Service Analysis

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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 →

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How To Kill Ridership: The Saga of the Queen Car

The Queen car was once the pride of the streetcar system.  It carried more people every day than the entire GO Transit network.  This is a story about how demand on that line has been killed off through poor management, service cuts, technology changes and utter indifference to the needs of the riding public.

Route History

Back when I started riding the streetcar system a lot, the Queen car had just been moved onto the Queensway right-of-way from the old alignment on Lake Shore Boulevard through Sunnyside amusement park.  The route has run from Humber Loop in the west to Neville Loop in the east for quite a long time.  For those who use route numbers, it’s the 501 car.

Meanwhile, the Long Branch car ran west from Humber Loop to Long Branch Loop along the Lake Shore with rush hour trips extended downtown via Queen to Church Street.  This route was numbered 507 but this disappeared when the line merged with the 501 to give through service all the time (when it wasn’t being short-turned).  There are now a few trips on 508 Lake Shore that run into downtown via King from the west.

In the east end, the Kingston Road car runs from Bingham Loop at Victoria Park to McCaul Loop, and the route is effectively a branch of the Queen car.  The current name Downtowner arose from a failed scheme to run extend the line west and north to Bathurst Station thereby providing an alternate route into downtown (much as the pre-1966 Bathurst via Adelaide service did).  This didn’t work, not least because chronic short-turning prevented many cars from ever reaching Bathurst Station.  This is route 502 where the route name stuck, but the routing didn’t.

The Kingston Road Tripper (now just Kingston Road or 503) also originates at Bingham Loop and runs via Queen and King Streets to loop downtown via Church, Wellington and York returning east via King.  Again, this is functionally a branch of the Queen line. Continue reading →

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Centre Poles on St. Clair (A Follow-Up)

After my less than kind words about the TTC and their centre pole design for St. Clair, I received a question about why the poles take up so much space (one extra metre on the right-of-way).  The short answer is that emergency vehicles, especially fire trucks, need to be able to drive down the ROW at speed without hitting anything and without falling off of the six-inch curb.  This means that the lane (measured from the curb to the pole) needs to be wide enough to give enough dynamic clearance for a large truck that is not tethered to the tracks.

Here is the longer version taken from an email I sent back to various people who asked: Continue reading →

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A Forest of Poles

This item is a followup to the St. Clair Streetcar item immediately below.  My friend Matt over at spacing.ca asked me about the mess of duplicate hydro and TTC poles, and the visual clutter this produces.  This is an important issue in the redesign of St. Clair, and I thought that I would post my reply to him here for everyone to see. Continue reading →

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Streetcars on St. Clair

Yesterday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Divisional Court, issued its ruling on the matter of Save Our St. Clair Inc. vs the City of Toronto and the TTC.  The Court ruled that the proposal for the St. Clair streetcar reserved right-of-way did not meet the test by which a judicial review would block the scheme, and therefore the application by Save Our St. Clair (SOS) was dismissed.

I am not going into the long and sordid history of this project, and those who know me well are aware that my feeling about both the City/TTC proposal and the position taken by its opponents was “a plague on both your houses”.  SOS made fundamental misrepresentations about the impact of the line and took positions about aspects of the plan that were diametrically opposed to each other.  Increasing pedestrian space, preserving parking and maintaining unimpeded traffic flow give one glaring example.

However, the City/TTC did an appalling job, even with much public consultation, of putting forward a reasonable plan.  There are many to blame in this and I won’t try to name names.  Here are a few of their worst gaffes: Continue reading →