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How to deal with subway failures

lead82

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Yet again we see chaos on the streets of downtown as the YUS line is closed from Bloor to Eglinton due to a construction incident. Before blame starts being tossed around, I'd like to discuss how can the city and the TTC better deal with these types of situations.

Currently the TTC runs shuttle buses, but they are stuck in traffic and do not run express and have very limited capacity.

I think in these situations, the TTC should:
a)Inform users of alternates available: University/Spadina line north, or parallel bus routes such as Bathurst.
b)Make the shuttle buses express, and make them run only the station entrances, without entering the station bus terminal (for faster service).
c)During these periods, transfers between buses on the affected routes should be foregone as a customer service gesture

From the city:
d)Yonge street ( or Bloor if BD line has failure) should be closed to ALL but TTC bus traffic in both directions between the affected routes.
e)Traffic lights should be prioritized to let buses through by keeping Yonge street green lights green for longer than usual (if not green always until the situation is resolved)

These situations happen very often to the Yonge line, and with over 300,000 people using it on a daily basis, transit needs to be a true priority on Yonge if a shutdown occurs. More often than not people are stranded and TTC is shown to be inept at handling the situation. They always seem to deal with it in the same way.

I'd like to hear some ideas on how the TTC and the city can better deal with situations to minimize the disruption, confusion and chaos that erupts when something like this happens.
 
I like the ideas that you present here, and they make sense. At least until we get the DRL and other pressure-relieving services going, even a delay on the YUS is deadly. For such an important line, the city should be doing everything to make sure things go smoothly. Shutting down Yonge may be a bit excessive, but I see the rationale behind it, and it would do a lot better help than busses in mixed traffic.

Also, it's closer to almost 300k people using the Yonge line during the time that it's closed. As in the time from when it was closed midday to when it opened in the evening, 300k people would have used it. That's quite a responsibility! I doubt that 300k cars worth of people would use Yonge in that same timeframe.
 
They're all great, but in the end I'm not really sure they'll help much ... doesn't mean we can't try them.

If you've ever experienced one of these in person the utter chaos that follows is nearly unmanageable. Loading people on the buses is nearly impossible.
 
This time the source of todays YUS line shutdown was not the TTC's fault according to Brad Ross, a contractor unrelated to the TTC was doing work on a bridge, the contractor caused collapsing I believe in the covered up tunnel between St. Clair and Summerhill Stations.
 
I like the idea of making Yonge a busway during these kinds of outages, but would it be possible to implement? Drivers wouldn't know if the subway is FUBAR, and would have no way to tell weather or not Yonge was open to them without some kind of massive signaling system. I guess you could deploy cops to each intersection to point people back, but that seems problematic to say the least. And prioritizing traffic lights for buses along Yonge could have adverse effects on other lines. Some fairly important roads and transit routes are bisected by Yonge, and such a prioritization could seriously disrupt traffic along them.

Ultimately the only solution is to stop promoting growth along the Yonge corridor. I don't really know why we thought this was such a great idea to develop ourselves along one single corridor but it is inherently prone to screw ups. The DRL will help too, especially if it goes up to Eglinton, but I don't get why we are so gung-ho to try to concentrate as much development as possible on one over strained corridor. Why haven't we tried to locate more stuff along the other half of the Yonge line to reduce this dependency?

What about direct buses? I mean, let's say the subway goes out between Eglinton & Bloor. Rather than having buses stopping along every stop, why not just task buses to go non stop between particular stations? So, have one bus that just goes directly, no stops, from Bloor-Eglinton, one bus Bloor-Davisville, one bus Bloor-St. Clair and so forth. The main problem with these shuttles is loading/unloading people. It's just a gongshow. Running direct bus pairs could minimize that. And we would know that demand for, say, Bloor-Eglinton would be greater than demand for Bloor-Rosedale so we could adjust frequencies accordingly. That would screw people who wanted to go somewhere within the effected corridor (say, Davisville-Summerhill) but given that the TTC is usually pretty good about limiting how big a service outage is, it would make more sense to focus on simply getting people back on the subway as soon as possible than trying to recreate subway level service with buses.
 
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Dang ninja'd.

@ TTC12: It wasn't the TTC's fault, but they run transit. If something messed up with their system, they have to fix it in the best way possible.
 
Some people were just ignorant earlier today and would not use alternative routes such as the Spadina line northbound or the Bloor-Danforth Line east or westbound. Instead they stood there complaining and waiting forever to get on a shuttle bus
 
does the TTC have a utility location service? a "call before you dig" hotline?

i bet the contractor was being very careful avoiding any buried telephone lines. "there's a wire buried here, lets dig over there". ;)
 
does the TTC have a utility location service? a "call before you dig" hotline?

i bet the contractor was being very careful avoiding any buried telephone lines. "there's a wire buried here, lets dig over there". ;)


Gentlemen...you see where that Starbucks cup is on the ground? That's where we'll start digging! By the way, something called a 'TiTi Sea' tunnel is around here somewhere so look out for signs or something
 
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I actually think the TTC running shuttle buses causes more chaos than if they did nothing. They should have simply communicated to people that there is more than one way to get across the city... take the University line north to an east-west bus or take the Bloor-Danforth to a north-south bus. That distributes the load over a lot more routes. Trying to run a shuttle bus service to replace a subway is just nuts.
 
So, agreeing with the premise of this thread, forget whose fault any given incident is (today is not the TTC's but it doesn't matter)

For our purpose what do we do once we have a situation in which there must be or is a partial subway closure?

Clearly there is a need to move depending on location in the system, anywhere from 10,000 passengers (assuming only a 1 hour closure) to more than 100,000 passengers as with tonight).

In any event a very large number, not easily moved, when a single bus, crush loaded might hold 55.

***********

My first answer, where service is cut-off is a function of cross-overs (where trains can be turned back), so this is not every station, its is perhaps 17 system wide. Off hand, on the YUS, St. George, ST. Clair West, Glencairn, Wilson, Downsview, Union, Bloor, Eglinton, York Mills, Finch. I think. And B-D Kipling, Islington.....not sure, something downtown, Chester, Woodbine, Warden, Kennedy. So 17 and a few stations.

For each of these turn-back options, there should be a TTC and Toronto Police contingency plan in a book, saying this is what we do!

Such a plan should, either provide TTC exclusivity or strong priority along a desired shuttle route.

Including turn-restrictions and reserving the curb lane for passenger waiting areas on narrow sidewalks, where required.

********

Then comes the issue of having a switch one can flick at Traffic Control which gives 'enhanced priority' to the route in question in regard to traffic lights.

*********

Then comes the issue of having, if only in reserve a few vehicles better equipped to handle this type of situation. I've largely been on the anti-artic side. Not because I have any real objection to articulated buses per se; but because every company I'm aware of that makes them has a lousy history in terms of maintenance and longevity.

Now dealing with this doesn't change my opinion, nor do I wish to see 40 artics bought to sit idle.

But maybe 10, only for shuttle service, and otherwise parked indoors.

That, with all-door loading, no fare-checks in this type of situation, would be extremely helpful.

*******

I would also argue for much better communication with passengers. Adam Giambrone was actually quite good in putting this out on his Facebook/twitter etc.

Great, serious good on him

But most passengers will not have him on Twitter or FB etc.

So when they get to the station, there needs to be printed signs, info from the collector, announcements etc.

Yet I understand many people tonight going south @ Finch were not given any info there was a problem till they were on their train!

That's absurd.

A collector booth should have 3-5 copies of standard sign saying "Subway Service Disruption, Shuttle buses from ____ to _________" then have inserts for all the relevant stations. That should go up ASAP in the event of a problem. Transit Control should have announcements running every 2 minutes. And Anyone buying fares or passing by the collector should be told in person.

Period

That would make people far less grumpy.

*********

Lastly, all services need redundancy as much as is practical, For Y-U-S this is built in in terms of the 2 lines; though they need at least one rapid transit link north of Bloor (Eglinton Crosstown will do this)

For Bloor though, there is no real alternative.

That needs to be addressed via the DRL

End of Mix of Constructive suggestions/thoughts/rant :p
 
The last time I've heard of the route "diversion" service was S'boro RT which the buses takeover the service (will end Nov. 21st).

Is there are shuttle bus routes (as current of today) other than Sheppard-Finch segment that replaces usual subway lines? Not to mention streetcar routes in time during construction (505 west of Spadina)? Any updates? :confused:
 
My commute on the QEW has been screwed up several times in the past couple of years when a car accident has shut down the highway completely - in those cases, it's taken me three hours to get home.

Those types of incidents aren't uncommon, but they don't seem to cause the same sort of fury. People don't rush to message boards demanding MTO's head on a platter. It's more accepted as just something that happens every now and again and we just have to deal.

That said, the TTC needs to better communicate issues. The OneStop screens are a joke. There are way too few of them and they don't seem to communicate information all that quickly - and even when there is a BIG EMERGENCY CLOSURE, the majority of the screen continues to run advertisements.

Place them all over. They're no use if they're only in fare paid zones - I need to know about a closure before I've paid the fare. And the screens need to get the information first - Brad Ross' twitter feed, as good as it is, is not something the average rider knows how to access.
 
That said, the TTC needs to better communicate issues. The OneStop screens are a joke. There are way too few of them and they don't seem to communicate information all that quickly - and even when there is a BIG EMERGENCY CLOSURE, the majority of the screen continues to run advertisements.

Place them all over. They're no use if they're only in fare paid zones - I need to know about a closure before I've paid the fare. And the screens need to get the information first - Brad Ross' twitter feed, as good as it is, is not something the average rider knows how to access.

Don't forget the annoying on-board speaker announcements. Most of the time I hear the announcement I'd expect the emergency updates, but all I've been hearing from them are crews talking to each other! OneStop TVs should be also installed on board subway cars; they are visible to all riders on board, and gets more attention on subway trains than at station platforms.
 
The only short term solution is get the message out, and encourage those who can walk the gap to walk.
 

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