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TTC: Cherry Street reconstruction and streetcar trackage (City of Toronto/TTC, U/C)

nfitz said:
Ah, that's interesting Though it does allow for a loop, where the 121 heads east on the "new" street - perhaps heading south from East Liberty down Pirandello Street or Solidarity Way. Presumably the EA will address transit.
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Either that or completely replace the southern loop of the Ossington bus with the 121. Make it go west on East Liberty, south on Dufferin and terminate at the gate, then east along the new road.

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The "obvious" reason for why the Cherry streetcar has been assigned the "514" route number is because it will have the majority of its route along the "504" route, King Street.

"513" could still be available for some other new streetcar route. "503" goes along Kingston Road, Queen Street, and King Street. Maybe some future route following those roads?
 
M II A II R II K said:
So this 514 will be thrown onto the same tracks that the already crowded and bunched up during rush hour.
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Though King Street is certainly crowded, the big problem is that the existing streetcars are full and people cannot get on. The 514 will add extra cars to the central part of the 504 route so that (maybe) customers will be able to squeeze in. Of course the whole of King Street would work far better for transit if the City prohibited left turns and greatly reduced parking but ....
 
DSC said:
At the public consultation I attended the TTC folks said that they are open to extending the 121 route both east (to Bayview) and west to serve Liberty Village once they get it going and can assess ridership.
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That was my thinking. @TTCplanning said the same thing on Twitter about the 72 route accessing Dockside Drive.

JasonParis said:
I find it interesting that the 121 won't enter Liberty Village proper, especially providing service along E Liberty / Liberty Streets.
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I originally thought having service on Liberty/East Liberty would be great, but where would it loop around to come back? One option, and probably the most logical since it's a natural terminus, would be for it to go to Dufferin Loop. Second option would see it parallel the 63, turning onto Atlantic, King, and back down south on Strachan. However, in both of those scenarios, I can see buses getting stuck in traffic during peak periods and being thrown off schedule. During rush, Liberty is fairly slow moving. In the evenings, Liberty west of Atlantic is deserted. Same goes for weekends. That would make the route fairly empty at most times. For the second option, I'm not a fan of the giant loop around which adds quite a bit of travel time to the overall route. Same thing happens on the 63 right now and it can sometimes take over 10 minutes just to get out of Liberty Village onto Shaw and up to Queen.

That's why I'm of the opinion that a loop around Duoro would be better. It's only a few minutes from most of the residential towers to Strachan. It connects to the 504/514/63. It doesn't get bogged down by all the stops along Liberty/East Liberty. The loop around doesn't add significant travel time to the route. And now with the streetlight at Duoro/Wellington, there's an advanced left turn signal so buses can turn without having to wait for an opening.

Anyway, my 2 cents, since I've been thinking about the different routing possibilities for a while now.

The addition of the new south street would help tremendously, but that's way too far into the future especially with no timeline.
 
The Dufferin Loop would be serving two routes starting in June, 514 CHERRY and 29 DUFFERIN. With the CNE, and other times maybe as well, the 193 EXHIBITION ROCKET would also use it. That's three routes, so far.

Adding an extension of the 121 FORT YORK-ESPLANADE would make it just too crowded. Even worse, imagine other routes, such as a southern extension of the 47 LANSDOWNE or a new LAKESHORE WEST LRT route for example, there would be just too, too much.
 
W. K. Lis said:
The Dufferin Loop would be serving two routes starting in June, 514 CHERRY and 29 DUFFERIN. With the CNE, and other times maybe as well, the 193 EXHIBITION ROCKET would also use it. That's three routes, so far.

Adding an extension of the 121 FORT YORK-ESPLANADE would make it just too crowded. Even worse, imagine other routes, such as a southern extension of the 47 LANSDOWNE or a new LAKESHORE WEST LRT route for example, there would be just too, too much.
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The 121 doesn't have to enter the loop.
 
By showing how service can be intensified in the core area of King, 514 lends weight to the case for transit priority along central King Street. When John Tory's sister's film festival isn't on, at any rate.
 
dowlingm said:
By showing how service can be intensified in the core area of King, 514 lends weight to the case for transit priority along central King Street. When John Tory's sister's film festival isn't on, at any rate.
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King Street already has Transit Signal Priority (TSP), as does every other streetcar route. The only exceptions are a handful of major intersections including Queen/Queensway, Spadina, University and Yonge.

Adding more streetcars will make the system even less effective, not more. The main issue is that passenger loading times are variable (making it virtually impossible for the system to accurately estimate when the light needs to be green), but a secondary issue is that there are so many streetcars that they start conflicting with each other. Green lights can't be extended forever, so a streetcar could be denied priority by another streetcar passing through in the other direction.

To manage the extremely-frequent service, the solution is conditional priority. Streetcars which are too close to the one in front would be denied priority, in order to space them out, and to increase the chance that other streetcars actually get priority. And with fewer priority activations, we might be able to get priority at those intersections currently lacking TSP.

EDIT:
Unless you were talking about non-signal priority (i.e. banning cars), in which case this service improvement would certainly add weight to that case. I'd really like to see through car traffic removed from King between Bathurst and Queen (where Richmond, Adelaide, Front and Wellington provides abundant alternatives). That in itself would help signal priority a fair bit by opening up the possibility of far-side stops.
 
There's a sign on the bulletin board in my condo (along The Esplanade) advising people of the imminent loss of the 172A route, encouraging people to attend a meeting and call our councillor in protest. Looking at the proposed routes, it looks like the 121 covers most of the 172A route, but some people aren't happy with this proposal.
 
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