The following is a combination of two comments sent in recently by Renee Knight, and I’m putting them in their own thread.

The 501 Queen Car in the Beach is doing a terribly pathetic job of serving this neighbourhood. Even in the midst of summer and with tourists flocking to the neighbourhood, there seems to be no consideration to the people that live here and need to get out of the beach for work, doctors, medical appointments…

In the last 5 years the state of service on the streetcar has become so abysmal that people buy houses in the Beach thinking they can take the Streetcar to their offices downtown, and to often end up either driving to work or selling their homes and moving downtown where they can walk to work.

Today alone, I waited 20 minutes for a streetcar that’s supposed to go every 6 minutes, and then got turfed off at Connaught, and then again at McCaul, just to go to Trinity and Strachan from Queen and Wineva, and this at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday. We’re not talking rush hour, no traffic problems, it’s a great sunny day.

The problem is that the people who decide on the short turns the drivers make aren’t anywhere near the route, and could care less if the schedule is being met, as in picking up passengers along the route. The focus is on the downtown core. TTC doesn’t get it that we also need to get downtown from the beach and back home again. Three streetcars and an hour an a half for a 40 minute trip is really pathetic, and it does not have to be this way.

I don’t believe that traffic congestion is the problem. I believe the problem is a negligent management so out of touch with its ridership that they just don’t care. And as far as that goes, this creates staff that doesn’t care either, if they can’t meet schedules, and are constantly being yelled at; after a while you give up and stop listening. That’s what we are finding on our route. Drivers have given up, their supervisors are not listening to them or us. What are we to do? It’s only going to get worse if no-one is looking at solutions!

For many years, the streetcar was very enjoyable to take, not so anymore!

I have called in to customer service, written letters that go unanswered… What can we do in the Beach to improve the service? Petition?

Any suggestions, Steve?

[2nd part]

Yes, this used to be the TTC’s motto before, The Better Way. What happened to the better way? It’s not better anymore.

I’ve taken the transit in this city for over 20 years, and the surface routes are painfully deteriorting in service. Particularly the Queen Car (501 – Neville Park – serving the Beach) I have never been more disappointed at the level of service on this route. My 64 Main bus does not disappoint, but anytime I have to take the Queen car, I am concerned, as 9/10 times, I will not get a streetcar for at least 20 minutes, often 30 or more minutes.

We always give ourselves around 15 minutes leeway to get to our desinations, assuming we should not have to wait to long for a streetcar that is scheduled to come to the stop (Queen & Wineva) every 6 minutes, so it isn’t a matter of people leaving late and blaming transit. It’s a matter of transit short turning 1/2 of the streetcars that are scheduled to come into the Beach, and that’s before any problems start on the line.

It’s just not an acceptable level of service.

I long for the days when I could see a car that wasn’t headed to Neville in a 20-30 minute wait, and trusting I’d see a car come my way before the one that just went down to Neville.

It used to take 30 minutes to get to Yonge & Queen from Wineva, now it takes an hour, trip time is still the same, what’s changed is the wait time. Very rarely are the traffic issues so bad that the neglect of not serving the Beach at least reasonably close to the schedule is actually neccesary.

What happens now, is that car returning from Neville Park will have one or two cars within minutes behind it, leaving terrible gaps in service that no-one seems to care about. The “we’re sorry for your inconvencience” from a Customer Service staffer just does nothing to remove the problem! In fact it’s like a slap in the face for bothering to call in!

The schedule, as we say in the Beach is “Published Fiction”. It’s a joke, and should be an embarrasment to the TTC, and those who supervise the line. I do not blame the drivers, they simply follow directions of their superiors, no matter how daft.

Steve:  I really am getting tired of the TTC’s lame excuses that all their problems would go away if there were no traffic congestion.  First off, the congestion is not anywhere near as bad all of the time on all of the routes as the TTC claims.  Second, there are ongoing problems with mismanagement of the service as described in Renee’s comments above.

For decades, the TTC has forgotten that many of the people who actually use the routes downtown live on the outer part of the line.  Screw up the service there and you drive away ridership.

In case everyone thought that this had turned into a blog about the Spadina Subway and intercity rail travel, let’s come back to the real world of the Queen Car with the following note.

Hi Steve
This is not really a comment, but rather a follow-up to my earlier comments re: service in the Beach.  It’s not getting any better.

Let’s start with a math quiz . What’s the next number in this sequence?

18,33,1,14,2,10,11 ______(??? )

Give up? Well the answer is “who knows, could be any number”.  It’s the 501 from Neville.

These were the 501 headways departing Neville westbound on a normal, dry road, no traffic, no accidents type middle of the weekday when all a person wanted to do was spend $10 on a streetcar going to Queen & Lee etc to do local errands. Can you believe it? Is anyone in charge of supervising this major streetcar route???

Walked down to the loop from Fallingbrook at 12:30 and saw 42xx departing westbound. 12:48 (run#7) finally came 18 minutes later. Thought I would hang around and see what followed:

• The next car, 4244 departed at 1:21-33 minute gap!!!!
• Then in a brilliant move, car 4250 left one whole minute later at 1:22 (came empty, left empty).
• 4210 left 14 min later at 1:36.
• Then run 14, 4230 left 2 minutes later at 1:38 (again empty)
• 4225 left at 1:48, and finally
• 4225 left at 1:57.

This is a very common situation, not unusual at all. What happens with this mess down the line? Where do the supervisors supervise from?  Do they know what is going on here????

This is sad and funny at the same time. Is anyone in control of this route??

Thought you may find this interesting Steve.
Pete

Yes, it is interesting and far, far too common.  The service at Neville Loop is supposed to run every 5’30”.

I am still mired in detailed analysis of the King route (which I hope to finish over Easter weekend) and have not had the heart to look at Queen Street yet.  The bottom line, however, is that service is quite irregular even on days, like Christmas, when it should run like a clock.

The following comments came in response to my post about travels on St. Clair.  It’s big enough and has enough material to warrant its own thread, so here it is:

This week has been an interesting one.  My morning commute is from Brown’s Line/Lakeshore to Queen/Spadina.  One seat ride on 501 is nice when the cars are running on schedule….

I’m getting a depressing kind of entertainment checking the time ahead/behind when boarding (and leaving if the car isn’t too crowded).

This week, it seems that 501 operators are not trying very hard to keep to schedule.

Tuesday: I go out to catch the regular 8:40 AM eastbound from Long Branch.  It’s signed as run 08/18, and there was one operator who was on this for a couple of board periods who was very good about leaving the loop consistently and arriving at Queen and Spadina no later than 9:35.  On Tuesday, it was a different operator, who arrived at the loop after the scheduled departure time.  She then took her backpack and vanished in the TTC building at the north-west corner of the loop.  Two other 501 ALRVs showed up while she was in there.  Three ALRVs stacked around the loop is a pretty unusual sight!  When she finally came out and pulled up to the loop, CIS was reporting -16 (which was about right); at Queen and Spadina it was still around -15.

Wednesday: after 9AM, waiting for a eastbound 501 streetcar at the 39/40th Streets stop.  And waiting.  A streetcar finally goes past westbound, and does not reappear eastbound for at least ten minutes.  This means it laid over for at least five minutes.  This is run 17; CIS is saying -20 as I board and of course it stops at every stop because people have been waiting for close to half an hour for a streetcar.  At Palmerston and Queen he turns on the four-way flashers and goes off to Starbucks for a coffee.  I think it was -19 at Queen and Spadina.

Today: same operator on the same run 17 goes past westbound; this time it returns eastbound in about five minutes.  CIS is saying -9 when I board.  There’s another ALRV on his tail westbound (run 02); and it stays on his tail eastbound.  We don’t move very quickly across Queen Street (slow bicyclists are keeping up or passing us).  The car is too crowded for me to check the CIS when I leave but I figure we were probably an additional few minutes behind, for a -14 or -15.  Run 02, which was right behind him westbound at Brown’s Line, is right behind him eastbound at Spadina.  As I leave the streetcar, run 17’s rollsigns are being changed to 501 KINGSTON RD & QUEEN.

Now I have been on other 501 runs where the operator is on schedule, or catching up to schedule.  I know it can be done. I ’ve been on other runs where we’re behind, and there’s no effort on the part of the operator to pick things up.  Combine the two, and you get huge gaps and multiple TTC vehicles showing up at the same time.

Steve:  Just think!  The TTC wants to put an LRT service out to the western waterfront.  This shows the sort of marvellous job they are doing of running attractive service now to build ridership.

Once again, I have to ask two questions of both the TTC and the ATU:  Why is it that situations where service runs at the whim of the operator are becoming more and more common, and what is the TTC going to do about it?  Do they even know or care?

There are a lot of wonderful operators out there, and it only takes a minority of bad apples to create havoc for riders and for other operators stuck in the mess.  This has nothing to do with the TTC’s favourite complaint, operation in mixed traffic, and everything to do with an abdication of the need to properly manage the service.

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.