King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[steveintoronto]

At the rate this thing's going, Ford St.

Ouch! lol...

How soon can we expect it to be implemented?

I think someone's got some 'splaining to do on that one.

 

[innsertnamehere]

How soon can we expect it to be implemented?

Let's get king street through it's pilot stage first, maybe?

Queen I could see, but Dundas and College would be tougher. There are less alternatives for vehicular traffic.

 

[Streety McCarface]

"Ideally", the 504/514 combined service should have a "Toronto rapid transit" headway. That's 5 minutes in the non-rush hours and 2 ½ minutes during the rush hours, or better. Likely we'll have wait till the TTC gets all 204+ new streetcars first.

Isn't the 503 supposed to be added to that? I'd argue they should also reinstate the 508 during peak periods.

Let's hope they get wise, and just let Bombardier knock out another 60 now - will probably be cheaper and much faster than going elsewhere now that the production line is pushing 60 units a year.

I'd argue it should be more than 60, especially with the portlands extension coming.

Steve Munro has been claiming that the ALRVs so-called "life extension" was merely cosmetic. The accuracy of that claim is unknown to me.

Idk if the program has remained the same ever since, but this is the Union's perspective.

 

[Streety McCarface]

Let's get king street through it's pilot stage first, maybe?

Queen I could see, but Dundas and College would be tougher. There are less alternatives for vehicular traffic.

A simple ban of left turns on both corridors seems like a fair compromise, especially for college/carlton.

 

[PinkLucy]

Random lunch break epiphany: Do you think that the complaining King Street restaurants are seeing less customers because it is easier for locals to take transit to superior options now with the pilot project?

If I lived in the Entertainment District, and I could suddenly get to King West or King East in 10 minutes rather than 30, there's no way I'd be eating at Kit Kat.

Just saying.

As a relative local, I didn't frequent the complaining establishments. They're tourist traps with not-so-great food. As has been pointed out, the theatre was dark longer than usual with no smash hits, so less of a theatre crowd in general.

But likewise, if you live at King East now you can easily get to King West.

But would you bother to make the trip to go to Fred's Not Here or Kit Kat?

 

[DSC]

Just heard a BIZARRE interview on CBC's Here and Now. Gill Deacon interviewed Al Carbone of Kit Kat about his ice sculpture fingers. She asked him if he thought they would help attract customers and he went on and on about some poor woman from the suburbs who got several tickets for driving through on King and then also got a ticket for having no insurance. He stated that 'we" have given Tory an ultimatum and unless things change in next 24 hours there will be something major next week. Perhaps him and Doug and Mammo lying on the tracks or putting the finger to better use? I don't think they archive their interviews which is a pity - I did not catch it all and it was VERY odd!

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

...he went on and on about some poor woman from the suburbs who got several tickets for driving through on King and then also got a ticket for having no insurance...

Am I supposed to be sympathetic, especially to the latter point - having no insurance and still drove? W-T-F??

AoD

 

[Streety McCarface]

Just heard a BIZARRE interview on CBC's Here and Now. Gill Deacon interviewed Al Carbone of Kit Kat about his ice sculpture fingers. She asked him if he thought they would help attract customers and he went on and on about some poor woman from the suburbs who got several tickets for driving through on King and then also got a ticket for having no insurance. He stated that 'we" have given Tory an ultimatum and unless things change in next 24 hours there will be something major next week. Perhaps him and Doug and Mammo lying on the tracks or putting the finger to better use? I don't think they archive their interviews which is a pity - I did not catch it all and it was VERY odd!

This guy can seriously go [censored]. What an arrogant [censored]. For God's sake, he's not the only business owner along the corridor, his customers are not the only individuals along the corridor, and most importantly, someone driving without insurance is breaking the goddamn law and if they're driving without insurance, they should have very well been ticketed, and probably had their license suspended until they buy insurance.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Poor lady is clearly psychologically afflicted. Question: Why is she allowed to drive?



Also, I'm dying laughing at these fools. At this point, I actually no longer care if some of these businesses go bankrupt or cease operations. Specifically the ones owned by people who spout pure rubbish in the hopes of earning sympathy. Good riddance.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

Poor lady is clearly psychologically afflicted. Question: Why is she allowed to drive?

This is Canada. People have a right to drive, rules be damned. Wouldn’t you feel violated if your rights were stripped!?

 

[SunriseChampion]

Please, my right to have wine with my picnic on the beach has already been stripped from me.
Huge societal danger in my having a bit of wine. A completely inept driver hurtling around in a 1t missile? An absolute right.
I see your point.

 

[MisterF]

I don't doubt the line has attracted new riders, but there's a theoretical and realistic limit to how many people can be added to a line. I also have my reservations about the quality of TTC's counts which rely on a mixture of Automatic counters on the new LRVs and visual counts for non-LRTs (unless the extrapolate ridership using just the flexities). FYI, based off of working in the industry I know that historically TTC used to just have someone ride the routes periodically and count people getting on or off. Considering baseline data was based on manual counts from CLRVs I'm super skeptical of the authenticity of the results just because of the given methodology wasn't that accurate to begin with. There's a bunch of factors that constrain the line's ability to add riders. I'll admit there's a bunch of numbers I don't quite know, was 25% extra capacity added to the line via better headways or added vehicles? If we have a line that was packed originally I just don't get how you could add an extra 25% to the line unless you add that through extra capacity. A 2-minute savings leaves me skeptical that this is the case (although I'm open to the suggestion that I'm wrong). The only other possibility I can think of is that this stretch of the line (eastbound between Spadina and Yonge) wasn't at-capacity before which I find very hard to believe. So there's a bunch of holes in the data that I would need to be filled before I believe it.

What is the upper limit of a street running streetcar line? With all the obstacles that King streetcars have had to deal with for so long, it has to be significantly higher than 65,000. What's the busiest street running streetcar line in the world? How busy is it? Without this information I'll accept the city's ridership numbers more than your skepticism. I'm well aware that the city uses antiquated methods of counting riders, but there's no indication that the methodology has changed or deteriorated. If the current ridership numbers are unreliable, the the previous ridership numbers must be equally unreliable. So if the counts are showing suddenly higher numbers, there's another reason for the change than the way the TTC counts riders.

Speed improvements have been as high as 4-5 minutes in rush hour. Reliability has improved as well. That kind of time savings means streetcars are about 20-24% faster in rush hour (less for the day as a whole). Those numbers could potentially improve further as the pilot is modified and refined. The faster speeds alone can move significantly more people without any new vehicles being added to the line. Increased reliability can increase capacity further. Add in the fact that they're using more Flexity LRVs which carry more people and have faster boarding and the line carrying 20% more passengers seems pretty realistic to me.

 

[lead82]

What do you base your numbers on? The TT. Has done an awful job of publishing true facts and dates j

 

[dowlingm]

I don't doubt the line has attracted new riders, but there's a theoretical and realistic limit to how many people can be added to a line. I also have my reservations about the quality of TTC's counts which rely on a mixture of Automatic counters on the new LRVs and visual counts for non-LRTs (unless the extrapolate ridership using just the flexities). FYI, based off of working in the industry I know that historically TTC used to just have someone ride the routes periodically and count people getting on or off. Considering baseline data was based on manual counts from CLRVs I'm super skeptical of the authenticity of the results just because of the given methodology wasn't that accurate to begin with.

TTC also have Presto data now (which is why they were able to say Queen ridership has not materially declined). The precision of their data can be argued but the accuracy is likely sufficient for the purposes of the pilot.

 

[steveintoronto]

On TTC's data being reliable or not, or to what degree, Munro has addressed this head-on. His latest blog went up yesterday. Here's an excerpt, I'm still catching up on it:

TTC Staff presented updated information on the King Street Pilot to the Board at its January 18, 2018 meeting.

The changes in travel times are shown for all periods during the day, not just for the peak periods as shown in the City's December 2017 dashboard.

These numbers are different from those reported by the City because the TTC uses a different definition of the peak period (6-9 am, 3-6 pm) while the City's figures cover begin and end one hour later in both cases. In either case, averaging over a three hour period reduces the benefit during the peak hour.

The TTC emphasizes that the benefits involve not just the pilot area, but the entire route through improved service reliability and reduced wait times.

Original reports of rididership growth cited only the peak eastbound hour at Spadina where demand rose from 2,100 to 2,600. Additional information about ridership growth based on Presto card usage shows that the improvement is more widespread. The table below compares the rise in Presto card usage on King and Queen streets from November 1 to January 8 with other routes. Both show higher figures than the balance of the system.

It is unclear whether this simply represents a faster uptake of Presto by downtown riders than an increase specific to King Street. Indeed if Queen were showing similar riding growth, one would expect calls for much more service on that route too.

Although an all-day ridership on the King corridor was previously cited as 65,000, a recent count was 10% higher at 71,000.

In mid-February, service on 514 Cherry will be improved during the off-peak. 503 Kingston Road will revert to streetcar operation between Kingston Road & Victoria Park and King & Spadina during weekday peak and midday periods. This will replace the 502 Downtowner bus which will now operate only during peak hours to Queen & University to shift some capacity to King Street.

Schedules will be adjusted to meet peak demand periods. Additional unspecified changes will occur in May based on updated ridership information.

Full operation of 504 King with low floor cars is planned for the end of 2018 with most of the route converted by the fall.

http://stevemunro.ca/2018/01/19/king-street-pilot-ttc-january-2018-update/