[AlvinofDiaspar]

I wouldn't tweet that. You'll get blocked as I just was.

Oh I wouldn't bother responding directly to an old tweet. As to getting blocked if I respond - see if I care.

AoD

 

[dowlingm]

According to CPTDB, the 503 will be streetcars next board AND run midday as well as the usual rush hour service.

 

[SunriseChampion]

This person seems very upset by #KingStreetPilot. Maybe some of the criticisms are well founded but then when this gets thrown in there: https://twitter.com/digitaltincan/status/952241589526646785

Pardon my language, but I fuc*ing loled.
That's right, not just a regular lol....a massive one.

Thanks for simultaneously brightening up my day and helping me lose hope in humanity.

 

[drum118]

No - that won't wash. It assumes the province will commit to pay their third for the additional 48 *at the same time* that they committed to Transit City. You also want the TTC and Council to have looked into the future and anticipate that Bombardier would deliver at a catastrophically poor rate compared to past contracts. Come on now. There's fair criticism and then there is this.

The order was to be a 3 split and ended up with the feds backing away. The city was left looking at 2/3 of the cost and the reason the number of cars were reduce to 204.

No one had a clue what BBD was going to do including BBD when the order was place.

 

[Streety McCarface]

According to CPTDB, the 503 will be streetcars next board AND run midday as well as the usual rush hour service.

Does anyone know if it's to better serve the King Street Pilot?

 

[DSC]

Does anyone know if it's to better serve the King Street Pilot?

Seems likely - and the report WAS in the King Street Pilot thread! (UT never being wrong!)
They have actually just finished stringing new overhead on Wellington Street so it may be their plan.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

I also wonder how much of that new ridership is from the Queen line. 3 days out of 5 I gave up waiting and just walked too the subway station as did many others.

None, according to TTC Chair Josh Colle. Queen ridership hasn't changed. The ridership on King is new transit ridership

"phenomenal success" though? That's a little much.

A 25% growth in ridership through a $1.5 Million investment is a pretty phenomenal success, imo.

 

[dowlingm]

Seems likely - and the report WAS in the King Street Pilot thread! (UT never being wrong!)
They have actually just finished stringing new overhead on Wellington Street so it may be their plan.

Steve Munro on this: https://mobile.twitter.com/SwanBoatSteve/status/952278463951659010?p=v

 

[MetroMan]

This person seems very upset by #KingStreetPilot. Maybe some of the criticisms are well founded but then when this gets thrown in there: https://twitter.com/digitaltincan/status/952241589526646785

Oh I wouldn't bother responding directly to an old tweet. As to getting blocked if I respond - see if I care.

AoD

Oh... I wasted too much of my time with her in an extensive “debate” and ended up blocking her when she made it clear that she wouldn’t accept demonstrable facts, studies and similar examples in other cities and just kept ranting on anyway despite being proven wrong. Some people have their mind made up and can’t be reasoned with.

 

[SunriseChampion]

6 million people though. That's a lot of people. Like way more than those selfish 65000.

Are you guys sure that was a real person on the other end of that Twitter account? Can't be real. That's some Russian bot-type shit right there.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

According to CPTDB, the 503 will be streetcars next board AND run midday as well as the usual rush hour service.

Any insights about how much this will increase the peak carrying capacity of the 504? The additional capacity is key for us to understand how much unmet demand there is in the pilot area; we need to throw as much capacity at this as possible.

However, this does such for 504 and 505 commuters that are losing their streetcars.

 

[TheTigerMaster]

The 505 and 506 won’t see streetcars return until 2019 at the earliest.

 

[TOareaFan]

Turns out Fred may not be here but he has company in opposing the streetcars

https://twitter.com/porchettaandco/status/952286926928715776

 

[nfitz]

The 505 and 506 won’t see streetcars return until 2019 at the earliest.

Says this week's plan.

 

[W. K. Lis]

From Toronto Metro, at this link:

Matt Elliott: Don’t let business complaints derail transit improvements on King Street
The pilot project is working for transit riders and that's what matters most.

Christopher Katsarov / The Canadian Press


Streetcar travel times are 33 per cent more reliable on King Street than they were before the transit-priority pilot launched, according to city data. Average vehicle travel times on most streets around King, meanwhile, have changed by less than a minute.

I got an email the other day from someone I’m working with on a project: “How quickly can you get to King and Spadina?” he asked.

It was one of those ridiculously cold days – walking or cycling would have been a bone-chilling mistake – but I knew I could count on the King streetcar to get me across town quickly.

“I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” I wrote back.

And I was.

That kind of reliability from the King car would have been unthinkable before the King Street transit pilot started in November, removing on-street parking and restricting vehicle movements. Back then, travel times were a terrible mystery. Getting from my place in Corktown to the Spadina area could have taken anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour.

The data suggests my experience is not an isolated one. According to city-collected statistics for November and December, streetcar travel times along King Street are faster and more reliability for everyone. Even better: peak ridership is up 25 per cent.

As a transit rider, I love what’s happening on King Street.

I feel like it’s important for me to say that because lately a lot of media stories about the pilot have been focusing less on the positive experiences of transit riders and more on the claims of local business owners who say the transit-first experiment has caused an apocalyptic drop in sales.

There is not yet independent data to confirm their claims. That will be coming soon, when the city releases data from payment processing company Moneris, comparing transaction activity along King with city-wide trends.

But even if that data does show some business decline, I won’t have any patience for calls to revert King Street back to its pre-pilot configuration. Nor will I accept any plan that calls for traffic restrictions to be time-limited — enforcing vehicle movements is hard enough as it is without adding further complexity to the rules.

The gain for transit riders is already too great to simply give up.

Instead, I’ll be looking to hear a rational explanation from the business community for why they think this change has impacted their sales.

It can’t be the loss of parking. Just 180 on-street parking spots were removed to make way for the pilot, hardly enough to make a serious dent in customer traffic. It’s not that cars have been banned altogether from King Street either, because they obviously haven’t been.

The only credible theory I’ve heard yet for why businesses might be suffering as a direct result of the transit pilot is the one that says confusion over the changes may have resulted in some people avoiding King Street altogether.

If that’s the case, that means the problem is messaging. And you don’t solve a messaging problem by making transit service worse for thousands of people. You solve a messaging problem with better messaging.

Mayor John Tory and staff at city hall have done their part — maybe to excess. Parking discounts are available at nearby lots. Warming centres and on-street art installations are coming. City-led campaigns to promote restaurants have been announced. Some restaurant and business owners, on the other hand, have been complaining since week one.

Unlike the streetcar, their positive messaging about the new King Street has been slow to arrive.