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The Changing Scope of St. Clair Construction

When I published my article about the year-long shutdown of streetcar service on St. Clair, I did not expect it would trigger a wave of complaints on Twitter/X about the scope and length of the project. Late last week, I was busy dealing with the announced service changes overall, but now am taking another look at St. Clair.

In the presentation deck (about which more below) there is a chronology showing that there was consultation back in May 2023. Exactly what this might have entailed is hard to say, but there were certainly no fireworks four months ago.

Anyone who is trying to keep on top of TTC construction plans has something of a challenge finding information. The Projects and Plans page is only linked from the common footer of all pages on the TTC site. If you don’t scroll down to the bottom, you will never find it.

Within that page is a link to the St. Clair project page. It contains links to an August 24 version of the project overview and a construction notice. The August 24 version is the one I used in writing my article. There are, however, three versions of the project overview.

The description of the planned work in the last version is quite different from the May 2023 version on which consultation would have been based.

Courtesy of the Internet Archive, I pulled up the original version of the St. Clair project page posted on August 12. Note that it says “Work will result in intermittent bus replacement on the 512 St. Clair streetcar route”, not a complete shutdown lasting to summer 2024. By late August, the page had changed.

Here are the three versions of the presentation deck:

In the May deck, text on a diversion map talks about intermittent bus operation, and the projected end date is first quarter 2024 for third party works. However, elsewhere we see that the full project including St. Clair West Station would run through to the summer.

It is quite possible that the May version of the deck gave the impression of a shorter, less intrusive project than the one now underway.

This was the version in effect for the original consultation.

By the August 11 version, the dates have not changed, but reference to “intermittent” replacement is gone.

The August 24 version contains the same information in a different form.

What is not clear is whether the TTC ever actually consulted about a more extensive shutdown, or about the problems created by operating buses in the traffic lanes, not on the streetcar right-of-way. The latter is difficult because of the support poles for the overhead system which lie between the eastbound and westbound tracks.

This is an example of scope creep coupled with changing and hard-to-find information. One might think that the TTC has been taking lessons from Metrolinx.

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TTC Service Changes for September 3, 2023

The TTC did not release the detailed list of September 2023 service changes until the afternoon of September 1.

To get this information out promptly, this article is published without the usual spreadsheet comparing old and new schedules. I will add the spreadsheet here in a few days when I have built it. Check back later in the weekend.

Updated September 3 at 8:40 pm: The spreadsheet detailing all of the service changes with before:after comparisons is now available.

20230903_Service_Changes

Updated September 5 at 2:20 pm: The description of the modified 403 Don Mills South Community Bus has been corrected.

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Yet Another Change to East End Streetcar Services

Further to my recent post about planned service changes effective September 3, the TTC has issued a revised set of route arrangements thanks to a change in the schedule for Metrolinx work at Queen & Degrassi.

There will be four stages to the service modifications:

  • Sunday, September 3 to Friday, September 22 at 10 pm
  • Friday, September 22 at 10 pm to Friday, September 29 at 10 pm
  • Friday, September 29 at 10pm to Monday, October 2 at 4 am
  • Monday, October 2 at 4am to Sunday, October 8

October 8 falls on Thanksgiving weekend which is the October TTC schedule change date. Service arrangements beyond that point have not been announced.

The information here is adapted, with corrections, from the TTC’s website Streetcar Service Changes page. As I write this (4:50 pm, August 29), there are several inconsistencies or errors on the TTC’s site. This article is an attempt to consolidate the available information.

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TTC Announces Fall 2023 Service Increases

On August 28, 2023, Mayor Olivia Chow and TTC Chair Jamaal Myers held a press conference at Scarborough Centre Station, hosted by TTC CEO Rick Leary, to announce planned service improvements for coming months. The map below shows routes affected by plans for October and November 2023.

The routes in blue, the former SRT colour, are part of the restructuring for the Line 3 replacement service. Note that they are shown as running west from STC via Progress, Brimley and Ellesmere. This is the final routing, although the 903 express bus is now using Progress all the way to Kennedy. The reason for this is that a queue jump lane is planned for Brimey and Ellesmere, but it is not yet ready. When it is completed, the buses will shift to the originally announced route via Ellesmere.

Other routes will see improvements to service and/or to reliability. No details were announced.

Service hours are planned to increase through the fall:

  • In September to 93% of prepandemic levels
  • By November to 95% of prepandemic levels with bus service rising to 99%.

Note that this does not mean that late 2023 service will be identical to early 2020, but that similar numbers of service hours will be provided. The bus network is especially important because it has the strongest ridership recovery rate.

The improvements planned include restoration of school trippers (a normal fall event), increasing service based on demand, reducing wait times by improving the Ten Minute Network, and adding unscheduled, Run-As-Directed service to supplement capacity.

Funding for the improvements comes from the unspent budget headroom created by the delay in opening the two Provincial LRT projects on Eglinton/Crosstown and on Finch.

I expect to receive the details of September service changes soon and will publish them when they are available.

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512 St. Clair Converts to Bus Operation Until Summer 2024

From September 3, 2023 until summer 2024 (the exact date is not specified), the TTC will operate buses on route 512 St. Clair during several overlapping construction projects.

Updated August 28 at 5:00 pm: A response from the TTC about the scope of work for this project has been added.

A major part of this work is the reconstruction of St. Clair West Station Loop.

All transfers between surface routes and the subway will occur on street, and the following route changes will occur:

  • 512 St. Clair buses will operate between St. Clair Station and Gunn’s Loop.
  • 47A Lansdowne buses will return to their normal terminal at Earlscourt Loop.
  • 90 Vaughan will be extended south to Bathurst Station.
  • 33 Forest Hill and 126 Christie will interline as a single route rather than looping at St. Clair West.

The chart below shows the many projects affecting St. Clair in the coming year.

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TTC Service Changes Effective Sunday, September 3, 2023 (Preliminary)

This is a preliminary version based on GTFS data (the standard format for transit schedules used by online services) and some Service Advisories on the TTC site. I expect to receive the full list of September service changes early in the week of August 28 and will update this article accordingly including the usual detailed comparison of service levels.

Updated August 26 at 9:15 pm: 512 St. Clair updated to reflect complete bus replacement for work at various locations on the line.

Updated August 27 at 4:30 pm: At 10:30 am on August 28, the Mayor, TTC Chair and CEO will hold a press conference at STC Station to “outline how the TTC will increase service beginning September and into the fall.”

Updated August 29 at 5:30 pm: Due to changes in the Metrolinx schedule for work on the Lake Shore East Queen Street bridge, there has been a further revision of planned service. Please see this post for details.

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TTC Confirms SRT Will Not Reopen, Plans Bus Improvements

The TTC has announced that the SRT will not reopen and that the focus will now be on the replacement bus service.

The review of the July 24 derailment is still underway and is unlikely to complete with much time left for remediating the condition of the SRT and restarting service for a short period before the planned November 18 shutdown.

The initial operation with reserved bus lanes is under construction with painted lane markings southbound on Midland and northbound on Kennedy between Eglinton and Ellesmere. Other work including red painted lanes, queue jump lanes and signal priority will be implemented in the next three months.

One problem caused by the unexpected early SRT shutdown is that the temporary bus terminal facilities at Kennedy Station are not yet completed. A interim terminal north of Kennedy Station will be used. Once the station reconfiguration is done, eight routes that now terminate at STC will be extended through to Kennedy Station to eliminate transfers.

This was part of the original plan for the SRT replacement service. The list of candidate routes for transfer elimination is 38 Highland Creek, 129 McCowan North, 131 Nugget, 133 Neilson, 134C Progress, 939 A/B Finch East Express, 954 Lawrence East Express, 985A Sheppard East Express [source: FAQ within Future of TTC’s Line 3 Scarborough].

According to the press release, the TTC is working to remove the existing SRT infrastructure and build the replacement bus roadway sooner than the original plan that stretched out two years. An updated target date has not been announced, buy the TTC’s recognition that this roadway is urgently required is a welcome change.

A larger issue critical to review of TTC’s maintenance plans is whether the derailment is a “one of” event, or if there has been a general decline in TTC maintenance across the system. This is directly tied to capital and operating budget planning for 2024 and beyond.

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TTC Board Report Archive Vanishes

Updated August 24, 2023: Access to the pre-2022 agendas has been restored through a page containing a search function by meeting type and date. However the path to the agendas has changed so that links from old articles to the agendas will now bring a “not found” response because they have moved from a directory “public-meetings” to “All-public-meetings”. This is another example of the TTC’s web management insensitivity to the importance of consistent navigation.

Fortunately, the links to reports have not changed unlike the situation in mid-2021 when all links to reports on the TTC website changed.

Thanks to an unexpected side-effect of work on the TTC’s website, Board agendas and reports prior to January 2022 have vanished.

The agenda page used to be created dynamically, but it has returned to a static format with links to meetings listed in a table. However, this table only goes back to January 2022.

The TTC advises that this is a temporary problem. All of the reports and agendas are still on the site, they just are not visible.

Without going into the details, it was possible to reconstruct the index information from a publicly available index file (sitemap.xml) which is used by web indexing services. The page linked below is a directory, pro tem, to Board agendas from 2005 to 2022.

TTC Board Meeting Agenda Index Archive

Although the TTC will, in due course, restore their directory page, I plan to update this archive with a subject matter index so that readers can find, for example, all annual budget articles without knowing the dates of meetings when they were presented. Stay tuned. This is very much a “spare time” project.

For future reference, this page is linked under the “Reference” tab in the main navigation bar.

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TTC 2024-2028 Service Plan Consultation Round Three

The TTC continues its consultation on a five-year plan for service combined with a “customer experience action plan” with a series of pop-ups in mid-August, meetings with various stakeholder groups, and an online survey available until August 27.

With the election of a new Mayor and a shifted political balance of the TTC Board, the context for these plans has changed quite substantially. After years where “less is more” might have been a fitting logo, the TTC now faces key questions about its future. What should transit be? How deep are it shortfalls? How high should we aim for improvement?

For information about previous rounds, see:

Current plans are to take the Annual Service Plan for 2024 to the TTC Board in Fall 2023. There will be a final, fourth round on the Five-Year Plans in November 2023 and they will go to the Board in early 2024. It is not clear how the Five-Year Plan will interact with the 2024 budget process which will already be substantially complete. This timing is a remnant of the Tory era at City Hall when the budget was a “done deal” at the Mayor’s bidding and debate on future options simply was not tolerated.

An important part of the Five-Year Plan is the TTC’s claimed “vision” for its future:

Focus on improvements that enhance TTC’s core-competency: mass transit – moving large volumes of customers safely, reliably, and swiftly across Toronto

In all of the talk about transit and various improvement schemes, staying focused on moving people must be a top priority. The attractiveness of transit for that function – getting from “A” to “B” and back again – must not be lost in flirtations with marginal technologies, ancillary services or “improvements” that will not touch most riders’ daily experience.

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