King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[micheal_can]

A little anecdotal observation: I took the 504 from Spadina to a meeting near Parliament. I got there in about 10 minutes but the streetcar was packed the entire way. On the way back, I took the 501 on Queen to compare. It was a lot longer, almost half an hour stuck in traffic from about Yonge all the way to Spadina. The kicker though: the streetcar was nearly empty at around 3:30pm.

It’s pretty clear that people who took the 501 have migrated to the 504 since it’s like a downtown subway.

This is a good indication that the TTC should be shifting 501 capacity to deal with the new demand on King. Could they not create a new Queen/King hybrid route?

Long Branch to Dufferin, then south to King, along King to River street where it’d resume the regular 501 route. Redirect as many cars as necessary to balance ridership to acceptable levels on both King and Queen. Even on the fly, with TTC managers monitoring ridership and calling in HQ where they’d make the decisions on which cars remain 501 and which would go through the hybrid route.

Clearly, the King Street Pilot has become a victim of its own success with packed cars that are not as good PR for the pilot as you’d think. Regular 504 riders are worse off than they were before the pilot with crush capacity streetcars.

Could they not just increase frequency?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Could they not just increase frequency?

Shortage of vehicles, especially streetcars.

 

[steveintoronto]

Long Branch to Dufferin, then south to King, along King to River street where it’d resume the regular 501 route. Redirect as many cars as necessary to balance ridership to acceptable levels on both King and Queen. Even on the fly, with TTC managers monitoring ridership and calling in HQ where they’d make the decisions on which cars remain 501 and which would go through the hybrid route.

I can see why you chose Dufferin, but ultimately the 501 would have to be King all the way from where it meets Roncy to where King meets Queen in the east, and/or the Sumach-Cherry loop. Perhaps the loop at Roncey may also be needed for some trips if cars aren't full at that point. Until sufficient numbers of streetcars are available, a shuttle from the Roncey loop up Parkside Drive to Keele Station would supplement streetcars running up Ronces, which are always slow on that stretch.

That transit mall in Melbourne that tends to come up in these discussions has higher ridership than any streetcar route in Toronto. I could see King gaining significant ridership if speeds stay higher than they were before.

It's hard to find the latest on the Melbourne Bourke Street trams, there's a continual push on to further increase throughput and speed via signal priority, but here's the news on that a year back:

Traffic light tweak aims to stop trams getting stuck as roads congest
October 17 2016
Some of Melbourne's busiest intersections will be reprogrammed to give greater priority to trams, as transport authorities grapple with worsening road congestion and a historical surge in tram patronage.

Passenger numbers on Melbourne's trams have soared 12 per cent in just one year, figures published late last week show, to 203.8 million trips in 2015-16. Patronage numbers have suddenly hit levels the city has not seen since private car travel began to supersede public transport use in the 1950s.

[...graphic displayed...]

Public Transport Victoria has attributed the rise to the introduction of the free tram zone in 2015 and to Melbourne's apartment boom, which is concentrated along inner-city tram corridors.

"Since 2012 more than a third of building approvals for new dwellings have been nearby tram routes," the authority said in its annual report. "As these dwellings are built and occupied, this leads to a significant population growth in the tram catchment."

Urban Melbourne has begun to track the explosion in development along Melbourne's tram lines in a series that reveals, for example, almost 3000 apartments approved or in construction along tram route 19.

Tram speeds in Melbourne are among the slowest in the world, at a network-wide average of about 16km/h, according to Yarra Trams, and PTV's annual report noted that "trams continue to be affected by traffic congestion".

In an effort to improve this, the Andrews government will introduce two trials of new technology on the roads next year.
[...]
The first trial will involve installing devices inside trams and traffic signal boxes, which will communicate with each other to alert the traffic lights to approaching trams.

The co-operative intelligent transport system will be more responsive than the current tram priority signals that sit beneath the surface of the road, which are triggered each time a tram passes, regardless of the level of congestion.

The second trial will use GPS technology to track trams in relation to other traffic on the road, feeding that information back to Yarra Trams and VicRoads' traffic control centres in real time.

VicRoads has also begun to look at measures to reduce delay on route 11, between West Preston and Docklands, which has suffered a sharp fall in punctuality this year.

One in four trams on route 11 ran more than five minutes late last month, the worst performance of all routes in Melbourne.

The proposed route 11 revamp is part of the authority's annual traffic light review, which targets bottlenecks in the road network.
[...]

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/t...g-stuck-as-roads-congest-20161016-gs3d7y.html

Trams that never have to stop for traffic lights could be the norm in Melbourne in the future, under plans being developed to deal with population growth in the city.

For the past seven years, VicRoads has been using mathematical modelling to figure out how changing conditions - such as traffic light frequency and clearway times - affected traffic flows.

VicRoads director of network policy and standards Andrew Wall said public transport was the focus of future planning because of its ability to carry far more people.

"We've used the model to assess what happens if we for example give absolute priority to the tram, which means that when a tram gets to a set of traffic signals, it never has to stop," Mr Wall said.
[...]
The mathematics of being stuck in traffic
Professor Jan De Gier and Dr Tim Garoni began working with VicRoads in 2008, as part of an internship with the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems.

Since then the University of Melbourne researcher has been applying the basic principles of mathematical physics and statistical mechanics to roads in a unique way.

"We studied simple particle models in mathematical physics and noticed that some of these ideas were actually applicable to traffic flow, so we could use very efficient models and intuitive ideas that we learned over the years, in the modelling of traffic," Professor De Gier said.

"You can view cars and buses and trams on a traffic network as simple particles, so you ignore a lot of the details that are inessential for traffic.

"If you model particles flowing through on a graph ... and you set up the rules properly, you'll see that they behave very much like traffic, so they spontaneously form traffic jams, and other things."
[...]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-13/trams-to-be-king-of-the-road-in-future-melbourne/6082674

Two very important points beside the obvious signal priority ones:
-The state government is deeply involved with Melbourne's challenge in finding solutions
-Melbourne's 'Central District' is free fare for trams

Gosh, guess that leaves Toronto up King Creek on two counts.

I'd posted what the Highway Traffic Act allows prior, but not one response so far:

Part xvi
pilot projects
Pilot projects
228 (1) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may by regulation authorize or establish a project for research into or the testing or evaluation of any matter governed by this Act or relevant to highway traffic. 2005, c. 26, Sched. A, s. 33 (1).

Project may conflict with Acts
(2) Under a project authorized or established under subsection (1),

(a) persons or classes of persons may be authorized to do or use a thing that is prohibited or regulated under this Act, the Dangerous Goods Transportation Act, the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act, the Off-Road Vehicles Act or the Public Vehicles Act or to not do or use a thing that is required or authorizedby any of those Acts;

(b) the Minister or Ministry or any person authorized or required to do anything under this Act, the Dangerous Goods Transportation Act, the Motorized Snow Vehicles Act, the Off-Road Vehicles Act or the Public Vehicles Act may be authorized or required to do anything that is not authorized or required under any of those Acts or to do anything that is authorized or required under any of those Acts in a way that is different from the way it is authorized or required. 2005, c. 26, Sched. A, s. 33.
[...]

https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90h08

Toronto Council bawls the blues when it comes to begging money from the Province for Elevators to Mars, to the tune of $B+....but when it comes to asking for help or using extant resources already available for sane, achievable and ready to go projects, City Council just makes it up as they go.

Unless City Hall gets more devoted to this, it will fail, present illusory success aside.

 

[mdrejhon]

Actually, there is some induced transit demand occuring caused by initially faster times, and it is reaching a new equilibrium. The 65K/day may even now be 70K/day.

Later on, assuming we threw as many streetcars as the street and turning loops can support, how many people per day will it take to satiate transit demand?

Playing induced transit demand bingo.
I'll take 80,000 per day by end of 2018. Bookmark this post. Any others who wanna guess?

It could be far higher, even 120,000 to 150,000 for 2-LRV consists at high frequency (60 meter 2-streetcar trains), on a full length dedicated ROW. But the pilot is a short section, and turning loop capacity becomes an issue.

(Induced transit demand is better than induced car demand).

 

[innsertnamehere]

At that point you need a subway. If the DRL actually ran east west through downtown I think it would easily see ridership north of 200k through downtown.

 

[amnesiajune]

The irony of their protests is that while business fell on the first week — which coincided with a significant drop in temperature — these particular businesses were actually very busy this week and it’s quite likely that business will be up once the TTC’s 2 hour fare is implemented. Some people need to be dragged kicking and screaming out of their comfort zone, even if the new status quo benefits them.

I guess this needs to be said again: some businesses will be hurt significantly by this change. I don't know why there's an incessant need to pretend that everyone is a winner (just like there was with the Bloor bike lanes). Some people will be hurt, and some people will probably lose their livelihood, but these projects need to be judged by whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

 

[MisterF]

I guess this needs to be said again: some businesses will be hurt significantly by this change. I don't know why there's an incessant need to pretend that everyone is a winner (just like there was with the Bloor bike lanes). Some people will be hurt, and some people will probably lose their livelihood, but these projects need to be judged by whether the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

If there are businesses that are so dependent on driving that this will force them to shut down, they will be replaced by businesses that thrive in an environment that prioritizes transit. And the city will be better off in the long run.

Still, I think the impact to businesses is overstated. The transit malls in Vancouver and Helsinki that I posted links to don't seem to be struggling (I haven't been to Helsinki personally). Still, King will never be closed to traffic completely like those streets because of the driveways and garages that access it. So there will always be some activity from cars.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

Playing induced transit demand bingo.
I'll take 80,000 per day by end of 2018. Bookmark this post. Any others who wanna guess?

It could be far higher, even 120,000 to 150,000 for 2-LRV consists at high frequency (60 meter 2-streetcar trains), on a full length dedicated ROW. But the pilot is a short section, and turning loop capacity becomes an issue.

(Induced transit demand is better than induced car demand).

I'll take a more conservative 75,000 per day by 2018.

But from what I hear from people, the King Streetcar is way more crowded since this project begun. One girl even suggesting to me that she is going to start driving because of how uncomfortably crowded it's gotten. I guess everyone has their threshold for what they'll consider acceptable.

 

[DSC]

I'll take a more conservative 75,000 per day by 2018.

But from what I hear from people, the King Streetcar is way more crowded since this project begun. One girl even suggesting to me that she is going to start driving because of how uncomfortably crowded it's gotten. I guess everyone has their threshold for what they'll consider acceptable.

More streetcars are apparently coming to 504/514

 

[W. K. Lis]

Maybe they should create more bicycle parking spaces, to get more people into their businesses?

 

[MetroMan]

They’re installing the planters to define the pedestrian areas on King. This should help improve the stark emptiness that the wide open streets created.

 

[TransitBart]

More streetcars are apparently coming to 504/514

Just what was ordered. Streetcars piled up on Broadview Ave. waiting for the loop at Broadview Station. I hope the add’l capacity is put on 514. I pass through Broadview and Danforth a few times a week. It can be a significant choke point.

 

[Andy_in_Toronto]

King St. turns to look really beautiful with the new planters. Even some Christmas decoration can be spotted. How ugly was is before including all the car traffic?

Before someone starts complaining that King St. would be a ghost town. Wrong, people are strolling down the street!

Still, someone might come up that businesses are struggling with the King St. Pilot. Was it so much better before? The restaurant St. Tropez closed down months before the pilot startet. The place is still empty and not filled with a new business.

The Toronto Entertainment District BIA seems to be the tool for Mammoliti and Ford to put out fake news. Before they are going to stop a Street Car I will block their big SUV's. I promise!

 

[MetroMan]

The city needs to make these pedestrian zones more obviously pedestrian and cordon off access from the road. As expected, cyclists seem to think that these are bike lanes.

 

[Midtown Urbanist]

This image shows the potential of King Street.

We need to put an effort to street beautification. Complete repavement of the roads, some investment in prettying up the sidewalks or at least cleaning much of it, and more street furniture. The planters are a good start.