TTC: Other Items (catch all)

[nfitz]

No excuses. The average rider don't give a damn what happens on the other side - the ridership experience is shaped solely by the one they're on - and it sucked. They paid to get from A to B, not to understand the ifs/ands/buts - that's for the org to figure out and remedy and it isn't happening so far.

I hear the cursing and muttering at short-turn locations.


It's a very different experience when the announcement is made, and everyone looks behind and sees the following streetcar right behind, than it is, when there's nothing in sight.

That is true, but unfortunately that never happens.

As it does actually happen, presumably this means that that your other claims are equally false?

Yes line management sucks. TTC themselves have admitted it, with the recent report on the improved management on the 504, 512, and Dufferin bus. And the 501 is particularly bad - even in the east end, with (theoretically) twice the number of streetcars servicing the end of the route.

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

Remember that the Gardiner was closed on Saturday from the 427 east. I foolishly decided to drive from the east end to Downsview to Bloor & Lansdowne and back home, and noticed that city traffic was much worse than usual. Queen must have been a gong show, particularly given the lack of line management on weekends.

 

[muller877]

I had to dig for this wonderful quote from Steve Munro, but he describes it pretty well. How come the route managers don't get fired? At my job, you'd lose your head for such poor performance.

Call me dumb but why are we still talking about "route managers"? It's called GPS, security cameras to judge how busy a car is and a couple of people in 1 room.

Instead we pay union wages for someone to commute for 45 minutes each way (leaving 6 hours of work in a day) who doesn't even know if a car is 1 minute or 10 minutes behind the one they are turning back.

 

[aquateam]

Call me dumb but why are we still talking about "route managers"? It's called GPS, security cameras to judge how busy a car is and a couple of people in 1 room.

Instead we pay union wages for someone to commute for 45 minutes each way (leaving 6 hours of work in a day) who doesn't even know if a car is 1 minute or 10 minutes behind the one they are turning back.

I completely agree. Why do we have managers with pencils and clipboards managing lines in the 21st century? The TTC has had its GPS-like system for a long time. They could easily use the data to create histograms of headways at different points along the line to get a portrait of what service looks like for riders. It wouldn't be difficult to have each bus/streetcar know how far ahead each vehicle is, to make sure that they leave at equally spaced times and so they know to speed up/slow down. I picture a phone app with a timer. Whenever it gets to one of the CTS poles, it compares the current time stamp to the time stamp of the last time a vehicle was there. It has a timer to let the driver know how much ahead/behind it is based on headway.

Same thing with ridership counts. Instead of people, with clip boards, counting every once in a blue moon on different days of the year, how difficult would it be to have the security cameras take snapshots at one point in time? Then you could actually have consistent data, and once the overhead of collecting the images is set up it wouldn't take much time to have interns go through the pictures.

 

[Filip]

I completely agree. Why do we have managers with pencils and clipboards managing lines in the 21st century? The TTC has had its GPS-like system for a long time. They could easily use the data to create histograms of headways at different points along the line to get a portrait of what service looks like for riders. It wouldn't be difficult to have each bus/streetcar know how far ahead each vehicle is, to make sure that they leave at equally spaced times and so they know to speed up/slow down. I picture a phone app with a timer. Whenever it gets to one of the CTS poles, it compares the current time stamp to the time stamp of the last time a vehicle was there. It has a timer to let the driver know how much ahead/behind it is based on headway.

Same thing with ridership counts. Instead of people, with clip boards, counting every once in a blue moon on different days of the year, how difficult would it be to have the security cameras take snapshots at one point in time? Then you could actually have consistent data, and once the overhead of collecting the images is set up it wouldn't take much time to have interns go through the pictures.

Bob Kinnear and Local 113. Probably the root of most TTC issues.

 

[PinkLucy]

I completely agree. Why do we have managers with pencils and clipboards managing lines in the 21st century?

So he/she can chat with the TTC staffer who switches the tracks back and forth for the 509/511 cars.

 

[AlbertHWagstaff]

Bob Kinnear and Local 113. Probably the root of most TTC issues.

From a couple of streetcar operators I know, some of the people in the CIS room seem to be totally clueless as to what's going on, even with all the GPS data, etc. The guy with the booklet probably has a much better idea of what's happening out there. The people running the line from the central CIS need to have proper training to understand what consequences their actions have. That's where the line management fails. The street Inspectors in olden days were all promoted from drivers and had to understand how the lines worked, especially since they had no mechanical data collection, it was all based on what they observed going on. On the other hand, traffic wouldn't have been as bad decades ago, so the practice probably worked reasonably well. The changing traffic conditions of today and domino effect of short-turning cars needs to be understood by the people making the decisions. This is where line management would improve.

I don't know if the CIS staff are in Local 113, I think they're supervisory staff.

 

[nfitz]

On the other hand, traffic wouldn't have been as bad decades ago, so the practice probably worked reasonably well.

Everything I hear in my neighbourhood is the traffic is much better than it was decades ago before they opened the Bloor-Danforth line.

You just have to look at 1950s aerial photographs of downtown Toronto to see acres of car parks that no longer exist.

 

[Electrify]

Not that I am making excuses for the TTC's embarrassingly bad service on Lake Shore, but have you considered the GO train or even taking a bus up to Bloor?

Perhaps the Star's fixer should do an expose on the situation. A route which is supposed to see service every 10 minutes seeing headways of an hour is simply unacceptable.

 

[AlbertHWagstaff]

Everything I hear in my neighbourhood is the traffic is much better than it was decades ago before they opened the Bloor-Danforth line.

You just have to look at 1950s aerial photographs of downtown Toronto to see acres of car parks that no longer exist.

Many of those car parks have moved underground under the buildings. Just watch the steady streams of cars coming out from under the bank towers every day.

I was thinking more of the 1970s and 1980s but either way, the Inspector on the street, if they had the skills to run the line could do it just as well as with having the GPS data today. The problem seems to be the training of the people doing the line management. All the GPS data and histograms won't help one bit if the people don't know how to apply the data and make appropriate decisions.

 

[44 North]

Everything I hear in my neighbourhood is the traffic is much better than it was decades ago before they opened the Bloor-Danforth line.

You just have to look at 1950s aerial photographs of downtown Toronto to see acres of car parks that no longer exist.

Thanks for the chuckle, nfitz.

 

[44 North]

For the people mentioning the WWLRT, please recall that we STILL don't know how that line would get downtown. The project was "delayed" before they figured it out.

I'm not fully supportive of whatever was ID'd in Transit City, and I always thought WWLRT was a bit of an oddity. I'm more interested in the City at least acknowledging the current and future western waterfront, and any improvements to surface transit that can be made. As it stands, that area seems to have fallen off the radar entirely. The only mention of the western waterfront in the last few years that I recall is from Byford.

 

[nfitz]

Many of those car parks have moved underground under the buildings. Just watch the steady streams of cars coming out from under the bank towers every day.

I was thinking more of the 1970s and 1980s ...

Didn't one of the traffic studies recently show that vehicles commuting into downtown hadn't changed in volume significantly for years?

but either way, the Inspector on the street, if they had the skills to run the line could do it just as well as with having the GPS data today. The problem seems to be the training of the people doing the line management. All the GPS data and histograms won't help one bit if the people don't know how to apply the data and make appropriate decisions.

There's clearly huge systemic problems at TTC in route management. And TTC has admitted this, in their plan to improve route management.

 

[muller877]

Yeah. Do those who mention WWLRT support the Bremner, under the Gardiner thing? It involves a new tunnel to union and new ROW right beside the cityplace condos & Skydome. I don't think it would be THAT cheap.

If it goes on the 509 route between Exhibition and Union, then you have problems with streetcar congestion and a slow route.

The 509 could be made into a very quick route by:
- elimination of redundant stops (before construction they had 8 or 9 stops from Fleet St to the tunnel (2 km in length). They only need York, Rees, Spadina, Bathurst (stop east of Bathurst on Queens Quay), Fleet. They could also get rid of Bastion on Fleet St.
- burying the streetcar from Dan Lekie onto Fleet St

These small changes would create an express route that then can be extended from the Ex to become the WWLRT fairly inexpensively (all relatively speaking)

 

[Electrify]

I guess another thing to keep in mind is that streetcars cannot turn around as easily as buses, requiring loops to be short turned. This likely compounds the issue, since it can be several more minutes before the short turn is executed.

Still, this is a sign that a fixed rail line running in mixed traffic is not the right fit for such a long route. There needs to be some pressure to break the line up, perhaps at the Humber Loop.