TTC: Flexity Streetcars Testing & Delivery (Bombardier)

[Le Gique]

-thanks be to Jupiter this discussion is capable of evolving past the absolutist (bus bad, tram good) phase

-can i suggest that when debates focus on specific routes, and projected ridership estimates fall in that gray zone between two technology choices <<i.e. it could go either way>> that we at least acknowledge we're in the gray zone?

-as objective as one/we/you try to be, the pull toward particular technologies is based on a personal ranking of perceived advantages and disadvantages, but also plain old emotional bias (BTW did I tell you how cool monorails are?)
-and why wouldn't institutions (like TTC, GO, Metrolinx, the premier's cabinet) be subject to gut-level bias too?

-this may get real complicated in about a month and a half, when the RTP comes out and everybody is juggling several different network possibilities in their noggins -- all the while trying to account for major variables (possible development, gas prices, etc.) that will impact ridership expectations

>and then there's the big one: how much money will be available to play with?

-if the economy goes sour we may end up splitting straw men in the jitney vs. rickshaw debate

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Both Finch East and Dufferin move more people than Queen...and that's just looking at total ridership, not peak volumes. Eglinton West moves only 100 fewer riders than the Carlton car despite far worse traffic. Downtown streetcar service is not an untouchably better option than buses once you remove nostalgic bias, but the tracks do already exist (we're not discussing some theoretical world where everything runs under optimal circumstances and where we have real choices between modes). They're not going to rip up the streetcar tracks unless a vastly superior option is made available, but if they had ripped them up years ago and replaced them with buses, we wouldn't be any worse off today.

 

[MisterF]

Both Finch East and Dufferin move more people than Queen...and that's just looking at total ridership, not peak volumes. Eglinton West moves only 100 fewer riders than the Carlton car despite far worse traffic. Downtown streetcar service is not an untouchably better option than buses once you remove nostalgic bias, but the tracks do already exist (we're not discussing some theoretical world where everything runs under optimal circumstances and where we have real choices between modes). They're not going to rip up the streetcar tracks unless a vastly superior option is made available, but if they had ripped them up years ago and replaced them with buses, we wouldn't be any worse off today.

Attempting to discredit my position by attaching it to "nostalgic bias" doesn't help your credibility. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it.

Are you using more recent numbers than I am? According to the 2005-2006 numbers, the Carlton car moves over 3000 more people every day than the Eglinton West bus. Queen moves more than Finch East but fewer than Dufferin. It's already been pointed out that Queen used to carry more riders when there were more streetcars on the route. The top 10 surface routes in the city:

504 King/508 Lakeshore: 47,900
43 Dufferin: 43,600
510 Spadina/509 Harbourfront: 43,400
501 Queen: 41,200
506 Carlton: 41,200
35 Jane: 38,800
39 Finch E/139 Finch E: 38,300
25 Don Mills: 38,100
32 Eglinton West: 38,100
36 Finch West: 37,000

 

[nfitz]

The latest (2007) data is in Appendix C of Service Improvements for 2008. Trends are similiar though - King seems to have had the biggest jump, to 53,100.

 

[Le Gique]

pros, cons, gut feelings and trams

Nostalgia has nothing to do with it.

i think nostalgic is used as a way to categorize any number of emotional attachments some feel toward streetcars

the person using this approach, and I've heard it from many people, may just be attempting to alert street rail supporters to their emotional bias on the issue, or maybe wants to dismiss/demean the perceived emotional attachment

if the intent is to bring out in the open that supporters are not viewing the debate entirely objectively or dispassionately, it also may imply that those criticizing streetcars feel they are acting from a dispassionate position, unaffected by feelings one way or the other

-many times, in other venues, i have seen "nostalgic" used just before the user starts a one-sided rant against mixed-traffic LRV -- have they examined whether their own views are affected by feelings or so-called "instinct"? -"Dammit, I just know I'm right."

-i probably sound like emotional bias should somehow be rooted out and we can have lovely, happy discussions together
--rather it's something of be aware of; of how it influences one's valuations of the pros and cons

-oh, and my gut says downtown toronto without streetcars is just some other North American city like regina or hamilton or atlanta. yeccccchhh.

>>is that feeling enough to make me ignore the advantages of all-bus surface transit? no. but it influences my valuation.

 

[MisterF]

Thanks for the link nfitz. So you were right Scarberian. Still, if the Queen car had significantly higher ridership at one point because of more vehicles, imagine the possibilities with higher capacity, faster loading Flexity streetcars. Or better yet, a couple new subway lines. The updated top 10:

504 King/508 Lakeshore: 53,100
510 Spadina/509 Harbourfront: 48,000
39 Finch East/139 Finch-Don Mills: 44,600
29 Dufferin: 43,600
501 Queen: 43,500
36 Finch West: 42,600
506 Carlton: 41,200
32 Eglinton West: 41,100
25 Don Mills: 40,600
35 Jane: 39,000

 

[Hipster Duck]

-oh, and my gut says downtown toronto without streetcars is just some other North American city like regina or hamilton or atlanta. yeccccchhh.

>>is that feeling enough to make me ignore the advantages of all-bus surface transit? no. but it influences my valuation.

I'm not sure if that's meant to be sarcastic, but had Torontonians chosen to rip up the streetcar network in the 1970s there is no likelihood that it would end up feeling like the rather dead downtown of a secondary North American city.

Urban vibrancy in the US has absolutely nothing to do with the demise of street railways. There were a myriad of forces at play, primarily racially-motivated (ie: redlining of neighbourhoods that discouraged home investment, white flight, desegregation, property tax-bsed school funding) that contributed to the decline of the American city after the second world war. But even to say that the cause of American urban misfortunes was race-based is a sweeping generalization that doesn't take into account the nuances of changing social and demographic patterns on a micro level that are too difficult to be catalogued.

Secondly, Toronto's vibrancy has to do with its position as Canada's preeminent city and, as such, as the natural gravitating point for Canadian intellectual thought, entrepreneurialism and cultural creativity. The largest, most important cities in a region can withstand enormous social and economic pressures, many of which would be large enough to cause irreversible damage to secondary centres like Winnipeg, St. Louis or Cleveland. As many obstacles as Robert Moses threw at New York - and I would argue that more of New York's urban fabric was deliberately destroyed than any other American city - it remained one of the most brash and exciting cities in the world, even in the dark days of John Lindsay.

It is about as disingenuous to say that urban vibrancy would be destroyed by ripping up streetcar lines as it is to say that it will be engendered by building them.

 

[Whoaccio]

Secondly, Toronto's vibrancy has to do with its position as Canada's preeminent city and, as such, as the natural gravitating point for Canadian intellectual thought, entrepreneurialism and cultural creativity. The largest, most important cities in a region can withstand enormous social and economic pressures, many of which would be large enough to cause irreversible damage to secondary centres like Winnipeg, St. Louis or Cleveland. As many obstacles as Robert Moses threw at New York - and I would argue that more of New York's urban fabric was deliberately destroyed than any other American city - it remained one of the most brash and exciting cities in the world, even in the dark days of John Lindsay.

A lot of it also has to do with the economy of a region. Toronto, along with NYC & Chicago, is a N. American financial center. Finance is probably the only sector of the economy where a sizable presence in an urban core is necessary. Given the tremendous amount of "in-the-flesh" work that needs to be done (meet with investors, meet with financiers, meet with lawyers, meet with interior decorators ect...). Most stock exchanges are located in those cities as well. Those are jobs that you can't very easily move to a suburban office park.

As far as I see it, that is the main reason TO, NYC & Chi maintained vibrant downtown cores is because of their financial roles. It is highly intertwined with other cultural and social roles of those cities as well. I mean, if CIBC or RBC could have left Toronto, they probably would have by now.

p.s. We were also smart enough to put our universities in our city (UofT, Ryerson, OCAD). That is an extra 40-50k+ people traveling and living in the downtown core who directly feed into the nightlife and housing market of downtown.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Good debate on cities and light rail...

Whoaccio and HD: Good points on cities like NYC,Chicago and Toronto being financial centers and that the loss of light rail in NYC and Chicago did not affect them.

HD: While NYC indeed was declining under the watch of Mayor John Lindsay
it hit rock bottom during the watch of Mayor Abe Beame-with the mid 70s fiscal crisis and problems like these examples that occurred during the Summer of 1977: The July Blackout and "Son of Sam" murder spree. It seems that after Ed Koch was elected Mayor NYC began to go back upward again.

Since this is basically about light rail I feel that Toronto was one of North America's smartest cities - by keeping their TTC system for the most part intact and resisting any major effort to dismantle them.
LI MIKE

 

[SteveMunro]

Watch out for TTC Stats

You have to be very careful when quoting TTC riding stats because they don't update every route each year.

For example, Carlton has been stuck at 41,200 since about 2002.

Also, don't forget that Queen also should include Downtowner bringing its total up to a hair under 50,000.

What seems to be missing here is a recognition that Finch East is jammed with buses (currently a 1'15" headway) and if there is going to be any significant increase in capacity, it will require a major change in mode and operations.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

What's also missing here is that Finch East is not split in two by a subway station, and doesn't see that much turnover along the route. If the suburban bus routes crossed Yonge as the streetcar lines did, both Finch and Eglinton would be over 75-80K per day, which is far above any streetcar line...there's perils involved in looking just at total ridership numbers, as is often done when comparing streetcar and bus routes.

 

[Le Gique]

I'm not sure if that's meant to be sarcastic, but had Torontonians chosen to rip up the streetcar network in the 1970s there is no likelihood that it would end up feeling like the rather dead downtown of a secondary North American city.

snip

It is about as disingenuous to say that urban vibrancy would be destroyed by ripping up streetcar lines as it is to say that it will be engendered by building them.

--HD, the line was not sarcastic; and may have in fact been quite ingenuous -- it was a personal example of the "gut feelings" my post was addressing >> i.e. I'm not claiming to be immune of emotional bias -- it almost always influences, subtly or grossly, our arguments

-for those who wish to empirically study the effect of street rail or buses on urban development, a place to start is TRB:

<<Impact of "Small Starts" (Streetcars and Trolleys) on Land Development
Letters of Interest and Nominations Due August 29, 2008

<<TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) has issued a solicitation for consultant letters of interest and panel member nominations on a synthesis to explore the state of knowledge, as seen from the transit agency perspective, about the impacts of streetcars and trolleys on land development.>>

 

[MisterF]

What's also missing here is that Finch East is not split in two by a subway station, and doesn't see that much turnover along the route. If the suburban bus routes crossed Yonge as the streetcar lines did, both Finch and Eglinton would be over 75-80K per day, which is far above any streetcar line...there's perils involved in looking just at total ridership numbers, as is often done when comparing streetcar and bus routes.

That makes for a really long Finch route, so of course ridership is going to be high. Maybe the number of riders per km would give us a better idea of how busy a route gets. I figured out a few and Spadina/Harbourfront came out on top by far at 6900 daily riders per km, followed by St. Clair at 5200. Bathurst, Dufferin, and Dundas are all in the 3500 range, and King and Carlton are about 3000. The Don Mills, Finch, Eglinton West, and Jane buses are in the mid to low 2000s.

It's also worth noting that the downtown streetcars tend to have much smaller catchment areas than the bus routes.

Eglinton West moves only 100 fewer riders than the Carlton car despite far worse traffic.

Only half of Eglinton West has really bad traffic. It's pretty free flowing towards the west end, at least when I've driven there.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Streetcar lines that cross Yonge are made as long routes, too, so of course their ridership is going to be high. Many routes, particularly suburban bus routes, run on for long distances but ridership peters out to almost nothing for the last few km. It's peak ridership volumes, not riders per km, that determines what is needed to handle ridership (politics, planning, etc., also get involved). I'm not sure there are any times of the day when Eglinton isn't cripplingly slow east and west of the Allen, where most of the riders are riding it. Buses could replace a streetcar line like the Carlton car...doesn't mean they should, but they certainly could.

 

[SteveMunro]

The streetcar routes crossing Yonge Street are, except for Queen, nowhere near as long as the suburban routes. Carlton goes from about 1km west of Victoria Park to Keele Street and is the longest of the bunch. Dundas and King, if stretched out in straight lines, would go from roughly Leslie to Jane.

Making these comparisons is fiendishly difficult because of differences in length of the average trip, the degree of bidirectional demand, the proportion of off-peak demand, just to name a few.

As for buses replacing streetcars, this is possibly only because the TTC has systematically driven ridership away with service cuts especially on Queen. Any route can be served with buses if you want to place a cap on the total ridership.