King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[sixrings]

"This is never an issue with photo radar or red light cams/ Why here?" he meant if it isnt t an issue with red light cameras working then why would there be any issues with cameras on king street working? (working as in detering people from bad activity)

 

[innsertnamehere]

Do you mean here as in Toronto or here as in Ontario? Because it’s definitely a province wide thing in my opinion, otherwise Mike Harris wouldn’t have bothered killing photo radar.

In general, the motorist expects to be given a sporting chance to break the law. Look at the opposition to fully unmarked police cars on the highway etc. So emissions/vehicle testing is bad, photo radar is bad, increased fines for losing a ticket appeal in court is bad, police checkpoints for insurance and valid vehicle registration are bad. Ireland has all of those things and must seem like a totalitarian dystopia to auto journalists and Toronto Sun columnists.

The issue is speed cameras, primarily. Red light cameras don't face similar opposition.

And the reason behind that is Ontario's irrationally low limits. People get pissed at the prospect of speed cameras on 400 series highways because having to constantly go 100km/h on the 400 or 401 is a ridiculous prospect. If the limit was 120 or 130 km/h, you would see way, way less complaints about speed cameras.

 

[muller877]

Steve Munro's latest installment on the Pilot is up, and a lot of folks won't be liking the points that he not only makes, but documents.

One of his comments directly relevant to the "intersection blockers":

https://stevemunro.ca/2018/04/08/king-street-update-march-2018-data-part-i/#more-19939

The Spadina light is about 2 minutes in duration for 1 full cycle. So it forces vehicles to be spaced out in this format.

A backlog means that more than 1 car is arriving at Spadina every 2 minutes. It is not scheduled as such. So why is there a backlog? (bunching? and where? when they leave the terminus or during the route?)

If they can fix bunching the backlog at Spadina won't be an issue.

 

[steveintoronto]

The Spadina light is about 2 minutes in duration for 1 full cycle. So it forces vehicles to be spaced out in this format.

A backlog means that more than 1 car is arriving at Spadina every 2 minutes. It is not scheduled as such. So why is there a backlog? (bunching? and where? when they leave the terminus or during the route?)

If they can fix bunching the backlog at Spadina won't be an issue.

Yes! Munro's blog is an intense read, it's Munro at his finest, he's being meticulous in being objective and methodical...and *highly referenced*! I suspect he's far ahead of anyone in the City or the TTC, even using their own stats and figures.

But at every step of reading his observations, the phrase recurs to me: "King Street needs intelligent traffic and streetcar signal-light, dispatch and control...*Pilot or Not*"

*Most* of the challenge on King for optimizing not just streetcar operation, but also limited vehicular flow (it has to be restricted, there's no way around it, pun fully intended) can be done not by the present process, which is a mess and looks like shit to boot, but by investing in a state-of-the-art traffic control system.

Until that time, the King Pilot has probably achieved all the gain possible. It's up against tram movement limitations, let alone vehicle limitations, and is reaching/has reached its 'level of incompetence'. Why that should come as a surprise is shocking in itself. The present limitation in vehicle throughput has been obvious to transit planners for generations. Which oddly, is exactly why they have 'central control' on railways. (And even much better nowdays, with forms of CBTC, where 'central' is everywhere).

Even forming streetcars into trains substitutes one form of improvement for another shortcoming.

Unless Council and City Transportation/TTC admit their shortcomings, this project is going to crash in congestion, from its own making or otherwise.

 

[steveintoronto]

The issue is speed cameras, primarily. Red light cameras don't face similar opposition.

And the reason behind that is Ontario's irrationally low limits. People get pissed at the prospect of speed cameras on 400 series highways because having to constantly go 100km/h on the 400 or 401 is a ridiculous prospect. If the limit was 120 or 130 km/h, you would see way, way less complaints about speed cameras.

Perhaps I'm missing the thrust of your point, but be aware that the present kerfuffle is about *municipalities* and speed radar:

Photo radar legislation passes in Ontario
Ottawa plans to implement a pilot project to put cameras in school zones.

METROLAND FILE PHOTO

Photo radar will be coming to school zones in Ottawa, after the province passed legislation allowing municipalities to use the technology to catch speeders.

By: Alex Abdelwahab Metro Published on Wed May 31 2017
It’s official. Photo radar cameras are coming to Ottawa’s streets.

On Tuesday, the province officially passed the Safe School Zones Act, which allows municipalities to install photo radar cameras, now renamed “Automated Speed Enforcement (ASE) technology” under the act, in school zones and designated community safety zones.

The law also gives municipalities the power to reduce speed limits in certain areas.

In a statement Wednesday, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said he was pleased with the change and looked forward to working with city councillors and staff to implement a pilot project as soon as possible.

In May 2016, Watson sent a letter to Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca, asking the province to give Ottawa the option of using photo radar in school zones, when requested by the ward councillor, as well as reducing the speed on residential streets from the current default of 50 km/h to 40 km/h.

The mayor has said money collected by photo radar programs would fund road safety initiatives.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/2017/05/31/photo-radar-legislation-passes-in-ontario.html

Does this tie-in to the King Street Pilot? Indirectly, yes. It shows the willingness of QP, at least under the present regime, to accede to at least some municipal requests.

When or how has the City of Toronto approached the TranspoMin for powers under the HTA Pilot section to institute much more modern controls on the King Pilot stretch? The section of the Act has incredibly awesome powers, subject to a ten year limitation. I'd say that time frame should allow a few findings to be made...

 

[muller877]

Even forming streetcars into trains substitutes one form of improvement for another shortcoming.

Unless Council and City Transportation/TTC admit their shortcomings, this project is going to crash in congestion, from its own making or otherwise.

The TTC has about 13,000 employees (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2013.jsp).

They have about 1850 buses, 95 subway sets and 250 LRT/streetcars (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2014/Section_One.jsp). Total of 2200 drivers needed per shift. Assume each vehicle runs two 8 hour shifts (some will have more, some less). So the have about 4400 drivers.

What are the other 8600 people doing? Even if there are a total of 4400 were CSR's, mechanics and maintenance there is still 4000 people who's job it is to make the TTC run smoothly and they are failing at that

 

[steveintoronto]

The TTC has about 13,000 employees (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2013.jsp).

They have about 1850 buses, 95 subway sets and 250 LRT/streetcars (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2014/Section_One.jsp). Total of 2200 drivers needed per shift. Assume each vehicle runs two 8 hour shifts (some will have more, some less). So the have about 4400 drivers.

What are the other 8600 people doing? Even if there are a total of 4400 were CSR's, mechanics and maintenance there is still 4000 people who's job it is to make the TTC run smoothly and they are failing at that

Even if I'd dispute those figures and your projections, I'd still have to agree with your point. What I find ironic is people defending the TTC against a Metrolinx uploading, and they have a very valid point. Metrolinx has lost their way too. But the TTC is even worse, or at least appears to be.

Again, to keep it on-topic, this has a direct bearing on the King Project. One of my repeated points is for the Project to be granted more statutory powers, and that resides at QP. If the subway is uploaded to the Province, something being discussed in the present electioneering, then it makes sense, Toronto track gauge besides, for the King Streetcar route, being the third largest mover of passengers in Toronto, only Line 1 and 2 of the subway exceeding it, to be part of that 'upload'. It may then come to pass that all streetcar routes should be uploaded, since the routes are so interlined as to make division highly problematic.

What could this achieve, at least for King? Much greater infusion of badly needed funds for a start, and much greater power in terms of being brought under the Metrolinx Act, and a far more direct sensitivity at QP for granting standing under the Pilot section of the HTA, and eventual permanent features unique to it, but able to be adopted by other Ontario cities. (Note: K/W's Ion appears to have had this granted, still can't find their enabling legislation)

Even though I'm a bitter cynic on the TTC and Council, at the end of the day, the City is out of its depth on a lot of transit projects through no fault of its own. Like it or not, even if purely through the Constitutional structure, QP is in a far more powerful position to make the King Pilot succeed. I may have to qualify or backtrack that claim later, but I just can't see how the City is going to make this work on the present course.

Whenever I look at successful transit malls the King Pilot is attempting to emulate, none of them are run at council level. Melbourne's, for instance, is well funded and catered to by research from the state level. Ditto San Diego, from the regional level with state and federal part funding.

[...]A key policy of the Victorian Government leading into the 2010 election was to create a Public Transport Development Authority (PTDA), as an independent agency to coordinate all aspects of public transport in Victoria.[4][5] The Government indicated that the authority was to plan, co-ordinate, manage and administer metropolitan trams, buses and trains, regional trains and buses, replacing the then structure of multiple agencies.[6] [...]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Transport_Victoria

Melbourne's having some growing pains of late: (Most read article at today's UK Guardian)

The struggle for Melbourne Has the world's 'most liveable' city lost its way?

But they're *way ahead* of Toronto in terms of transit malls, and public transit altogether. Lessons to be learned for King Street.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Even if I'd dispute those figures and your projections, I'd still have to agree with your point. What I find ironic is people defending the TTC against a Metrolinx uploading, and they have a very valid point. Metrolinx has lost their way too. But the TTC is even worse, or at least appears to be.

Again, to keep it on-topic, this has a direct bearing on the King Project. One of my repeated points is for the Project to be granted more statutory powers, and that resides at QP. If the subway is uploaded to the Province, something being discussed in the present electioneering, then it makes sense, Toronto track gauge besides, for the King Streetcar route, being the third largest mover of passengers in Toronto, only Line 1 and 2 of the subway exceeding it, to be part of that 'upload'. It may then come to pass that all streetcar routes should be uploaded, since the routes are so interlined as to make division highly problematic.

What could this achieve, at least for King? Much greater infusion of badly needed funds for a start, and much greater power in terms of being brought under the Metrolinx Act, and a far more direct sensitivity at QP for granting standing under the Pilot section of the HTA, and eventual permanent features unique to it, but able to be adopted by other Ontario cities. (Note: K/W's Ion appears to have had this granted, still can't find their enabling legislation)

Even though I'm a bitter cynic on the TTC and Council, at the end of the day, the City is out of its depth on a lot of transit projects through no fault of its own. Like it or not, even if purely through the Constitutional structure, QP is in a far more powerful position to make the King Pilot succeed. I may have to qualify or backtrack that claim later, but I just can't see how the City is going to make this work on the present course.

Whenever I look at successful transit malls the King Pilot is attempting to emulate, none of them are run at council level. Melbourne's, for instance, is well funded and catered to by research from the state level. Ditto San Diego, from the regional level with state and federal part funding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Transport_Victoria

Melbourne's having some growing pains of late: (Most read article at today's UK Guardian)

The struggle for Melbourne Has the world's 'most liveable' city lost its way?

But they're *way ahead* of Toronto in terms of transit malls, and public transit altogether. Lessons to be learned for King Street.

Employees need breaks in between, so you can basically assume that every vehicle is multiplied by 3, and subways need to be multiplied by 2 since each train has 2 operators. This means there are 6, 870 operators. This is fair considering sick leave and vacations. Operations (maintenance) would probably be closer to 5000, meaning there are closer to 1000 executives and planners. That seems fair and considering how big the city is, I can understand why things could struggle at times.

 

[rbt]

The TTC has about 13,000 employees (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2013.jsp).

They have about 1850 buses, 95 subway sets and 250 LRT/streetcars (https://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2014/Section_One.jsp). Total of 2200 drivers needed per shift. Assume each vehicle runs two 8 hour shifts (some will have more, some less). So the have about 4400 drivers.

What are the other 8600 people doing? Even if there are a total of 4400 were CSR's, mechanics and maintenance there is still 4000 people who's job it is to make the TTC run smoothly and they are failing at that

This is old (2007 data) but the breakdowns will not have changed significantly.

https://swanboatsteve.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/workforce19902010.pdf

https://stevemunro.ca/2010/02/21/how-many-people-work-for-the-ttc/


Operations includes drivers, railcar/shops, revenue management, plant management (water, fuel, electrical, garbage, HVAC, etc.), and subway maintenance.

 

[steveintoronto]

The TTC is in fact downsizing through attrition.

 

[BMO]

Yes! Munro's blog is an intense read, it's Munro at his finest, he's being meticulous in being objective and methodical...and *highly referenced*! I suspect he's far ahead of anyone in the City or the TTC, even using their own stats and figures.

But at every step of reading his observations, the phrase recurs to me: "King Street needs intelligent traffic and streetcar signal-light, dispatch and control...*Pilot or Not*"

*Most* of the challenge on King for optimizing not just streetcar operation, but also limited vehicular flow (it has to be restricted, there's no way around it, pun fully intended) can be done not by the present process, which is a mess and looks like shit to boot, but by investing in a state-of-the-art traffic control system.

Until that time, the King Pilot has probably achieved all the gain possible. It's up against tram movement limitations, let alone vehicle limitations, and is reaching/has reached its 'level of incompetence'. Why that should come as a surprise is shocking in itself. The present limitation in vehicle throughput has been obvious to transit planners for generations. Which oddly, is exactly why they have 'central control' on railways. (And even much better nowdays, with forms of CBTC, where 'central' is everywhere).

Even forming streetcars into trains substitutes one form of improvement for another shortcoming.

Unless Council and City Transportation/TTC admit their shortcomings, this project is going to crash in congestion, from its own making or otherwise.

I mean they could attempt to make the stop near-side and allow multiple vehicles to be boarding and alighting simultaneously without spending millions on signal adjustments.

Also, I want to reiterate that TSP on King would completely botch traffic on Spadina, since the second a streetcar triggers an earlier signal it could take multiple phases for the north - south synchronization to get back to coordination . Frequencies on King are so high that the light would either perpetually create gridlock for vehicles or essentially render signal priority for streetcars moot. TSP is most effective at increasing average travel speed on routes with lower Frequencies. TSP on routes with 2-3 minute Frequencies are really 1.5 minute headways when you take into account BOTH directions. Realistically when the required demand for capacity gets so high that you need such Frequencies you build dedicated lanes, and when demand still outstrips this you grade separate transit lines. Obviously you can't really do that here, but TSP is like putting lipstick on a pig, treating the symptoms not the disease. We need to disperse the demand on adjacent corridors.

 

[steveintoronto]

I mean they could attempt to make the stop near-side and allow multiple vehicles to be boarding and alighting simultaneously without spending millions on signal adjustments.

Yeah, I've considered that too, except then motorists would complain that "our right turn is blocked". It has to come down to priority, and if streetcars have priority (and it remains to be seen if the green light extension at intersections elsewhere is even in effect along King) then the cars will just have to wait.

The way the "pilot" has been concocted is an accumulation of compromises, and all it takes is one compromise to throw the rest of the balance way off kilter.

But all other complexities aside, I totally agree on streetcar ingress and egress being both sides of the light when the far-side is already in use. There might be slight complications in knowing which stop to board at, but that's no different than when buses are bunched.

Again, in a properly set-up model, with lights, dispatch headways and speed (pace) all controlled by intelligent processors by a communication based system, events like tail-backs and bunching would be greatly reduced.

Until that time, alternate measures must be taken, and both side of intersection boarding/exiting must be considered.

 

[W. K. Lis]

They should allow egress from the new streetcars at the near side because of a red light, IF they press the button to open the doors on the inside of the streetcars. Don't know if they can override the outside buttons, to prevent boarding. Probably not.

 

[steveintoronto]

They should allow egress from the new streetcars at the near side because of a red light, IF they press the button to open the doors on the inside of the streetcars. Don't know if they can override the outside buttons, to prevent boarding. Probably not.

Failing that, the far side stops should allow two Flexities to board/exit. This kind of bunching shouldn't happen, but until some intelligent line sensing system is installed, bunching is unavoidable.

Addendum: Just walking past Dundas West station, and I'm reminded that bunching is not only causing major issues in the core, it is at the terminals. Dundas West can only stack one CLRV and one Flexity before the next Flexity has to wait on Dundas south of Bloor, or worse, north of Bloor, either way blocking traffic at a very stressed intersection.

Steve Munro and others have pointed out similar for Broadview Station, and elsewhere along the line.

Bottom line is the need for a control system to set headway and dispatch departure and arrival time, and control the traffic lights and establishing priority when needed. This has been proven time and again in other progressive cities. It's needed here, probably even more than the King clearway itself.

I'd say the success or not of the King Pilot depends on it.

 

[muller877]

This is old (2007 data) but the breakdowns will not have changed significantly.

https://swanboatsteve.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/workforce19902010.pdf

https://stevemunro.ca/2010/02/21/how-many-people-work-for-the-ttc/


Operations includes drivers, railcar/shops, revenue management, plant management (water, fuel, electrical, garbage, HVAC, etc.), and subway maintenance.

The Admin and management (Davisville, etc) is included in the operations line (see this heading disappear in 1993). They buried the number of people in a larger line item. A transparent organization should bifurcate the numbers where the is >10% of the people. But of course the TTC either is horrible at PR or hiding the number of bureaucrats (most likely both).

Get a 2 of them out of their office chairs and send them to Dundas West & Broadview to coordinate the streetcars. They can make sure the spacing is OK at the start of the line and monitor which drivers are routinely fast or slow (especially near the end of a shift).

Get a 3rd to turn on a computer and monitor the streetcars on an app (that we all have access to). And send a msg to a driver if he/she is catching up to the streetcar in front of him/her.

And do this from 6am-2pm as one shift. 2pm-10pm as a second.

They don't need to spend millions on an operations center for a quick fix. Just 6 people working diligently. Ideally with a smart city (lights, etc) eventually it becomes more high-tech but we need something now.