TTC surface stop spacing

[Dan416]

Riding transit in Poland the past couple weeks really reminded me how ridiculously closely spaced our stops here are. The trams and buses have subway-level spacing there.

 

[cplchanb]

One thing that particularly gets on my nerve is putting 2 stops in the same intersection ie: eastside bayview westside bayview
What is their rationale for this? If its because of bus cramming they should just assign 1 side for x route and the other side for y.
From the outlook it looks like just enabling people to be lazy from crossing the road.

 

[Filip]

There's a stop just east of Marine Parade/Lake Shore and another just west of Palace Pier/Lake Shore. It is about 100m apart. Drives me nuts in the morning.

 

[lead82]

Torontonians are a lazy bunch. Primarily I think it's because when they do the public consultations the majority of people who show up are seniors and they demand stops be close together. Our subway stops downtown are insanely close. The Bloor-Danforth line is especially ridiculous especially given the density around each station. It's the Toronto way to make transit as slow as possible. The TTC tries to take away stops and the residents complain loudly and put them back. I recall the St. Clair line study when I was in university. The original ROW that they were going to put in had about 1/3 less stops than the one currently running. The fact that we have a stop at St. Clair Station, then at Yonge, then another one a block away is ridiculous. The worst is between Vaughan and Spadina. There are 4 stops in a 300M area. Outside of the St. Clair W subway, the Tweedsmuir stop should be removed, as should be the Bathurst stop. Vaughan is close enough to Bathurst to not require a stop 50M to the east.

 

[Electrify]

Torontonians are a lazy bunch. Primarily I think it's because when they do the public consultations the majority of people who show up are seniors and they demand stops be close together. Our subway stops downtown are insanely close. The Bloor-Danforth line is especially ridiculous especially given the density around each station. It's the Toronto way to make transit as slow as possible. The TTC tries to take away stops and the residents complain loudly and put them back. I recall the St. Clair line study when I was in university. The original ROW that they were going to put in had about 1/3 less stops than the one currently running. The fact that we have a stop at St. Clair Station, then at Yonge, then another one a block away is ridiculous. The worst is between Vaughan and Spadina. There are 4 stops in a 300M area. Outside of the St. Clair W subway, the Tweedsmuir stop should be removed, as should be the Bathurst stop. Vaughan is close enough to Bathurst to not require a stop 50M to the east.

WHY DO YOU HATE OLD PEOPLE???

(Seriously, you should see the stop spacing discussions on the SELRT thread. You would think we were discussing a medivac shuttle for dismembered war soldiers, rather than light rail transit line.)

 

[k10ery]

WHY DO YOU HATE OLD PEOPLE???

(Seriously, you should see the stop spacing discussions on the SELRT thread. You would think we were discussing a medivac shuttle for dismembered war soldiers, rather than light rail transit line.)

Why do you hate dismembered war soldiers?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Making matters worse is the so-called "transit priority" traffic signals. With far-side stops, you'll think that the traffic signals would be timed (extended or quickened) to allow the streetcars (or buses) to get to the other side without stopping. In other jurisdictions, they allow transit to proceed on their own without parallel greens, usually ahead of the left turning vehicles.

However, because traffic signals are under the control by the same people who are in charge of roads, they see only one vehicle. They ignore the 100+ people on board, the three people in three cars HAVE to get priority first.

 

[reaperexpress]

Making matters worse is the so-called "transit priority" traffic signs. (sic) With far-side stops, you'll think that the traffic signals would be timed (extended or quickened) to allow the streetcars (or buses) to get to the other side without stopping.

A large proportion of traffic signals along streetcar routes are equipped with TSP to hold the green light to get the streetcar through.

Part of the reason that TSP isn't that effective even when it is activated is in fact the close stop spacing. When programming TSP, there is no way of knowing how long each vehicle will spend at each stop, or even if it will stop at all. That makes it very challenging to provide a green at the right time, especially when the stop is on the near side of the intersection. We can estimate a value based on observation, but there will inevitably be a fair bit of variation. And to make matters worse, the vehicles that are most likely to have a "failed" TSP extension are the ones with the longest dwell times - which tend tend the ones that are already late! This clearly has a negative effect on schedule adherence (i.e. bunching). In contrast, without a stop immediately upstream of an intersection, travel times through the detection zone are pretty consistent. And late vehicles are probably less likely to get a failed extension since they tend to travel more quickly.

In other jurisdictions, they allow transit to proceed on their own without parallel greens, usually ahead of the left turning vehicles.

The arrangement where transit proceeds on its own exclusive phase can work well with low frequency routes, but is terribly inefficient on routes as frequent as most of our streetcar lines. That's because the transit phase represents at least 12 seconds when no-one can move other than the streetcar. Given that downtown signal cycles are only 70-80 seconds to begin with, that's a massive loss in green time for everyone else, and for a pretty minimal benefit.

For an example of how this phasing both works and does not work, check out The Pond Road at the York University Busway. North-south buses have their own green phase inserted into the cycle whenever they are detected upstream. Normally the roadway is only used by route 196 York U Rocket in one direction, as well as Viva Orange and route 41E Keele Express at rush hour. Under that load, it works beautifully, with the signal usually able to react fast enough for buses to pass through on green. But right now, almost all buses serving York U are detouring via the busway due to construction, and the intersection is a complete mess. There are so many buses that the signal has an almost constant call for the transit phase, and simply has to cycle through its 3 phases continuously (N/S, E/W and Bus). As a result, buses are no longer served in time for their arrival since the signal can't finish serving the other phases in time. There are also significant queues along the Pond Road, which causes delays to all bus routes leaving York U.

There are situations where inserting a phase is necessary due to conflicts such as a LRT turning off a street, but in Toronto it is preferable to to serve LRVs concurrently with parallel movements wherever possible.

Note that with our new signal system it has become technically possible to rearrange phases on the fly such that LRVs can proceed ahead of left turns without needing a dedicated phase. This advancement is not being developed at the moment given the aforementioned more-pressing issues with TSP, but has been identified as an area of potential improvement.

 

[nfitz]

Last year, the City re-wrote its signal timing guidelines, and changed their objective from "minimizing vehicular delay" to "minimizing person delay". This is partially due to changes in priorities, and partially due to advancements in delay estimation for non-auto modes.

That's a major developement!

 

[Dan416]

The other thing our buses and streetcars could really learn is all-door boarding and using POP. In Krakow, Poland at least, the fare inspections are quite frequent.

 

[CDL.TO]

It's coming to the streetcar network, at least.

 

[ehlow]

I was inspected for the first time getting off the streetcar at Spadina station recently. The machine at the stop didn't seem to be working, thankfully there was enough room inside to get to the machine.

 

[lead82]

WHY DO YOU HATE OLD PEOPLE???

(Seriously, you should see the stop spacing discussions on the SELRT thread. You would think we were discussing a medivac shuttle for dismembered war soldiers, rather than light rail transit line.)

I don't hate old people at all. I just take issue when politicians pander to them because they vote in greatest numbers. The end result is a generally longer commute for those traveling longer distances. Typically it is the poor people who suffer because they live on the edges and away from a subway station. My point wasn't about hating old people. My point was we need reasonably spaced stops. 100m is too frequent. I would say a minimum distance should be around 400m, which is what was originally suggested by TTC on the Transit City LRT lines. St. Clair is a good example of what not to do. It takes almost 40mins to get from one end to the other for a distance of ~8km. That is less than 20km/hr average speed. Yes part of the blame is to bad traffic signals but frequent stops are an issue as well.

The TTC should have a metric to make each line perform to a certain average speed (ignoring bad weather or special circumstances). That way they can measure which routes need to be improved by removing stops or improving signal timing/priority.

 

[smably]

This is no longer true. Last year, the City re-wrote its signal timing guidelines, and changed their objective from "minimizing vehicular delay" to "minimizing person delay". This is partially due to changes in priorities, and partially due to advancements in delay estimation for non-auto modes.

Amazing! Maybe we'll finally see proper transit priority on Spadina, where it feels like streetcars spend 90% of their running time waiting for two cars to turn left before proceeding to the far-side stop.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Amazing! Maybe we'll finally see proper transit priority on Spadina, where it feels like streetcars spend 90% of their running time waiting for two cars to turn left before proceeding to the far-side stop.

That's one hundred passengers on board the new LFLRV having to wait as two cars, with one driver each and no passengers, make their left turns.