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Improving Service on the King Car

This week’s TTC agenda includes a report called Improvements to the 504 King Streetcar Service.  You can read the details on the TTC’s site, but here are the high points and my comments on them.

Installation of a temporary reserved right-of-way on a four-to-five block section of King Street as a demonstration project in July and August 2008.

This proposal is modelled on the successful scheme down on Queen’s Quay, although I doubt we will be so lucky as to see bike lanes and geraniums up on King.  It is unclear which section of King would have the trial, although there is a suggestion in the report that it go west of John to pick up the restaurant district.  If so, a 4-to-5 block stretch won’t make it to Yonge Street.

While this will be interesting to see, it will benefit offpeak operations as much as the peak if most of the reserved lane is in the theatre/club district.  However, it’s much harder to justify a reserved lane for the offpeak headway on King  given other interests who will want all four traffic lanes.  The TTC is using peak period demands and headways to argue for reserved lanes, but there are problems in the offpeak as well.

A much more reasonable proposal would have been to ban parking (see below).

Rescind the existing “transit lane” on King from Dufferin to John, and from Jarvis to Parliament, because it isn’t enforced anyhow.  Expand the peak no-parking period from 7:00 to 10:00 am and from 3:00 to 7:00 pm.  Designate King from Dufferin to Parliament as a “transit priority zone” where fines for traffic and parking violations would be doubled.  Expand the use of red-light cameras to include King Street intersections.

I think that the hours of “no parking” need to be expanded.  If we count up the number of spaces on King in the theatre district versus the number of seats in various theatres, it is clear that parking on King itself does not contribute much to the overall capacity for people coming to these venues.  The same argument holds for the restaurant strip west of John.  If we are going to talk about taking space for transit, the easiest source of that space is the parking strip.

Staff to report back on the feasibility and cost of constructing taxi lay-bys on King from Bay to York.

Again, we can use streets to store traffic, or to move it.  If the taxis in the financial district are considered essential, then make room for them so that there are two working lanes each way.  Otherwise, start towing.

Elsewhere in the report, staff note that they have added cars to provide extra capacity above what the Service Standards would otherwise dictate.  Well yes, but that was at least four years ago and riding is still climbing.  This extra service, taking the line down to a 2-minute headway, only operates in the AM peak and is timed to hit the inbound peak through Parkdale and the Bathurst/Niagara neighbourhoods.  The PM peak service remains every 4 minutes.

Congestion on King is not a serious problem in the AM peak.  Indeed, although there is congestion through the core in the midday and afternoon, there is also congestion in Parkdale (any problem on the Gardiner or special event at the CNE), in the Theatre/Club district (evenings from roughly Wednesday through Saturday), and on Roncesvalles Avenue (some weekends).  None of the TTC’s proposals addresses this.

The report claims that a previous scheme for dedicated reserved lanes and closing of King to much traffic was opposed by business owners and some Councillors.  This is understandable considering that a permanent installation is an all-day affair and the level of off-peak service on King is not all that frequent.  As I said above, it also gets tied up in areas other than the core.

There is a fascinating table showing riding on the King car from Dufferin to Parliament, and the PM peak from 5:00 to 6:00 (3040 riders)  is nearly as high as the AM from 8:00 to 9:00 (3450) even though there is less service.  Note that on a 2-minute headway, there are only 30 cars per hour, and obviously we are getting good turnover of passengers and bidirectional traffic to get that many riders per car, especially in the PM.

The transit market share on King is at or above 60% from Strachan to Yonge hitting a peak around 70% at Spadina.  I wonder how much higher it would be if we could fit more people on the service?

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Transit City: All Those Comments

As regular readers here will know, I have had a running correspondence with several people about the fine details of engineering various parts of the Transit City proposal.  Enough already.  The issue is that this is a proposal for a network to get people talking about what transit can do on a large scale.

Yes, there are details to be worked out for various sections, but it’s not my job to run a one-man mini-EA for each route.  People get paid a lot of money to do that and I’m sure Transit City will keep them in small change for years.

I have a few comments still in the hopper about alternate routes and technologies, and these will be answered in due course.  However, I will henceforth delete without mercy [you have to imagine mad cackling laughter here] comments asking me about details of engineering various stations and bridges, among other things.  I think that’s been done to death, other readers are probably getting bored, and I have better things to do with my time.

To all of you who have commented, many thanks even if I don’t agree with you.  At least there is a conversation going on here.

Let’s not turn Transit City into an exercise in Toronto negativism where people spend their time finding all the things that might be wrong with a proposal and concentrate instead on how we can build a better transit system.

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Budget Proposes Changes to Transit Tax Credits

The following text is taken from the budget announcement.  You will have to scroll down to find this heading because the page is not indexed.

Public Transit Tax Credit

Budget 2006 proposed a non-refundable public transit tax credit for the cost of monthly public transit passes starting July 1, 2006. Budget 2007 proposes to strengthen this measure on two fronts.

Electronic Payment Cards

Since the introduction of this credit, several transit authorities have developed proposals for the introduction of cost-per-trip electronic payment cards. The requirements for the existing credit do not accommodate these proposed cards.

Budget 2007 proposes to extend the eligibility for the public transit tax credit to accommodate these electronic payment cards. Under this proposal, the cost of an electronic payment card will be eligible for the credit if:

  • the cost relates to the use of public transit for at least 32 one-way trips during an uninterrupted period not exceeding 31 days, and
  • that transit usage, and cost of those trips, are recorded and receipted to the purchaser by the relevant transit authority, in sufficient detail as to allow the Canada Revenue Agency to verify eligibility for the credit.

A one-way trip will consist of an uninterrupted trip between the place of origin of the trip and the destination.

This measure will apply to electronic payment cards issued after 2006.

Weekly Passes

There may be instances where low-income individuals are unable to afford the financial outlay associated with purchasing a monthly pass. Even though they are regular transit riders, they may purchase a series of weekly passes.

Budget 2007 proposes to extend eligibility for the public transit tax credit to accommodate weekly passes where an individual purchases at least four consecutive weekly passes. For the purposes of this measure, weekly passes will include passes that provide a passholder the right to unlimited public transit use within a period of between 5 and 7 days.

Individuals making claims will be required to retain their receipts or passes for verification purposes.

This measure will apply to weekly passes valid for use after 2006.

I am not quite sure how the first measure will actually be implemented because the most likely way a Smart Card will work will be to operate as a limited-time pass.  In effect, you get to ride for some period of time within some bounded area.  This is necessary because the computing and monitoring required to figure out when one “trip” ends and another “begins” is quite daunting in a free-transfer system like the TTC.  Such a capability would significantly increase costs and raise concerns about trip monitoring as an invasion of privacy.

Making Weekly Passes part of this scheme is a welcome and overdue addition.  Now, can we look forward to multiple-trip fare media such as GO’s 10-trip tickets?

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Track Work Plans

In the midst of all the Transit City postings, something for those who love to monitor the reconstruction of our streetcar system.  Here are the track plans for the TTC as published in the 2007 Capital Budget.  Note that these will change between now and the actual proposed dates, but it gives a sense of what’s in the pipeline for the next few years. Continue reading →

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Transit City (7) Thirty-Five Years

After spending the whole day at City Hall and the evening writing about Transit City and responding to many, many comments, a few personal words.

Back in 1972, the Streetcars for Toronto Committee fought to preserve Toronto’s streetcar system and with it, the basis for an expansion of low-cost rapid transit into suburbs that were still farmland.  I have walked along Finch Avenue East when it was a dirt road with sheep grazing on one side and apples ripening on the trees on the other.

We almost got the start of that network with the Scarborough LRT line, but Queen’s Park had a better idea and GO Urban was born.  That boondoggle led eventually to the RT and in the process convinced everyone that low-cost transit was impossible and subways were the answer.

Only one problem:  we couldn’t afford them, and that’s over two decades ago.  Endless wrangles on where to build one subway route wasted huge amounts of time and reinforced the idea that transit was not going to serve the suburbs.  What has become the gridlocked 905 follows directly from the folly, from the abdication by planners and politicians to make a good, working transit system in the outer 416 as a model for what could grow into the 905.

Megamayor Mel’s contribution was “downtown North York”, an oxymoron if ever there was one, and the Sheppard Subway.  I remember Mel saying “real cities don’t use streetcars”.  This is the same person who called in the army to shovel snow, and who sold out his opposition to the Harris amalgamation plan in return for a guaranteed shot at the Mayor’s job.

I remember the long dry years when the contempt for public input and transit advocacy was palpable.  No point in wasting my time on carefully researched deputations.

Today was an event I’ve been waiting for although I never really expected to see it.  This is an LRT plan on a scale and with the political support we should have had 30 years ago.

And so my deep thanks to many who have supported my transit advocacy over the years, to the politicians and press who have listened to my incessant rants about LRT and transit in general, to the professional staff at the City and TTC who against the odds have kept up a belief in transit, and to the growing and lively activist community who bring new hope that people actually care about what happens to our city.

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Transit City (6) The Money

This is part of a series covering various aspects of the Transit City announcement of March 16.  In previous posts I have looked at various aspects of the network both as presented and as in might evolve and improve.  Now let’s look at how this stacks up against other transit proposals for funding.

The total cost of all seven lines is $6.1-billion.  Assuming that this is spend over a 15-year construction period, that’s about $400-million per year.  The value includes a fleet of 240 vehicles at a presumed cost of $5-million each.  These would be much larger than present-day streetcars and have a capacity close to that of a subway car.  Examples of cars in other systems can be seen both on the Transit City site and on many other transit activists’ and ethusiasts’ pages.  I’m not going to get into cataloguing the options here.

Of these lines, by far the most ambitious is the Eglinton line which consumes over 1/3 of the total program cost.  This line has the highest cost/km ($73-million) due to its tunnel section for about 10km across the central part of the city.  This line can be built in stages with a good chunk of the underground part coming last.

A major purpose in getting out the Transit City proposal was to allow the City, the media, the citizenry and the politicians at many levels of government to have something concrete to talk about.  We all know that cities, especially Toronto, want more money for transit.  Everyone knows what a subway is, but few know about LRT.  Discussions about the future of transit inevitably bog down in a hopeless circle of “I only want a subway” and “We can’t afford subways”.  Being a transit advocate in that environment is challenging. Continue reading →

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Transit City (5) The Southern Network

The southern part of Transit City overlaps the existing streetcar system and some of the studies already underway.  Transit City itself includes:

  • The Waterfront West LRT from Union Station to Long Branch

Other related schemes include:

  • The Waterfront East plans for East Bayfront, West Donlands and the Port Lands.  EAs for the first two of these are already underway.
  • The St. Clair streetcar right-of-way and its extension to Jane Street (see discussion in the West Network post).
  • A review of operations and service quality on the 504 King Route released today on the supplementary agenda for next week’s TTC meeting.  [I will comment on this at a later date.]
  • The proposed Front Street Extension.

The Waterfront West line has, until now, been described as ending in southeastern Etobicoke, currently planned for a new loop at Park Lawn and Lake Shore.  I am pleased to see that the Transit City proposal recognizes the potential of all of southern Etobicoke and extends the LRT plan all the way to Highway 27.  For years, it seemed like the Park Lawn terminus was an inevitable first step in replacing the streetcar service to Long Branch with buses and further isolation of the area from the rest of the city. Continue reading →

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Transit City (4) The North-Central Network

This post continues a series of articles about the Transit City announcement on Friday, March 16.  I have subdivided the discussion to keep these posts to a reasonable size and to focus discussion on each part of the network.

The North-Central section of Transit City comprises:

  • The Eglinton LRT originating at Kennedy Station (see discussion of the East Network) and running straight across town to Person Airport or beyond (see discussion of the West Network).
  • The Don Mills LRT from Steeles Avenue to the Danforth Subway.

These are the two largest and most expensive parts of the proposed network, and they will likely take the longest time to fund and build.  Both of them require some underground construction, especially on Eglinton, and this will lead to the inevitable demand to “just build a subway”.  That urge can and should be resisted. Continue reading →

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Transit City (3) The West Network

This is one of a series of articles about the Transit City plans announced on Friday, March 16.  I have subdivided the subject to keep the posts to a reasonable size and so that the discussion comments can be groups to a handful of closely related lines.

The western portion of Transit City consists of:

  • A Finch West LRT line running from Finch Station via Finch Avenue to Highway 27
  • A Jane LRT line running from Steeles West Station west to Jane and south to the Bloor Subway
  • The western portion of the Eglinton LRT from the environs of Pearson Airport eastward

Other studies underway include:

  • Extension of the St. Clair streetcar line west to Jane
  • The Blue 22 express service in the Weston corridor from downtown to the airport

All of the LRT lines would be at grade except for Eglinton east of Keele and probably the south end of the Jane line.  More about that later. Continue reading →

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Transit City (2) The East Network

Transit City is such a big announcement that boiling it down into reasonably-sized posts is a challenge.  Rather than writing one article about the routes overall, another on technical bits and pieces, and yet another on the possible future, I’m going to treat major portions of the network as one post.  My hope is to keep related discussions about individual lines in the same place.

The eastern portion of Transit City is made up of:

  • A Sheppard East LRT from Don Mills Station to Morningside.
  • A Scarborough-Malvern LRT from Kennedy Station east via Eglinton and Kingston Road, and then north on Morningside beyond Sheppard into Malvern.
  • The eastern part of the Eglinton LRT from Don Mills east to Kennedy Station.

In addition, two other studies are now underway:

  • Extension of the Scarborough RT east and north from McCowan Station to meet the Sheppard LRT.
  • Kingston Road from Victoria Park to West Hill.

All of the LRT lines would be at grade with the exception of the Sheppard line’s interchange at Don Mills Station. Continue reading →