effect during the winter months, an ideal time to show off improved service quality.  With luck, the traffic signals will actually speed streetcars across the route rather than contributing substantial delays.  This is a real test of the TTC’s and the City’s desire to show that transit priority and all of the disruption on St. Clair are worth the effort.

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Queen Car Route Split Effective October 19, 2009

Starting on October 19, 2009, the TTC will experiment with splitting the 501 Queen route into two segments on weekdays only.  The intention is to decouple the outer ends of the line from events that occur on the opposite side of the city, and to provide sufficient flexibility that short turns should not interfere with riders’ ability to use the service.

This will be a trial operation lasting only for the October schedule period (roughly six weeks).  Seven cars will be added to the route during peak periods, with between five and eight additional at other times.  Weekend service is not affected, nor is the operation of the 502/503 routes on Kingston Road.

Two separate services will operate:

  • Neville Loop to Dufferin, looping in the west via Shaw, King and Dufferin.
  • Long Branch Loop and Humber Loop to Broadview, looping in the east via Parliament, Dundas and Broadview.

The eastern route will operate from Russell Division, and the western one from Roncesvalles.  This will eliminate crewing complexities with cars and operators switching between divisions.

Overnight service on the 301 Queen car will be split in the same manner, but cars will be scheduled to connect.  This arrangement will result in scheduled pairs of cars on the common section, a rather odd configuration.

The Neville-Dufferin branch will operate with the following headways:

  • AM Peak: 7’15”
  • Midday: 7’30”
  • PM Peak:  7’15”
  • Early Evening: 8’00”
  • Late Evening:  9’30”

The Humber-Broadview branch will operate with the following headways (service to Long Branch in parentheses):

  • AM Peak: 5’30” (11′)
  • Midday:  6’15” (12’30”)
  • PM Peak:  6’30” (13′)
  • Early Evening: 7’30” (15′)
  • Late Evening: 9’30” (19′)

By comparison, scheduled service for September 2009 is:

  • AM Peak: 5’10” (10’20”)
  • Midday: 5’53” (11’45”)
  • PM Peak: 5’40” (11’20”)
  • Early Evening: 6’45” (13’30”)
  • Late Evening: 10′ (20′)

If the new service is closer to schedule than the old one, then service should be improved even though scheduled headways on the outer ends of the route are slightly wider.  

Headways on the two halves of the route are, except for the overnight operation, different and there is no attempt to produce a blended operation in the central part of the route.  It will be interesting to see how many cars run in pairs by coming out of Dufferin or Broadview immediately behind a through car.  This is a challenge for TTC line management, and could defeat the benefit of the overlapped service between Broadview and Dufferin.

The considerable overlap of the two routes provides continuity even if either of them needs to be short turned.  Westbound cars from Neville could short turn at Bathurst or at McCaul while still serving downtown and connecting with the through service to the west end.  Eastbound cars from Humber could short turn at Church.  A shorter overlap would have almost guaranteed that many cars would never serve the major downtown stops or connect with their counterparts for through service.

Although all cars will pass through the congested section between University and Bathurst, short turns will be possible without eliminating connections, and the need for short turns at the outer ends of the line should be reduced.  This will bear watching.

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Why Streetcars?

Tom Jurenka sent in the following note, and it raises questions that deserve a debate.

Hello Steve

As a non-native Torontonian (grew up in Winnipeg, but have lived in Toronto for 24 years now) I have always been puzzled — and often infuriated — by streetcars (and the absolutely terrible traffic light timing in Toronto, but that is another story).

My question is an honest one — WHY? All I can see is the negatives of streetcars:

  • they tear up streets (I’ve lived through Queen Street E, Gerrard, now St. Clair, being torn up utterly to undo the damage of streetcars pounding the rails)
  • they are slow as molasses (as a bicyclist, I routinely pass 5 or 6 streetcars on Queen Street heading from AC Harris to downtown)
  • because of their slowness and immobility they delay traffic all the time, causing snarls and the attendant idling pollution
  • they are super expensive (witness the recent funding mess)

So I’m really curious why streetcars are a better alternative to trolley buses or just plain old buses, which move fast, are mobile, and are less expensive per unit to buy. Would you be able to point me at some links/articles/studies/whatever to help me understand this issue?

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

Tom Jurenka

This is a far more complex question than just the list above, but I will use this as a jumping off point. Continue reading →

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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.

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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 →

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Church Street Track Construction Begins (Updated)

Updated July 13 at 10:45 am:

The TTC has updated its track construction schedule to co-ordinate with City watermain work.

  • Church Street is done in two pieces as described in the original article.
  • Parliament Street is deferred to 2010.
  • Wellington and Victoria Streets are deferred to 2013.

Thanks to David S. Crawford of the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood Association for this information.

Original post:

Through the 2009 and 2010 construction seasons, TTC and the City will be rebuilding streetcar track and watermains on Church from Carlton to King.  The work notice has been posted on the TTC’s site.

There will be three phases to this work. Continue reading →

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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 →