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TTC: St. Clair Streetcar Right Of Way

Joe needs to grow some cojones, IMHO. Every time Ford starts shouting, he needs to have a big white report in his hand with 'ST. CLAIR BEST STREETCAR IN NORTH AMERICA', jump on his desk, and scream, 'It's the best streetcar in North America!!' Robbie can scream all he wants, lying like a thief, and the rest of council essentially let him. A 'third party report' isn't going to stop him from lying about St. Clair, because he sees no difference between what he says and the truth, on any topic.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
Joe needs to grow some cojones, IMHO. Every time Ford starts shouting, he needs to have a big white report in his hand with 'ST. CLAIR BEST STREETCAR IN NORTH AMERICA', jump on his desk, and scream, 'It's the best streetcar in North America!!' Robbie can scream all he wants, lying like a thief, and the rest of council essentially let him. A 'third party report' isn't going to stop him from lying about St. Clair, because he sees no difference between what he says and the truth, on any topic.
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Just want to say I love how you call him Robbie, like he's a little kid. And he deserves it too.
 
I know this is just my own little bone to pick, but the Fords' blathering about St. Clair drives me nuts. Again, just like every Thursday, I turned left onto St. Clair at Mt. Pleasant. The light at the end of the bridge and the light at the street car loop were conveniently green, so I ended up stopped at Yonge w/ about five-six cars at the same time as the streetcar arrived. The left-hand turning cars cleared, heading north on Yonge, the streetcar and my light turned green, and the streetcar proceeded to stop and pick up 3-4 passengers at Yonge. I made the light at Deer Park, but missed the light at Avenue Road. The streetcar, having picked up passengers twice in-between, pulled up beside me as we waited for the LH turning cars again, then the streetcar proceeded to the Avenue Road stop and I proceeded to turn right into Forest Hill on my way to UCC.

The point(s) of all this? 1. Total travel time for me, MP to FH -- 5 minutes because of two lights. Total travel time for the streetcar -- 5 minutes, despite picking up passengers. Both times are more than acceptable. 2. The only thing that slowed me down the whole time was an aggressive driver who felt it necessary to gun through the right-hand lane at Deer Park and I had to jam the brakes as he swerved into my lane to miss a parked car. Once again, it is the car drivers that are the problem, not the streetcars.
 
Riverdale Rink Rat said:
I know this is just my own little bone to pick, but the Fords' blathering about St. Clair drives me nuts. Again, just like every Thursday, I turned left onto St. Clair at Mt. Pleasant. The light at the end of the bridge and the light at the street car loop were conveniently green, so I ended up stopped at Yonge w/ about five-six cars at the same time as the streetcar arrived. The left-hand turning cars cleared, heading north on Yonge, the streetcar and my light turned green, and the streetcar proceeded to stop and pick up 3-4 passengers at Yonge. I made the light at Deer Park, but missed the light at Avenue Road. The streetcar, having picked up passengers twice in-between, pulled up beside me as we waited for the LH turning cars again, then the streetcar proceeded to the Avenue Road stop and I proceeded to turn right into Forest Hill on my way to UCC.

The point(s) of all this? 1. Total travel time for me, MP to FH -- 5 minutes because of two lights. Total travel time for the streetcar -- 5 minutes, despite picking up passengers. Both times are more than acceptable. 2. The only thing that slowed me down the whole time was an aggressive driver who felt it necessary to gun through the right-hand lane at Deer Park and I had to jam the brakes as he swerved into my lane to miss a parked car. Once again, it is the car drivers that are the problem, not the streetcars.
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Under a real transit priority setup, the streetcars (and light rail vehicles) would be given their own go signal (unique traffic signal that has a different appearance from other traffic signal) before any left signal, and only if there is a streetcar (or light rail vehicle) that is on schedule or behind schedule (if would hold if it is ahead of schedule). Then the left advance signal should appear, followed by the regular traffic signal.

This shows the stop and left turn transit signal for trams in Berlin:
[video=youtube;ajtg6bQJHWQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajtg6bQJHWQ[/video]

Of course, you could go a little too far:
[video=youtube;mG03DinFnbs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG03DinFnbs[/video]
 
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Funny, I used to live right near Torstrasse and rode that tram every day. The transit priority is definitely better than in Toronto, but it's still pretty slow. People ride them for a couple kilometres or less to get around their neighbourhoods or to get to the U-Bahn.

St. Clair is a success in the same way: it's a good local neighbourhood feeder. It's certainly not the kind of setup that's conducive to long crosstown trips. I like St. Clair and I campaigned for the ROW to be built. I must admit the fiasco of the TTC's construction management made me a little embarrassed about my open support. I'm glad it's built, it's an improvement, but that doesn't mean it wasn't massively delayed and over budget. It, and other projects like it (Dufferin? Coxwell?) would be much more justified if they had done a better job of building the prototype. I also hope that in any evaluation, they look at travel time. The TTC's own schedules haven't changed, which reinforces the fact that this is a good short-distance feeder route and not a model for longer lines. Reliability is also important, and that's the most shameful. There is all kinds of massive bunching that happens on St. Clair, just like Spadina. I'm talking about three or four streetcars in a row. There is absolutely no excuse for this with a private right of way. It's just a total, abject failure of route management. Steve Munro has been pointing this out for years. Amazingly, the TTC is willing to spend billions to implement his light rail fantasy plan but they won't take the time to listen to his very useful suggestions about managing existing routes properly.
 
unimaginative2 said:
Funny, I used to live right near Torstrasse and rode that tram every day. The transit priority is definitely better than in Toronto, but it's still pretty slow. People ride them for a couple kilometres or less to get around their neighbourhoods or to get to the U-Bahn.

St. Clair is a success in the same way: it's a good local neighbourhood feeder. It's certainly not the kind of setup that's conducive to long crosstown trips. I like St. Clair and I campaigned for the ROW to be built. I must admit the fiasco of the TTC's construction management made me a little embarrassed about my open support. I'm glad it's built, it's an improvement, but that doesn't mean it wasn't massively delayed and over budget. It, and other projects like it (Dufferin? Coxwell?) would be much more justified if they had done a better job of building the prototype. I also hope that in any evaluation, they look at travel time. The TTC's own schedules haven't changed, which reinforces the fact that this is a good short-distance feeder route and not a model for longer lines. Reliability is also important, and that's the most shameful. There is all kinds of massive bunching that happens on St. Clair, just like Spadina. I'm talking about three or four streetcars in a row. There is absolutely no excuse for this with a private right of way. It's just a total, abject failure of route management. Steve Munro has been pointing this out for years. Amazingly, the TTC is willing to spend billions to implement his light rail fantasy plan but they won't take the time to listen to his very useful suggestions about managing existing routes properly.
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The bunching is caused by a few drivers who don't care how to obey the schedules. This applies to all TTC routes and line management. I have see drivers, let alone supervisors tell these slow poke driver to get on the ball with no luck.

TTC doesn't have a good line management systems to the point most streetcars supervisors are bus drivers/supervisors who fail to understand that you cannot short a streetcars easy like a bus.

A good point for short turning a Queen or King Car at Dufferin St is you cannot, as the overhead is still missing at Queen. The new trough has no provision to allow the overhead from Queen St to connect to Dufferin considering this was supposed to be reinstalled when the new bridges were installed last year.

As a supporter of the St Clair ROW, I felt lost in supporting it during construction from how TTC handle the mess to the point they just roll over when the city told them. Miss management from the top down is the reason this thing turn out to be a dog. I have 1,000's of photos showing how bad some of the surveying was done by the city to the point track connection were off by 18 inches because of the hop scooting of the construction process. Contractor was to work here one day then told to do work elsewhere that was not schedule for yet by the city.

The transit priority in the city suck big time.

Don't forget, TTC is only a sub trade to the city and they have bitch for years on transit priority, but keep getting shot down for turning it on or fixing the problem by the city.
 
I think due to politics, many people here have had a brain cramp and forgotten about what happened in the past

It was a total shit-show that caused a residential nightmare, and cost the city taxpayers a ton of extra money...sure it may running well now. Big Deal
 
Automation Gallery said:
I think due to politics, many people here have had a brain cramp and forgotten about what happened in the past

It was a total shit-show that caused a residential nightmare, and cost the city taxpayers a ton of extra money...sure it may running well now. Big Deal
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The REVITALIZATION project was a total shit-show. Stop trying to pin the problems on the streetcar ROW.
 
Uh, it was the TTC's project that kept constantly being delayed, month in, month out, for years. It was the TTC that kept telling people when things would be finished, and then blowing past the deadline as if nothing happened. I had a friend working on the project for the TTC and he has some pretty amazing stories that I couldn't write on a public board.

I'm glad the project was done, I supported it from the start, but let's not forget the serious problems with how it was managed.
 
St Clair is a fast ride, way faster than before, (depending on the operator of course). For some reason, bunching still happens during peak hours which is a none sense to me. That would be my only 2 critics.

Other than that I like St.Clair but the mismanagement of the line raise questions and anyone thinking that TTC will do a stand up job with the LRT are being overly optimistic.
 
Solid Snake said:
St Clair is a fast ride, way faster than before, (depending on the operator of course). For some reason, bunching still happens during peak hours which is a none sense to me. That would be my only 2 critics.

Other than that I like St.Clair but the mismanagement of the line raise questions and anyone thinking that TTC will do a stand up job with the LRT are being overly optimistic.
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I have great fear that if Sheppard turns out during construction like St Clair, you can kiss LRT good bye.

There needs to be one person in charge and they must know their stuff to keep all contractor, subs, on a tight lease, especially the City departments, other wise it will be a mess with every anti LRT supporters saying we told you so.

In this age of hand held devices and technology, why are TTC line management still writing down the time and location in a book when a streetcar shows up to tell them if they will be short turn, where to change car etc??

CIS tell a driver to short turn with no understanding what the ridership is like on a car in the first place. Hand held device will not do that until the Presto system comes on line.

Once you get to the root of the various issues for line management, St Clair will operate a lot faster than it does today.

Development is already taking place because of the ROW to the point the land owner/lords are rubbing their hands with joy, as they are making a killing now.
 
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