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Elimination of Wychwood Stops on St. Clair

Chris84

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Construction of the St. Clair ROW from Vaughan Rd. to Westmount Ave. is scheduled to begin next spring. The proposed design has been posted here: http://www.toronto.ca/wes/techservi...construction/cdcg/2007-12-12_presentation.pdf
The stops at Wychwood Ave. have been eliminated. If you look at the design (pg. 7) you’ll see traffic medians at Wychwood but not passenger platforms. At the Community Design Consultation Group meeting last week, I learned that stops at Glenholme and Northcliffe were also to be eliminated but are back on due to local opposition.
Vaughan and Christie are further apart than most other stops. I think the elimination of the Wychwood stops will be bad for the area. I’m sure that many local residents will be upset to learn that they are losing this stop.
I would think that if significant opposition develops, this stop would be reinstated like Glenholme and Northcliffe.
Comments?
 
I don't think you're gonna get a lot of sympathy here for adding more stops... we seem to have an affinity to remove stops so we can speed up service on this board ;)
Wychwood is a longer than usual distance between stops, but hey, it'll speed up service and it'll mean a slight increase in walking distance.
 
It is quite absurd how close together the stops are on the TTC. Removal of stops is almost always a good thing. It's 180m walk to Christie, I think people will manage.
 
Bathurst and Vaughan really should have been one stop instead of two. With the far side Vaughan stop, I don't see the big deal in axing Wychwood. It will only improve service for the vast majority on the corridor.

I bet one reason why there's stops at Wychwood is because it would have been the last stop before turning into the carhouse before that division was shut down. Like many things TTC, this was merely a legacy. Like Sunday only stops.

Northcliffe really should have been cut without any problem either.
 
What is the optimal stop spacing?

I did a quick measure of the new stop intervals from Yonge to Caledonia:

St. Clair Stn - 100m - Yonge (westbound only) - 320m - Deer Park - 290m - Avenue - 340m - Warren/Dunvegan - 200m - Russell Hill - 270m - Spadina - 190m - Tweedsmuir - 130m - St. Clair W Stn - 280m - Bathurst - 160m - Vaughan - 460m - Christie - 260m - Arlington - 300m - Winona - 270m - Oakwood - 250m - Glenholme - 180m - Northcliffe - 190m - Dufferin - 370m - Earlscourt - 270m - Lansdowne - 350m - Caledonia

Average is about 270m

Note Vaughan to Christie is now the longest interval at 460m (Vaughan - 260m - Wychwood - 200m - Christie).

SeanTrans – The TTC said that due to the heavy usage of both the Vaughan and Bathurst stops, both stops were required to avoid platform overcrowding (this is in the minutes of a previous CDCG meetings).

So what is the optimal distance between stops? How far is too far?
 
Consider the s/b stops at Riverdale Library and Bridgepoint Hospital, just a few metres apart! (Guess I should measure them...)
 
So what is the optimal distance between stops? How far is too far?

How about the Joyce test?

How far my grandma can walk in 10 minutes.

Lets face it - St. Clair is not a rapid transit route. Frequent stops are necessary to serve the street, and I believe the distance should be a reasonable distance for the vast majority of society.
 
You're not saving much time at all eliminating just one stop, and is especially harmful if removal causes a near half kilometre of no service. All the stops between SCW and Avenue Rd are underutilized and no one's calling for them to go *cough* Tweedsmuir & Dunvegan *cough*.
 
Wow. 460m is the longest? 400m is the distance between Spadina and Rees... one block. Ideally the spacing should be 500m on an streetcar/LRT route if it is going to be considered efficient transit... that is a maximum 250m walk along the street plus the additional walk to get to the street which should be no greater than 400m (at which point there should be a bus route going through the neighbourhood since the neighbourhood is too wide between serviced streets).

Note the spacing of the subway on Bloor where there is a subway and no surface transit and the stops are (using distances from StClair):
Yonge - 320m - Bay - 630m - St.George - 470m - Spadina - 600m - Bathurst - 620m - Christie - 560m - Ossington - 890m - Dufferin - 640m - Lansdowne

compared to the St.Clair streetcar which is ([] = subway equivalent):
[Yonge] - 320m - [Deer Park] - 290m - Avenue - 340m - [Warren/Dunvegan] - 200m - Russell Hill - 270m - [Spadina] - 190m - Tweedsmuir - 130m - St. Clair W Stn - 280m - [Bathurst] - 160m - Vaughan - 460m - [Christie] - 260m - Arlington - 300m - [Winona] - 270m - Oakwood - 250m - Glenholme - 180m - Northcliffe - 190m - [Dufferin] - 370m - Earlscourt - 270m - [Lansdowne]

and consider that there are more people on Bloor (i.e. more people walking further).
 
Northcliffe and Tweedsmuir would certainly be the other stops to cut.

I'm not a big fan of cutting too many stops, but if it's a rail-based line with a ROW, there needs to be a line drawn somewhere.

I could easily name dozens of stops that could be cut, easily, without much impact. York Street anyone? Or Chestnut?
 
I think 2 surface route stops for every 1 Bloor-Danforth stop is fair.

What gets me is when the TTC has different stop spacing in opposite directions. For example, Dundas, with westbound stops at Grace, Crawford, and Ossington (3 stops) and eastbound stops at Ossington, Shaw, Beatrice, and Grace (4 stops). Also, different spacings on parallel streets, Queen has one stop between Spadina and Bathurst (Augusta) as does Dundas (Denison), but College has 2 stops in the same distance (Augusta and Borden).

It would be nice for the TTC to study the question: "What is an appropriate stop spacing?" and apply it across the system.
 
It would be nice for the TTC to study the question: "What is an appropriate stop spacing?" and apply it across the system.

Having a policy prevents political interference. Why would any councillor go for that? They love to come to the rescue with a transit stop or a tree planting to win over the hearts of their constituents. If they have policies for these things then they can't look like super-councillor.
 
The TTC needs to strike a "stop placement committee" and look into all these aforesaid issues. There are probably as many as a thousand stops across the city that could -- and should -- be cut.
 
I think land usage around stops explain why more frequent stops are needed in some areas over others. Alot of people complain about the Victoria/York/Simcoe stops on the 504 and similar stop proximity on Queen and Dundas but factor in the intensification of points of interest/nodes and transit servicing mothers with strollers, the elderly and disabled and you can see how cumbersome eliminating even one stop could become for many.

As for useless stops city-wide:

110 has like five non-intersection stops south of the Queensway.
Ditto for the 47's Bridgeland section.
84 has a stop at the base of the West Don Bridge (east of Canyon)
116 has a stop in Morningside Park.

Can anyone think of some others?
 

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