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King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

animatronic said:
I'm hearing from retailers that revenues are down across the board this holiday season. Until someone like Moneris comes out with a quantitative analysis of before and after spend for the street over the last few weeks (e.g., change in revenue vs restaurants on Queen St.), I'm not going to get swayed by anecdotes.
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Bloor St. said the same thing, yet Moneris proved otherwise. There are also a number of factors such as the overall economy, the particular business (maybe it was already going downhill) and so on. A decrease of 3% in available parking is not a significant game changer in 3 weeks.
 
Yeah I truly dont see those businesses being significantly affected. Even if people who drive are "avoiding the area" as a whole due to the project (which is the only way that the decreased purchasing could make any sense to me as I agree no one is parking right in front of a king and bay restaurant), I really can't see how that would decrease their bottom like by more than 5% or so, if at all.

Edit: also its 5:20pm, and king between john and university is packed because--you guessed it--the moronic planters. Last week with no planters: totally clear. Oh, and pedestrians off the sidewalk but within the planters: ZERO. What an asinine reason for the streetcar to slow down and the project to tank.
 
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Like I said before, many restaurants just live on the brink of bankruptcy. So many will never make it more than a year, no matter what. If an establishment isn't strong to begin with, the loss of parking might push them over the edge... but people kind of seem to forget how flimsy restaurant business is. Let them go out of business, they will anyway.
 
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MetroMan said:
This just came to my attention:

View attachment 128683

The Entertainment District BIA doesn’t appear to understand the point of a pilot. We can’t run a study to help identify the shape of permanent infrastructure by doing a part time study.

Something tells me that they won’t share any positive feedback with the city.
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I think the Entertainment District BIA felt it had to respond if only to reeducate its members on King Street West who told the Star they didn't have a King Street BIA. A fact BTW that the Star report without any factual clarification. Of course they do not have a King Street BIA, they are in and have been in the Entertainment District BIA for almost 20 years. Sigh. I also happen to know that this BIA did reach extensively to its members in consultation phase but they may (?) have slipped a bit on communications during the implementation; or of course maybe the businesses just didn't pay attention. Imagine that.
 
Biked the west side again today - ride in was easy but the evening rush wasn't as smooth. A few cars were ignoring the rules this time. Also longer stops behind streetcars due to crush loading - lots of CLRVs today that really slowed things down.

Checked my stats - a bit slower than average overall but not significantly worse than R/A. Will try it again and see how it goes.
 
TTC should offer businesses (located in the Pilot area) free advertisement on the King streetcar, for a period of 6 months to one year. That would help them add a new group of customers, who are more likely to stick around in the new environment.
 
I find the whole pushback to be a little silly and premature. The small amount of on-street parking surely cannot account for that much business.

Meanwhile, more people are taking the King streetcar. I'm pretty sure those people eat food as well.
 
Avenue said:
Like I said before, many restaurants just live on the brink of bankruptcy. So many will never make it more than a year, no matter what. If an establishment isn't strong to begin with the loss of parking might push them over the edge... but people kind of seem to forget how flimsy restaurant business. Let them go out of business, they will anyway.
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This! Don't blame transit for your shitty, overpriced and uninspired product wrapped around a crunchy pseudo-hip coating and pretend you are going to last more than a year otherwise.

AoD
 
My personal habit as a motorist (which I suspect is not atypical) when heading to a restaurant or business is to drive until I spot the destination, and only then start looking for parking. That usually entails aiming for the main street, and driving it for any number of blocks until I zero in.

From this perspective, I can see where some potential customers might choose to go elsewhere rather than head for King Street. If my friend tells me "It's on the south side of King, east of Spadina and west of University", will I be able to figure out with precision which sidestreet to navigate to get right to the door? And how will I find parking? Garmin isn't going to help me with the new turn restrictions, it will line me straight down King. So, it is plausible that people who are aware of the transit mall are just avoiding this district altogether.

Frankly, as a very seasoned downtown driver, I could not tell you from memory if Peter Street is east of John or west of it. Or what the cross street for 900 King West might be. I bet many people who use the district often don't carry that information in their head.

I have seen precious few of the King St businesses proactively publicising how to find them using the new turn rules, or where the major public parking lots close to their particular establishment can be found. Ironically, one thing that the pilot may need is much more education around how to drive to specific places and where the specific best parking lots are for restaurant X.

- Paul
 
guys, how am I seemingly the only person on this forum who has not had a great experience with the King Street Pilot? I take it daily from St. Andrew Station to Bathurst in the mornings around 9am and back the other direction around 5:30 pm in the evenings and it's been basically no difference for me. In fact, it seems that the far-side stops end up causing way more bunching as streetcars have to wait near-side as the previous streetcar sees people boarding and alighting. This regularly requires one full light phase before the next streetcar can proceed through. This causes a ripple-efffect that ends up accumulating more and more. Last night I had to get off at John Street and walk to St. Andrews as there had been 5-6 streetcars + a wheel trans vehicle bunched up ahead all having to wait one or two light-cycles to cross Spadina and University Avenues.

I don't know what the solution is other than either giving King Street signal priority, or moving far-side stops a but further past the intersection to allow more than one or two vehicles to load and off-load, or simply move stops at major intersections with large delays to nearside so that vehicles can load and offload while waiting for the red, OR take some flexity vehicles from another line and make King 100% new vehicles so that you don't have three vehicles for every one flexity's capacity. I'm willing to hold-0ff judgement until the new vehicles start to really replace the legacy fleet on King, but I feel like this pilot is having negligible impacts on peak hour operations, and that most of the improvements are seen in the off-peak periods. Just my observations, but I'd be very skeptical if the data doesn't prove this. Any thoughts?
 
BMO said:
guys, how am I seemingly the only person on this forum who has not had a great experience with the King Street Pilot? I take it daily from St. Andrew Station to Bathurst in the mornings around 9am and back the other direction around 5:30 pm in the evenings and it's been basically no difference for me. In fact, it seems that the far-side stops end up causing way more bunching as streetcars have to wait near-side as the previous streetcar sees people boarding and alighting. This regularly requires one full light phase before the next streetcar can proceed through. This causes a ripple-efffect that ends up accumulating more and more. Last night I had to get off at John Street and walk to St. Andrews as there had been 5-6 streetcars + a wheel trans vehicle bunched up ahead all having to wait one or two light-cycles to cross Spadina and University Avenues.

I don't know what the solution is other than either giving King Street signal priority, or moving far-side stops a but further past the intersection to allow more than one or two vehicles to load and off-load, or simply move stops at major intersections with large delays to nearside so that vehicles can load and offload while waiting for the red, OR take some flexity vehicles from another line and make King 100% new vehicles so that you don't have three vehicles for every one flexity's capacity. I'm willing to hold-0ff judgement until the new vehicles start to really replace the legacy fleet on King, but I feel like this pilot is having negligible impacts on peak hour operations, and that most of the improvements are seen in the off-peak periods. Just my observations, but I'd be very skeptical if the data doesn't prove this.
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I hear you. The TTC really needs to make some changes, and Transportation Services needs to step up too. Re-activating streetcar priority signals that will hold green lights would significantly reduce the double-stopping at intersections. The TTC hasn't adjusted their schedules yet either to take advantage of the time savings - many streetcar operators crawl along to keep to schedule. Going to an all-Flexity fleet on King will help too, but that's not going to happen for a while.
 
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