Updated January 8: A regular correspondent reports that the Service Assistance Crews are back at work at Russell Carhouse. I am awaiting further info on other points raised in this post.
Queen Car
Where Would a Queen Subway Go?
This post is intended to continue the thread of historical background to the problem of threading a Downtown Relief Line from the Danforth Subway into downtown Toronto. It is not intended to endorse a specific alignment, but to show the sort of problems that existed 40 years ago and which remain today.
Back in June 1968, the TTC considered a report about an interim Queen Street streetcar subway and a later subway line. (The linked version of this report has been scanned as text and formatted by me rather than leaving it as page images, but the content is identical.) This contains a number of observations of interest.
- At this point, the alignment from Queen north was designed to connect with Greenwood Yard as a full subway. This would be changed many years later to a Pape alignment south to Eastern for a possible ICTS/RT yard.
- An interim arrangement with a streetcar subway from roughly Sherbourne to Spadina was examined, but it was thought that in the long term, the demand in the Queen and King Street corridors would exceed the capability of streetcar operations. In hindsight, this is a rather large case of overestimation of future demand.
- Construction of the Sherbourne Portal would be possible because the buildings on the north side of Queen had recently been demolished to make way for Moss Park.
- Conversion of a streetcar subway to a full high-platform rapid transit line was considered to be difficult.
- An alignment south of Queen Street was considered impractical because of the buildings that would have to be underpinned or demolished.
- An alignment directly under Queen Street would probably require cut-and-cover construction with associated disruption due to soil conditions. The possibility of more advanced tunneling methods is mentioned.
- Widening Queen Street is considered an option because, in the good old days, tearing down buildings was the thing to do. This would not play out quite so favourably as an option today. The buildings are part of a vital streetscape.
- An alignment behind the north side properties was considered, although it would still involve considerable building acquisition and demolition.
- A study by the Metro Planning Department suggested that in the west, the line might travel northwest via the CN corridor to the vicinity of Islington Avenue.
- The projected cost of the line is in the range of $25-million per mile, or $16-million per km.
- The report confirms that structural provision exists at Osgoode Station for an east-west subway line.
I have also included here a scan of a drawing showing a possible alignment from Donlands Station south and west to the Broadview (this is labelled “north alignment”, but this portion is substantially the same for all variants).
Several points are worth noting from this drawing.
- The tunnel would pass under Eastern High School and through an existing residential neighbourhood.
- The alignment would require the demolition of a large number of vintage buildings along Queen Street.
- The curve south to west begins at Dundas and Alton and ends at Queen and Jones. This gives an indication of the swath that any subway curve will cut through a neighbourhood, and I commend this to those readers who propose lines with hairpin turns.
- A curve from Pape onto the rail corridor would be less severe, although not without impacts, because it would not be a full 90 degree turn. (Pape is the north-south street just to the right of the obscured part of the street grid at the top of the page.)
As I said at the outset, I am publishing this to provide context for the discussion on this site. The planned construction of the Richmond Hill subway extension and the demand it will add to the Yonge line has side-effects that must be addressed. None of the options is simple, but we need to understand what they all are and how elements of them might be chosen or omitted from the solution.
Service Changes for January 2009 (Updated)
Updated December 29: The January 2009 Service Summary is now available online.
January 2009 brings a small number of service changes notably on the streetcar system. Many of these address overcrowding problems during the off-peak (there are no spare cars for peak period requirements).
Of particular interest are the changes on 501 Queen.
The weekday schedules will be adjusted by adding running time and stretching the headways during both peak periods and midday. The alleged purpose of this change is to improve trip reliability. Whether this will simply mean that even longer layovers will be available at both ends of the line remains to be seen.
Given the length of the Queen route, the TTC needs to move away from laying over cars to laying over operators by way of scheduled breaks at Russell and Roncesvalles carhouses. Ad hoc changes to line management are in place at Russell, but still not at Roncesvalles.
I have requested the CIS data for December 2008 and January 2009 for Queen (and related routes) in order to investigate whether there has been any improvement due to recent and pending schedule changes.
Meanwhile, the service improvements on Saturday and Sunday address crowding that shows up even on the averages, never mind when the service is erratic. It wasn’t your imagination, there just were not enough cars on the line for the demand.
November 2008 Service Improvements (Update 2)
Update 2: The TTC now expects to have all posted schedules updated by Christmas Eve, subject to delays caused by the weather. Please hold your cards and letters, folks, about places they have missed at least into mid-January.
Original Post:
This Sunday (November 23) will see a large number of service improvements both during peak and off peak periods to implement the next major step in the Ridership Growth Strategy. Continue reading
Humber Bay Gets Its Express Bus
Today, the TTC, in the best tradition of oiling the squeaky wheel, agreed to a one-year trial operation of a premium fare express bus from eastern Mimico to Union Station. This ran contrary to the staff recommendation that the route would not meet the criteria for a financially viable operation.
During the debate, Commissioner Hall suggested that, as a condition of this trial, the Humber Bay condo owners should stop operating their own private bus service over the same route. However, this idea was withdrawn. Chair Adam Giambrone supported the scheme with reservations, but expected that the ridership numbers would bear out what staff predicted and the route would not survive its one-year review. We shall see.
This service will require 3 additional peak buses to provide 5 inbound morning and 4 outbound afternoon trips.
I cannot help observing that this situation (the demand for a special bus) mirrors the situation in the Beach. The TTC is reaping the effect of two decades of ignoring the poor quality of service offered on Lake Shore. Despite all the claims of better operation on the 501, the efforts at managing operators to avoid short turns only takes place in the east, and has yet to be implemented westbound at Roncesvalles. Moreover, the 3 morning trips on the 508 Lake Shore, trips that should run like clockwork, are not predictable or worth waiting for.
It will be amusing to see whether the TTC manages to get the buses to their stops on schedule, and how long it takes for the would-be riders to complain about infrequent, unreliable service.
It’s always interesting to listen to people talking about how fast they can drive downtown, and therefore how good the bus would be. They ignore the need to walk to a stop, to wait for a bus and to get through downtown traffic to their stop.
Meanwhile, all of you whose routes are still crowded will wait a little longer for service meeting the TTC’s own standards. Even with recent increases, there remains a considerable number of routes that are overcrowded and for which the TTC has no spare equipment.
Sometime late in 2009, we may see the 501 Queen service extended from Humber to Park Lawn, provided that the forty-two municipal agencies that appear to be incapable of co-ordinating any transit-related construction can get their acts together. It will be intriguing to see what effect this has on demand for the premium fare bus service and what the comparable running times, including waits, really are.
How Much Will We Subsidize Transit Service? (Updated)
Updated October 23: The TTC deferred the Lake Shore Express bus proposal until its November meeting so that it could be considered together with an overall report on express bus policies.
TTC’s October Supplementary Agenda
The supplementary agenda for this month has now been posted, and it contains some reports of interest.
At this point, I am only posting links here for information, but will comment on these after the meeting on October 23.
Queen Car Update: No route changes at this time. Continue attempts to improve line management.
“TTC Culture” : 1 Queen Car : 0 (Updated June 25)
Updated June 25:
Jonathan Goldsbie has an article about the Queen car forum on the Eye Weekly site.
Updated June 18:
First, apologies to Gary Welsh of City Transportation Services whose name I misspelled in the original post. I’m used to the many permutations possible with “Stephen Munro” and don’t like to screw up other people’s names myself.
Today I deputed on the subject of the Queen report and forum, and the thrust of my remarks was:
- I agree that some of the proposals for traffic-related improvements on Queen will be good for the route. This and other operational changes have been under discussion for some time and were part of the reason I started my analyses of CIS data in 2007.
- There are many items on the “to do” list including detailed evaluation of alternate route structures, monitoring and management of the existing service, and bringing reports on traffic changes to Community Council for discussion and approval. They’re worthwhile and we mustn’t lose the momentum.
- The monthly update on cancelled service and short turns is missing, and we have no idea of how effective any new practices might be since late April.
- At the Queen Car Forum, the same May report was presented without updates, but the big problem was the issue of “TTC Culture” as an explanation for the slowness of change. I made the point that this is hard to believe given enthusiastic celebration of TTC employees’ skills and dedication at the 40-year service presentations that opened the meeting, and the extensive review and recommendations for immediate change in the report on the Lytton Boulevard subway fatality. Both of these show a culture that celebrates skill and dedication. I made it clear that my remarks were aimed at corporate culture, not at any individual who happened to be the bearer of the message.
- My own view is that problems on Queen are disproportionate to those on other routes and this is a function of the length and challenges posed by the 501, not just any “cultural” issues.
- When the report with a recommended strategy for dealing with the 501 comes forward in October, I hope that it will have more substance and a positive outlook about what can be done.
- Commissioner Bussin (who attended the Forum) replied that she felt the “culture” reference was only to short-term problems with introduction of change and asked how I took the impression I did. I replied that the sense was not just mine, but that of others I had talked to and responses to the original post here.
- TTC staff argued that they only intended the “cultural” reference as a short-term problem to be overcome, that years of line management style can’t be changed overnight. They haven’t given up on the system. Also, the problem with a lack of updated info appears to be a staff resource issue (for which read they’re too busy with other things), but the information will be incorporated in the monthly Chief General Manager’s Report.
I have managed to cheese off a number of folks at the TTC and City Hall, but feel it’s not my job to be a cheerleader. I report what I hear and what I see. Possibly my comments influence how others see the same events, but such is the problem of any media (the “it’s in the Sun so it must be true” syndrome).
Some of you have already written with your own reflections on Tuesday’s meeting, and if there are others reading this, I would be interested in your take on what was said. This blog exists not just for my opinions, but as a forum for many others to let those interested in transit matters see a variety of positions whether I agree with them or not.
The original post follows below. Continue reading
Queen Streetcar Forum (Updated)
When: Monday, June 16, 2008 from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Where: Council Chambers, City Hall [Note Updated Location]
The TTC will send staff to discuss the recent status report on the Queen car, but I do not expect that we will hear anything definitive about issues like splitting the route. Various options are on the table, but the report comparing them won’t be available until October, and implementation won’t likely come until early 2009.
James Bow and I will have comments of our own, depending on just what the TTC says, and Commissioners Adam Giambrone and Sandra Bussin will likely attend.
Routes 501/502/503 in January 2008: Blended Service? (Updated)
Update: The charts in this post have been updated so that each route has its own colour. Thanks to a reader, Brent, who spotted the problem with rendering them only in B&W.
One of the little myths of TTC schedules is that routes with branches, or streets with overlapping routes, actually have something like “blended” service where some care is taken to even out vehicle spacings.
In some cases, the schedules do make an attempt to do this with identical headways on different services, but after that, the service is pretty much left to its own devices to “blend”. For many years, the 502 and 503 services on Kingston Road had similar but slightly different headways. This would mean that there were large scheduled gaps followed by pairs of cars during periods when the departure times at Bingham were almost in sync. As it happened, this problem was at its worst right at the peak of inbound travel. Poor service by design, and in time this was fixed.
An example of overlapping routes where the blend is troublesome lies on Eglinton Avenue east of Yonge where many services run together: 34 Eglinton East, 54 Lawrence East (with two branches of its own), 100 Flemingdon Park, 56 Leaside, 51 Leslie and 103 Mt. Pleasant North. The 103 doesn’t overlap for long and there is no service on the 51 and 56 at some times (although this will change if the proposed Ridership Growth Strategy full-service standards come into effect in November 2008).
On Eglinton there are three major services, each on its own headway. This causes scheduled bunching and wide gaps. Given the different requirements of each route, this is inevitable, but it’s important to remember that many riders will see packs of buses and wide gaps and wonder just what is going on.
Down on Queen Street, there are three services merged westbound between Kingston Road and the Don River, and two services between the Don and McCaul. It’s not uncommon to see cars from different routes running in pairs, and I started wondering just how frequently this happens. Continue reading
Steve Munro 