[PinkLucy]

News release issued by the City this afternoon

First set of transit and traffic data released for King Street Transit Pilot

Today, the City of Toronto released the first set of data on the King Street Transit Pilot, a transit-priority pilot project on King Street from Bathurst Street to Jarvis Street.

The transit pilot launched on November 12 in an effort to improve transit service, support economic prosperity and improve public space. The pilot project is being monitored for impact on transit service, traffic flow on parallel streets and effects on cyclists, pedestrians and local businesses through data collection and public feedback.

"Measurement is vital to the King Street pilot, and will ensure we can make any necessary adjustments so the street and surrounding area works for transit customers, cyclists, pedestrians, drivers and business owners as well as local residents,” said Mayor John Tory. "We also appreciate the feedback of local businesses, transit users, and the taxi industry and will continue to address any concerns as quickly as possible."

The data released today represents the first two weeks of travel time monitoring for both streetcars and vehicles. Preliminary findings include:
• The reliability of streetcar travel times has improved for both the morning (7 to 10 a.m.) and afternoon (4 to 7 p.m.) rush hours.
• The most significant improvement has been during the afternoon rush hour, when the upper range of streetcar travel times has improved from 25.0 minutes to 22.0 minutes eastbound and 24.0 to 19.7 minutes westbound.
• Average streetcar travel times have improved for the afternoon rush hours. The most significant improvement has been westbound, with a 2.6 minute improvement in average travel time through the pilot area.
• Average vehicle travel times on most streets in the pilot area have seen variations (+/-) of around a minute or less compared to before the pilot.
• In some cases, where increases in vehicle travel times of more than a minute are present, other conditions have been identified which most likely caused the delay.

The City continues to measure and evaluate the transit pilot through:
• A partnership with Miovision to capture and analyze multi-modal traffic data to study changes to pedestrian, cycling and vehicle volumes throughout the pilot area;
• The use of Bluetooth and GPS technology to monitor and evaluate streetcar and vehicle travel times; and
• Continued monitoring and evaluation of the economic impacts of the pilot, including obtaining transactional trend data as well as working with local businesses and Business Improvement Areas.

“This initial set of data shows improvements in the reliability and travel times of the streetcar, with minimal impacts on travel times for vehicles on other routes in the downtown," said Barbara Gray, General Manager of Transportation Services. "We will examine the data and make any operational improvements necessary to ensure people can move quickly and reliably through the downtown no matter how they travel.”

Data from to the King Street Transit Pilot will be released on a monthly basis, around the 12th of each month.

Baseline (or "before") data was collected prior to the launch of the pilot to be used as a benchmark for the data now being collected.

The full data dashboard and additional information about the transit pilot is available on the project website at http://www.toronto.ca/kingstreetpilot and will be made available through the City’s Open Data portal.

This news release is also available on the City of Toronto website at http://ow.ly/IDpz30hbwko.

 

[SaugeenJunction]

Source

 

[rbt]

News release issued by the City this afternoon:

• Average streetcar travel times have improved for the afternoon rush hours. The most significant improvement has been westbound, with a 2.6 minute improvement in average travel time through the pilot area.

That was way cheaper than the Gardiner East costs to save drivers 2 minutes.

Someone get the popcorn ready for the Sun article stating that 2 minutes isn't significant and King needs to be transitioned back immediately.

 

[drum118]

First time riding 504 today from Parliament St in the east to Dufferin St in the west since the King pilot project started and the fastest and shortest trip I have every taken on it all my life. Fix traffic signals as well better enforcement along with better traffic signs, It will be even faster.

Waiting for a westbound 504 or 514 was a different story, even at Broadview Station. Large crowd on hand which mean there hasn't been a car in some time. Decide to do some banking and still found the same crowd when I got back. Then a 504 show up with peak load. When I got off, there was a 514 and another 504 behind us.

 

[Towered]

That was way cheaper than the Gardiner East costs to save drivers 2 minutes.

Someone get the popcorn ready for the Sun article stating that 2 minutes isn't significant and King needs to be transitioned back immediately.

It's already started - talk radio hosts on CFRB were outraged about the 2 minute savings and ranted about what an insult it is to drivers.

 

[PinkLucy]

I guess that all those thousands of people being better served by transit simply don't count for anything.

 

[reaperexpress]

"ION is a more advance system and a testbed for a new set of laws from what I can tell" Yeah...if @reaperexpress is reading this, he appears to be the most schooled on their system in these threads, it would be great for him to review what he's already posted here and in the ION string.

I don't have any actual info on the ION signals, I just have my own intuition and familiarity with general traffic signal stuff.

Like I said before (notably here and here) there is no legal issue with using the vertical white bar for straight through movements. It's within the HTA definition (albeit a constrained interpretation). The issue is that the vertical bar is already extensively used in Toronto, and it currently means "left and right, but not straight". If you want the vertical bar to mean "straight" that's fine, but you first need to change all the existing vertical bars to something else.

Similarly in Waterloo, there is no legal issue with using the white bar for straight through movements. The non-conformities of the Waterloo signals are the absence of circular yellow and circular red aspects, both of which are required under HTA Reg.626. Sadly I've still not been able to figure out their method for varying from the HTA.

Regarding far-side stops and signal delays, @mdrejhon summed it up almost perfectly:

Actually, these are the perfect places for stations. What we need is European style traffic priority stoplights.

European style "FAR-SIDE" traffic priority speedup for trams/streetcars
--> Stoplight automatically stay green until streetcar coasts past (or shortens red cycle upon GPS-trigger of approching streetcar)
--> Stops at platform to pick up people
--> Streetcar can immediately begin accelerating, never having been stymied by a red light.

To clarify, the reason the far-side is faster is that with a near-side stop, the priority system can't accurately predict when the streetcar will actually wish to proceed through the intersection and therefore it often provides the green light at the wrong time. With far-side stops, the streetcar's arrival time at the intersection can be predicted to within a couple seconds, which allows the priority system to much more reliably provide a green to streetcars.

There's already traffic priority systems in Toronto (green-light extension upon approaching streetcar), but they're at amenic settings -- programmed so conservatively that it is not producing noticeable benefits. Many stoplights have a "maximum green extension" so a streetcar doesn't manage to coast past on time. A green light can only be triggered to be extended by a few seconds by an approaching streetcar, but that's not long enough -- the extension expires often before the streetcar reaches the stoplight! It's just an easy programming change with the existing TTC traffic priority system to at least give another +10-15 seconds (increased green-light-extension timeout parameter). Or even better, make it GPS-triggered (smarter timing of greens) in a future upgrade.

The reason that the current priority system is not producing noticeable benefits is that it is disabled within the pilot area. It was turned off at the start of the pilot, and will hopefully be turned back on soon, having been reconfigured to optimize for the new far-side stops. I may be biased, but I expect the new setup will provide much lower signal delays for streetcars than the old setup did.

With the King Pilot, the streetcar is currently operating faster without signal priority than it was before with signal priority. Just wait till the priority gets turned back on!

 

[BMO]

Meanwhile, on modal rebalancing in downtown Toronto.... #KingStreetPilot

Car drivers (including me) understand this, and willingly understand the need for a few rebalanced to streetcars and cycles, to imcrease a downtown's overall (totalled) people moving capacity. Gains exceeds losses.

View attachment 129846

These metrics are always funny, because I'm sure sidewalks move more people yet have less space in the ROW than transit vehicles...after all every transit trip starts and ends with a walk. equal space <> equal movement of people. Things need to be defined appropriately in terms of real metrics like travel times and capacity. If every transit user is getting to work in half the time a driver gets into work, then what does the lack of space really mean? On the other end, if a driver is getting to work faster than transit users, than maybe it makes sense to dedicate more space to transit if it means it can cut transit times to make it more competitive. As a planner I always cringe when I see my planning peers show these flashy graphics that don't really tackle an issue from any other angle than an urban design one, it also implies that transit can only be improved if you give it more space which isn't true at all. You can add signal priority on a bunch of corridors that would improve transit without having to re-allocate space to it. But at the end of the day this is what planning has become; striving to find the most tweetable way of presenting an issue.

Maybe if they said something like giving an extra 4% to transit could provide a 50% reduction in transit travel times. Something along those lines.

Edit: I realize my post seems contrarian, I acknowledge that YES there is a capacity issue with transit downtown. I just often see this space argument made, and I don't feel it really does the topic justice since transportation is so much more than just the physical space dedicated to one mode or another.

 

[BMO]

First time riding 504 today from Parliament St in the east to Dufferin St in the west since the King pilot project started and the fastest and shortest trip I have every taken on it all my life. Fix traffic signals as well better enforcement along with better traffic signs, It will be even faster.

Waiting for a westbound 504 or 514 was a different story, even at Broadview Station. Large crowd on hand which mean there hasn't been a car in some time. Decide to do some banking and still found the same crowd when I got back. Then a 504 show up with peak load. When I got off, there was a 514 and another 504 behind us.

In terms of transit metrics, sure travel time is a great metric, but if the real-world travel time including wait time has increased because passengers have to wait for multiple streetcars to pass, then the overall time savings may not be true for the average person. What we CAN confirm is that the streetcars are operating a little quicker and a little more reliably. However, if the induced demand has also increased, then real-world time-savings for people may be no better. Personally, I think travel times were an issue before, but I always felt that capacity was an even bigger issue as I often saw people having to wait for multiple streetcars during the peak hours between Dufferin and Yonge. Based on my experience I don't think this has changed very much. I'm almost questioning what this will mean if the line is completely outfitted with TSP and new streetcars and we STILL have capacity issues. Me may have to convert Queen St and other corridors into streetcar dedicated streets to disperse the load.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Again, I use the king car regularly and have had no real capacity issues. The streetcar may be full, but the frequencies are so ridiculously high that there is almost always another one right behind it. Reliability has shot way, way up with the pilot which means those gaps in service have been greatly reduced.

 

[DSC]

In terms of transit metrics, sure travel time is a great metric, but if the real-world travel time including wait time has increased because passengers have to wait for multiple streetcars to pass, then the overall time savings may not be true for the average person.

You are, of course, right that for travel time one really needs to take any waiting around into account not just the journey time but do you think that people did not have to wait for several streetcars BEFORE the pilot? We did and it is certainly no worse and from my experience much better now - particularly in the last week or so as the Flexities have been deployed. The route is certainly busier but this may be because of the Christmas Market @ the Distillery as much as transit users moving to King or deciding they can take the streetcar and not walk for shorter trips.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Again, I use the king car regularly and have had no real capacity issues. The streetcar may be full, but the frequencies are so ridiculously high that there is almost always another one right behind it. Reliability has shot way, way up with the pilot which means those gaps in service have been greatly reduced.

Does bunching still occur?

 

[steveintoronto]

Waiting for a westbound 504 or 514 was a different story, even at Broadview Station. Large crowd on hand which mean there hasn't been a car in some time. Decide to do some banking and still found the same crowd when I got back. Then a 504 show up with peak load. When I got off, there was a 514 and another 504 behind us.

My fear for some time is that the gains from the 'clearway' were being overstated, and expectations were getting out of hand. If you read back, some posters were making claims far beyond what the stats are presently showing. Ironically, it plays into the hands of the naysayers. With the present results, it's still possible this project won't be continued past the pilot stage, forces in Toronto....*powerful forces in Toronto*...don't want this to succeed.

The non-conformities of the Waterloo signals are the absence of circular yellow and circular red aspects, both of which are required under HTA Reg.626. Sadly I've still not been able to figure out their method for varying from the HTA.

Many thanks for that. I continue to Google every time I think of a new tag to add to the search, still come up empty. I'm now of the opinion that TO should just bull ahead interpreting the HTA in a way a court would agree and the challenge will be for QP to claim the interpretation is wrong. There's been complete silence from QP on much of the cycling infrastructure being afoul of the HTA. Where's the cajones for doing it for a larger and more invested segment of the population?

The reason that the current priority system is not producing noticeable benefits is that it is disabled within the pilot area. It was turned off at the start of the pilot, and will hopefully be turned back on soon, having been reconfigured to optimize for the new far-side stops. I may be biased, but I expect the new setup will provide much lower signal delays for streetcars than the old setup did.

With the King Pilot, the streetcar is currently operating faster without signal priority than it was before with signal priority. Just wait till the priority gets turned back on!

This is crucial, and I completely agree. The logic is clear on this. Unless the City wants this to fail, they have to keep pushing the edge forward. Even with greater priority, there will still be needed actions to further improve the corridor performance. Unfortunately the City is throwing peanuts at this, like an inflatable tank purely for show, and then sent into battle to fight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army

Based on my experience I don't think this has changed very much. I'm almost questioning what this will mean if the line is completely outfitted with TSP and new streetcars and we STILL have capacity issues. Me may have to convert Queen St and other corridors into streetcar dedicated streets to disperse the load.

Agreed on all points save Queen. That may or may not come in later years, but for now, all emphasis must be on the King Korridor. It's grossly under-resourced as it is.

Does bunching still occur?

Again, I use the king car regularly and have had no real capacity issues. The streetcar may be full, but the frequencies are so ridiculously high that there is almost always another one right behind it.

Well...this is a case of two cities, as I'm looking over Roncesvalles where I live, and use the 504 regularly and we have to be careful to separate observations on the Korridor v. the Enz. Bunching and overcrowding are a very real problem still on the ends, and that affects the corridor. Like a highway starting and ending on local streets.

I can only imagine the same problems on Roncy are also happening up Broadview.

Edit to Add: On the last point, agreed with a number of posters to *consider* short-turning or redirecting Queen cars at King and Roncy, and King and Parliament or Sumach. The conundrum is that buses would have to be added to shuttle along Roncy (or Parkside Dr to Keele Station) and King and Sumach (or wherever is chosen) and some other subway station to relieve Broadview while some streetcars remain on the full route. The question is the budget and availability of buses to do these shuttles, which I would suggest may go 'express' in some cases.

The real problem is the lack of streetcars, and until that is biased by intervention by short-turning, results are always going to be skewed negatively. The idea of *some* Queen cars diverted along King is an excellent one to consider. There may be downsides that outweigh doing that, but I can't see many.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Travel time savings in the evening rush have far exceeded that the stats seem to be showing, on average, for me. My commute on TTC used to be in the 40-45 minute range door to door.. it is now 30-35.

 

[BMO]

Travel time savings in the evening rush have far exceeded that the stats seem to be showing, on average, for me. My commute on TTC used to be in the 40-45 minute range door to door.. it is now 30-35.

Your Mileage May Vary. I find if I leave earlier, say 4:30pm then my trip is way quicker, however if I leave anywhere between 5-7pm I see virtually no difference in travel time. I do however consistently see more bunching on my end near Bathurst and further west at Dufferin. Maybe they're doing more short turns in the pilot section?