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King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

the King street pilot still doesn't change the fact that the 504 stops too frequently, moves people too slowly and is often overcapacity during rush hour. it would probably be best to upgrade the service beyond streetcars at some point.

good thing a new downtown subway roughly following the route of the 504 is under construction as we speak!
We still need to get this right. The 504 King will be one of the most heavily used transit routes in our city, with or without the Ontario Line.
 
the King street pilot still doesn't change the fact that the 504 stops too frequently, moves people too slowly and is often overcapacity during rush hour. it would probably be best to upgrade the service beyond streetcars at some point.
I guess you haven't ridden other systems where you will see almost the same as King with only one lane of traffic, one lane of transit in each direction, the odd ROW and some on street parking??

I do agree on stop spacing and you will find stops far apart in other places. Then those stops don't have the high density around them nor in between to what we have today, let alone what coming down the road.
 
Having to walk even further to get to a stop right now is a straw that will break riders' choosing to carry this shitty, slow streetcar service on their backs. The TTC has driven away customers en masse before and faced collapse, closing stops in dense areas is asking them to face that again. Choice riders have carried the TTC since the Miller expansion, but they can very easily leave it again too. Closely spaced stops aren't what makes the streetcars move at 5 kph between them. It's TTC drivers with no incentive to care about speed, TTC management with no incentive to request speed, a City that makes no effort to allow them to move at speed, and a core group of lazy, ignorant riders whose lives revolve around doing things in the slowest, dumbest way possible to make everyone's life worse. Oh, and by the way, the streetcars are too big.

Especially that last one. It's become clear to me the 100% replacement with CLRVs was a very big mistake for Toronto. They should have had two sizes, and a larger total number of cars.
 
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Having to walk even further to get to a stop right now is a straw that will break the backs of the riders' who are choosing to carry this shitty service. The TTC has driven away customers before. Closing stops in dense areas is asking them to do it again. Choice riders carried the TTC since the Miller expansion. They can leave it very easily.

There is a balance to be struck.

While you're quite right that choice riders may balk at an excessive walk to/from transit, they can and will also balk at a service that is too slow, and too stop and start.

There is definitely room for some stop rationalization in Toronto, we have too many routes with too many stops within 300M or less, sometimes even 200M or less of one another. That, in general, is not reasonable.

That said, there are nodes of density, as noted by @drum118 where its impractical to remove stops, if only because it would grossly overcrowd the remaining stops.
 
Regarding King, we shouldn’t be too pessimistic about the lack of explicit cycle lanes. I’m sure the redesigned King will be far safer for all road users, including cyclists.

Safer, sure. But not necessarily better for transit operations.

The Public Realm group will not give up those 50 cm of sidewalk width unless they are absolutely forced to. Speaking from my experience trying and failing to get them to give up those 50 cm during the design of the original pilot. My team predicted that streetcars would commonly get stuck behind bikes if they only provided a metre of space beside the tracks, and sure enough that's exactly what happened.
Interesting. Is this the work of the restaurant lobby?
 
Honestly I think the entire steeetcar network needs a modernization to improve speed and reliability, and get it to the operational level of something like the Finch LRT.

Wider stop spacing, upgrading to double-point switches, multi-directional trams, parking removal, bike lane expansion, upgraded passenger platforms and congestion charges are all small things that could make a big impact on operations in aggregate.
 
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Honestly I think the entire steeetcar network needs a modernization to improve speed and reliability, and get it to the operational level of something like the Finch LRT.

Wider stop spacing, upgrading to double-point switches, multi-directional trams, parking removal, bike lane expansion, upgraded passenger platforms and congestion charges are all small things that could make a big impact on operations in aggregate.
Though one might argue about the value of all of these proposals, they are NOT mostly small things. replacing switches and buying bi-directional cars is certainly not cheap and a congestion charge (which I certainly like) is a HUGE political problem (and must usually be accompanied by much more transit service inside the zone.)
 
Oh, and by the way, the streetcars are too big.

Especially that last one. It's become clear to me the 100% replacement with CLRVs was a very big mistake for Toronto.
Except that large streetcars like the Flexitys, or multiple single units coupled together, is a way more efficient solution than what we had before, because they can serve stops and pass through traffic lights (and abide by inane stop and check rules) as one, instead of each car having to do it separately. There is basically no city of Toronto's calibre that runs single units anymore, that I know of, except for a small portion of services in Prague.

Who are the streetcars too big for, anyway? Why would anyone except for motorists be bothered by the length of them?
 
Honestly I think the entire steeetcar network needs a modernization to improve speed and reliability, and get it to the operational level of something like the Finch LRT.

Wider stop spacing, upgrading to double-point switches, multi-directional trams, parking removal, bike lane expansion, upgraded passenger platforms and congestion charges are all small things that could make a big impact on operations in aggregate.
The lowest hanging fruit is re-examining the TTC's new rule after rule in the name of "safety" that make service slow. The crawling through intersections, crawling past another streetcar, allowing passengers to reopen the doors, slowing down the speed of the doors. Buses aren't told to crawl when passing each other or when going through intersections. Subway doors close a fast pace and passengers cannot reopen them. It's ridiculous that somehow these things that happen elsewhere on the system are only "unsafe" with a streetcar.
 
I find it funny that ppl say our streetcars are too long when I see cities moving to longer ones than ours now as well in the past.

Saw systems with 60's cars that were operating in pairs moving to 3-7 sections based length of 32-45 meter cars due ridership as well being high floor. Even systems that are lowfloor in the first place moving to longer cars. You have systems moving to 56m cars and seen a few of those.

I do see the day when TTC will have to order longer cars for various routes.

Until TTC replace "ALL" current switches with switches that is used by others, slow going, having one car cross the intersection at a time will remain as it is today for crossing switches while others don't slow down and pass each other at the same time.

TTC is the only system I been on where the driver open and close the doors in place of riders and a timing system for closing.
 
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The lowest hanging fruit is re-examining the TTC's new rule after rule in the name of "safety" that make service slow. The crawling through intersections, crawling past another streetcar, allowing passengers to reopen the doors, slowing down the speed of the doors. Buses aren't told to crawl when passing each other or when going through intersections. Subway doors close a fast pace and passengers cannot reopen them. It's ridiculous that somehow these things that happen elsewhere on the system are only "unsafe" with a streetcar.
This is the worst part of all. And waiting at a red light to slowly cross an intersection, only to stop again.
Is there a way we can actually get this addressed?
 
This is the worst part of all. And waiting at a red light to slowly cross an intersection, only to stop again.
Is there a way we can actually get this addressed?
This is what happens with far side stops and no priority signals for transit. Then, traffic itself cause the backup due to left turns, ppl crossing the road on a red and so on.

TTC is not the only one to have these double stops as it happen on other systems as well even with ROW.
 
TTC is the only system I been on where the driver open and close the doors in place of riders and a timing system for closing.
I think the reason behind it is people don't know that the button on the door supposed to open it and are used to the driver having to open them or release them so that they can push on them like on buses or step on the back stairs like the old streetcars. It's more of a Toronto public problem than a TTC problem. I remember mentioning it to someone and they responded with "that's not how we do it in Canada they should open the doors for you."
 

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