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Despite what Ford says The Streetcar in Toronto is here to stay.

Interesting read from Light Rail Now dated 2013/06/28 on

Ed Tennyson: Streetcars use streets more efficiently


at this link:

♦

A recent Toronto poll found that opinions of metro-area respondents were almost evenly split on a plan to ban motor vehicles and allow only streetcars to operate on King Street (one of the downtown’s major thoroughfares) during morning peak hours, with 40% favoring the idea and 43% opposing it. While the plan had overwhelming support in the inner-city, the metro area’s more affluent, conservative suburbs (e.g., Scarborough) tended to oppose it. (Suburban voters have also tended to support conservative Mayor Rob Ford, who promotes policies similar to those of the USA’s Tea Party.)

The poll elicited the following observations and comments from Edson L. Tennyson, a renowned transportation engineer and consultant to the Light Rail Now Project. Ed is widely respected within the North American public transportation industry, having served as manager of several major transit agencies as well as Transportation Engineer for the City of Philadelphia and Deputy Director of Transportation for the State of Pennsylvania.

♦

Without facts the people responding to that poll do not know what they are talking about. Since King Street is in the Old City, what business is it of Scarborough?

Let us look at the facts. A lane of autos waiting at traffic signals can move only 900 passengers per hour, not enough to keep a city busy or healthy. I do not know the streetcar headway, but with 56,700 weekday passengers, it sounds like 4,500 one-way in the peak hour, 5 times auto capacity. With 90 people per 4-axle car, that would require a 1.2-minute headway, 50 cars per hour. With articulated cars, a 1.8-minute headway could handle it.

The point is, who wants to allow 900 [Mayor Rob] Ford supporters to block the movement of 4,500 people per hour? Polls will not move anyone, but those 800 automobiles with 900 people will block 4,500. That is stupid, uneconomical, and grossly unproductive. When gridlock gets bad, transit speed falls to three (3) miles per hour. A streetcar costing $235 per hour will cost $78 per mile at three miles per hour; but at 6 miles per hour, which might be possible with no autos, the streetcar cost falls to $39 per mile, a saving of 50 percent for farepayers and taxpayers. If the media had the integrity and equity to explain it that way, I am sure the polls would change drastically in favor of streetcars.

Crooked politicians like Mayor Ford were running the U.S. Congress in 1959 when they banned streetcars from the District of Columbia [i.e., Washington, DC]. They did it to speed auto travel, but it did not work that way. It sped auto travel, all right — away from the city instead if into it.

Back then, Washington’s streetcars were almost as busy as Toronto’s streetcars. They made a profit to subsidize bus service, but they annoyed motorists. Traffic engineers wanted the streetcar lanes for auto left turns, a very low-volume use. Traffic engineers were trained at the Eno Foundation, then subsidized by General Motors. They were required to teach the need to eliminate streetcars.

The last [Washington] streetcar ran in 1962. Buying new buses escalated fares drastically and drove away most riders. Many downtown department stores went out of business. People with good jobs moved out of the city to escape auto congestion caused by automobiles, not streetcars.

From 1948 to 1975, transit use in Washington fell by 72%. The population fell from 750,000 to 590,000. By 1990 the City had so much debt it could not function. Congress had to bail it out, castrating City Council.

By then, MetroRail [rapid transit] was growing large enough to replace the streetcars and greatly reduce bus dependence. Transit increased almost 300% from 1975 to now. The Mayor just announced a tax cut as the city has too much money. The population is growing with higher-income people.

When MetroRail was planned they took a close look at Toronto to get it right. They did.
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Instead of banning cars completely, why not remove parking from the street and make the inner lanes transit only lanes (outer lanes for cars). Bollards (and paint & signs) can be installed to keep cars out of the streetcar lanes. There can be a left turn signal phase like on Spadina.
 
ehlow said:
Instead of banning cars completely, why not remove parking from the street and make the inner lanes transit only lanes (outer lanes for cars). Bollards (and paint & signs) can be installed to keep cars out of the streetcar lanes. There can be a left turn signal phase like on Spadina.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea, but I personally still like banning cars entirely. Road capacity can be made up for on streets like Richmond/Adelaide, although I suppose Queen may suffer, and Queen is another street that could vie for the title of most worthy to be completely de-vehicle-ed.

The more stark the solution implemented, the sooner people will be able to see the benefits of restricting car usage from the downtown core.

Also, the article above is spot on. And the history of the streetcar purge of post-war USA makes the shake my head.

Lastly, "affluent suburbs such as Scarborough"? Has the writer been to Scarborough?
 
ehlow said:
Instead of banning cars completely, why not remove parking from the street and make the inner lanes transit only lanes (outer lanes for cars). Bollards (and paint & signs) can be installed to keep cars out of the streetcar lanes. There can be a left turn signal phase like on Spadina.
Click to expand...

These rules are currently in place during rush hour, but they don't work. No one follows them. Bollards might help keep cars out of the streetcar lanes, but I don't think there's room to install them. King is a very narrow street.

Banning cars completely during rush hour is one more small step toward getting some actual pedestrianized streets in this city.
 
MrsNesbitt said:
Lastly, "affluent suburbs such as Scarborough"? Has the writer been to Scarborough?
Click to expand...

That's how you know the author is American. They assume suburban=white+rich, and urban=poor+minority. Not that there aren't affluent areas of Scarborough that are pro-ford and anti-streetcar.
 
I like our streetcars but just not the way they work.
The past weekend I was taking the 512, and it took more than 45 minutes from Yonge to Keele, and it is only 6 km

The problem being there are just way too many stops one next to another. It was painfully slow. I swear by riding a bike it would take half the time. When passing St Clair West, there was a driver shift, and the streetcar stopped at one spot, the driver got out, new driver got in, then drove for 10 meters and stopped again for new passengers to board. What a waste of time when they could do the whole thing at one place.

It seems as if the whole system is not designed with efficiency and speed in mind. Rather, I feel like I am in a slow paced small town like St Catharines where people just have infinite patience waiting for everything.

It was so slow that when returning, I decided to take the bus back to Keele Station, took the bloor line to Yonge, and went back up to St Clair station, instead of just take the 512 directly. This is how the streetcar is perceived by riders. They are nice to have, but frustrating to use.

With respect to the Queen and King line, the only thing that makes sense is to give the streetcars dedicated lanes, plus eliminate probably half of the stops. You simply can't expect people to support the streetcars when they function like this. Downtown is congested and vehicles travel slowly, I got it, but we are not doing hardly enough within our ability to mitigate the problem. Does "local service" mean the transit stops every 200 meters? I have never seen other cities work like this, even the ones with 3X downtown Toronto's density. I don't know what geniuses decided that. If the 501/504 can't get from Yonge to University within 10 minutes and Spadina in 15 minutes, which is walking time, there is something wrong with the system.
 
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ksun said:
I like our streetcars but just not the way they work.
The past weekend I was taking the 512, and it took more than 45 minutes from Yonge to Keele, and it is only 6 minutes.

The problem being there are just way too many stops one next to another. It was painfully slow. I swear by riding a bike it would take half the time. When passing St Clair West, there was a driver shift, and the streetcar stopped at one spot, the driver got out, new driver got in, then drove for 10 meters and stopped again for new passengers to board. What a waste of time when they could do the whole thing at one place.

It seems as if the whole system is not designed with efficiency and speed in mind. Rather, I feel like I am in a slow paced small town like St Catharines where people just have infinite patience waiting for everything.

It was so slow that when returning, I decided to take the bus back to Keele Station, took the bloor line to Yonge, and went back up to St Clair station, instead of just take the 512 directly. This is how the streetcar is perceived by riders. They are nice to have, but frustrating to use.

With respect to the Queen and King line, the only thing that makes sense is to give the streetcars dedicated lanes, plus eliminate probably half of the stops. You simply can't expect people to support the streetcars when they function like this. Downtown is congested and vehicles travel slowly, I got it, but we are not doing hardly enough within our ability to mitigate the problem. Does "local service" mean the transit stops every 200 meters? I have never seen other cities work like this, even the ones with 3X downtown Toronto's density. I don't know what geniuses decided that. If the 501/504 can't get from Yonge to University within 10 minutes and Spadina in 15 minutes, which is walking time, there is something wrong with the system.
Click to expand...

The TTC wants to remove some streetcar stops, however, some NIMBYs and others don't want that to happen because they might have to walk an extra short block.
 
W. K. Lis said:
The TTC wants to remove some streetcar stops, however, some NIMBYs and others don't want that to happen because they might have to walk an extra short block.
Click to expand...
There's no plans to remove any 512 stops.

The vast majority of the stop removals were approved without much debate. There is a handful going under further study.
 
ehlow said:
Close stop spacing and slow speeds isn't a streetcar specific thing. It applies to busy bus lines as well.
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yep. I was taking the 89 literally in the middle of nowhere (Keele/Western Road) and the bus stops every 200 meters to board 1 person. The low density nearby doesn't remtvely justify such short spacing.
This is the one single frustating thing about taking non-subway transit in Toronto.

Buses in Tokyo, New York or Shanghai don't have such close spacing between stations, and they are much much denser cities. I don't know what TTC is thinking. Even in the core, spacing should be 500+ meters or so. People should be expected to walk 5-10 minutes to a stop - the rest of the world does just that.
 
MrsNesbitt said:
Interesting idea, but I personally still like banning cars entirely. Road capacity can be made up for on streets like Richmond/Adelaide, although I suppose Queen may suffer, and Queen is another street that could vie for the title of most worthy to be completely de-vehicle-ed.

The more stark the solution implemented, the sooner people will be able to see the benefits of restricting car usage from the downtown core.

Also, the article above is spot on. And the history of the streetcar purge of post-war USA makes the shake my head.

Lastly, "affluent suburbs such as Scarborough"? Has the writer been to Scarborough?
Click to expand...

What's the advantage of banning cars entirely? If it's made physically impossible for cars to enter the transit lane, then the streetcar will never be stuck in traffic anyways. Left turns can be restricted to major roads & left turn signal phases to minimize waiting time for the streetcars.

I guess the advantage of banning cars entirely is that you can use the remaining lanes to either widen the sidewalk or for bike lanes. I'm just worried there are condos with parking garages that go onto King or something like that, I feel keeping cars out of the transit lanes may be more feasible than banning them altogether.

There should be room to install bollards that make it impossible for cars to enter. Also you'd ideally discourage pedestrians from crossing the transit lanes if you want fast streetcars.

I just saw some great Montreal fully pedestrianized streets so I can see where you guys are coming from, however those did not have transit running on them.

Regardless, I think something needs to be done to improve the streetcar service since we're spending tons of money on new vehicles & track upgrades and there is no alternative to going east-west downtown fast other than biking. The DRL isn't coming until 10-15 years later if we're lucky.
 
Streetcars are returning to the United States. From this link,...

This map displays every U.S. streetcar system, side by side, that’s either open or under construction.

Lots of cities have added streetcar lines in recent years, but not all systems are created equal. Matt Johnson, a writer with the D.C.-area blog Greater Greater Washington, recently plotted every streetcar system in the country that’s either open or under construction. Drawn to scale and shown side by side, these maps give a sense of the relative size of different cities’ streetcar systems.

As Johnson notes, the two largest systems, in Philadelphia and New Orleans, are upgraded versions of original streetcar lines that have been in place for more than a century. This map doesn’t include San Francisco’s Muni Metro system or Boston’s Green Line; both are descendents of historic systems, Johnson says, but today they operate more as light rail lines. This image also doesn’t include tourist-oriented lines with limited hours of operation, such as Savannah’s River Street Streetcar.


streetcar-graphic.jpg
Click to expand...

Note that they also consider light rail lines are not streetcars. So those light rail lines are not included in the streetcar map. Also, they only are showing the United States streetcar lines, Toronto is not shown.
 

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A lot of those new streetcars in mixed traffic, while they look cool, are extremely short, extremely slow, and don't have much ridership. Unlike Melbourne or Toronto where they actually operate as useful & well used services.

They also don't have large vehicles like we will with the new streetcars, or operate in multi car trains like in LA's LRT: a key advantage of using railed vehicles.

Also building a brand new streetcar line in mixed traffic like many US cities are doing doesn't make sense to me. If you're spending all that money on tracks & new vehicles, then at least give it a ROW.

Light rail is the way to go in my opinion, with large trains going fast.
 
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