News   Nov 22, 2024
National Housing Day: City of Toronto and Riverdale Co-op Open Affordable Homes
 582     1 
News   Nov 22, 2024
Bauhaus Condos Rising in Toronto's Old Town
 1K     5 
News   Nov 22, 2024
49-Storey Waterfront Tower Proposed at Spadina and Queens Quay
 2.8K     8 

RapidTO: Citywide Streetcar Priority (City of Toronto, TTC)

Getting transit built is a compromise between satisfying local and more removed stakeholders. That being said, it's indeed often the case we have overly frequent bus and streetcar stops (and traffic lights).
 
turbanplanner said:
Transit is for the people not engineers.
Click to expand...
Yeah and the engineers consider the costs and benefits to all people. Unlike individuals who just consider costs and benefits to themselves.

If a stop removal adds two minutes to one person's commute while saving 30 seconds for 200 people, that one person will make a fuss while the 200 people will say nothing. There's a reason that planning and engineering is based on analysis rather than just blindly swaying in whichever direction a particular group pushes.
 
Last edited:
reaperexpress said:
Yeah and the engineers consider the costs and benefits to all people. Unlike residents who just consider costs and benefits to themselves.

If a stop removal adds two minutes to one person's commute while saving 30 seconds for 200 people, that one person will make a fuss while the 200 people will say nothing. There's a reason that planning and engineering is based on analysis rather than just blindly swaying in whichever direction a particular group pushes.
Click to expand...
I get what your saying but I disagree that engineers always know best.
That sort of mentality leads to metrolinx style blunders where they lazily cut trees/nature since being selective would take too much work, and then replant just 1 species.
 
turbanplanner said:
I get what your saying but I disagree that engineers always know best.
That sort of mentality leads to metrolinx style blunders where they lazily cut trees/nature since being selective would take too much work, and then replant just 1 species.
Click to expand...
The public is certainly able to bring attention to issues which may have been overlooked or undervalued in the analysis. This is why public consultation is useful.

Indeed any analysis done by engineers or planners inherently includes some sort of weighting of how important various issues are relative to each other. If the public wants to suggest a different weighting based on local priorities then that is perfectly valid and can be helpful.

What is not useful is when members of the public say that they have a particular objective, then actively oppose measures which are in line with that objective. For example, when they oppose safety improvements by claiming they're unsafe. Because apparently their knee jerk reaction is an equally valid assessment of safety as decades of studies.

If "the public" truely values short walking distance rather than short travel times then of course it's in the TTC 's best interest to have shorter stop spacing. Because those are their customers or potential customers. But you can't base what "the public" wants just on the people who complain the loudest.
 
Last edited:
If a few people complain to their local counsellor that they are so many streetcars that it's backing up traffic, does that mean the TTC should cut back service to placate them?
 
^^^ One of the primary reasons why streetcars back-up is because the stops are so close that the light coordination can't work to it's full potential.
 
ssiguy2 said:
^^^ One of the primary reasons why streetcars back-up is because the stops are so close that the light coordination can't work to it's full potential.
Click to expand...
How many lights in the city are coordinated? Especially with the recent limit lowering.

It’s very rare I’ll go more than 2 lights without hitting a red
 
turbanplanner said:
How many lights in the city are coordinated? Especially with the recent limit lowering.
Click to expand...
Nearly all signals are coordinated. That's why you often have to wait ages in the middle of the night while you show up on a side street while there's no other traffic anywhere. The signal is waiting for a specific moment in the signal cycle where it's allowed to change, in order to "coordinate" with the moments which have been selected at the adjacent signals which also have the same cycle length.

In many cases it would be better if the signals actually weren't coordinated, since the coordination doesn't - and cannot - work well in a network with closely-spaced signals on 2-way streets with many different types of road users with different average speeds. At least with uncoordinated operations, the cycle length can be optimised for the individual intersections instead of being a compromise between all of the intersections in the group of coordinated signals. The cycle length could also change in real-time based on traffic demand - even with our existing signal controllers.

turbanplanner said:
It’s very rare I’ll go more than 2 lights without hitting a red
Click to expand...
Each intersection has 12 motor traffic movements, 12 bicycle movements, and typically 2 or 4 transit movements. Of these, you can potentially provide a green wave for 1 to 6 of them depending on the network layout.

Just because it's coordinated, doesn't mean it's coordinated to allow you to drive your car without stopping. Typically the coordination is not used to provide a green wave for one particular group while screwing over everyone else, it's simply a timing which is better overall than random independent timings. (Though if they introduced Dutch-style fully-actuated signals with peer-to-peer communication, they could probably beat that again without using strict coordination).
 
Last edited:
reaperexpress said:
Nearly all signals are coordinated. That's why you often have to wait ages in the middle of the night while you show up on a side street while there's no other traffic anywhere. The signal is waiting for a specific moment in the signal cycle where it's allowed to change, in order to "coordinate" with the moments which have been selected at the adjacent signals which also have the same cycle length.


Each intersection has 12 motor traffic movements, 12 bicycle movements, and typically 2 or 4 transit movements. Of these, you can potentially provide a green wave for 1 to 6 of them depending on the network layout.

Just because it's coordinated, doesn't mean it's coordinated to allow you to drive your car without stopping. Typically the coordination is not used to provide a green wave for one particular group while screwing over everyone else, it's simply a timing which is better overall than random independent timings. (Though if they introduced Dutch-style fully-actuated signals with peer-to-peer communication, they could probably beat that again without using strict coordination).
Click to expand...
I am a car driver, and lucky enough to move around to different cities and experience their neighbourhoods. Traffic movement is not about moving cars, it’s about moving people, and in all the various forms that takes. However cars move an average of what , maybe 1.? people per vehicle in Toronto, compared to any form of transit, not to mention all of the bicycles, pedestrians, unicyclers etc. etc. The pendulum in Toronto is still too far car centric still and needs to come much further towards other forms of transit.

If you love a car and cannot handle playing second or third fiddle to a TTC Bus - move to Halton, Vaughn, Clarington, where it appears it will be another generation before that changes much.

I enjoy being here in Montreal, sitting at a red and watching while not one person tries to force a right turn on a red in a crowd of pedestrians, and keeping my eye on the separated bike lanes next to me as I make my way to the bridge. Montreal is not perfect, but in some respects I will give them points for their efforts to bring balance to the streets.
 
reaperexpress said:
Nearly all signals are coordinated. That's why you often have to wait ages in the middle of the night while you show up on a side street while there's no other traffic anywhere. The signal is waiting for a specific moment in the signal cycle where it's allowed to change, in order to "coordinate" with the moments which have been selected at the adjacent signals which also have the same cycle length.

In many cases it would be better if the signals actually weren't coordinated, since the coordination doesn't - and cannot - work well in a network with closely-spaced signals on 2-way streets with many different types of road users with different average speeds. At least with uncoordinated operations, the cycle length can be optimised for the individual intersections instead of being a compromise between all of the intersections in the group of coordinated signals. The cycle length could also change in real-time based on traffic demand - even with our existing signal controllers.


Each intersection has 12 motor traffic movements, 12 bicycle movements, and typically 2 or 4 transit movements. Of these, you can potentially provide a green wave for 1 to 6 of them depending on the network layout.

Just because it's coordinated, doesn't mean it's coordinated to allow you to drive your car without stopping. Typically the coordination is not used to provide a green wave for one particular group while screwing over everyone else, it's simply a timing which is better overall than random independent timings. (Though if they introduced Dutch-style fully-actuated signals with peer-to-peer communication, they could probably beat that again without using strict coordination).
Click to expand...
If lights are timed so that every form of transit stops every light that seems like poor coordination. I experience this driving, while on the bus, and biking in a lot of areas.
It's especially frustrating when you travel the speed limit and see people going 30 over catch every light.
 
turbanplanner said:
If lights are timed so that every form of transit stops every light that seems like poor coordination. I experience this driving, while on the bus, and biking in a lot of areas.
It's especially frustrating when you travel the speed limit and see people going 30 over catch every light.
Click to expand...
Okay...

Here's the traffic signal timing manual. You try making a signal timing which doesn't suck for all users on one of our arterial roads which has a traffic signal every couple hundred metres.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top