TTC's answer to fixing the Queen 501 streetcar? Pass the wire and duct tape
JOHN BARBER
jbarber@globeandmail.com
January 24, 2008
Shall we muddle through? It is, after all, the Toronto way. We miss many opportunities, take wrong turns and even embrace imbecility, but we always muddle through.
So all aboard the Queen 501 streetcar, the muddler's express. It is the perfect vehicle for such excursions. It never arrives, and when it does it's too full to board. Fed-up passengers are abandoning it in droves. It is as slow today as it ever was when horses dragged carts through the mud.
And for the 734th time since then, officials have convened to discuss improvements to its horrendous performance.
Yes, we could have buried most of the line in 1949, economically and expeditiously, as the far-sighted experts of the day recommended.
But what would our history be without such monuments of penny-pinching stupidity as the cancellation of that initiative?
We are muddlers and must claim it.
The result is certainly charming. National Geographic's new book, Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Greatest Trips, recommends the 501 as one of the world's top trolley rides.
It's a terrific tourist attraction that doubles, badly, as one of the hardest-working routes of a metropolitan transportation system.
The latest hopeless initiative to fix the 501 originated in a petition from its most aggrieved dependents, commuters from the Beaches.
They are tired of the waiting, the jostling and, worst of all, the surprise "short turns" half a mile from home - expedients made necessary by the utter failure of the schedule.
The TTC responded with a thoughtful report that acknowledged the lunacy of operating "high-frequency, high-capacity, fixed-rail transit service in mixed-traffic roadways," an activity it described as "anomalous to Toronto" in the world today.
Nobody would ever plan such an arrangement, advised Mitch Stambler, the official responsible for doing such things, and managing it is near impossible.
"That's just a fact," he said. "It's getting worse and worse."
But don't ask today's TTC to emulate the last century's visionaries.
One of the reasons why the 501 schedule is a joke, apart from the left-turning cars blocking the route, is that the TTC can't afford enough operators to drive the streetcars needed to provide the advertised service. So forget the grand plans.
"If we keep waiting for the big stuff to come along and we don't do anything about the things we have control over, we've got a problem," TTC chairman Adam Giambrone said.
So rather than petitioning, advocating and visioning, the commission is reaching once again for the bailing wire and duct tape.
The TTC's automated vehicle location system dates from the 1970s and doesn't work, according to the report.
Bold recommendation: Fix it up somehow.
Streetcars are old and unreliable, with increasing breakdowns causing "severe delays" (also known as "unanticipated additional headways" in muddle-talk). Bold recommendation: Replace scheduled vehicle retirement with "midlife" overhaul.
Various commissioners enthused at the prospect of making the 24-kilometre line easier to manage by cutting it in two, but that's only because they think their constituents could win a zero-sum game bound to inconvenience other riders.
Some of the recommended moves are familiar and needed: Changes to traffic signal design to favour streetcars, turn prohibitions, parking restrictions, more operators available on a more flexible basis.
The streetcar lines are now being managed by the TTC's subway operations group, bringing new thinking to the old dilemma of the street railway.
But will anybody notice the changes? Of course not.
The sole aim of earnest muddlers is to slow the rate at which things get worse. Theirs is an undetectable activity.