Tony Turrittin of Transport 2000 sent along a copy of a note explaining to potential bidders the kind of requirements that would appear in the specifications for new streetcars. I am publishing it here to save on answering ongoing queries about what the TTC plans to do. Note that this is a shortened version of the original text to retain the core information about the Commission’s technical requirements. Continue reading
Why Do We Have Streetcars?
This piece is much more of an editorial than my usual writing here in response to a lot of ill-informed commentary about the streetcar system and Transit City. This is not intended as a definitive, answer-all-questions epic on why we should keep streetcars, but as an overview of my position.
Some will think I am too aggressive, moving too fast, or just plain out of my mind for my opinions on the role streetcars and LRT can play in Toronto. I happen to have similar feelings about those who advocate subways and other inappropriate technologies.
For three decades, Toronto has been appallingly served by its professional transportation establishment and by its politicians. While the rest of the world goes on with building, or rediscovering, the streetcar and LRT, we clung to the idea that they were quaint, something for the tourists, but not “real” transit. We blew years on studies looking at small extensions to our subway network that would do almost nothing for the city overall and leave large areas without decent service. We just about convinced everyone that good transit could never happen because we could never afford it.
With Transit City and the Official Plan there is hope that we are moving in an important new direction.
Recently, a reporter at the Star who shall remain nameless left me both a voicemail and a comment here asking that I get in touch about a piece he is writing. He has not returned my call back, and the email he left bounces. This leaves me little alternative but to reply here to the questions I think he might be asking. Continue reading
East Bayfront / West Don Lands Update
The materials presented at recent Community Liaison Committee meetings for the two EAs now in progress are available on the TWRC website. Note that they are not thick with explanatory information as they are intended to accompany a verbal presentation, but they show where things stand with the planning now.
Several issues have been raised by the CLCs, and a revised set of proposals will come back to the next CLC meetings later in May. The material in these documents is not definitive.
East Bayfront (roughly Bay & Queen’s Quay to Parliament)
The West Don Lands material has not yet been posted on the TWRC site. I will add the link here when it is available.
Shelters on St. Clair (Updated)
The TTC will install new shelters on St. Clair starting in late July. They are currently at the stage of approving drawings for the manufacture of the shelters, then there will be a prototype, then the installation.
I can’t help wondering why on a project that has seen so many delays we are only just now getting around to the preliminary stages of building the shelters. This is one more example of a project with equal measures of bad luck and bad planning.
On a brighter note, I was at a community meeting tonight regarding the detailed plans for this year’s construction between Westmount and McRoberts, and things went much more smoothly than the raucous gatherings of earlier times.
Update May 9: The presentation materials are available online.
Intersection Replacements on Dundas
With the reconstruction of the Dundas route, we will get several chances to see the TTC’s new method of installing intersections this summer.
The special work is pre-coated with rubber and assembled into panels before it arrives at the worksite. The rubber provides mechanical isolation of the track from the roadbed just as the sleeves now used for tangent rails do, reducing vibration and increasing the lifespan of the entire installation. Pre-assembly of track panels simplifies work at the site because each individual piece of track does not have to be fitted into position and welded one at a time.
Tentative dates for intersections (as shown on the TTC’s construction site) are:
- Victoria Day weekend: Bay & Dundas
- Canada Day weekend: Ossington & Dundas
- Simcoe Day weekend: Church & Dundas
- McCaul & Dundas is not explicitly scheduled, but trackwork in the surrounding area is planned for late May
The TTC is quite proud of advancements they’ve made in track construction quality and speed, and Dundas Street is certainly a chance to show their progress.
Jane’s Walk 2: My Home Streetcar Lines — Mt. Pleasant & St. Clair
Back in the days when goodly chunks of “the suburbs” were still farms, I grew up in North Toronto near Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton. This neighbourhood dates from the building boom of the 1920s, although our house was older, 1906, the third one built in our block. The old farmhouse up the road was replaced by two monster homes a few years ago, and now ours is number 2 in seniority.
When I was young, I spent a lot of time down at Mt. Pleasant Loop watching the streetcars. This was a typical old style TTC loop with trees and benches, a house to the north and a BA gas station to the south right on the corner. All of that’s gone now, and the loop is simply a hole in the front of seniors’ building where, infrequently, one can find a Mt. Pleasant bus.
The other corners held Ted’s Restaurant (gone — replaced like other stores around it with an ugly midrise office block), Eglinton Public School (replaced by a new building that turns its back on the intersection with a dead wall where once there was a playground), and the Bank of Commerce (now a Second Cup, but at least the original building).
Tracks ran west on Eglinton to Yonge, but these were never used for revenue service. These had been installed in 1930 to allow operation of the St. Clair line from Eglinton Carhouse, but this never happened. The junction at Mt. Pleasant came out in 1959, but the track to Yonge, buried under pavement, remained years longer until Eglinton was repaved. Continue reading
Travels in The Beach
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.
Jane’s Walk 1: The Early Days of the Streetcar System
Before I start to write about individual parts of the streetcar system, here’s a bit of historical background. Today, people see only the network downtown, small one compared with the size of Toronto, not to mention the GTA, but the system was much larger before the combined effects of automobiles, suburbanization, expressways and subways. This is not going to be an exhaustive history (much has been written on this including books cited at the end), but will give a taste of what was once in our city. I will bring in more details when I write about neighbourhoods and their streetcars.
Please be sure to read the string of comments that has accumulated at the end of this post. Many readers have added information that I had left out in the interest of space, or had simply not known of before.
Streetcars have been around in Toronto for a long time especially if you count the horse car days. The Toronto Street Railway was granted a 30-year franchise in 1861, and began its operations with a short line in the oldest part of the city running to the St. Lawrence Hall and Market, the City Hall before the “old” City Hall of the 1890s still standing at Queen & Bay. The Market Gallery (now showing an exhibit from the Spadina Expressway battle) was the original Council Chamber, although only the shell of the building remains. Continue reading
The Spadina Subway: In For A Penny …
The Toronto Executive Committee Agenda for April 30 contains an intriguing report titled Spadina Subway Extension — Update. This sets out details of the proposed agreement between the City of Toronto, the TTC and York Region for the construction and operation of the line to Vaughan Corporate Centre.
You can read the whole thing at your leisure, but here’s what caught my eye:
- The subway line will be built, owned, operated and maintained by the TTC. The land on or under which it sits will be owned by the TTC or on long-term lease.
- Surface facilities including bus transfers and passenger pickup/dropoff areas will be built and maintained by York Region.
- The TTC will set service and fare levels for the subway, will control retail leasing in the stations, will take all revenues and will be responsible for capital maintenance.
The estimated operating cost of the line in York Region is about $9-million per annum, and the TTC expects to recover “up to 80% from fares and other revenue”. This is a very optimistic projection considering ridership levels claimed in York Region’s own Environmental Assessment report, and obviously it assumes an extra fare for service north of Steeles Avenue. Alas, there report contains no material to support this claim.
The TTC seeks a Provincial startup subsidy “until such time as the subway reaches full ridership”. Does this mean until the subway is literally full, or that it has met some projected level of riding, and if so what level?
What is extremely troubling here is that Toronto and the TTC propose to sign on to an arrangement whereby the TTC could wind up subsidizing the operation in York Region if revenue projections fall short and/or if Queen’s Park doesn’t cough up an operating grant. The absence of any financial or ridership data in this report leaves me wondering just how this financial sleight-of-hand comes about.
This is an ideal arrangement for York Region who don’t risk ongoing costs of subsidizing the subway if it doesn’t meet expectations. They get the benefit of the development, such as that may be, without chancing a raid on their budget to pay for empty subway trains.
By the time the VCC line opens, there will no doubt be some kind of fare union, if not an amalagamation between the Toronto and York Region transit systems. Will there still be separate fares north of Steeles? Will the TTC’s revenue projections be realistic in that sort of environment?
These are serious questions, but I doubt we will see much from our Executive Committee on Monday. Despite recent moves to snatch a few dollars from the Spadina Subway trust fund, I doubt anyone at City Hall wants to dig too deeply into the financial assumptions of this project.
How does the TTC expect to recover 80% of operating costs, let alone pay for future capital maintenance? How much service will be cut in Toronto to run trains to the fields of Vaughan? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?
Jane’s Walk
Friday, May 4th will be Jane Jacobs’ birthday, and in her honour on Saturday, May 5th there will be many walks around neighbourhoods in the city. You can read all the details at the event’s website.
In 2005, I received the Jane Jacobs Prize in recognition of decades of work as a transit advocate in Toronto, especially for my part in saving the streetcar system and urging that Toronto make better use of this mode of transport. It took a long time, but with Transit City there’s some hope we may see an LRT network in the suburbs. Better late than never.
Jane’s Walk arose from the combined desire of the prizewinners to do something in Jane’s memory, something that would be informal, that would not turn into a nightmare of publicity and organization, something that people could all do in their own way. Her love of neighbourhoods and of observing the city around us made the choice obvious — walks through neighbourhoods conducted by people who know and love them.
When we started talking about this, I was asked about a “walk” (well, a ride) of the streetcar system. This brings serious problems both because it’s impossible to visit all the places I would go in only 90 minutes, and the last thing the TTC needs is a crowd of people showing up at random locations all trying to pile into the Saturday afternoon service. I spend enough time griping about service quality, and would never live it down if the TTC could trace a string of delays to my tour group. Chartering a streetcar is expensive, almost verges on the territory of “formal tour”, and has the tiny problem that you can’t visit places the streetcars don’t run any more.
My contribution to Jane’s Walk will be a series of pieces here suggesting places you might like to visit in a trip around the city that are mostly related to the streetcar system. I don’t know yet how many there will be, and some may be written after May 5th has come and gone. The advantage of a self-conducted tour is that you can do it any time! Originally, I had thought of linking my writing to the actual walks planned by others, but the way they are shaping up we would miss parts of the city completely.
All of these will be filed here under the topic “Jane’s Walk” and you will be able to pull them up at any time from the menu in the sidebar.
Steve Munro 