King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[innsertnamehere]

the option that gives full transit priority (the one that retains through traffic as well) fails a lot of other transit friendly measures too.

The ones with improved public realms allow for some farside streetcar stops as well, which improve travel times above the existing nearside transit stops. It also prevents direct street to streetcar boarding level, instead requiring people to continue to risk crossing live traffic lanes to board the streetcar. Nevermind the absolute crapshoot that the single remaining vehicle lane would be.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Over-engineered, driver placating bullshit. This isn't rocket science. Ban cars, between Dufferin and Parliament, full stop. The solution is very, very simple, but as usual, this city does not have the balls to propose it, must less implement it.

Keesmaat is an utter sell-out positioning herself for a future in politics.

Please explain to me how this is planned to be done with 77 private driveways and several thousand underground parking spots that have access onto King. Or where the city even has the authority to close property access points to private property.

In the meeting staff pointed out that only a few blocks actually have 0 driveway access points, such as between Church and Jarvis. They identified those areas for full pedestrianization. They laid out a massive 20ft long map that highlighted the various taxi stands, bus drop off locations, driveway accesses, etc. too.

 

[44 North]

Considering the impossibility of a car-free King was a known to most at the start, I'm left just as confused as before. Is there a report with more meat on it, or is it only the slides? I saw ridership and latent demand acknowledged, but nothing in the way of projected demand of the options. Or capacity of the options. Is it possible that even with the most transit-focused option we'll be left with speed/capacity/reliability no different than today?

 

[bobbob911]

the option that gives full transit priority (the one that retains through traffic as well) fails a lot of other transit friendly measures too.

Such as?

It also prevents direct street to streetcar boarding level, instead requiring people to continue to risk crossing live traffic lanes to board the streetcar.

You're exaggerating here - crossing would certainly be with the lights at intersections, same as St Clair or Spadina.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Such as?



You're exaggerating here - crossing would certainly be with the lights at intersections, same as St Clair or Spadina.

I listed it. The lack of farside stops, and crossing live lanes of traffic for boarding. The farside stops especially limits any speed gains the exclusive transit lanes offer. The Alternating Loop option has minor protrusion of vehicle traffic into the the streetcar lanes, but it realistically won't produce significant travel time reductions. It manages to provide entire direct boarding, though farside boarding won't be possible at all intersections.

There isn't the space for in median stops a la spadina or st clair, or various other stops around the city (think Bathurst northbound at Queen). Passengers will continue to wait as they do today, on the curb.

Ultimately I believe that the Alternating Loop design is the best for the street, given the presentation I saw at the meeting.


This isn't some political reasoning behind the various options, there are very real reasons behind the proposed options. The fact is that there is simply too many vehicle demands along the street beyond simple single passenger vehicle movement that cannot be ignored.

 

[bobbob911]

I suppose for the pilot project your right. I expect it or were to be made permanent some kind of platform could be accommodated.

Still, I don't see this as any kind of safety or efficiency concern - it's essentially status quo.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I suppose for the pilot project your right. I expect it or were to be made permanent some kind of platform could be accommodated.

Still, I don't see this as any kind of safety or efficiency concern - it's essentially status quo.

Nope. There really just isn't the space. King street is an extremely constrained environment. You need about 2m for a streetcar platform, and beyond the streetcar tracks you have about 6.5m of space to "fiddle with" in each direction. 3.5m lanes for cars, 3m for a sidewalk. If you cut space out of the sidewalk and made the lanes as thin as possible, you would end up with a 1.3m sidewalk, which is far below code and nowhere close to wide enough to accomodate pedestrian traffic. You just cannot do it.

I highly suggest you, and everyone here, takes a look at the slide deck below before posting. It really highlights the wide range of demands placed on King street and why the various solutions have been proposed.

http://www.slideshare.net/CityPlanTO/king-street-pilot-public-meeting-feb-13-2017

 

[bobbob911]

I've read the deck. For me the primary concern is that the streetcar lanes are dedicated. All else is secondary, IMO

 

[innsertnamehere]

Is the priority completely dedicated streetcar lanes, or fastest streetcar operations? because those are two different things. Option 1, the one that provides full dedicated streetcar lanes, but fails essentially every other metric, likely won't even produce the fastest travel times.

As I said, the Alternating Loop option would see effective dedicated lanes, with the only protrusion being the occasional car detouring drop off traffic. You have to remember that forcing right turns on every block already vastly reduces vehicle traffic on the route to likely almost nothing, for most drop offs it won't be worth it to even drive on King any more, instead dropping off at the nearest north-south street. The important thing is that vehicles to not queue up in front of the streetcars at intersections, which won't be happening.

 

[bobbob911]

That design makes assumptions about how traffic patterns might change to ensure efficient streetcar movement. Dedicated lanes *guarantees* it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

^I just struggle to see how there will be large amounts of traffic when you are forced to make a right turn at every stoplight.

 

[Dandy Horse]

Hm so I wonder if bikes will be forced to turn right too or if we'll get "bicycle excepted" signs that would be cool. What about sidewalks? They're incredibly inadequate as it is.

 

[MetroMan]

For those teased about about a car free King Street who are now afraid of cars taking back space that should be dedicated to exclusive streetcar use, consider that staff will not be presenting multiple options to city council. They will choose one and Council will decide Yes or No. One of them achieves the essence of that goal and Keesmaat clearly prefers it: the alternating loop with streetcar only lanes. She emphasized that fixing transit is the priority and has been tweeting #TransitFirst.

City Planning didn't know what kind of crowd they would encounter tonight so they brought several options just in case. I believe that what they got was generally supportive. We were split into groups but I hopped around listening to each one. There was one guy complaining that this isn't a "transit first plan, it's a transit only plan" but the vast majority of the overflow crowd seemed to be in support. Objections had to do with details, not the overall plan itself. So, I think that Keesmaat will be endorsing the plan that best suits transit and that is the alternating loop.

Cars were never going to be eliminated entirely because of private access. The alternating loop fixes the crawling King Streetcar, widens the sidewalks for the tens of thousands of pedestrians flooding the area every day and maintains access to cars who still have a place on King. This plan sets up the possibility of closing some blocks to car traffic on a schedule. For example, no cars other than taxis or those with local permits between Bathurst and Spadina during club nights. Or no cars between John and University during lunch hour when that block gets flooded with office workers.

Oh, and more more thing: Keesmaat is totally the obvious progressive champion in a run for Mayor. We can stop searching. She's articulate and charismatic and she obviously knows City Hall and policy inside and out. I don't know if she's planning to run but she definitely has what it takes. Whether she goes against Tory in 2018 or leaves her mark as City Planner and runs when Tory exits or is weak in 2022, she'd be an incredible Mayor.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

^I just struggle to see how there will be large amounts of traffic when you are forced to make a right turn at every stoplight.

There are tons of taxis on weekend evenings on King Street, clogging up the street. I made the mistake of driving along King on a Saturday evening during the summer. Never again. The dozens of taxis had me travelling 5 minutes, just to travel the 150 metres or so to the next intersection.

Given that taxis show little regard for driving regulations, I'm sure they'll happily block the streetcars during their passenger drop offs. If there is not going to be physical separation between the LRVs and taxis, I'm inclined to ban taxis outright from the transit corridor to avoid this problem.

 

[steveintoronto]

I don't know why a law abiding cyclist would defend rule breakers who give the entire community a bad reputation. It's good to find a cyclist who understands this. Red light runners and sidewalk cyclists need to be policed if we're going to all get along.

The way to explain this is to make a comparison to driving. If you wouldn't do it when driving, don't do it when cycling, with few exceptions many drivers do anyway, like rolling stops for stop signs...*sometimes* when there's absolutely no affected traffic. I actually get quite vocal with some cyclists, as I would as a driver. Not one cyclist yet has responded to my tirades, because they know they're in the wrong. We'll discuss this further in another forum, you've made some excellent comments.

It will be a YES or NO question that is brought to City Council which makes me nervous.

CP24 had a pretty good report last night, TorStar has a very poorly written and researched article running today. You and some other posters provide details not yet appearing in the media, and crucial ones. You've now got me "nervous" too.

As I left she turned to me and cheerfully said that the progressives on Council just won another vote with the election of Neethan Shan in Ward 42, replacing Raymond Cho.

It's been years...dammit, decades...since I've spoken to Pam. She's got an incredible heart, even if she is on the meek side. She's very well-intentioned. I'm a radical, vocal centrist, but if I had to choose between left and right on council, I'd defer to the left as so many right wingers are reactionary, not rational right. It's left this city languishing in the past, almost unable to embrace change. When Mississauga is more progressive than Toronto, you know there's a serious problem.

Now she presents a list with a bunch of half assed half measures (including already tried-and-failed options) and spends more time yapping about pedestrians and sidewalks than transit. Hijacked indeed.

Ouch. I have hopes for Keesmaat, will discuss further later, but perhaps by trying too hard, and being too effervescent, she's been all over the map on this issue and others, and changed her view too many times.I get the gist of her direction, but her tweets and quotes are contradictory and ambiguous in many cases.

Did she already forget how badly she got destroyed on the Gardiner file?

Tory certainly muzzled her on that one. That story might yet see Tory flip flop.

the option that gives full transit priority (the one that retains through traffic as well) fails a lot of other transit friendly measures too.

Yeah....sigh....I see all the presented options as being nebulous in many respects. I see a number of posters with the same bottom-line concern that I have: Given the chance, many drivers will ignore painted lines and/or bollards, and it's not just taxis.

The ones with improved public realms allow for some farside streetcar stops as well, which improve travel times above the existing nearside transit stops. It also prevents direct street to streetcar boarding level, instead requiring people to continue to risk crossing live traffic lanes to board the streetcar. Nevermind the absolute crapshoot that the single remaining vehicle lane would be.

This is one of the issues, at least in the 'trial stage' that is doomed to indicate shortcomings of a model that done right, would succeed. I'm in the minority on stating that the Bloor cycle lanes are not only a bad model, but dangerous and not conducive to good cycling protocol, mostly because it's such a poorly implemented temporary test. And I'm getting the distinct impression that as proposed, the King 'test' is potentially the same set of failures, and then being judged on that as being a failure of concept, when *many*....*multitudes* of other cities have done it close to as well as can be done, and they're great successes. Why are Torontonians, Canadians in general, so unable to look at others' models and state: "They've got a model already tried and tested that we can tweak to our own needs"? That's one of the great facets of Americans getting things right in many cases. "Hey, they did a great job on that in Lower Slobovia, we can do it and do it even better if we study their model and improve on it."

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