[Admiral Beez]

One only has to look at the ridership of 1953 for streetcars service and look at what the numbers are today for buses that service those routes today. You are looking at 50 to 90% less riders on those routes.

Surely there's more current comparative data than from the middle of the last Century.

 

[drum118]

Surely there's more current comparative data than from the middle of the last Century.

Not for streetcar on these routes: 1963: Church 1,000 (5); Coxwell 1,600 (5); Dupont 2,000 (20); Harbord (west end) 2,700 (37); Lake Shore 1,700 (21); Parliament 2,200 (6); Queen (east of Woodbine) 1,900 (15); St. Clair (east of Yonge) 1,300 (9) York Township Lines 2,000 (11).

Have not seen any real numbers for peak times for any routes in years. You have to use the # of buses for peak time listed in the services changes to try to arrived at a number that are used on X-streetcars routes. Most TTC route numbers are about 5 years out of date.

As for the 53's numbers, that the only list I have come upond that is this detail so far.

 

[spider]

PPl perfer to ride steel wheels than rubber wheels and that has been provened right acroos NA since the late 30's. One only has to look at the ridership of 1953 for streetcars service and look at what the numbers are today for buses that service those routes today. You are looking at 50 to 90% less riders on those routes.

Which 2011 Bus route that replaced a 1953 streetcar route has only 10% of the former's ridership?

The lack of an answer to my question leads me to believe that you are confusing your wish list with reality in order to bolster your bias towards rail based transit. I guess that there is nothing wrong with fantasy as long as we all understand it to be fantasy.

 

[jje1000]

The lack of an answer to my question leads me to believe that you are confusing your wish list with reality in order to bolster your bias towards rail based transit. I guess that there is nothing wrong with fantasy as long as we all understand it to be fantasy.

Ughh. What about you? You want fewer buses and streetcars but multi-billion dollar subways at the same time.

With this in mind (http://stevemunro.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/CapAppendixBC.jpg), the TTC is going to go through a period of serious budget restraints.

 

[spider]

Ughh. What about you? You want fewer buses and streetcars but multi-billion dollar subways at the same time.

That is a fair general assessment of my opinions about transit but what does it have to do with the statement that caused me to ask for clarification of some seemingly unlikely numbers offered as facts.

I have opinions on the TTC that may be considered to be biased, I have no problem with that but please notice that I don't make goofy statements like "streetcars cause cancer" and expect everyone to believe me just because I said so.

 

[jje1000]

Having opinions is perfectly fine, but tacking on little phrases such as "I guess that there is nothing wrong with fantasy as long as we all understand it to be fantasy" makes you look like a smug douchebag and calls into question your judgement.

If maintaining streetcars and expanding the streetcar system can be considered a fantasy, what does it say about your want of subways?

 

[spider]

Having opinions is perfectly fine, but tacking on little phrases such as "I guess that there is nothing wrong with fantasy as long as we all understand it to be fantasy" makes you look like a smug douchebag and calls into question your judgement.

Until the 10% lament is justified it is fantasy. No judgement required.

If maintaining streetcars and expanding the streetcar system can be considered a fantasy, what does it say about your want of subways?

The 10% fantasy lamented the loss of streetcars to the lowly and much maligned bus, the indignity of which created a catastrophic but undocumented loss of ridership. What nonsense. I made no mention of subways in this particular thread, please stick to the topic.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

That said, it makes no sense to build new lines because the costs of building new streetcar lines is actually quite exorbitant and the ridership benefits hardly justify those costs. To use a somewhat back-of-the-envelope calculation, would you spend $200M to build a streetcar line from scratch, or would you just buy about 15 articulated buses and institute POP boarding for (and I think I'm wildly overestimating the costs here) $20M? Even if we assume that the cost of bus replacement and operation is twice as much per rider as a streetcar, you would still have to justify ridership going up 5X to support the streetcar. Has any streetcar that replaced a bus service (eg. Spadina) ever generated 5 times as much ridership as the original bus. No. And that will never be the case.

Spadina's up about 15% since the conversion from the bus began. Chinatown has perhaps declined a bit, but U of T's had an enormous enrollment increase over the past 15 or so years and the development south of Queen has been massive. 15% is not impressive. However, the reasons for ridership ups and downs on Spadina or anywhere else have little to do with the LRT vs bus specifics. The corridor probably doubled in size but only sees 15% more riders largely because the service is usually pretty lousy. Service on connecting routes like College and Queen is also lousy. If every streetcar (or bus route) in the city was as frequent and fast and reliable and well-managed as a route like Finch East, ridership would be explosively higher in many places. When people wait for 15 minutes and then sit in a congested bunch of vehicles for another 15, they become frustrated and next time they just walk instead and save 20 minutes, or cycle, or take a taxi, or take a different route.

Getting rid of one kind of vehicle and spending a bajillion dollars on a different one that does the exact same thing is mindnumbing process when the existing ones are nowhere close to being used properly or to their full potential. Yes, buses could easily replace a streetcar service like Carlton, but doing so would be a pointless waste.

From Planetizen:

Economic Development. Tangherlini says that one advantage streetcars have over buses is that the tracks “give a sense of permanence, and that encourages long-term investment.” Portland, Ore., which started operating North America’s first modern streetcar system in 2001, can attest to that. A 2008 study by the city says that since streetcar plans were unveiled in 1997, “$3.5 billion has been invested within two blocks of the streetcar alignment.” The study lists “grocery stores, restaurants, galleries, shops and banks” as amenities that have been built near the streetcar lines.

This is an oft-cited example but it's easily debunked. Portland built a streetcar as part of a large, multi-neighbourhood redevelopment project. The areas around the CBD were going to be developed with or without the streetcar. Really, the development built the streetcar. It loops around downtown on one-way streets one or two blocks apart, so a 5-6 block wide swath of Portland - a good 50% of the downtown area - is "within two blocks." It'd be like running a line along Richmond and Adelaide, looping through CityPlace and the Portlands at either end and then saying all of the development between Queen and the Lake was triggered by the transit line. They didn't speculatively build a streetcar line and then cross their fingers that condos and coffee shops would sprout in its wake where none had been already slated. No city does that.

It's easy to say transit "encourages" development but it doesn't do more than new sidewalks, new landscaping, better policing, rezoning, urban design, by-law changes, new parks, civic boosterism, the impact of pioneering enterprises (a loft conversion, a Starbucks on a risky corner), even little things like demographics, etc., etc.

 

[k10ery]

Spadina's up about 15% since the conversion from the bus began. Chinatown has perhaps declined a bit, but U of T's had an enormous enrollment increase over the past 15 or so years and the development south of Queen has been massive. 15% is not impressive. However, the reasons for ridership ups and downs on Spadina or anywhere else have little to do with the LRT vs bus specifics. The corridor probably doubled in size but only sees 15% more riders largely because the service is usually pretty lousy.

I'm sorry, but this is completely untrue.

Ridership on the Spadina bus was 25,000 the year the ROW was completed, and it was never more than 35,000 back before Mike Harris killed transit in Toronto. Ridership on the Spadina streetcar is now 50,000. This growth has happened at the same time as ridership has stayed flat or declined on most bus routes.

Daytime headways on Spadina are excellent and cars are full at peak. It's only so damn slow because of crush loading and the absence of POP. So at worst you could say it's a victim of its own success. (OK, too many red lights too.)

 

[nfitz]

It's a shame there aren't numbers available in detail, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 2.5 km from Spadina station to King Street is the busiest TTC surface route in the city. The majority of the Spadina streetcars only run on this section. It will be interesting to see what happens to ridership when the new double-length low-flow all-door loading LRVs start running on this route.

 

[k10ery]

The numbers are from TTC's Ridership and Cost estimates. They're detailed but maybe not that accurate. Having a fare card would make for better data.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

I'm sorry, but this is completely untrue.

Ridership on the Spadina bus was 25,000 the year the ROW was completed, and it was never more than 35,000 back before Mike Harris killed transit in Toronto. Ridership on the Spadina streetcar is now 50,000. This growth has happened at the same time as ridership has stayed flat or declined on most bus routes.

Daytime headways on Spadina are excellent and cars are full at peak. It's only so damn slow because of crush loading and the absence of POP. So at worst you could say it's a victim of its own success. (OK, too many red lights too.)

Nice try. I specifically mentioned the ridership before construction started. The 48,000 current riders include Harbourfront (5K? 10K) while Spadina bus ridership figures do not. Depending on how many ride Harbourfront today, 15% could really be anything from 10% to 25%, but it's in that ballpark.

Again, how can a route not see increased ridership when the number of people along it basically doubles? Less than ideally-managed service can impact any route and it does impact Spadina. There's been no miracle of improved service along Spadina since the bus to streetcar conversion and likewise, there would be no miracle of improved service should a streetcar line be converted to buses.

 

[k10ery]

Two minute headways and it's full at peak. What more do you want? Even if you subtract 10K for Harbourfront (I doubt it) it still carries more people than the Sheppard subway. Service could be faster but it's a line that works.

Where exactly do you think population has doubled along Spadina?

 

[lafard]

Cityplace has added many thousands of residents, but they seem to be mostly going south. The northbound stop at Bremner is not a lot busier than the one at Dundas.

What I think has happened is that previously, people would go east to the subway, presumably on a streetcar, to avoid the spadina bus. When Spadina got its ROW people stopped doing that, the streetcar attracted traffic that previously had been diverted to the subway (and lesser extent, Bathurst).

By now, ridership is constrained because we don't have enough streetcars to put on the line to meet demand. The new vehicles can't come soon enough. God only knows what the latent demand is like on that thing, I bet if you had adequate capacity and fixed the gappiness the ridership would go up by 25% overnight.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Two minute headways and it's full at peak. What more do you want? Even if you subtract 10K for Harbourfront (I doubt it) it still carries more people than the Sheppard subway. Service could be faster but it's a line that works.

Where exactly do you think population has doubled along Spadina?

Where? Read the post you're failing miserably to counter. Subtracting 10K leaves 38K, which is 10K less than Sheppard. If you're going to argue with numbers, try using correct numbers.

It's not about what I want, it's about what Rob Ford probably wants. There's next to nothing to gain from replacing streetcars with buses or buses with streetcars. There never is much to gain when you change vehicles and mismanage/don't change what really impacts the ridership and the service: speed, frequency, reliability, connecting routes, etc.

Cityplace has added many thousands of residents, but they seem to be mostly going south. The northbound stop at Bremner is not a lot busier than the one at Dundas.

What I think has happened is that previously, people would go east to the subway, presumably on a streetcar, to avoid the spadina bus. When Spadina got its ROW people stopped doing that, the streetcar attracted traffic that previously had been diverted to the subway (and lesser extent, Bathurst).

By now, ridership is constrained because we don't have enough streetcars to put on the line to meet demand. The new vehicles can't come soon enough. God only knows what the latent demand is like on that thing, I bet if you had adequate capacity and fixed the gappiness the ridership would go up by 25% overnight.

Well, yeah, they were probably avoiding the Spadina bus during construction of the ROW, but not before then. Not when the Spadina bus was moving 30,000-35,000 riders a day.

CityPlace isn't the only contributor...look at everything between Front and Queen that's been built since 1995. U of T's enrollment is also much higher. Also, Harbourfront was moving 6K or so people a day back then, but could be a fair bit higher now. It doesn't matter which way people are going: they're still included in the ridership figures.

Changing one kind of vehicle to another is pointless if problems can be solved by managing the line better. A mismanaged bus route on Queen or College would be stupid. They wouldn't suddenly be well-managed just because they're buses.