King Street (Streetcar Transit Priority)

[DSC]

More info on the new 'patio stuff' at https://www.toronto.ca/city-governm...anning-studies-initiatives/king-street-pilot/

The curb lane public spaces between Bathurst and Jarvis Streets are currently delineated by planters. Local businesses were offered the opportunity to claim the public spaces on the block adjacent to their business for their use. Spaces not claimed by local businesses were included in the Everyone is King design build competition.


"I was really excited to see the calibre of the submissions to the design competition," said Councillor Lucy Troisi (Ward 28 Toronto Centre-Rosedale). "I can't wait to see how they translate from paper to reality over the next few weeks. I hope everyone takes the opportunity to visit King Street and enjoy these installations."


The competition saw a total of 96 entries in two categories. The winning projects from the design build competition are:


Stream 1: temporary public space installations • Asphalt Poetry by Plant Architect Inc. in collaboration with Poet Ronna Bloom • #WouldYouRatherTO by Urban Minds • The Spark by Andrea Bickley, Edvard Bruun, Alex Flash, Alice Huang, Camille Kauffman, Michael Laanvere, Tudor Munteanu, Éamonn Pinto, Rebecca Shaw • The Present Moment by Hello Kirsten • Ziggy by Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster • Woggle Jungle by VPA Studio: Victor Perez-Amado, Anton Skorishchenko, Michael De Luca • Everyone is (a) Kid by Anthony Renditya, Chelsea Alexander, Ian Kendall, Iva Mihaylova, Jeffrey Kwong, Katrina Beaudette, Krysia Bussiere, Ryan Guiricich, Sam Spagnuolo • Watch Your Step! by Stephanie Boutari • The King \ St by BRENS North America in collaboration with O2 Planning + Design • King's Buried Treasure by Karen Roberts in collaboration with Cindy Scaife and Marg Cresswell


Stream 2: durable destination parklets

• Face to Face/Tête à Tête by PLANT Architect Inc.

• King Street Causeway by IBI Group in collaboration with PCL Construction

 

[MisterF]

I think to refer to the improvements with "MUCH" is a bit . . . much. The data points to minor improvements at best and it's unclear if the increase in ridership is associated with the increase in transit frequencies or because of all of the hype revolving around the pilot. As someone who uses the king streetcar daily I see more people being left behind on the side of the road than before. While my experience is one data point I think a lot needs to be done before we can justify calling it a success for transit.

If despite the larger, more frequent, and faster streetcars, more people are being left at the side of the road, doesn't that speak to the project's success? It means that more people are using the line than before. Sounds to me like the project needs to be expanded.

 

[Avenue]

Nobody was planning a speedway. Streetcars do not need to race to give good servuce, they need to move and they now do. I have taken 20 minutes to get from Spadina to Yonge, not these days. Take a look at the statistics - transit is now MUCH more predictable, fast and popular.

You're still wasting hours of some of the country's most productive work force every day stuck in traffic. I think the King Streetcar is still unacceptably slow for 21st century. It may be good for 40s but these days people are more time-poor. It's only popular because there are no other options for its riders.

"MUCH more predictable, fast" is pretty meaningless since the starting point was significantly slower than just walking.

 

[steveintoronto]

If despite the larger, more frequent, and faster streetcars, more people are being left at the side of the road, doesn't that speak to the project's success?

Not necessarily. You might wish to rephrase that. It could indicate a number of things not positive for the claimed goals of the "Pilot". If that was a private carrier, shareholders would be right to question the delivery of the service, let alone the future benefits.

The King Corridor is still drastically underperforming compared to what other "world leading cities" have instituted, some in North Am alone from decades ago (San Diego Trolley is a prime example).

I've just sent this off and got an automated reply:

Stephen XXX
1:54 PM (14 minutes ago)

to kingstreetpilot

What priority, if any, has been instituted for the King cars through the Pilot Project?

And what are the future considerations, if any, for intersection light priorities?

Thank you

Automatic reply: Streetcar priority at traffic lights


Inbox
x

King Street Pilot
1:54 PM (15 minutes ago)

to me

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write to the King Street Transit Pilot . We really appreciate it! Feedback and comments will be passed on to the appropriate leads on the project team.


For more information about the King Street Transit Pilot and how to get involved, visit us at www.toronto.ca/kingstreetpilot.

I'll update this string when I get a considered reply.

 

[steveintoronto]

You're still wasting hours of some of the country's most productive work force every day stuck in traffic. I think the King Streetcar is still unacceptably slow for 21st century. It may be good for 40s but these days people are more time-poor. It's only popular because there are no other options for its riders.

"MUCH more predictable, fast" is pretty meaningless since the starting point was significantly slower than just walking.

And to think this is the third largest carrier route for the TTC? And they throw pretty trinkets to impress the gullible fans.

Let's be diplomatic about this: It's not as agonizingly slow as before. Just painfully.

 

[steveintoronto]

If despite the larger, more frequent, and faster streetcars, more people are being left at the side of the road, doesn't that speak to the project's success? It means that more people are using the line than before. Sounds to me like the project needs to be expanded.

Future residents likely to push King St. streetcars back past limits, study finds
The Ryerson University study looked at 8,000 residential units under construction in the King St. corridor.

Any gains made by the King St. pilot project will likely be moot if 6 per cent or more of future residents along the line take the streetcar, a new study from Ryerson University has found.

The problem is that transit cannot keep pace with development, said Diana Petramala, senior researcher at Ryerson’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development, calling the issue a “mismatch.”

“What we’re seeing here is that they’ve put a lot of development along the King. St. corridor, and now you basically have the streetcar operating at its full capacity and still have an overcrowding problem,” she said.
[...]
According to TTC’s March update, 85 per cent of streetcars travelling west arrive within four minutes during morning commutes; travel times have improved by five minutes in each direction during the evening.

But Petramala noted that King St. streetcars travelling eastbound are now running six seconds slower during the morning rush hour than they did prior to the pilot project, indicating an already stressed line.
[...]

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...-streetcars-back-past-limits-study-finds.html

I'll dig for the originating study and post it later.

The King Project needs a lot less clapping, and whole lot more pushing if this isn't going to go off the rails...

Addendum: The author quoted above Ryerson blog:

Love it or hate it: The King Street Pilot still falls short on transit needs along the corridor
By: Diana Petramala and Alex Butler
April 26, 2018

The discussion in this blog is based on data released by the TTC in March for the period ending in February. The TTC has since released new data for March. However, the story has not changed with the new set of data.

The City of Toronto has restricted vehicle traffic between Bathurst and Jarvis on King to give the 504 (King Street) and 514 (Cherry Street) streetcars priority at its busiest stops– a temporary project called the King Street Pilot. This has become a widely debated transit experiment – some love it and some hate it. Whatever your feelings are, the experiment highlights the woes that occur when there is a mismatch between transit planning (or infrastructure) and development. The pilot project has helped the transit system catch up to all the office and residential development that has occurred in the area in the last decade or so. However, given an 8,000 units still under construction along the route, the streetcar is likely to be overcrowded once again in the coming years, even if the pilot is made permanent.

The issue with the King corridor is the amount of development that has occurred without proper assessment of transit needs
The eastbound King Streetcar runs between Dundas West Station (at Bloor and Dundas) down Roncesvalles to King –along King Street to Broadview -- then north to Broadview Station. The westbound streetcar goes in reverse along this route. The 514 Streetcar travels along King between Dufferin and the Distillery District.

Analyzing the census tracts that the King Streetcar runs through gives an idea of the amount of construction happening within 400 meters of King Street. Based on CMHC data, there has been almost 30,000 new residential units built in census tracts around the King Street corridor since 2010. Put another way, almost 10% of total development across the Greater Toronto Area occurred in areas serviced by the King streetcar.
[...graphs in report...]
The only change in service to accommodate this development was the addition of roughly eight to ten streetcars in the morning peak (between 7 am and 10 am) and ten streetcars during the afternoon peak (4 pm to 7pm) between 2011 and early 2017. In other words, the TTC made room for between 860 to almost 1300 passengers to accommodate the creation of 30,000 residential units alone. This does not include office development.

The result was overcrowding on the King Streetcar. By 2016, the 504 streetcar was by far the busiest surface route in the City of Toronto (see figure 1) and a Toronto Star article highlighted that it was running at 126% of its capacity during peak hours. Based on standards set by the TTC, each streetcar can carry a maximum of 108 (old streetcars) to 130 (new streetcars) passengers comfortably and is considered overcrowded if it exceeds these levels. However, riders were managing to cram themselves into busy streetcars, while some were left standing out in the cold as full streetcars passed them by. As such, at the busiest hour and the busiest stop, an average of 2,200 people were riding the King street per hour, when really it should have only been carrying 2,100 riders.

Life after the pilot project was introduced
The experience on the streetcar shows that the program has been a modest success so far. According to the City of Toronto data, the number of daily riders on the King Streetcar increased to 84,000 from 72,000. The streetcar is also moving marginally faster for most of the day, without major impacts on alternate streets like Adelaide, Queen and Dundas according to the TTC data. Travel times for the streetcar between Bathurst and Jarvis have fallen by about 2.5 minutes, while travel times across the whole route have improved by over five minutes during the AM and PM rush hour peaks.
[...more graphs...]
We would like to point out that the rise in transit ridership did not match the number of fewer cars traveling on King Street per hour. There are, overall, less commuters using the road. At the same time, a quick google maps analysis does suggest that traffic is a bit heavier in pockets along Adelaide, Queen and the turn-off points along King relative to pre-pilot days.

Nonetheless, removing most of the cars that travelled on King Street during the morning and afternoon rush hours has meant that the TTC can now run streetcars more frequently. At its peak capacity, the streetcar comes every 2.7 minutes on average. At its best, the TTC can now carry up to 2,900 passengers per hour without the streetcars becoming overcrowded (see figure 3), or approximately 800 more passengers per hour than before the pilot was introduced. Set against the number of new riders per hour (2,750 at its busiest point in the day), the streetcar is no longer overcrowded– most of the time.

However, according to City of Toronto data, streetcars only arrive within four minutes 85% of the time in the AM Peak. This is a slight improvement over pre-pilot conditions, but still limits capacity. The travel times between Bathurst and Jarvis have not changed relative to pre-pilot days – even after almost all car traffic has been removed, evidence of continued overcrowding during the AM rush. According to transit commentator Steve Munro, overcrowding can slow streetcars down because it takes longer for passengers to load and unload at stops. [...continues at length...]

https://www.ryerson.ca/cur/Blog/blogentry26/

Look! Squirrel...

 

[DSC]

You're still wasting hours of some of the country's most productive work force every day stuck in traffic. I think the King Streetcar is still unacceptably slow for 21st century. It may be good for 40s but these days people are more time-poor. It's only popular because there are no other options for its riders.

"MUCH more predictable, fast" is pretty meaningless since the starting point was significantly slower than just walking.

Yes, a subway would certainly be faster (if one lives and works near stations) BUT to build one will take over a decade (even if anyone wanted to do it and started today). I think the King Street Pilot is an excellent 'interim' stage ("interim' in TO can mean up to 25 years!).Transit on King IS faster and it IS more reliable, maybe not enough of either but ....

 

[MisterF]

Future residents likely to push King St. streetcars back past limits, study finds
The Ryerson University study looked at 8,000 residential units under construction in the King St. corridor.


https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...-streetcars-back-past-limits-study-finds.html

I'll dig for the originating study and post it later.

The King Project needs a lot less clapping, and whole lot more pushing if this isn't going to go off the rails...

Addendum: The author quoted above Ryerson blog:

https://www.ryerson.ca/cur/Blog/blogentry26/

Look! Squirrel...

I'm not disputing any of that, but it doesn't change the fact that the King pilot has unlocked some of the pent up demand for transit going east-west through the core. Not nearly enough of course, which is why I said that the project should be expanded. Ultimately nothing short of a subway combined with RER will truly address the travel needs of the area. That's still years or decades away. But we can give surface streetcars as much priority as possible in the meantime.

 

[steveintoronto]

But we can give surface streetcars as much priority as possible in the meantime.

Lest I appear to be at loggerheads with you, we're close allies on this, but let's dwell on 'priority' for a moment.

What traffic light priority is presently in place for the streetcars? Once this point is addressed, then it's a *start* to getting more performance out of this. Your subway comment is more than serendipity though, as in her conclusions, correction, *their* conclusions, Diana Petramala and Alex Butler blog:

However, the experience so far is an example of how the city and province combined could benefit from evidence-based planning decisions. As of now, the Province, through the Growth Plan, directs that there must be appropriate transit and infrastructure in place to support the intended development, allowing development to occur along a transit corridor is sufficient criteria. There are no guidelines to estimate/monitor the corridors capacity to support said development. By US standards, the amount of density allowed to occur along the transit line would have been enough to support investment in a heavy rail (subway) system.

And she's right on a number of counts, one of which I've repeatedly raised:
Why wasn't QP brought into this from the start?

I give up reposting the Pilot Section of the HTA. Ya know, unless Toronto, in aggregate ("In a Democracy, you get the politicians you deserve") starts thinking...*really thinking*...on how to make this work...we're fugged.

Many if not all the tools are there to do it. But alas, the political where-with-all is abjectly absent...

 

[dowlingm]

Sue Ann Levy being her usual considerate self:
https://twitter.com/DJAngier/status/992388473599356931

 

[innsertnamehere]

The funny thing to me is that I regularly drive across Richmond in the middle of the morning peak and it almost always takes me around 7-10 minutes to go from Church to Portland. Like clockwork. The most it has been is maybe 12 minutes in the 50 or so times I've done it since the pilot started.

an hour travel time on Richmond is almost certianly related to construction or an accident or something that is restricting throughput. On a regular day there is very little traffic on Richmond. It flows well at almost all hours barring something screwing it up.

On Adelaide in the evening rush however.. It is much worse. That has always been the way however, with or without the pilot.

 

[narduch]

1hv1h

an hour travel time on Richmond is almost certianly related to construction or an accident or something that is restricting throughput. .

Or a broken water main...

 

[steveintoronto]

Just got a response to the query I sent yesterday to the King Street Pilot Project team:

What priority, if any, has been instituted for the King cars through the Pilot Project?
And what are the future considerations, if any, for intersection light priorities?

Thank you

Reply:

Hi Stephen,

Transit signal priority (TSP) has been activated at eastbound and westbound approaches at King/Bathurst and extended the morning peak period timing plan to match with current volumes. There is a plan to modify Bathurst/Adelaide, to improve capacity of northbound right-turn traffic to Adelaide Street. The recent increase in turning volume is an effect of restricting eastbound traffic on King Street.

Recent adjustment to traffic signal timing were implemented at Spadina, University and Church street, but none of them includes TSP at this time.

Regards,

XXXXX

A huge amount of constraint centres on that lack of "Priority"...let alone where it exists, the limited nature of it.

 

[W. K. Lis]

From link.

Why do some people think that the least efficient use of road space should be catered to along King Street? Even the bicycle is a better use of road space than the automobile.

 

[reaperexpress]

Just got a response to the query I sent yesterday to the King Street Pilot Project team:

Hi Stephen,

Transit signal priority (TSP) has been activated at eastbound and westbound approaches at King/Bathurst and extended the morning peak period timing plan to match with current volumes. There is a plan to modify Bathurst/Adelaide, to improve capacity of northbound right-turn traffic to Adelaide Street. The recent increase in turning volume is an effect of restricting eastbound traffic on King Street.

Recent adjustment to traffic signal timing were implemented at Spadina, University and Church street, but none of them includes TSP at this time.

Regards,

XXXXX

A huge amount of constraint centres on that lack of "Priority"...let alone where it exists, the limited nature of it.

Thank you for actually pushing the City on this issue. The only intersection with (weak) priority currently active is Bathurst, but according to the City's Open Data the system is actually installed at 7 other intersections in the pilot area but is sitting idle (it was turned off at the start of the pilot to update the system to take advantage of the new far-side stops). I think that pushing Transportation Services to allow the new-and-improved priority to actually be turned on could be the difference between success and failure for the pilot.

I also find it somewhat unfair that the effectiveness of the pilot is being evaluated without signal priority, whereas the 'before' condition did have priority at most signals.