Service Analysis

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Will The TTC Ever Finish On St. Clair?

I spoke to Vice-Chair Joe Mihevc at the TTC meeting on Wednesday about the situation at St. Clair West and on the portion of the line east to Yonge.  Here is the current status.

The problem with rebuilding the track is that there is one section on the east side of the loop where there are electrical cables buried in the concrete.  Breaking up the concrete so that these can be moved is a delicate business and won’t be done for a few months.  Meanwhile, the rest of the loop is being installed.

In about two weeks, this will allow pavement restoration in most of the loop.  At that point, the buses that enter from the west will be able to loop down the ramp and around the west and north sides of the platform.  They will all exit via the ramp that comes out in the Loblaw’s building on the north side of the street.

Meanwhile, Mihevc is getting a complete runaround from staff on the installation of new shelters.  It’s always something that will happen in a week or two, and has been like this since the summer.  He is getting very frustrated because he takes the blame every time he parrots information to his constituents.

TTC staff should carefully consider what they are doing.  Mihevc has defended staff positions on the St. Clair right-of-way against all criticisms and burned up some of his credibility, with me among others, in the process.  The last thing the staff needs is to lose that champion in the Vice-Chair’s office.  If he stops believing what he is told, they are in big trouble.

Of course, many of us stopped believing what staff said about St. Clair a long time ago.  Vice-Chair Mihevc has some catching up to do.

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Analysis of 501 Queen: Part III — Monday, December 4, 2006

December 4 was an odd day.  The weather was uneventful, and service on the nearby King route was well-behaved (see the analysis of 504 King).  CIS Control seemed to adopt an unusual strategy to “managing” the Queen service to the point that short turning must be described as “aggressive” if not “pre-emptive”.

  • Most of the “Humber” service actually short-turned at Roncesvalles.
  • Many of the cars on both branches short-turned at Woodbine Loop.
  • There is little evidence of serious traffic congestion or major delays in the charts, but ragged headways and bunched cars were common.  

Continue reading →

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Analysis of 501 Queen: Part II – Friday, December 1, 2006

December 1, 2006, was not a good day for transit operations.  As I have already discussed for the King route, it was probably the worst day of the month.  The weather was bad through the afternoon and early evening, and severe congestion problems affected many routes.

This is a contrast to Christmas Day, discussed in the previous post, where good weather coupled with little congestion or passenger surges made for ideal conditions.

Among the problems we will see for December 1 are:

  • bunching of cars due to congestion
  • pairs of cars running together over the entire route
  • large gaps to the termini
  • congestion, most severely in an area well away from downtown, and only in one direction

This shows what the line looks like under worst case conditions.  Even though the service is seriously disrupted, this data has important lessons about how the line is scheduled, managed and operated. Continue reading →

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“Driver Bob” Writes About the Queen Car (Updated, Again)

I received a long comment in reply to an earlier post about service in the Beach from a TTC operator, and this deserves its own thread.

Updated November 11:  Driver Bob left a short note attached to the wrong thread in which he dismisses the discussion here.  I have added it to the end of this post just before the comments. 

A second comment, apologizing for the first, has also been added.

Continue reading →

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Analysis of 501 Queen: Part I – Introduction & Christmas Day 2006

The Queen streetcar is the subject of much discussion here, and I have been remiss in failing to post an analysis of the CIS (Communications & Information System) data for this route to substantiate many of my (and everyone else’s) observations.  Over the next few weeks, in preparation for a Rocket Riders’ meeting in early December, I will post a series of articles looking at the line’s operation in detail.

For those who are unfamiliar with the sort of analyses that will appear here, please read all of the articles about the King route filed under Service Analysis on this site.  As I write this, there are nine of them (with one more to come), and you should read them in order.  They include some of the background on how the CIS system works and the various ways I have sliced and diced that data.  I will not repeat this information here in the interest of brevity.

By way of introduction to the data, this post deals with Christmas Day, 2006.  This is important for a few basic reasons:

  • Operating conditions on Christmas were as close to ideal as one could ask for.
  • There was no traffic congestion.
  • There was no inclement weather.
  • Passenger loads were modest.

Collectively, this means that the observed behaviour of the line shows what happens when most of the sources of random delay are eliminated. Continue reading →

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What Can We Do About the Queen Car?

The Rocket Riders will devote their December 4 meeting (Metro Hall, 6:30 pm) to a discussion of the Queen Car, its many problems and ways to fix them.  In support of this, I will start publishing analyses of that route’s operation here based on the CIS data from December 2006.

Yes, I have let that whole project slip out of sight in past months for a variety of reasons.  Mea culpa.

Here is an overview of my past writing on this issue:

Route Structure

The amalgamation of the Queen and Long Branch services was a disaster from the day it started, but the TTC has never acknowledged this problem or studied alternatives, publicly, in detail.  One extremely long line is impossible to manage.  The schedule includes a huge amount of padding for “recovery time” that is actually counterproductive because operators can basically run on any time they please and still have time for a lengthy break at the end of the line.

Service on the Long Branch section is very spotty with very long gaps quite common.

Service on Kingston Road is compromised by the difficulty of integrating the 502 and 503 services and by the very wide off-peak scheduled headway.

My proposed route structure is not definitive, and I am sure others will come up with various schemes.  The underlying theme is to shorten routes and to provide overlaps so that short-turns will not totally devestate service.

  • Queen car from Humber to Neville
  • Lake Shore car from Brown’s Line to downtown via King (Monday to Friday until early evening)
  • Lake Shore car from Brown’s Line to Dundas West Station (M-F evening, weekends and holidays)
  • Kingston Road car from Victoria Park to a single downtown destination

Peak Period Operations

A major problem exists on both King and Queen with the morning peak where many cars enter service off-schedule.  This plays havoc with service at the ends of the lines due to short turns and causes ragged headways at a time when there is no traffic congestion to blame for this situation.

The peak period Lake Shore trippers to downtown do not operate at predictable times even there is no possible way that “traffic congestion” can interfere with on-time operation.

Vehicle Allocation

[Note:  An ALRV is the 75-foot long two-section streetcars commonly seen on King, Queen and Bathurst.  A CLRV is the 50-foot long car seen on the system overall.]

The 501 operates with ALRVs on wide headways while the 504 runs with CLRVs on close headways.  The TTC should reverse this arrangement so that ALRVs are used on King where their greater capacity is badly needed.

Equally important will be that we actually see ALRVs where they are scheduled.  The number of times in the past year when I have seen CLRVs operating ALRV runs on Queen, overcrowded because they are carrying an ALRV headways, is quite ridiculous.  In my review of the King car, I found that the peak period extra ALRVs that are supposed to build capacity inbound through Parkdale in the morning are more often operated with CLRVs.

The TTC seems to be utterly incapable of assigning larger vehicles where they are required.

Service Levels

On Queen, the change to CLRVs on closer headways would improve the frequency of service even with the inevitable short-turns.

On Lake Shore, the change to CLRVs will improve scheduled headways, and integration to a single downtown destination will avoid the problems inherent with a few rogue trippers.  Combined with a shorter, easier-to-manage  route, this should make service in southern Etobicoke much more attractive.

On Kingston Road, consolidation of the 502 and 503 would provide one common, frequent service during the peak period that would have some hope of reliability outbound from a single downtown location.

On King, the change to ALRVs would provide additional capacity provided that current headways are maintained.

Summary

The Ridership Growth Strategy seeks to improve service quality, but little attention has been paid to the streetcar network on the grounds that the fleet is fully committed already.  This is certainly not true during off-peak periods, and the TTC needs to account for the large number of spare cars during the peak.

Proposals for transit priority must focus on “micro” changes to individual intersections and neighbourhoods with parking restrictions and signal improvements.  The “macro” scheme for reserved lanes through the business district does not address major sources of congestion, and diverts attention and effort from overall improvements to route operations.

There is no question that improving service level and quality on these major crosstown routes will cost more.  There should be a huge incentive for the TTC to improve line management.  Sadly, they will more likely trot out their usual complaints about congestion as the source of all troubles.  The cheapest service improvement comes from managing what we have properly.

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All Roads Lead to Spadina

With the construction projects now in progress, the service on Spadina Avenue is an impressive mixture of cars from other routes.  Scheduled PM peak service now consists of:

  • Spadina cars every 2 minutes from King north to Bloor
  • Queen cars every 5’30” from King to Queen
  • Bathurst cars every 5’20” from King to College

Some of the turns to and from Spadina have working transit priority signals, while others don’t and the streetcars have to fight their way through traffic.

Weekend service is almost as frequent especially when extras are thrown in on Queen and Bathurst to compensate for diversion delays.

The new Bathurst/Queen intersection is now assembled, and concrete placement was in progress on the north-east quadrant when I visited earlier today.  Once that work is out of the way, the new intersection track must be connected to the existing tangent rails in all four directions.

This intersection, like other recent work, includes a large amount of vibration insulation including rubber sleeves around the running rails, and rubber encapsulation of the castings except where they are bolted together.

Ed Drass passed one observation about the Bathurst service on to me:  Why is the Bathurst car diverting via College, thereby missing an important destination, Western Hospital, even though the track layout allows a diversion via Dundas?  Did the people planning the diversion not know a Dundas route was possible?  Is there any possibility of changing the diversion before north-south service resumes on November 5?

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The 507 Lives, Sort Of

I have written before about the need to reorganize the way service is operated on the Queen line, and the TTC never quite gets around to doing a detailed review.  I’m not sure what it will take to light a fire under them, but the time is long overdue for them to admit the through-routing of 501-Queen and 507-Long Branch was a disaster.

Other related issues include the problem of Humber Loop (not the most ideal location for a transfer given its isolated location) and the mix of services running downtown from Parkdale.

I received a comment from “Ed” recently that shows finally, someone has realized there are problems on Lake Shore, although the “fix” is a temporary one. Continue reading →

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St. Clair Construction Begins / Local Unrest Continues

Chris W. sent in the following comment:

Hooray!  The St. Clair Transit website was updated today!  There is a new, very informative flyer.

Highlights:

  • Phase 2 (Westmount to McRoberts) to start October 15 and continue into the spring.
  • Vaughan Road to Westmount Avenue to start next spring.
  • Caledonia to Gun’s loop to start late next summer.
  • Shelter installation on Phase 1 to start early October 2007!
  • Later this fall streetcars will returns from Yonge to Oakwood loop, initially running straight through St. Clair West Station.
  • Streetcars will be removed in spring 2008 “With other TTC work occurring on Bathurst Street “. Could this mean the tracks from Bloor to St. Clair will be replaced next year instead of 2009?

If this all comes to pass someone should throw a party.

Yes, I believe that Bathurst from St. Clair down to Bathurst Station is supposed to be rebuilt in 2008. Continue reading →

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Meanwhile on St. Clair: A Fall Update

While I was at the TTC today, I took the oppurtunity to find out what is going on with this endless project.  Here’s an update.

The Ramps at St. Clair West

Due to problems with the contractor (no specifics), the work has been on hold.  However, the impasse is now resolved, work has (or will shortly) resume and completion is planned for the end of October.

The New Shelters

The now-and-forever project to install new shelters on the completed portion of the line is getting rather comic.  They were supposed to come in August, then in September and now they might get here this month, but don’t hold your breath.  October, maybe.  Considering how long ago this line was designed, the idea that we are only now getting delivery of the shelters is a huge joke.

Why Are The Buses Not On The Right Of Way?

It seems that the buses are afraid of falling off because of clearance problems.  Of course, if they hadn’t put those dumb centre poles on the right-of-way, this would not be an issue.

I cannot help thinking that all of these and similar problems are rooted in what passes for design and project management.  The TTC can run an efficient project (just look at the recent reconstruction at Kennedy Station), but some on some projects everything that can go wrong does.  They can’t blame it all on SOS or Hydro.