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Looking Back: Bloor-Danforth Shuttles

From February 1966 when the original Bloor-Danforth subway opened between Keele and Woodbine, and May 1968 when the extensions to Islington and Warden were added, two streetcar shuttles served the remaining outer part of the Bloor carline.

Looking at the old streetscapes, much remains familiar, but much has been lost especially to cheap rebuilds and infill developments.  Very much a vanished breed from this era are the car lots, gas stations, furniture stores and, in a few cases, houses.

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Bloor-Danforth Streetcar Shuttles: Demand Without Density

A frequent part of debates about technology choices and network planning is the premise that to succeed, rapid transit must be surrounded by high density development. This is an odd claim given the counter-examples available on Toronto.

The situation is more subtle, and “demand” turns not just on density adjacent to the line, but on its ability to act as a corridor drawing on feeder services to concentrate demand. Whether such concentration is “good” is another matter. Higher demand requires more infrastructure in the corridor and in a worst-case scenario, a line can run out of room. Two good examples in Toronto are the Yonge subway and Highway 401.

Focus on a single corridor can also distort travel patterns and network design. As a non-driver, I have often been amused by motorists who will go miles out of their way to use an expressway, only to find themselve trapped in a traffic jam. For transit riders, the need to force-feed rapid transit can interfere with travel that is not oriented to the primary trip pattern. Try getting around Scarborough if you are not bound for Kennedy or STC stations.

Recently, I was scanning another batch of old phographs and they reminded me of an even older example of high demand in a low density area: the streetcar shuttles on Bloor-Danforth that operated between the opening of the original Keele-Woodbine service, and the extensions a few years later to Islington-Warden. Neither Bloor West nor the Danforth — particularly in the late 1960s — were forests of high rise apartments. All the same, the shuttles had service, capacity and demand beyond that we see on any streetcar line today.

The Bloor West shuttle from Keele Station to Jane Loop operated with 17 cars at peak over a distance of only 2.1km at a headway of 1’07”. That’s 53.7 cars/hour for a design capacity of about 4,000/hr (based on about 75 riders per car) with headroom for peaks at a higher level.

The Danforth shuttle from Woodbine Station to Luttrell Loop operated with 12 cars on a 1.6km line at a headway of 1’30”. At 40 cars/hour this gave a design capacity of about 3,000/hr.

An important point about these shuttles is that the lion’s share of their traffic was bound to or from the subway, and local traffic was comparatively light. Many riders boarded inbound at the Jane and Luttrell terminals, and the streetcars were not attempting to serve very heavy demand from on-street stops. That demand depended on feeder bus services from what we now call “the inner suburbs”.

Moreover, the level of service on the outer ends of the old Bloor-Danforth streetcar route shows how considerable the demand was for these segments, even allowing for some added demand due to the subway’s presence.

The moral of this short article is that a transit network and its routes cannot be thought of with a simplistic model of transit stations surrounded by development. The larger context includes the diversity or concentration of demand patterns and the degree to which the network serves them.

In the next article, a look at Bloor West and The Danforth as they once were.

Correction January 6, 2015: In the original version of this article, I cited the number of cars/hour as the actual assignment of vehicles to each route. Thanks to John F. Bromley for catching this howling error.

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Will We Ever See Our New Streetcars?

In the Financial Post, Peter Kuitenbrouwer reports on problems at Bombardier’s Thunder Bay plant.

It’s a sad tale of cock-ups with parts that don’t fit and claims that designing for Toronto’s streetcar environment is too challenging. Fortunately for Bombardier, they have not yet had to start producing the Metrolinx cars that should be an off-the-shelf design as a point of comparison.

Sorry, Bombardier, you bid on this contract, and you pass yourselves off as a world-class supplier. Stop complaining and start delivering.

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Welcome to My New Site for 2015

Updated February 28, 2015: The domain stevemunro.ca now points to the site hosted at WordPress and is synonymous with swanboatsteve.wordpress.com.

Updated February 17, 2015: All articles and attachments from the old site have now been migrated here.

Starting on January 1, 2015, all of my new content will appear here.

For a period of time (likely until March 2015) “stevemunro.ca” will take you to my original site where articles are still active with comments. Given the number of hotlinks to recent activity, I am leaving those articles in their original locations.

Access to the new site will use the URL swanboatsteve.wordpress.com until February 28, 2015.

When the migration is completed and activity on the old site dies off, I will switch my domain to point to the new site and it will be accessible either via the WordPress domain name or using stevemunro.ca.

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Birth of a Name: Transit City

Today, December 29, 2014, is the tenth birthday of the name “Transit City”.

No, this was not an early version of David Miller’s LRT network (still two years away), but rather an attempt by the TTC to show what might be done with surface transit improvements. I had an advance copy of the proposal for comment, and a request for a name that could give it some presence. Something better than “Expansion of Bus and Streetcar Rapid Transit” by which it would appear on the January 2005 agenda.

In a somewhat fanciful, stream of conscience email, I wrote back:

Hmmm … “Better Late Than Never” would be a good description for some TTC services, not to mention for a plan that we could actually achieve rather than endlessly debating.

[…] it is important that we somehow emphasize that this is something we really can do, and can do in a reasonable timeframe at a cost we might be able to afford.  Also, we have to tie this in with the idea that Toronto is growing through transit to support the OP [Official Plan].

As a sidebar, somewhere the plan has to acknowledge that the TTC is NOT the only game in town, and that some of the growth will be handled by other systems, notably GO Transit.  What is vital is that we do not repeat the errors of “Network 2001” which planned for lots of growth but ignored the potential contribution of commuter rail.  That’s where the so-called justifications came from for the Sheppard Subway and for the scheme to massively expand Bloor-Yonge station.

Somewhere, we have to say that we should not try to handle all of the regional demand on the subway, and that this approach will leave resources (and subway capacity) free to handle comparatively-speaking local demand.

The LRT (or whatever) study needs to acknowledge this context — that it is NOT trying to be a mega solution to all transportation problems of the 416 and 905, but that it is trying to address the growth of population on The Avenues, and more generally in a built form that is not suitable for a network of subway lines.

Alas “Wheels to the Future” has already been used by the TTC over 60 years ago, and some bright spark might point out that hovercraft and maglev trains do not use wheels for propulsion — we want to give no indication that this study may be biased to one particular mode, after all.

“Transit for the Avenues” or “Transit Avenues” only makes sense if you know about the OP and the special meaning it assigns to that word.

“Network 2011” has been used before, and we really need to get a shovel into the ground sooner than that anyhow.

Hmmm … I have just had a brainwave along another, er, avenue …

“Toronto, A Transit City” is generic and it shows the focus we want for overall growth using transit (be it on the Avenues or elsewhere).  It’s also broad enough to embrace a larger scheme of studies … “Toronto:  Building a Transit City” … which would probably come to be shortened in general parlance as the “Transit City” plan …

The presentation duly appeared on January 12, 2005, and it makes interesting reading, if only for a very different view of where transit was headed 10 years ago. The report is no longer available on the TTC’s website, but thanks to Transit Toronto, it is still online.

 

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The TTC Looks Ahead to 2015

At its December board meeting, the newly-appointed Toronto Transit Commission board had little new business to discuss on its agenda. The heavy policy debates will come in January with the 2015 Operating Budget and the 2015-2024 Ten Year Capital Plan.

The board is a mixed bag of old and new faces, and there is no real sense yet of how this group will react to calls for improved service and the reversal of cuts for which some of them were responsible during the Ford/Stintz era. Josh Colle is now the TTC Chair, a position held by his father Mike, now an MPP, from 1988 to 1994. He is hard to read, and like so much of the new John Tory administration, uncertain as to whether holding the line on taxes takes precedence over the quality of service. Until the budget debates, Toronto will not know whether Colle is a new “transit champion” in name only, or if he and his board members will fight for TTC riders at Council.

The so-called citizen members of the board (four of the eleven seats go to non-councillors) have been carried over from the previous term, and will sit until their replacements are appointed early in 2015. The choices made by the Civic Appointments Committee, itself dominated by Tory-sympathetic Councillors, will give us a sense of just how independent the Mayor and his circle want the TTC Board to be.

To set the stage for the new term, CEO Andy Byford presented a TTC Overview under the title “The Road to Modernization”. There is nothing particularly new here, but it gives a sense of Byford’s focus. The title is somewhat ironic, the sort of things one would have expected half a century or more ago, not a call-to-arms for a system that prides itself for its reputation in the transit industry.

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TTC Service Changes for February 15, 2015

The February 2015 service changes are mainly a collection of housekeeping updates with no significant change in service levels.

41 Keele local service will change to artic buses, but the express service will continue to operate with 12m vehicles.

504 King continues to see buses substituting for streetcars during peak periods. Weekend running times will be extended to match actual conditions but no service will be added “because of a lack of budgeted operator hours”. Remember this line the next time the TTC tells you it has no spare vehicles. They are unable to add vehicles off-peak because there is no budget headroom to pay the drivers.

2015.02.15_Service_Changes

Updated: A reader has noted that the evening service proposed for Keele is shown as the 41B Petrolia/Steeles branch rather than the 41A Steeles service that operates now. The info in my table is based on the TTC’s service change memo, but I have sent a request that they clarify whether this is an error. Given the holidays, a reply probably won’t come in for a while.

Updated: The TTC has confirmed that the service design on the 41 Keele route has not been changed, and that the 41B evening service was shown in error. The table linked above has been updated to reflect this correction.