[DSC]

Oven noticed that dwell times seem significantly shorter on the new cars than the old.

Who is this "Oven" of whom you speak?

 

[nfitz]

Oven noticed that dwell times seem significantly shorter on the new cars than the old.

That's not surprising, people can take a long time to get up and down the stairs. There's times I've been half-way up the stairs at the front of the CLRV, only to realise there's someone trying to get off, who is only just beginning to cross the white line.

And no one stands on the stairs, debating with the operator where this particular car is going.

 

[nfitz]

How soon till all the new trains arrive and they can get rid of the old ones?

Depends when they order the remaining 60 or so.

Current plan is to only get 204 new cars, and retain 30 ALRVs for peak operation only (which seems optimistic to me ... they've been getting less than 20 cars our most days, and yesterday and today only got 10 cars our).

If you look at the budget, if they continue with Bombardier, then 2021 sometime. If they are dumb enough to retender it ... who knows. 2030?

 

[innsertnamehere]

Who is this "Oven" of whom you speak?

Autocorrect from "I've"

 

[innsertnamehere]

No "the doors won't close if you are on the back steps", no chatting with the driver, no steps to go up and down, and way more doors. The CLRVs will sit at University or Yonge for a solid minute while people get on and off. The Flexities probably spend less than 20 seconds, and unload and load probably twice as many people.

Dwell times are now the biggest speed limiter on the 504, so the Flexities are greatly appreciated.

 

[W. K. Lis]

The CLRV's and ALRV's have 4 steps (3 risers inside plus step up from outside). The PCC's had 3 steps (2 rather high risers plus the step from outside). The Flexity's only have the 1 step from outside.

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

That said, you're almost certainly right that 204 streetcars will not be enough to accommodate ridership growth, and that we should figure out how to get some more streetcars that will run on our network but aren't made by Bombardier.

I agree with everything in this except for the part about Bombardier. I get that they have had problems with sending the new cars out on time, but they now have an advantage over any other manufacturers that come in they have a vechle that is alredy desiged and proven to work onb the TTC nttwork., any others will have to go through testing and trials all over again.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I agree with everything in this except for the part about Bombardier. I get that they have had problems with sending the new cars out on time, but they now have an advantage over any other manufacturers that come in they have a vechle that is alredy desiged and proven to work onb the TTC nttwork., any others will have to go through testing and trials all over again.

We've got time to go for alternatives - Bombardier aren't finishing their contract anytime soon. Nothing like being unable to deliver and still get rewarded in the end.

AoD

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

We've got time to go for alternatives - Bombardier aren't finishing their contract anytime soon. Nothing like being unable to deliver and still get rewarded in the end.

AoD

and you think other manufacturers wouldn't have a problem with a large order either? Evey problem could have happened to any manufacturer. The TTC order is unlike any othr order for LRVs in the world. Most other ones are usauly in the double digets for orders, instead ours is in the triple digits and setting aside space in a plant may not be as easy as it is for some manufacturers as others. Sure they could build one somewhere but that would take time too and could cause delays to reciving them.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

and you think other manufacturers wouldn't have a problem with a large order either? Evey problem could have happened to any manufacturer. The TTC order is unlike any othr order for LRVs in the world. Most other ones are usauly in the double digets for orders, instead ours is in the triple digits and setting aside space in a plant may not be as easy as it is for some manufacturers as others. Sure they could build one somewhere but that would take time too and could cause delays to reciving them.

Sure, but there are no harm having alternatives. The last thing you want is to get strung along by firm that counts on quasi-sole sourcing - and the TTC/province have encouraged that for far too long. Let's not get too Stockholm Syndrome about it.

AoD

 

[EastYorkTTCFan]

Sure, but there are no harm having alternatives. The last thing you want is to get strung along by firm that counts on quasi-sole sourcing - and the TTC/province have encouraged that for far too long.

AoD

True but they also want them built here in Ontario too or at least in Canda. The thing is we won't know anything until. anything gets announced by the TTC. Who knows maybe they will strike a deal with Metrolinx to buy off the extra LRT cars as stretcrs for the legacy network.

 

[BMO]

Unless you're claiming people are now doing random trips just for leisure, the induced demand argument makes no sense. Public transit is the most efficient way of moving people, if you're inducing demand for it, you're likely stealing people from uber/taxi and personal vehicles.

You can be stealing people from other lines, I don't understand why what I stated is beyond the realm of possibility. It's consistently shown that transit riders will gravitate towards higher-order transit when presented with the option, in this case, Queen St is within a stone's throw of King St along with all the perpendicular routes on cross-streets that may see passengers opt to transfer at King instead of Queen now. I imagine the initial increase in reliability and speed probably led to a little more capacity on the line that was swiftly taken up by new riders from other routes that heard all the news articles and fanfare about how great King Street is. I don't think it has anything to do with shifting people off uber/taxi or the creation of off-peak trips (although I imagine it hasn't hurt that).

Edit: maybe the terminology I'm using is incorrect?

 

[BMO]

The loading standard, by definition, accommodates the pent-up demand by always ensuring there is spare capacity along the line. As more people ride the line, the number of people per vehicle increases, which in turn triggers more vehicles to be added to the line.

The peak-period TTC crowding standards are:
CLRV: 74 people
Flexity: 130 people

But the manufacturer's vehicle capacities are:
CLRV: 133 people
Flexity: 251 people

The problem on King is that the TTC is physically unable to add enough streetcars to keep the line within the crowding standards. This is for a couple reasons:
1. There aren't enough streetcars in the fleet to run the service which should be run.
2. Even they did remove streetcars from other routes to put on King, the increased frequency could exceed the practical capacity of the street itself, causing the line to grind to a halt as every vehicle gets stuck behind every other vehicle (think Line 1 when there's any kind of delay during rush hour).

The practical capacity of the street is based on the signal cycle, which can be as long as 120 seconds. It's not consistently possible to get more than one streetcar through per green, because it then sits on the far side serving the stop, preventing any subsequent vehicles from proceeding for about 30 seconds. If a streetcar enters the intersection at the start of the green (i.e. was waiting at a red light) it might leave the stop just in time for a following streetcar to enter the intersection just before the end of the green, but we can't really count on that.

Currently the scheduled service frequency and loading-standard capacities on King are:
15 CLRVs/hour on the 504
7 Flexities/hour on the 514
5 buses/hour on the 503
and some extra CLRVs, but we don't really know how much that increases the frequency. Let's say 2 extras per hour.

The combined frequency is about 29 vehicles per hour, which is an average headway of 124 seconds. That's roughly equal to the practical capacity of the street, so adding more vehicles to the line may make things worse rather than better by increasing streetcar-to-streetcar queuing at signals, which increases travel times, which in turn reduces frequency. So the speed would go down and the capacity would stay the same.

The most practical way to increase the physical capacity of the line is to use bigger vehicles. Multiplying the vehicles in the current schedule by their loading standard provides a total capacity of
2423 people per hour. In comparison if all 29 vehicles per hour were Flexities, the capacity would be 3770 people per hour (a 64% increase).
Also in comparison, a 4-lane urban road can carry about 900 automobiles per hour per direction in ideal conditions (no parking, no loading, no bicycles, no transit, no left turns, no right turns etc), which is about 1000 people per hour at the average 1.1-1.2 vehicle occupancy.

In a more short-term basis, I see a couple ways of increasing the line capacity:
- convert the 504 from CLRVs to Flexities on a 1:1 basis as quickly as possible, which is exactly what the TTC is doing. But that's subject to deliveries from Bombardier given that it's not politically viable to take them from routes that have already been designated fully wheelchair-accessible.
- convert the 503 from buses back to CLRVs, and extend it as far west as practical (Charlotte loop?)

Yup, once you account for dwell time at stations + traffic signals your theoretical capacity on the line can't be too much higher than what we're already seeing, regardless of TSP or new Flexities. You'll have to disperse the load and avoid people funneling onto the line...the DRL could theoretically relieve Yonge AND King Street, but you're still going to have an issue for the 10+ years during construction. One simple thing they could do to increase capacity a little more would be to add express buses that stop at major intersections. They can by-pass streetcars on the right-lane while simultaneously serving the same corridor. Have the express buses stop near-side to avoid impacting streetcar loading/alighting.

 

[DSC]

and you think other manufacturers wouldn't have a problem with a large order either? Evey problem could have happened to any manufacturer. The TTC order is unlike any othr order for LRVs in the world. Most other ones are usauly in the double digets for orders, instead ours is in the triple digits and setting aside space in a plant may not be as easy as it is for some manufacturers as others. Sure they could build one somewhere but that would take time too and could cause delays to reciving them.

BBD have behaved DREADFULLY POORLY over this order and many of their other customers, Metrolinx, New York and London for example, have not been happy with them either. They have failed to deliver to the TTC after repeated promises and the new streetcars are still not arriving problem-free - look at the figures in the TTC CEO's monthly reports.
Frankly, I wonder how long they will keep making trains and streetcars - due to loss of customer confidence - but if they are making them when a new order is required I would not ban them from bidding on any future TTC orders but would CERTAINLY go out to a competitive tender with VERY strict deadlines.(Maybe for the supposed 'add-on order' of 60 cars they would come in much cheaper than others as they ought to have got the hang of building them by then but ...) Our streetcars are not different in their essentials from those used elsewhere (the gauge being the biggest difference but that is not that hard to adjust for when you have an order of 200+)

 

[micheal_can]

Depends when they order the remaining 60 or so.

Current plan is to only get 204 new cars, and retain 30 ALRVs for peak operation only (which seems optimistic to me ... they've been getting less than 20 cars our most days, and yesterday and today only got 10 cars our).

If you look at the budget, if they continue with Bombardier, then 2021 sometime. If they are dumb enough to retender it ... who knows. 2030?

A new tender should go out within the next year or so for about another 200 cars.
Why?
Because those ALRVs are not going to last too long.
Because the Flexis will break down.
Because more ridership will happen due to the city growing.

Maybe Bombardier gets the contract, maybe another company does. But, there needs to be a plan to replace everything sooner, and to ad to the fleet faster.