Service Analysis

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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 →

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Queen Car Operation Update

At its meeting on July 9, 2009, the TTC considered a staff report about operation of the Queen 501 streetcar service.  This reviews various attempts at line management and scheduling as well as their effects on service as measured by short turn counts as well as the number of wide gaps between cars.

For the period October 18 to November 21, 2009, the TTC will experiment with splitting the 501 into two separate overlapping routes, although the exact termini of the routes is not yet decided.

The Queen car has been the source of many complaints about service quality, and I have written several articles here examining the actual behaviour of the route in detail based on TTC vehicle monitoring data.  The most vocal complaints arise in The Beach, and much effort has focussed on that end of the line, but problems also exist on Lake Shore.  Concerns to the west emerged during recent public meetings on the proposed Waterfront West LRT line where providing basic, reliable service today was more important to residents than a new LRT service in the distant future. Continue reading →

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When Is A Park Not A Park?

Those of you who know Broadview Station will remember the years of construction we who live nearby suffered through as the station gained new streetcar platforms, elevators, an enlarged lobby, a lot of fixes to leaky ceilings, and now roof repairs.  Through much of this the triangle of land between the streetcar loop and sidewalk was transformed from a park to a construction staging area and then, miraculously, our park came back, somewhat gentrified, last year.

That property had been held by the TTC for years in anticipation of, yes, redevelopment, although everyone nearby thought it was a park.  It wasn’t.

Until now.  This week, the TTC will officially declare the land surplus to its needs, and set in motion a transfer to the City Parks Department.  I’m not sure that there will be dancing in the streets, but at last our park is safe from being turned into a rather oddly shaped condo.

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Some Things Take A Little Time

Oh dear, oh dear!  That poor old overworked, underappreciated TTC!

The Spadina car opened in July 1997, and one thing immediately obvious to anyone who bothered to look was that “transit priority signalling” was simply not working the way that phrase might imply to mere mortals who ride the service.  Indeed, a newspaper article by Stephen Wickens has taken on legendary status with the claim (valid under some circumstances) that a trip down Bathurst to Western Hospital in mixed traffic makes better time than the Spadina car and its right-of-way.  I’m not going to revisit that debate here .

In June 2005, I spoke to the issue of non-priority for Spadina cars at a Commission meeting.  At that time, then Vice-Chair Olivia Chow moved that staff take the necessary action to implement priority signalling by September 2005 where it is not already active and report back by September 2006 on the impact; and that the recommendations in my submission be forwarded to TTC and City staff with a joint report to fall meetings, presumably in 2005.

The due date for this report has always been a few months away, and I have had the honour of holding the longest outstanding report request at the TTC for some time.  I was expecting the report in April, but that month came and went.  Now, according to this week’s agenda, the report will be at the Commission meeting of December 16, 2009.

That is at least still “fall”, by a few days, albeit not the one Olivia Chow had in mind.

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Analysis of 501 Queen Service Winter 2008/2009: Part II Long Branch to Parkside

In the previous installment, I reviewed the headway patterns for the 501 Queen route outbound to terminals at Neville, Humber and Long Branch.  Now I will turn to the operation of the west end of the route between Long Branch and Parkside Drive.  I used Parkside (the east side of High Park, and the continuation of Keele Street south of Bloor) as the eastern end of the measurement because it is at the end of the private right-of-way and because this avoids problems with variations caused by operations at Roncesvalles.

The charts presented here show headways (the frequency and regularity of service) as well as link times (the time needed to traverse part of the route).  Headways are important to riders because they show how predictable service will be, and they also bear on riding comfort because crowding is directly affected by regularity of service.  Link times are important for service planning because they show where and when congestion occurs, and how predictable (or not) the running time between locations will be. Continue reading →

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WWLRT Public Meetings: Park Lawn to Long Branch

There will be two public meetings to discuss the design for this section of the WWLRT, essentially an upgrade of the Long Branch streetcar.

Monday, May 11, 2009
2:00pm-4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
Mimico Adult Learning Centre
255 Royal York Road

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
2:00pm to 4:00pm 6:30pm to 9:00pm
The Assembly Hall
1 Colonel Samuel Smith Park Drive

For further information, including the display panels from the previous open houses, please see the project’s website.

After the first round in December 2008 where many felt that the available information and proposal left much to be desired, this is described as a “re-start” of a “new consultation process”.

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Analysis of 501 Queen Service 2008/09: Part I — Comparative Short Turn Data

A few months ago, I received the TTC’s vehicle monitoring data (a.k.a. “CIS” data for “Communications & Information System”) for 501 Queen and related routes for the months of December 2008 and January 2009.  I have been whittling away at it for the past few months as time permitted, and now it’s in shape to begin publishing commentaries.

Of particular interest are the effects, such as they may be, of the new line management strategies implemented by the TTC.  Operations in the two months differ because of a change in the schedule.

  • December 2008:  Drop back crewing was used at Connaught so that operators would leave westbound on their time while relief operators drove the vehicles to and from Neville.  The intent is to allow the operators to get on time without affecting the through service.
  • January 2009:  A new schedule was implemented in which run numbers remained assigned either to the Humber or the Long Branch service.  The intent is to avoid short turns whose entire purpose is to sort out the relative order and location of each branch’s runs to make sure that they are in the proper sequence westbound.

For reasons best known to the TTC, relief crews were available during Christmas Week, but there was no extra line management.  Therefore, that week is in a way an example of a “do nothing” approach, although under less than the most strenuous circumstances.

Anyone who was in Toronto this past winter knows it was much worse than the previous few years and we had a particularly bad December.  This shows up in the service quality, but generally for the period needed to get the roads back in proper shape.

Because I now have data for December 2006, December 2007, January 2008, December 2008 and January 2009, we can review operations over three winters, a variety of weather conditions and different management strategies. Continue reading →