King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[rbt]

A new tender should go out within the next year or so for about another 200 cars.

I'll be surprised if TTC doesn't get gifted back some of the Metrolinx vehicle contract.

Metrolinx has more vehicles on order than they can possibly use in even the boldest of their current plans but they're at an okay price. If we're really lucky, Metrolinx will cover the cost (including yard changes/expansion) and allocate them as waterfront expansion.

 

[TheKingEast]

A positive report. I waited about 2 minutes for the Eastbound streetcar at around 6PM and it was fairly empty. The ride was pretty good as well. So it's not ALL bad. I still see a lot of cars on the street though. Also based on how the stops work, the bulk of people entering the streetcar are doing so at the back which is the smallest part of the car. I now get on at the front to avoid the glut of people filing into the streetcar.

 

[TheKingEast]

A new tender should go out within the next year or so for about another 200 cars.
Why?
Because those ALRVs are not going to last too long.
Because the Flexis will break down.
Because more ridership will happen due to the city growing.

Maybe Bombardier gets the contract, maybe another company does. But, there needs to be a plan to replace everything sooner, and to ad to the fleet faster.

I want no parts of Bombardier.

 

[steveintoronto]

[...] The problem on King is that the TTC is physically unable to add enough streetcars to keep the line within the crowding standards. This is for a couple reasons:
1. There aren't enough streetcars in the fleet to run the service which should be run.
2. Even they did remove streetcars from other routes to put on King, the increased frequency could exceed the practical capacity of the street itself, causing the line to grind to a halt as every vehicle gets stuck behind every other vehicle (think Line 1 when there's any kind of delay during rush hour).

The practical capacity of the street is based on the signal cycle, which can be as long as 120 seconds. It's not consistently possible to get more than one streetcar through per green, because it then sits on the far side serving the stop, preventing any subsequent vehicles from proceeding for about 30 seconds. If a streetcar enters the intersection at the start of the green (i.e. was waiting at a red light) it might leave the stop just in time for a following streetcar to enter the intersection just before the end of the green, but we can't really count on that.
[...]
The combined frequency is about 29 vehicles per hour, which is an average headway of 124 seconds. That's roughly equal to the practical capacity of the street, so adding more vehicles to the line may make things worse rather than better by increasing streetcar-to-streetcar queuing at signals, which increases travel times, which in turn reduces frequency. So the speed would go down and the capacity would stay the same.

The most practical way to increase the physical capacity of the line is to use bigger vehicles. Multiplying the vehicles in the current schedule by their loading standard provides a total capacity of
2423 people per hour.
[...]
In a more short-term basis, I see a couple ways of increasing the line capacity:
- convert the 504 from CLRVs to Flexities on a 1:1 basis as quickly as possible, which is exactly what the TTC is doing. But that's subject to deliveries from Bombardier given that it's not politically viable to take them from routes that have already been designated fully wheelchair-accessible.
- convert the 503 from buses back to CLRVs, and extend it as far west as practical (Charlotte loop?)

So, how do we move more passengers on the line? Double decker trains?

I'm struck by the lost....*wasted* opportunity of the now removed couplers on the ALRVs. Yes, they were costly to maintain, especially not being used at the time, and there was a danger when not cowled (Shiner Skirts), but for what little life the ALRVs have left, the couplers would have proved invaluable in their late life on King.

In the event of waiting for BBD, throughput is the only way to increase effective capacity, and until priority signals are established and improved, and short-turning instituted more at either end of the corridor, the full potential capacity can't be realized. For any system, the rate of throughput (speed) determines the highest product, with caveat of max speed possible not being exceeded. This will continue to be a huge limitation for the King Korridor success or not. It's been, by far, the greatest Achilles Heel of the Melbourne Bourke Street model. https://wongm.com/2015/01/another-melbourne-tram-priority-trial/

That said, you're almost certainly right that 204 streetcars will not be enough to accommodate ridership growth, and that we should figure out how to get some more streetcars that will run on our network but aren't made by Bombardier.

Yup, once you account for dwell time at stations + traffic signals your theoretical capacity on the line can't be too much higher than what we're already seeing, regardless of TSP or new Flexities. You'll have to disperse the load and avoid people funneling onto the line.

One simple thing they could do to increase capacity a little more would be to add express buses that stop at major intersections. They can by-pass streetcars on the right-lane while simultaneously serving the same corridor. Have the express buses stop near-side to avoid impacting streetcar loading/alighting.

Since all the other options aren't possible right now, this is the only one left that I see as being so. *Even if it means robbing Peter to pay Paul*. Flexities should be taken from other routes to reach the maximum possible on King, and supplemented with buses on those other routes. Any thought of using bus expresses along King is difficult, lack of space and the need to keep as much clearway as possible for the streetcars renders that counter-productive, but what would make sense is short-turning the 504 at the ends of King, and then being met by express buses up to the subway from there, in both cases avoiding the congested Roncy and Broadview.

Also based on how the stops work, the bulk of people entering the streetcar are doing so at the back which is the smallest part of the car. I now get on at the front to avoid the glut of people filing into the streetcar.

I've noticed that too. I 'don't feel right' sitting at the front of a streetcar, but by observing the load crush at points like Spadina Station, the crush is far lower towards the front door. It's the complete opposite of older streetcars.

 

[pstogios]

It's funny how we gave up running proper transit for areas that would by nature be the easiest to capture riders to chase the reluctant converts from cars where all the dice are loaded against transit use.

AoD

This isn’t funny at all. This is politicians wasting taxpayer’s money and ruining people’s lives, all for the sake of chasing a few extra votes.

 

[drum118]

This isn’t funny at all. This is politicians wasting taxpayer’s money and ruining people’s lives, all for the sake of chasing a few extra votes.

Whats new, since it has always been how do I get reelected and have that nice paying job and screw everything that doesn't get me votes.

Was talking to a reporter about doing a piece on this and they did agree the polis are calling the shots with transit in the rear view. Getting it by higher up would be a hard sell.

 

[reaperexpress]

Yup, once you account for dwell time at stations + traffic signals your theoretical capacity on the line can't be too much higher than what we're already seeing, regardless of TSP or new Flexities. You'll have to disperse the load and avoid people funneling onto the line...the DRL could theoretically relieve Yonge AND King Street, but you're still going to have an issue for the 10+ years during construction.

Well running Flexities on the current headways would represent a 64% increase in capacity compared to today (from 2423 pphpd to 3770 pphpd), which pretty substantial. Hopefully as the capacity increases, the demand increase at less than 1:1 so the overcrowding goes down and the dwell times improve.

One simple thing they could do to increase capacity a little more would be to add express buses that stop at major intersections. They can by-pass streetcars on the right-lane while simultaneously serving the same corridor. Have the express buses stop near-side to avoid impacting streetcar loading/alighting.

The problem with buses stopping near-side is that the signal priority system currently installed on King can't distinguish between different routes, so it would get screwed up by the buses stopping within the detection zone. However, there are 4 signals in the pilot area which don't have transit priority: Spadina, University, Bay and Yonge. So stopping nearside at those intersections would be fine.

If the express bus is normal-fare, then having near-side stops would encourage people to run across the street from the streetcar to the bus stop if the bus shows up first (and vice versa). So the express buses would need to have a distinct customer base.

Based on these constraints, an option would be to reroute the existing premium-express bus services from Richmond/Adelaide onto King, with stops only near-side of Spadina, University, Bay and Yonge. However, I'm not sure if the net ridership increase on the premium express buses routes would add up to anything significant, especially given that some current riders will be lost from the intermediate stops (Peter, John, etc).

Also note that the pilot design deliberately makes it impractical to overtake streetcars. The express buses would be limited to the speed of the streetcar service.

 

[MetroMan]

The pedestrian zone in front of Fred's Not Here has "mysteriously" been pushed out of the way, creating a parking zone in front of that restaurant.

The King Street Pilot office has been notified.

 

[DSC]

The pedestrian zone in front of Fred's Not Here has "mysteriously" been pushed out of the way, creating a parking zone in front of that restaurant.

The King Street Pilot office has been notified.

Well, that MIGHT mean that the restaurant will see ONE more customer - or maybe they just parked there to visit Metro Hall! If these restaurants relied on parking right at the door to attract customers their business model was really flawed!

 

[BMO]

Well running Flexities on the current headways would represent a 64% increase in capacity compared to today (from 2423 pphpd to 3770 pphpd), which pretty substantial. Hopefully as the capacity increases, the demand increase at less than 1:1 so the overcrowding goes down and the dwell times improve.



The problem with buses stopping near-side is that the signal priority system currently installed on King can't distinguish between different routes, so it would get screwed up by the buses stopping within the detection zone. However, there are 4 signals in the pilot area which don't have transit priority: Spadina, University, Bay and Yonge. So stopping nearside at those intersections would be fine.

If the express bus is normal-fare, then having near-side stops would encourage people to run across the street from the streetcar to the bus stop if the bus shows up first (and vice versa). So the express buses would need to have a distinct customer base.

Based on these constraints, an option would be to reroute the existing premium-express bus services from Richmond/Adelaide onto King, with stops only near-side of Spadina, University, Bay and Yonge. However, I'm not sure if the net ridership increase on the premium express buses routes would add up to anything significant, especially given that some current riders will be lost from the intermediate stops (Peter, John, etc).

Also note that the pilot design deliberately makes it impractical to overtake streetcars. The express buses would be limited to the speed of the streetcar service.

My understanding of Flexity replacement (which may be flawed) is that it wouldn't be a 1:1 conversion of the line. You'd be replacing something like 2 CLRVs for every 1 Flexity put into service since they are so much longer I don't think you'd be able to replace them 1:1 without considerable impacts on bunching. So I don't think we'll be seeing a 60% increase in capacity just form the vehicles.

The CLRVs each have a crush load of 132 people, each new Flexity has a normal load of 251, maybe that gets extended to 280 under crush circumstances you're still only seeing ~6% increase in capacity due to the vehicles. You may see an overall increase in capacity due to lower overall dwell times at stations since you'd have one vehicle stopping instead of two smaller vehicles.

Fair points on the express buses, maybe Adelaide/Richmond are good alternatives for this.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The flexities on a network whole represent about a 30% increase in capacity compared to the old fleet. With the ALRVs that are being rebuilt, this means that service capacity will remain significantly above that. Provided that the TTC actually starts receiving the cars quickly.

 

[micheal_can]

My understanding of Flexity replacement (which may be flawed) is that it wouldn't be a 1:1 conversion of the line. You'd be replacing something like 2 CLRVs for every 1 Flexity put into service since they are so much longer I don't think you'd be able to replace them 1:1 without considerable impacts on bunching. So I don't think we'll be seeing a 60% increase in capacity just form the vehicles.

The CLRVs each have a crush load of 132 people, each new Flexity has a normal load of 251, maybe that gets extended to 280 under crush circumstances you're still only seeing ~6% increase in capacity due to the vehicles. You may see an overall increase in capacity due to lower overall dwell times at stations since you'd have one vehicle stopping instead of two smaller vehicles.

Fair points on the express buses, maybe Adelaide/Richmond are good alternatives for this.

Oh, if only there was some sort of system that would automatically control the trains so that they would never bunch up. If only there was some sort of traffic signalling device that could ensure transit vehicles have priority, Oh, if only there was some method of enforcing the laws.....

 

[W. K. Lis]

To those in Vaughan, hop on the subway and come on down to either KING STATION or ST. ANDREW STATION and walk to and shop or dine at the shops and restaurants along King Street.

 

[Megaton327]

To those in Vaughan, hop on the subway and come on down to either KING STATION or ST. ANDREW STATION and walk to and shop or dine at the shops and restaurants along King Street.

Make sure to wear a different hat each time you do so!

 

[DSC]

Oh, if only there was some sort of system that would automatically control the trains so that they would never bunch up.

It's called 'route management' and the TTC are not good at it.