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How It Started
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King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

Streety McCarface said:
No, no, no. It makes absolutely no sense to remove streetcars from Dundas, Bathurst, or College and replace them with Articulated Buses just because they're not as crowded as King. Do you know how many people use each of those? College carries 39601 passengers per day, Dundas carries 32410 passengers per day. Queen carries 43464 passengers per day, but by km, it carries the least number of passengers per km on its line. The 505 is the most crowded surface route as is, and without the 511 (21433 passengers per day), the CNE would be a mess. Also, articulated buses downtown would be next to impossible on all these routes. Let it also be known, the Eglinton East bus carries 30,000 passengers per day, less than the 506 and 505. Based on how many buses pop up on that route, even considering moving the 511, 506 and 505 to buses is absurd.
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So run GO trains on the streets? :rolleyes:
 
TransitBart said:
For everyone's benefit here, what would your commute time have been pre-trial in comparison with today?
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That is really not a useful figure. You need to look at properly collected statistics and not rely on the opinions of one person - whether it's King East, me or Fred. There are proper stats coming out from the City and the TTC and Steve Munro has been and will dissect the transit ones. Just because the Freds and the Kit Kats pull out personal and unverified figures does not mean we all have to.
 
TransitBart said:
For everyone's benefit here, what would your commute time have been pre-trial in comparison with today?
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Well, pre-pilot my morning commute was all over the place. 15 minutes on a good day 20-25+ average with delays due to traffic on University and Yonge. The actual commute time of the pilot has been maybe 10-12 minutes. The issue I had with the pilot (and I guess I still have it in some cases) is the time it takes to find a streetcar that isn't jammed. I still have this issue during the evening rush.
 
"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.
 
W. K. Lis said:
"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.
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I agree with your sentiment but as far as I know there will be fewer LFLRVs than there were CLRVs+ALRVs at about 200 vs 250. The LFLRVs are on a capacity replacement/slight bump basis, but their large size means that fewer of them were ordered. So headways across the entire TTC will, in general, get longer, not shorter. The TTC could disproportionately increase headways on some or all other routes to decrease them on King, but that would result in substantially longer wait times on other routes than the increase that will already occur.

To maintain headways and improve capacity we need the extra 60 cars and I'm not sure if anyone still thinks there's a chance in hell of council approving that within the next decade, never mind in which century bombardier (or a replacement supplier) would feel like delivering not only the current order but this addition.
 
W. K. Lis said:
"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.
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I don't get it. It's already better than this, especially at rush hour.

Cutting the frequency won't help.

TheTigerMaster said:
Whos plan was this? I've never heard that before
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Ah, you have me. I went back to dig, and Queen didn't come into play until Miller's second term. Then the projects were "King Street Transit Priority" and "Queen Street Transit Priority".

When this started in early 2001 (by Councillor Miller) it was only King. I'd forgotten the first bit.

I suspect if I did further, that someone was suggesting similar in the 1950s - as an interim measure until they complete the already approved Queen line.

Megaton327 said:
I agree with your sentiment but as far as I know there will be fewer LFLRVs than there were CLRVs+ALRVs at about 200 vs 250. The LFLRVs are on a capacity replacement/slight bump basis, but their large size means that fewer of them were ordered. So headways across the entire TTC will, in general, get longer, not shorter.
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That was the original plan - back in in 2006 or so. And no secret, given that TTC has published number of cars and frequency for each route more than once. But streetcar ridership has increased over 40%.

So the current plan is 204 LFLRVs plus 30 ALRVs for 234 cars. Which isn't that far off the 247 cars (195 CLRVs + 52 ALRVs) they had at the time they ordered.

Even 204 LFLRVs is a significant increase in capacity - using the published peak-period loading standard of 74 for CLRVs, 108 for ALRVs, and 130 for LFLRVs, the total capacity (assuming everything is in service) has gone from 20,046 to 26,520. It will rise to 29,760 with 30 ALRVs and 34,320 with 60 more LFLRVs. Though of course they could never have close to all of them in service - but that indicates the general increase in the fleet size.

And storage requirements have gone up too. Previously the old cars totalled about 4.12 km in length (length of the entire fleet, nose-tail on the track. The 204 ALRVs are 6.12 km, with 6.81 including the 30 CLRVs. While 264 LFLRVs total 7.9 km.

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.
 
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steveintoronto said:
Yes! This of course would be post pilot. The real challenge comes at the streetcar intersections. as to take all four tracks across each would require massive and complete rebuilding of them.

What I propose is leaving the present tracks in place, but between intersecting track junctions, *local* (stopping) tracks are in the curb lane, and merge into the present 'through' (or express) lanes, such that the local tracks don't alter the crossovers, and once past the intersection, the local tracks verge off from the express ones again.

This would allow the stopping cars to run slower without fouling the express tracks. It would also mean that passengers would board from the present sidewalks (the curbs slightly further into present roadway).

This would allow express through 'trains' to travel at a higher speed and pass the locals that are stopped. Would it satisfy the need for a subway? Not quite, but would go a long way to building on the demonstrated though incremental success now starting to show.

Needless to say, pedestrian crossing access from one side of the road to the other would have to be corralled, or overhead bridges/decks built that could also host restaurants and second floor building access.

Expensive? Compared to building a subway, it would be a tiny fraction to achieve much of the same outcome.
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That would be a good alternative solution, provided that the switches are easy to change than they are now.

I wonder if it would be easier to rebuild the unions if you removed some of the turning tracks from the intersections too (i.e. no left turn movements and only right turns from the local tracks), because ideally you'd like to have 4 tracks throughout. If you really needed a left turn movement for interoperability, you could do 3 right turns using local streets instead (ex: Spadina NB to King WB could use the existing Charlotte St Loop configuration).

Theoretically, this type of reconstruction could be completed within a couple of years, given how long it's taken the TTC to rebuild sections of tracks. A far cry from the decade of construction that would be needed for the DRL. We could theoretically have a 100,000+ ppd surface RT line up and running by 2021 if we started seriously talking about it now.
 
gweed123 said:
That would be a good alternative solution, provided that the switches are easy to change than they are now.
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Absolutely, for all sorts of reasons. It's time for the TTC to start using modern, high-speed switches whenever track is replaced or added to.

You've obviously caught what I described, but for other posters, in case the description was awkward, it's better to describe the concept as 'local loops off the main track laid between major track intersections'. I'll see if I can provide a pic to post to show that. Think New York City's subway express tracks through local stopping only stations.
gweed123 said:
Theoretically, this type of reconstruction could be completed within a couple of years, given how long it's taken the TTC to rebuild sections of tracks. A far cry from the decade of construction that would be needed for the DRL. We could theoretically have a 100,000+ ppd surface RT line up and running by 2021 if we started seriously talking about it now.
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This aspect just isn't getting talked about much. As to why boggles the mind.

There is a downside that might terrify many aware of this: And that's the loss of pedestrians being able to wander mindlessly across the tracks. The fencing is unavoidable, possibly/probably even with just the present two tracks but moving at a faster pace than just walking speed. Many jurisdictions do fence off the tracks or place a barrier in between the tracks to stop persons running across except at pedestrian crossing points with signals. In North Am, the immediate example I'm very familiar with is the San Diego Trolley, one of the more successful LRTs. Portland and Seattle do same in some areas IIRC.

Addendum: Here's a pic of Melbourne's temporary fencing until permanent fencing can be installed. Melbourne has the largest 'tram' network in the world, by far, and of course hosts the Bourne Street Mall that Toronto's King Street Mall is often compared to by the City and TTC.

Melbourne has seen a series of fatal pedestrian collisions with 'trams':

E114_1744.jpg

https://railgallery.wongm.com/albums/melbourne-tram-stops/E114_1744.jpg

Many more pics here:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=melb...AhUkzoMKHQaBDroQ9QEILzAC#imgrc=R9Q2BGsSj26UrM:
 
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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.
 
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