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King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

This is only a preliminary decision. Staff are open to extending the pilot to Dufferin based on feedback from the public. A number of people called for this in the meeting because of the large amount of development in Liberty Village.
How bad is 504 there? In PM rush, it seems to move well once it gets past Bathurst. I'm not there in the AM. On the east side, it's rare to see much problems east of Jarvis.
 
First thing I think King needs is official box junctions at all signalled intersections, and enforcement. The latter is obviously the more important point. Maybe the street design could include areas for TPS to hold cars for ticketing, since the excuse that "we don't want to make traffic worse while ticketing offenders" is a very annoying one.

I'm wondering if there could be an option D that uses the placement of crossovers/switches. Depending on time-of-day or events, streetcars could alternate to sharing tracks. Obviously there'd have to be a new form of streetcar signalling put in. Not sure if it makes any sense, but this is something I haven't seen considered by TTC before. Probably a reason tho.
Much more difficult in single end car operations I would think, plus it assumes TTC can keep the switches functional.
 
First thing I think King needs is official box junctions at all signalled intersections, and enforcement. The latter is obviously the more important point. Maybe the street design could include areas for TPS to hold cars for ticketing, since the excuse that "we don't want to make traffic worse while ticketing offenders" is a very annoying one.

Much more difficult in single end car operations I would think, plus it assumes TTC can keep the switches functional.

If you look at King & Jarvis you can still see the faint remains of yellow painted lines the City put there about a decade ago to remind drivers that it is against Highway Code to enter a junction if you can't get out of it. When we asked the City a couple of years ago to repaint them they said they had given up on that as the police never enforced the law so it was a waste of $$. I am all for painted box junctions but unless police do their job it is simply not worth it.
 
How bad is 504 there? In PM rush, it seems to move well once it gets past Bathurst. I'm not there in the AM. On the east side, it's rare to see much problems east of Jarvis.

That is true, and this slide shows it. But some residents have argued that with all the development happening in places like Liberty Village, it will not stay that way after a few years. In the PM graph you can already see reliability starting to degrade just west of Bathurst (compared to the Dufferin side), and that vehicle speed is not in the green. The same is true around Jarvis in the PM. So I think it's better to be proactive in those areas and implement something now, instead of waiting for things to get worse which is inevitable.



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That is true, and this slide shows it. But some residents have argued that with all the development happening in places like Liberty Village, it will not stay that way after a few years.

Fair, though keep in mind this is just a pilot and won't be sticking around long enough to see that day. Final design options will be created based on the results of this pilot. If King west of Bathurst is busier at that time, it will likely be included considering how much support there was for that option. Not including it in the pilot doesn't preclude it from being included in the final recommendations.

With the lack of pedestrian activity and street-front retail in this section, I think simply enforcing the HOV lanes would help. This is one part of King that doesn't really need wider sidewalks or less car lanes, especially considering the lack of through-roads in Liberty Village.
 
How bad is 504 there? In PM rush, it seems to move well once it gets past Bathurst. I'm not there in the AM. On the east side, it's rare to see much problems east of Jarvis.

Going eastbound in the morning often gets backed-up a few blocks west of Bathurst....because of Bathurst. Maybe improvements east of Bathurst will clear this up? If the maintain the left turn at the intersection I don't see this being alleviated at all and will still be a choke point. Especially since if cars are restricted on King you'll have a bunch of traffic making the left to get to Adelaide.
 
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Going eastbound in the morning often gets backed-up a few blocks west of Bathurst....because of Bathurst. Maybe improvements east of Bathurst will clear this up? If the maintain the left turn at the intersection I don't see this being alleviated at all and will still be a choke point. Especially since if cars are restricted on King you'll have a bunch of traffic making the left to get to Adelaide.
Good points and that's why this is a pilot project and why they will tweak it (word of the week?) as they see problems.
 
Why do we bother going through the ritual of studies, analysis, planning and consultation? Why put ourselves through the cost and years of effort of this exercise?Ultimately Council will make this decision, as they did on SSE and East Gardiner. The majority of councillors are from the suburbs, and the only criterion they care about is privileging car traffic. Their ideal urban form is the Golden Mile circa 1955. Staff and consultants can produce whatever reasoned city-building plans they like, but Toronto is incapable of implementing them. Giorgio Mammoliti isn't an outlier - he represents Toronto's majority opinion. A radical rebuild of King as a transit and pedestrian friendly corridor would make a lot of sense. It would be a no-brainer in dozens of other cities. But this is Toronto and we can't do anything right. We should pass from denial and resign ourselves to the fact that anything smart is impossible in this town.
 
If ones walks from Dufferin to Broadview 10-15 years ago and walk it today, they will see a major change to King as well Queen thats only the tip of the ice berg heading toward that area in the next 20 years.

There is already 2 proposal to change Dufferin intersection to high density on 2 of the 4 corners.

If people think traffic will not increases due to development off these roads in the next 5-20 years are dreaming with rosy glass on.

Spadina at King has 4 proposal now and thats a bitch of an intersection from early am to late pm today with pedestrians playing a major role in slowing traffic and transit down.

At one time you roll up the rug after 6 pm for week day and all weekend, but its a 7/24 today as well down the road.

Making right hand turns is going to be a major issues and unless pedestrians are force to wait for a light to allow traffic to turn freely.

What King was before is a thing of the past and only going to be more density and pedestrians busy. We better get off our ass and build for the future yesterday.

I don't support bike lane on this road, as they can be found a block or 2 away now. This needs to be more for transit and pedestrians than anything else. Taxis and Uber are going to be a problem one way or another since its all about a passenger or 2.
 
That "reliability" graph line doesn't make sense to me. Ridership maybe??

If people think traffic will not increases due to development off these roads in the next 5-20 years are dreaming with rosy glass on.
Mirvish, who is whinging about this proposal, wants to build gigantic condos. How are people gonna get to his Princess of Wales parking garage if there is gridlock because every other business owner wants to promote private transport too??
 
I'm wondering if there could be an option D that uses the placement of crossovers/switches. Depending on time-of-day or events, streetcars could alternate to sharing tracks. Obviously there'd have to be a new form of streetcar signalling put in. Not sure if it makes any sense, but this is something I haven't seen considered by TTC before. Probably a reason tho.

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Swanston in Melbourne: https://goo.gl/maps/EzsWSKd2HpH2
This is a turn-back switch, those are double-ended trams.
 

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