by

What Will the Spadina Subway Cost?

Next week’s TTC agenda contains a report on potential ridership, costs and revenues for the Spadina Subway extension.

This is fascinating reading because we now begin to see vaguely real numbers about this project.  Contrary to claims in an earlier report to Council, the line will not recover 80% of its costs from opening day and a special subsidy will be needed. 

One particular observation notes that York University students now ride in from the 905 on a single York Region fare.  They will not be willing to pay an extra fare for a “TTC” fare zone on the subway, and therefore won’t contribute much revenue to it.  They are the single most important part of the revenue projections for the new line, but the marginal revenue they will actually generate is small.

The City of Toronto has been asked, through the operating agreement for the new line, to shoulder all of the future costs and losses despite the considerable benefits for both York Region and Queen’s Park.  The TTC holds that this should justify a special operating subsidy.

The Toronto portion of the subway is projected to open with a 62% cost recovery for operations.  This is quite respectable, but below average for the system and operating dollars will have to be found (or diverted) to run this line.  On Sheppard, we got no special subsidy and absorbed the extra operating cost into the base budget.  Remember that the next time the TTC says it cannot afford to run better service on your bus route.

The TTC is quite clear in saying that subways require a density of 100 persons and/or jobs per hectare, and that:

… the Spadina Subway Extension, especially the portion north of Steeles Avenue, is not expected to reach this density threshold for some time after the commencement of revenue service …

Revenue service is almost a decade away, and “some time after” even further in the future.  Meanwhile, we have many pressing transportation requirements in the GTA that will go unfunded.  The report ends by stating:

A substantial operating cost contribution from the Province of Ontario to the estimated $14.2-million in net operating costs for the entire line should be pursued to offset the City’s financial risk.

I’m sure further study of this problem will magically reduce the projected losses to politically acceptable levels.  The Emperor’s tailor will be visiting any day now.

by

GO Construction News

Robert Wightman sent in this update: 

Since I retired again on May 31st (I do this every 6 months or so) I have been driving around and have a few observations on GO construction:

The three track section on Lakeshore West from Burlington to Bayview Junction is finished and new signalling has been installed. The signals are no longer searchlight but three (or in some cases two) aspect LED signals. They look quite sharp.  The north track only goes up the Dundas sub and the South track only continues into Hamilton whilst the middle track can go to either.

Most of the track on the Barrie extension has been relayed with 115 lb. continuous welded rail. Every level crossing is having crossing gate installed including the one that runs about 200 yds to a farm house. The Station area at Allendale (Barrie) is all fenced off and levelled. There is a concrete foundation for what appears to be a sub station behind BDO Dunwoody. It looks like the parking lot here will be 200 to 300 feet wide and a mile long. Maybe they will have one long loading platform and you can park either beside where you get on or where you get off.  All the new stations on this line are architecturally similar to the original stations which have been completely refurbished. The station in Bradford has, it appears, just been refurbished including the pole that held the train order semaphores. This line is supposed to open later this year.

The track work on the Georgetown line from Bramalea to Mt. Pleasant is proceeding as almost all of the bridges have been widened and in some places grading has started for the additional track. CN has started to replace the existing signals with gantries to hold the signals for the extra track and all the heads are 3 aspect LED signals like on Lakeshore.

They are going to have problems at the Brampton Station — is it is effectively one track east of the station and you very seldom get two trains passing there. People have gotten used to running behind the trains as soon as it has cleared Church Street to get to the train. When it is two tracks some one is going to get killed as they get hit by a through freight going the other way. They have had police out telling people that it will soon be two way all the time but it won’t help.  It will be interesting to see the platform on the South side as it will be at street level at the West end and elevated at the East end, the Brampton EL, or is it L?

I do not venture out to the East end much so I have no idea what is happening there. The GO trains have disappeared from Guelph Junction so I assume the new storage yard in Milton is built. I have seen work going on at the Lisgar Station and it is supposed to be open in the fall.

If I see anything new I will report.

Robert Wightman

Anyone with news of events in the other half of the world is welcome to add to this post.

by

How Long is it from Woodbine to Yonge?

In a separate thread here, there is an extensive discussion of whether it is faster to take the Queen car from Woodbine to Yonge, or to take a bus north plus two subway trips.  I originally quoted a running time of 20 minutes for this trip, but was subsequently convinced to up this to at least 25.

Recently, I began looking at the Queen car’s operating data for December 2006.  [For all of you who have been waiting, the grand work on King is now complete and I will be publishing a much abridged version here soon in installments.  In time I will also address the perennial Spadina vs Bathurst question.]

For the first three weeks of December, the running time from Woodbine to Yonge sits quite consistently on 25 minutes from about 7:30 am until 6:00 pm.  The spread in values ranges mainly from a low of 20 to a high of 30, although the majority of observations are within a few minutes of 25.  For trips leaving Woodbine from about 8:00 to 8:30, the running times can be extended to over 30 minutes although this tends to occur moreso on poor weather days.

A related problem is the reliability with which each scheduled car actually shows up for the peak inbound trip.  In my analysis on King, I had already discovered that several cars scheduled to pass through Parkdale during the height of the peak do not always show up, or show up late leading to erratic service just when it is most needed.  I looked for the same effect on Queen and was not surprised by what I found.

In the two hour period from 7:00 to 9:00, there should be about 25 cars westbound on Queen (I say “about” because the actual value is fractional thanks to the 4’52” headway).  As on King, some of these cars do not show up reliably or at all, at least east of Woodbine Loop, and the problem is more severe as the rush hour goes on.  Missing runs are particularly a problem starting around 8:00. 

This means that just at the point when most people want to get downtown for a start in the 8:30 to 9:00 period, the service gets reliably worse.  Because of crowding, this also means that travel times will be extended.

I have not yet had a chance to examine this in detail for the Queen route, but on King the origin of the problem is quite clear.  Some runs, especially those scheduled to enter service comparatively late, don’t always make it out of the carhouse, or if they do, they are late.  Those that are late are often short-turned, or make their trips well off-schedule.  Either way, they are missing from the time and the place when they are most needed.

The reason for this, I believe, is that these runs do not have assigned operators but use either staff from the Spare Board (operators with no assigned work who fill in for absences) or volunteers working overtime.  There is, of course, a good chance that the number of operators available for these runs will be lower on days when the weather is bad.  People who are marginally ill choose not to come in to work, and people who might take overtime prefer not to work in snowstorms.  Just when all the service is needed on the street, critical peak period cars are missing.

Intriguingly, there is very little variation through the day in running time over this section, and systemic traffic congestion does not appear to play a role in westbound trips over this segment of the route.

Often, I have discussed the question of the adequacy of service to meet demand, and the TTC routinely talks about the level of scheduled service.  The problem here is that anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the “scheduled” service may be missing on any weekday during the morning peak westbound at Woodbine.

Congestion is a serious problem on parts of the system.  However, this is not a question of transit priority or rights-of-way, this is a question of the TTC actually operating all of the scheduled service. 

by

Mysteries of Poles on St. Clair

No, this is not a commentary about immigration, but about the seemingly mundane issue of street lighting, hydro and TTC poles on St. Clair Avenue.

Regular readers here will know that I am not impressed by designs including centre poles because:

  • they take up an extra metre of road space that could be used at the sidewalks,
  • they interfere with emergency vehicles (or even TTC buses) using the streetcar right-of-way, and
  • they are just not very attractive.

People involved with the project from both the City and the TTC have steadfastly maintained that these poles are essential to the project and that they were “selected” by public participation.  This is complete nonsense on both counts. Continue reading →

by

The Tyranny of Old Plans

Some months ago, John Sewell gave a series of talks about the origins of suburbia.  Among the fascinating background materials were several maps showing the expressway network in what we now call the GTA and beyond.

Some of these maps are now 70 years old, but they clearly show the precursors of many of the 400 series highways.  Many decisions about future land use and development turned on alignments that Ontario identified and protected years before they were needed.  Long term planning has benefits, but it can also be an invisible hand directing the future.

Three long-lived transportation projects in Toronto come to mind.  All shared two common factors:

  • property development interests played a role in advocacy for these projects, and
  • all of the projects were “too expensive”, but they stayed on the books 

One project is already built albeit in shortened form, one is in early days of construction, and one refuses to die even though it’s little more than a billboard and a perfunctory website. Continue reading →

by

Another View From The Beach [Updated]

I received the following comment from Tina R., and there are enough separate issues here that it deserves its own thread.  This deals with service to The Beach as well as general questions about buses versus streetcars and LRT, and express operations.

An update about running times on the Queen car, added on May 27, appears at the end of this post. 

Continue reading →

by

Forty Years of GO Transit

Late last week, I did an interview for CBC in anticipation of GO’s 40th anniversary celebrated on May 23rd.  A few clips were used on both TV and radio, but we covered a lot of territory that didn’t get on air.  Hence, this post.

For a detailed history of GO’s many routes, including some ideas that never got off of the ground, please turn to the Transit Toronto website.  My topic here is more “what might have been” and “what might still be”.

GO began in an era when the wisdom of expressway construction was under attack, and the first train ran fully four years before the Davis government would kill plans for the Spadina expressway (not to mention a network of other horrors that would follow).  Clearly, someone understood the idea that just building more and more lanes had its limits and there were better ways to get people into downtown Toronto.  It’s worth remembering this context.  What we now call the 905 was largely rural, and there were still a few farms in outlying parts of Metropolitan Toronto. Continue reading →

by

“Doors Open” at the TTC

Doors Open Toronto is coming up this weekend, and there are two TTC sites open for visitors.

Lower Bay Station

Lower Bay recently had weekend subway service during the diversion around tunnel repairs between Bay and St. George Stations, and it will be open for walking visitors on Saturday, May 26 from noon to 3:00 pm.  Note that this site is not accessible as there are no working escalators to the lower level.

Here is a note from the TTC with the details:

Entry into Bay Lower station will be from inside Bay Station – we will have volunteers and security staff guiding people into Bay Lower from the collector’s level.  As there are two sets of doors into Bay Lower station we will be using one for entry and the other one for exit – we therefore will have a continuous line into the station going straight through and out the other end.

We will have the crash gate open on collectors’ level and we will line people up starting at that location – there will be some signage around the station to indicate the start line as everyone will start in the same spot no matter where they entered the station.

We hope to be able to accommodate everyone who comes to visit us that day.

Harvey Shops

The main repair shops at the TTC’s Hillcrest complex will be open from noon to 3:00 pm on Saturday.  (The last time I was inside this building, they were rebuilding PCCs and it’s time for another visit.)

The full site listing is available at the Doors Open website.

by

Harbourfront News (Updated)

Updated May 18:

Service to Exhibition Loop resumed today with normal operations on the Bathurst and Harbourfront cars to Exhibition Loop.

Updated May 15:

For those who were wondering why the TTC is fixing the track on Fleet Street when it is supposed to be replaced later this month, here is the answer:  our friends at Toronto Hydro can’t handle two projects at the same time, and since they’re busy on St. Clair, Fleet will have to wait.  Come back in the fall.

Streetcar service should return to Fleet Street once the patchwork on the track is completed.  The schedule for May-June still shows the cars running to Exhibition, and so the TTC should be able to restore service once there is track to run on.

More news when it’s available. 

The original post follows below. Continue reading →

by

Improving Service on King and Queen

[Those of you who want oodles of details won’t find a complex spreadsheet or chart here, and you will have to take some of the numbers on faith.  Trust me.  The reason for this post is to stimulate discussions and to ask the question “Why Not?”.]

We all know that service on the King and Queen routes leaves a lot to be desired, but little is done about the situation beyond the usual complaints of congestion and the need for an exclusive right-of-way.  Although major changes won’t happen until we have a larger fleet, improvements are still possible if only there is the will to make them.

I have been looking at a number of route configurations (some of you will know of my schemes for the Long Branch car), but believe that in the short term the first issue we must confront is the assignment of vehicle types to these two routes and the number of cars available for service.

My proposal, briefly, is that the King line operate exclusively with ALRVs and that Queen run with CRLVs.  Service and capacity would be increased in both cases.

The following discussion concerns the AM peak when service is at its height.  All other times of day would be adjusted accordingly. Continue reading →