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TTC: Streetcar Network

jmi22 said:
This might be beyond the scope of this forum, but does anyone know why there is essentially no history of the downtown councilors/progressives trying to improve streetcar service? It is the single most common way downtown residents get around and yet they have seen essentially no improvement. Even prior to the mass infill downtown and the subsequent traffic, I imagine exclusive row still would have significantly improved headways prior to the 2000's. The one thing I ever found in detail about downtown councilors and better streetcar service was Jack Layton's fight against the Spadina streetcar row.
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It's a political hot potato that none of them want to touch because improving streetcar routes can only come at the expense of car drivers.
 
Towered said:
It's a political hot potato that none of them want to touch because improving streetcar routes can only come at the expense of car drivers.
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The simplest solution is just running the current time-table (or fixing it), without massive gaps. Even if the number of streetcars were doubled, that's only once every 5 minutes on most routes.

I'm not sure how this hurts drivers. If they could improve the service and restore TTC ridership, there'd be less drivers!

What would come at the expense of drivers is shutting down the TTC. We need a good old-fashioned week-long TTC strike. That will remind drivers the implications to them of less TTC!
 
nfitz said:
The simplest solution is just running the current time-table (or fixing it), without massive gaps. Even if the number of streetcars were doubled, that's only once every 5 minutes on most routes.

I'm not sure how this hurts drivers. If they could improve the service and restore TTC ridership, there'd be less drivers!

What would come at the expense of drivers is shutting down the TTC. We need a good old-fashioned week-long TTC strike. That will remind drivers the implications to them of less TTC!
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Running to the current timetable won't help if streetcars are getting stuck in traffic. A few weeks ago, I was stuck on an inbound 504 during evening rush hour that took 22 minutes to get from Sumach to Jarvis. There was no accident, just really bad traffic. If the schedule reflected a 22 minute travel time instead of the 7 it claims it is, it would still be a terrible experience.

To make the streetcars a viable form of transit, cars need to be banned from their tracks. I am not necessarily advocating for a radical approach like fully banning cars from the street, but one lane for cars, one lane for trams, and no parking, Euro style. This is the only way you can materially improve streetcar transit. There is no acceptable surface transit where it mingles in mixed traffic.

Hence, why our spineless clown show that calls itself a city council won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
 
T3G said:
Running to the current timetable won't help if streetcars are getting stuck in traffic. A few weeks ago, I was stuck on an inbound 504 during evening rush hour that took 22 minutes to get from Sumach to Jarvis. There was no accident, just really bad traffic. If the schedule reflected a 22 minute travel time instead of the 7 it claims it is, it would still be a terrible experience.

To make the streetcars a viable form of transit, cars need to be banned from their tracks. I am not necessarily advocating for a radical approach like fully banning cars from the street, but one lane for cars, one lane for trams, and no parking, Euro style. This is the only way you can materially improve streetcar transit. There is no acceptable surface transit where it mingles in mixed traffic.

Hence, why our spineless clown show that calls itself a city council won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
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504 already has much more frequent service.

Sure, stuff happens - but most of the day, little happens, and they still bunch, leaving 30-minute gaps.
 
The 504 is still a clown show and I wont even attribute the full problem to traffic. There are frequently times I see 3-4 or even at times 5 streetcars leave Distillery Loop at the same time heading westbound (an area where there is no car traffic that would cause this kind of mess to happen).

The city can give the TTC it's own ROWs, special signal priorities and all of that, but if the TTC continues to choose to operate service like clowns with no route management then streetcars will continue to bunch up no matter what's done.
 
It's not about one or the other - it should be both.

I'm just saying, good line management wouldn't have gotten me downtown that day any faster. Mixed traffic is a disaster for public transit.

Incidentally, Sumach to Jarvis is just the sort of trip that would've been great to make by e-scooter. It's too far to walk comfortably in the heat, and transit is useless. If only we had grown ups on our city council.
 
T3G said:
Incidentally, Sumach to Jarvis is just the sort of trip that would've been great to make by e-scooter. It's too far to walk comfortably in the heat, and transit is useless. If only we had grown ups on our city council.
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It's only 1.2 km. That's about what I am to the Danforth subway - and I figured I was close!
 
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I'm not gen Z, but nice try.

Our ancestors got by without air conditioning but these days it's considered a standard item and attended to if it has broken down.

At any rate, the point is elsewhere. There are very few good ways to get around the city.
 
CapitalSeven said:
Yes, Google shows it's a 17 minute walk.
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17 minutes to walk 1.2 km? Has the walking speed estimate on Google broken or something? Maybe it's set for Gen X walkers now :) ?

It must be adding a minute for every traffic light. Shouldn't be more than 11 or 12 minutes per kilometre.

But yeah - they need to fix the streetcars - especially if they are only going to run every 10 minutes.

Typically I see streetcar gaps at normally up to 3 times the frequency. So when streetcars are scheduled for every 4 minutes - seldom wait more than 12 minutes.

But with every 10 minutes ... yikes.
 
nfitz said:
17 minutes to walk 1.2 km? Has the walking speed estimate on Google broken or something?
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I was joking - but I was just noticing that a 6.1 km walk into downtown that has for years said 75 minutes for me, now says 84!

I always found I tended to average about 10% faster than the estimated walk time - but 20%?
 
nfitz said:
17 minutes to walk 1.2 km? Has the walking speed estimate on Google broken or something? Maybe it's set for Gen X walkers now :) ?

It must be adding a minute for every traffic light. Shouldn't be more than 11 or 12 minutes per kilometre.

But yeah - they need to fix the streetcars - especially if they are only going to run every 10 minutes.

Typically I see streetcar gaps at normally up to 3 times the frequency. So when streetcars are scheduled for every 4 minutes - seldom wait more than 12 minutes.

But with every 10 minutes ... yikes.
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Google's baseline assumption is a walking speed of 4.5km/ph which works out to 13.3 minutes per km or 16 minutes per 1.2km.
 
Northern Light said:
Google's baseline assumption is a walking speed of 4.5km/ph which works out to 13.3 minutes per km or 16 minutes per 1.2km.
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Yes, that looks right when it is flat. My point is that I think it was 4.8 to 4.9 km/hr previously!

Probably a topic for https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/google-maps.4305/

Edit - yes - confirmed. I'm looking at a post I made here in November 2022 - https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threa...first-capital-hatch.34483/page-5#post-1881179

In it I reported walking times of 21 minutes for a 1.7 km walk, and 15 minutes for a 1.3 km walk. Now it's reporting 23 minutes and 18 minutes for the same walk!
 
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