Service Analysis

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How Joe Mihevc Got Conned On St. Clair [Updated]

[I received a very long response to this item via email which contains enough information that I believe it is worth having alongside the original post here.  I have added it below.]

Back in the dark ages when we had public participation meetings on St. Clair, there was a huge amount of concern about intersection design and curb cuts.  The folks along St. Clair were deeply suspicious, and rightly so.  As I have often written, the road engineers cannot be trusted with anything and need to be wrestled to the ground for the slightest design improvements.

Then, finally, construction started.  I had talked to Councillor Mihevc several times about the need to corral the engineers, and met with him and Jim Teeple, the TTC’s project manager, in the cafe over Loblaw’s one day.  I was assured that Joe had his eyes open and was working hard to minimize the intrusions of the project.

That was when the project stopped at the east ramp into St. Clair West Station.

Then something odd happened.  In the interest of speeding up construction, the work for 2006 was extended west to Vaughan Road.  What we now see is the same ridiculous curb cuts that were in the original TTC plans, and which many had assumed we would be able to fix as part of the detailed design for the section from Bathurst west.

It didn’t happen.  The road folks got their widenings, the community got ridiculously narrow sidewalks, and Joe has turned into an apologist for this outrage.

Now we have to go into detailed design for the next section actually believing that we have a chance to get proper treatment for pedestrians and businesses along the street.

The TTC and Council must insist that roads be designed for people and neighbourhoods, not just for cars. Continue reading →

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What’s Up On St. Clair? (With A Glance at Spadina)

Today’s Star has an article about the ongoing woes of construction activity on St. Clair.  I will leave you to read the text yourself, but there are a few important points that deserve comment.

The intention of the right-of-way is not to save time, it is to make the service reliable.

Well, yes, but saving time wouldn’t hurt either.  Indeed, if the service is reliable, then people would not have interminable waits for a car that eventually shows up as a pack.  This will probably save more time than anything else. Continue reading →

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Waterfront West and St. Clair LRT Projects

St. Clair Streetcars Return in Late November

The St. Clair line will resume streetcar operation on the last weekend of November 2006 when trackwork from Vaughan Road to St. Clair Station and elevator construction at that station will be completed.  We will have wonderful new track and maybe even working priority signalling (although I doubt we will actually see that for years, if ever), but the cars will still tiptoe over the rotten track at St. Clair West Station whose loop won’t be redone until next year.  So much for good construction planning.

There are rumblings that the section from Vaughan to Keele won’t be finished in 2007, but I have not tracked down anything definitive on that.  As for a possible extension beyond Keele, this is mired in redesign of the underpass at Dundas, Scarlett Road and St. Clair.

Isn’t it nice to know transit has such a high priority?

Waterfront West

Meanwhile, work is underway on the EA for the Roncesvalles to CNE portion of the waterfront line.  The TTC has the good sense to recognize that running this service into downtown via the Tonnerville Trolley operation on Queen’s Quay is a non-starter, and they are looking at branching off from Fleet Street via Fort York/Bremner Boulevards coming into Union Station in a tunnel along the north side of the Air Canada Centre.

No word yet on a redesign of Union Station Loop to handle the substantial additional loads that the eastern and western waterfront lines will bring.

All this will, of course, require funding for construction and for additional vehicles. 

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A Short Trip to Long Branch

A few days ago, I set out to visit friends in darkest Long Branch (for an East Ender, Long Branch is near the edge of the planet).  My destination, roughly, was Lake Shore and 32nd Street.  I had a few choices of how to get there from home base at Broadview Station:

  1. Subway to Kipling, 44 Kipling South to Lake Shore, 501 Queen to 30th Street
  2. Subway to Islington, 110 Islington South (30th Street branch) to Lake Shore
  3. Subway to Dundas West, 504 King to Sunnyside, 501 Queen to 30th Street

Being a streetcar fan, and trusting on the speedy service available on the broad boulevards of Queensway and Lake Shore, I chose option 3. Continue reading →

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St. Clair Update

Construction is finally underway west from Avenue Road and St. Clair to Tweedsmuir.  At this point, the work is on sidewalks and utilities, but you can see the extent of the road widening from the cuts into lawns between Avenue Road and Russell Hill.  Traffic in the construction area is now confined, more or less, to the streetcar lanes in the middle of the road. Continue reading →

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Service Quality: What Tax Cuts Don’t Give Us

Tonight, I spent the later part of the evening at the Gladstone Hotel at spacing magazine’s latest issue launch, one devoted to transit issues.  You can read all about it at www.spacing.ca.

Let me tell you about my trips to and from the Gladstone.  I arrived at Queen and Spadina on a southbound 510 just in time to see not one, not two, but three 501 Queen cars leave westbound.  Hmmm.  Not a good sign.  As things turned out, the next 501 (actually two of them) did not show up for 25 minutes, and the first car was going only to Roncesvalles.  Fortunately for me, the Gladstone is not in Long Branch.

On the trip home, a bit after midnight, the eastbound 501 showed up reasonably promptly and the trip across Queen was uneventful.  We pulled up to Broadview just behind a 504 King car, the one that should have taken me home.  Did it wait for transfer passengers from the 501?  No.  At least the following 504, about 10 minutes later, was not short turned (this happens regularly late at night when I attempt this route home).

In a way, these are two isolated incidents.  Eastbound service on Queen at Spadina during my long wait was quite regular.  Service on the Dufferin bus seemed to be running smoothly any time I peeked out the door or window from the bar at the Gladstone [please note how this demonstrates my commitment to monitoring the TTC, and the places I will lurk to do so].

But the point is that in both directions, I encountered problems that should not be part of TTC service — a long wait and bunched service one way, and a missed connection thanks to an inconsiderate operator the other way.  We can have the cheapest fares in the world, but if we don’t have reliable service, people will stay in their cars.

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Why Run Good Service When You Can Just Take Them To Court? (Updated)

In today’s Toronto Star we learn that the TTC is rather miffed about a plan by Humber Bay condo owners to run a private bus to downtown.  It seems that the Queen car might not be The Better Way for these folks.

This is the second time recently the TTC’s legal folks have come into the public eye (the first was the anagram subway map fiasco).  For more info on that, go to spacing.ca’s website for selected articles on the subject at this link.  For the original map go to here.

Maybe it’s time for more service and fewer legal threats.

Since the original post, I’ve had some feedback from readers: Continue reading →