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King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

reaperexpress said:
Draw me a cross section of what you want at a platform. Streetmix is a quick tool for drawing cross sections.

For the record, when I was on the design team I was pushing for the intermittent transit mall option, not the half-assed design we got.
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Then why not just say that to begin with. We’re on the same page. I really didn’t mean to insult you or anyone else. I get there are other factors at play here, political and otherwise.
 
duty free said:
Then why not just say that to begin with. We’re on the same page. I really didn’t mean to insult you or anyone else. I get there are other factors at play here, political and otherwise.
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Because your claim was this:
duty free said:
King Street current design is what happens when non creative people think they're creative.
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Your claim was not that the designers were faced with political factors that forced them to adopt a heavily suboptimal design, your claim was that the designers lacked the creativity to come up with the idea of a transit mall or a ROW.

That claim is objectively false because both of those options were already evaluated as options for the street.
 
reaperexpress said:
Because your claim was this:

Your claim was not that the designers were faced with political factors that forced them to adopt a heavily suboptimal design, your claim was that the designers lacked the creativity to come up with the idea of a transit mall or a ROW.

That claim is objectively false because both of those options were already evaluated as options for the street.
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no to be clear, the design team wasn't creative enough in selling the idea of a transit mall.

it's your job as a designer to not just present your client with options, but to convince them why the best option is the only real one to consider. in that you failed and that's fine. anyone can present options though. that's not impressive. it's only half the job.
 
reaperexpress said:
... your claim was that the designers lacked the creativity to come up with the idea of a transit mall or a ROW.
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Someone didn't come up with creativity to deal with the signage and road paint. Political factors are at play, but I doubt it came to that level of detail.
 
The half job we have now is clearly the result of finding the minimum viable product. They determined how to spend the least amount of money and found the solution that only used paint, signs, and stoplights adjustments, but nothing truly permanent. Unfortunately, unlike many European old town streets that weren't built with finding places for cars to park from the beginning, there are parking garages and lots that require access from King St so the "ideal" solution of a transit and pedestrian mall will never be fully realized.
 
EnviroTO said:
The half job we have now is clearly the result of finding the minimum viable product. They determined how to spend the least amount of money and found the solution that only used paint, signs, and stoplights adjustments, but nothing truly permanent. Unfortunately, unlike many European old town streets that weren't built with finding places for cars to park from the beginning, there are parking garages and lots that require access from King St so the "ideal" solution of a transit and pedestrian mall will never be fully realized.
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Well yeah it was called the King Street Pilot for a reason. It was just a pilot project. We did a quick cheap test using mostly paint and signs to confirm that removing through motor traffic from King Street isn't the end of the world. The test confirmed that hypothesis. The total car trips in the area went down by about 20k/day and transit trips went up by about 20k/day.

That was supposed to be followed up by an actual redesign of the street to implement that idea in a much less janky way, but six years later we're still using the original setup that was optimised to be cheap and quick, rather than a permanent setup optimised to be effective and self-enforcing.
 
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reaperexpress said:
Well yeah it was called the King Street Pilot for a reason. It was just a pilot project. We did a quick cheap test using mostly paint and signs to confirm that removing through motor traffic from King Street isn't the end of the world. The test confirmed that hypothesis. The total car trips in the area went down by about 20k/day and transit trips went up by about 20k/day.

That was supposed to be followed up by an actual redesign of the street to implement that idea in a much less janky way, but six years later we're still using the original setup that was optimised to be cheap and quick, rather than a permanent setup optimised to be effective and self-enforcing.
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Just throw in automated enforcement and you've fixed a revenue and enforcement problem
 
reaperexpress said:
Well yeah it was called the King Street Pilot for a reason. It was just a pilot project. We did a quick cheap test using mostly paint and signs to confirm that removing through motor traffic from King Street isn't the end of the world. The test confirmed that hypothesis. The total car trips in the area went down by about 20k/day and transit trips went up by about 20k/day.

That was supposed to be followed up by an actual redesign of the street to implement that idea in a much less janky way, but six years later we're still using the original setup that was optimised to be cheap and quick, rather than a permanent setup optimised to be effective and self-enforcing.
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Though I too think that King ought to have been 'finished' properly a while ago, the 'problem' is that the City needs to lay a new watermain along lots of it between Bathurst and Parliament and to do this after the street is remade is crazy. Originally, I think the plan was to do the watermain and new TTC tracks (or some of them) in 2022 or 2023 but now Queen is out of action due to Ontario Line so closing that section of King at same time would have been virtually impossible. King is now supposed to get new streetcar tracks and watermain from Bathurst to Parliament in 2026 -2028 (I think) but if the Adelaide/Richmond diversions are not working well .... Things ARE all connected and when you adjust one thing it ripples through the whole area.
 
EnviroTO said:
The half job we have now is clearly the result of finding the minimum viable product.
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The minimum delivered product is not the same as the minimum viable product. I would argue that with the taxi exemption and without automated enforcement we actually don't have a MVP; we have a half-assed deliverable that fell apart under the least amount of load.
 
DSC said:
Though I too think that King ought to have been 'finished' properly a while ago, the 'problem' is that the City needs to lay a new watermain along lots of it between Bathurst and Parliament and to do this after the street is remade is crazy. Originally, I think the plan was to do the watermain and new TTC tracks (or some of them) in 2022 or 2023 but now Queen is out of action due to Ontario Line so closing that section of King at same time would have been virtually impossible. King is now supposed to get new streetcar tracks and watermain from Bathurst to Parliament in 2026 -2028 (I think) but if the Adelaide/Richmond diversions are not working well .... Things ARE all connected and when you adjust one thing it ripples through the whole area.
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It sure would have been nice to have King St made into its final form early for when Queen was closed for OL. Sometimes sweating assets is pennywise pound foolish. In the mean time (ie, next 5 years) they can make do with traffic wardens and improved signage, along with the better 'temporary' platforms..
 
Traffic wardens out on King today. I noticed them at Jarvis, Yonge, and Bay, but there may have been others elsewhere.
PXL_20240506_171740213.jpg


Also saw a police pull over a driver for driving through an intersection on Saturday. Didn't ticket them but gave them a talking-to...
 
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