Service Analysis

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The Long Sad Tale of the Queen Car

One of the joys of year-end housecleaning is that I run across old files — letters and reports from bygone days that show how much, or how little has changed over the years.

Back in 1984, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee conducted a detailed survey of streetcar route operations with particular attention to short turns. We presented our manually collected findings in a manner that will be familiar to readers of this post from the detailed reviews of lines’ operation as graphic timetables.

That study prompted the TTC to commission the Joint Program in Transportation at the UofT to make a detailed, formal study of the Queen car. In due course, that study reported and the findings came to the Commission.

In time, I may dig out and publish all of that material, but one letter says far more than the studies. In April 1985, Alderman Dorothy Thomas (the title had not yet become “Councillor”) who represented the Beach wrote to Julian Porter, then Chair of the TTC, about the study. Her letter shows much of the same frustration with the TTC’s attitude to service quality and management as we have seen over the past quarter-century.  (Note that I have scanned in only the text from the letter and have dropped the graphics such the Council letterhead.)

At the time, the Queen route still operated with four-axle cars (PCCs and CLRVs), and had not yet experienced the wonders of wider headways with six-axle ALRVs nor the service cuts of the mid-90s.

Recently, the TTC attempted a trial operation with a split route using turnbacks at Shaw and at Parliament. I have requested but still have not yet received the vehicle monitoring data for the months of October and November 2009 that would allow a detailed review of that operation nor of the “standard” arrangements in place for part of each month and on weekends.

What we do know is this:

  • Staff hated the scheme, and some actively sabotaged it.
  • Although notices were sent at least twice advising that operators should carry riders west to Dufferin and east to Parliament, this was almost completely disregarded by staff, some of whom were quite aggressive in telling people they could not ride beyond the turnback point.
  • There was no attempt visible any time I checked to manage the merging of the two services, and it was common to see pairs of cars crossing downtown together.

A report on the split operation is expected early in 2010, but based on what I saw and heard, it will confirm what some TTC management probably wanted to demonstrate all along, that the community and the advocates should keep their fingers out of operational planning.

Among the comments in Alderman Thomas’ letter we see both how the TTC’s characterization of problems does not fit with empirical data, and that some problems arose simply from the way the line is managed.

Back in 1984/5, it was sad to see how much the TTC attempted to deny the problems they had with service reliability, and the degree to which they simply did not collect real data in the field.  Twenty-five years later, the TTC is doing some internal analysis of data from the vehicle monitoring system (CIS), but I have still not seen anything as sophisticated as the articles published here.

I’m an “amateur”, albeit one with a very strong IT background and a talent for making sense out of the large amounts of CIS data.  The TTC has never invited me to discuss my work, nor to make suggestions either for improvements or corrections to the methodology.

We’re all still waiting for “Next Bus” to be rolled out with online route displays of anything more than the Spadina and Harbourfront lines even though the contract for this system was awarded over three years ago.

When many routes appeared, briefly, in a beta version of the system, but with less than stellar accuracy in displays, we were told that the problem lay with the completion of the GPS rollout.  Either that rollout is going much more slowly than planned, or there are still problems handling additional routes.  We’ve seen publicity shots of central dispatchers looking at the Queen car on a real map, not a bare-bones text display from the dawn of CIS.  Why are these displays not available to the public?

Promises of new, accurate information channels for TTC riders come frequently, but I can’t help feeling a lot of them short-turn well before they reach their destinations.

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The 512 Rocket

After a few days’ operation, observations about the new St. Clair streetcar right-of-way from Bathurst to Lansdowne are accumulating (see comments in the previous post in this series).

On Sunday, service was a shambles because in general the operators could not achieve the faster scheduled speeds in the new timetables.  Part of this was due to unfamiliarity, part to the operation of the traffic signals, part due to passenger behaviour and part to what I can only call “operator style”.  For anyone used to dawdling back and forth on the old shuttle east of St. Clair West Station, the new timetables are quite a change.

November/December 2009

January 2010

The scheduled speed for the shuttle was 11.3km/h on weekdays and 11.9km/h on weekends.  Headways were supposed to be 3’30” and 4’00” respectively.  All who rode the line know that the cars spent most of their time sitting at terminals, and the schedule was complete fiction.  This operating style established the idea that there was lots of time for layovers.

The scheduled speed for weekday operations on the new route ranges from 12.8km/h (am peak) up to 15.9km/h (late evening).  On weekends the scheduled speeds are higher than comparable periods on weekdays.

It is worth looking at the the 510 Spadina service (also shown in the linked summaries above).  The segment from Bloor to King ranges from 10.5 to 12.6km/h with service to Union at a higher average speed because of fast running south of King. Continue reading →

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A Day To Celebrate on St. Clair

Saturday, December 19, 2009 brought the first passenger-carrying streetcars to St. Clair from Bathurst to Lansdowne on the new streetcar right-of-way.  Regular service starts on Sunday, but the preview day featured PCCs 4500 and 4549 shuttling between St. Clair West Station and Earlscourt Loop from about 11 am to 4 pm.

4500 was the politicians’ car with TTC Vice Chair Joe Mihevc, Chair Adam Giambrone and MP Carolyn Bennett.  Mihevc wryly noted that Bennett (a Liberal) was part of the government when funding came from Ottawa for this project.  It’s been underway for some time.  Mike Filey was along to provide historical commentary.

4549 was generally less loaded, but featured the Hillcrest Choir whose renditions of stop announcements were a distinct improvement over the standard TTC offering, and they even pronounced the streetnames correctly.

After riding several times in both directions, I can honestly say that the weaving track, although unusual, was not at all uncomfortable or any threat to standing passengers.  The first few trips encountered work crews putting finishing touches on parts of the line, but with only two cars operating, it wasn’t hard for them to dodge out of the way.

Everyone was having a marvellous time, and the crowd was fascinating for its makeup — many parents taking their young children out to ride cars built in 1951 on a line that might not have had active streetcar service when they were born.

To my amazement, the heat worked quite well on both cars, something I did not find on any other transit vehicle (bus, streetcar or subway) I rode on the same day.  The biggest problem with the PCCs is that the centre doors were not working on either car, and this made for lots of congestion as people had to push through crowds (at least on 4500) to reach the one working door at the front.  The running joke on board was that if we paid 50 cents more on the fare, we could have cars with doors that worked.  Memo to TTC:  Fix the doors.

Earlier in the week, test runs were made with CLRVs to check out clearances, overhead alignment and track.  Harold McMann sent a few photos of car 4165, the first test car on Monday, December 14.  Many thanks to him for these.

The real test comes Monday morning with a rush hour load.  A few problems were obvious even with the PCC runs, notably difficulties at Lansdowne.  There does not appear to be a dedicated transit left turn, and cars must bull their way through traffic.  This is probably because the westbound switch is not yet electrified, and the traffic lights don’t “know” that they have to give a transit call on.  This should be fixed.

A more difficult problem is the exit from Earlscourt Loop which is close to Lansdowne eastbound, and will regularly be blocked by traffic waiting for a green signal.  Streetcars must push out into traffic from the loop without any sort of signal to assist them.  They may also find an occasional 47 Lansdowne bus laying over, and it will be interesting to see how often this form of “congestion” puts gaps in the service.

The operation of traffic signals generally follows the pattern we have seen elsewhere with a left/U turn phase for autos, followed by a through green for autos and transit.  Some parts of the line now have detectors that will hold a transit green for an approaching streetcar, but I have not seen enough of the operation to know if this is installed or working at all locations.

Here are views of the test run with 4165 and of the PCC operation.

Continue reading →

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Wandering Rails on St. Clair (Update 2)

Updated December 15 at 1:00 am:

Car 4165 made two test runs on the western section of the St. Clair route on Monday, December 14.  The first pass was done slowly to check clearances, and the second was done at speed without incident.  Testing will continue through the week.

On Saturday, December 19 from 11 am to 3 pm, there will be charter service using PCCs 4500 and 4549.  Here is Councillor Joe Mihevc’s announcement of this event.

Save Saturday, December 19 for a fun shop local event from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. when there will be free rides on two TTC heritage streetcars between Bathurst and Lansdowne. The heritage streetcars are the red-maroon and yellow “Presidents’ Conference Committee” streetcars that first operated in Toronto in the late 1930s and ended in the mid-1980s. These PCC streetcars are a real treat that will take you down memory lane to Toronto’s past.

The Hillcrest Village Choir will be performing for much of the day on one streetcar, and Toronto historian Mike Filey will be speaking about local history on the other. This is a great opportunity to come to St. Clair to enjoy a rare ride and support local businesses by finishing some last minute holiday shopping or enjoying a St Clair meal with friends and family.

The basic idea is have local residents support local businesses along the strip and use the PCC streetcars to jump on and off at your pleasure. So you may want to have a brunch or lunch at a local eatery, and then catch the streetcar as it comes by, make a big loop and return to where you began, perhaps jumping off at a store that you always wanted to check out. Boarding the streetcar will be from the new passenger islands.

I will be at World Class Bakers at Christie for most of the time. Feel free to come by and say hello.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The free ride only extends between Bathurst and the Earlscourt loop at Lansdowne. There will be no free transfers to other lines. The streetcar will only use the St Clair West subway station to turn around (no passengers will be permitted to exit into the subway. If you want to go to the subway, you will need to use the buses which will continue on the road and pickup passengers from the sidewalk.)

Joe Mihevc

The original December 5 post follows the break below.

Continue reading →

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A New Loop at Queen and Broadview? (Updated)

Updated November 7 at 11:35 am:

The proposed site for the new streetcar loop sits on the east side of Broadview just north of Queen, and this would make the entrance curves quite close to the Queen Street intersection.  Normally this is the sort of configuration traffic planners hate as cars would have to turn off Queen onto Broadview, slow for the northbound facing switch (with the butt end of the car still sitting in the intersection) and then proceed into the loop.  A far from ideal arrangement.

The existing parking lot’s rates are 75 cents per half hour to a $4 maximum before 6 pm, and a $3 maximum overnight.  At those rates, the atttraction is for long-term parking, not for local shopping.

The TTC has done without Parliament Loop for years and nearby around-the-block loops are quite adequate for buses.

A proposal many years back to build a new streetcar loop here for the King route was cancelled for budgetary reasons, and more recently Cherry Street Loop has been talked up as a turnback.  Other than as a possible eastern terminus for a split Queen car, the need for a new loop at Broadview is hard to understand, especially at the expense of a local parking lot.

The proposed new parking site on the west side of Broadview just north of Thompson Street appears as a vacant lot in the satellite view on Google. It is currently occupied by a temporary building which was a sales office for a proposed condo that was completely out of keeping with the neighbourhood and was rejected by Council. As I noted in the comment thread, a smaller loop could be built using this land, Thompson Street and the laneway connecting the two. This would leave the Legion’s building in the middle of the loop on the northwest corner. Why the TTC insisted on taking the larger parking lot for a proposed loop, a project that is not even in the Capital Budget, I don’t know.

Original Post:

Buried in the November 9 agenda for Toronto’s Government Management Committee is a report detailing an exchange of properties between various agencies.  One of these is the old Parliament Loop at King Street where an archeological dig has been in progress — this is part of the site of Ontario’s first Parliament Building.

In order to assemble the historic site for public use, there will be a swap of various chunks of land between private owners, the Ontario government, the Toronto Parking Authority and the TTC.

There is now a parking lot on the east side of Broadview just north of Queen, and this would become a new streetcar loop.  Although this would be a handy place to short-turn 504 King cars (rather than looping via Parliament and Dundas), it could also be an eastern terminal for a split Queen route should this be implemented on roughly the current route model.

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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.