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Splitting the 501 Queen Streetcar

If we can't turn Queen Street into a transit/pedestrian mall, then how about allowing only trucks, taxis, and high occupancy vehicles (no single occupant vehicles, more than one occupant only) on Queen Street? If you are in a car all by yourself, use Adelaide or Richmond.
 
The Star seems to have found all two people who ride from The Beach to past Shaw each day and concluded that 100% of riders are inconvenienced and hate this change.
 
The CBC was weirdly negative about this all day yesterday. Robert Fisher's headline was literally "Changes to the 501 today as the route splits into two, but riders are not happy with the change." Seemed weird. It's a five week trial. If it doesn't work, the status quo returns.

The reporters seemed to have a ton of trouble explaining things, too. One dude got so tongue-tied he ended up making it sound like the route was just split at Parliament, period, and everyone from The Beach (where, sure, a lot of CBC Toronto staff live) would have to transfer to go downtown.
 
Lets see what I saw at 1500 today.

Going east within 5 minutes.
Unknown empty ALRV that pickup up riders the next stop from me
Boardview
502 Victoria
Parliament
Parliament
Neville
Neville
Parliament
Boardview

Going west within 7 minutes,
Long Branch
Shaw
Shaw
Shaw
Humber
Humber
Shaw
 
Lets see what I saw at 1500 today.

Going east within 5 minutes.
Unknown empty ALRV that pickup up riders the next stop from me
Boardview
502 Victoria
Parliament
Parliament
Neville
Neville
Parliament
Boardview

Oh I had much more fun sightings at about 1700 walking from Bay to York...

502 Victoria Park
502 Victoria Park, (coming into service off of York (!) directly behind the other 502)
503 Victoria Park, (WTF?)
Church
Church
Neville Park
Parliament

I walked all the way to Ossington and saw many more Church short turns and very rarely a Parliament or Neville.

I have seen a few cars in the past weeks bravely navigating Richmond from Victoria to York, so I guess some supervisor discovered this track still exists and is barely passable enough to use for short turns.
 
Last edited:
Splitting the TTC 501 Queen Streetcar Route...

Everyone: If the proposed splitting of the 501-Queen streetcar route improves reliability then I say "let's do it!". There will be the matters of transfers for thru riders between both ends and how both ends turn around Downtown.

I still feel that this should be a prime candidate for a E/W subway line or perhaps a LRT subway line thru Downtown to alleviate congestion...LI MIKE
 
The Star seems to have found all two people who ride from The Beach to past Shaw each day and concluded that 100% of riders are inconvenienced and hate this change.

I totally agree with that article. I said the same thing in the first post that It would be very annoying if you were travelling further west then Shaw. I really dont understand why they wouldnt make it short-turn at Roncesvalles instead of Shaw.
 
I totally agree with that article. I said the same thing in the first post that It would be very annoying if you were travelling further west then Shaw. I really dont understand why they wouldnt make it short-turn at Roncesvalles instead of Shaw.

Allegedly the stretch of Queen from Shaw to Roncie is one of the main culprits fingered in the bunching problems. Part of the rationale of the route split was ensuring that neither half had too many of those.

Incidentally, there's a lot of really terrifyingly complicated mathematical study that's been prompted by bus bunching. Apparently, to the real-world Jeff Goldblums out there, it's one of the best examples of chaos theory in action.
 

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