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Left work at 5:40 today. Walked along King from Spadina to Church before a Street car caught up with me. It short turned a Church. Something has to be done.

I can't believe that the restaurant owners on King don't see the potential revenue gains from all the expanded partio space and pedestrial appeal that would come from closing a lane. I can see that doing it temporarily would confuse people, but it would also generate interest. I would also say that the city should be prepared to assist the local businesses in benefitting from the change: e.g. grant permission for exapanded patios, make sure that the street is appealing to pedestrians.
 
unimaginative2 said:
The alternating one-way streets seems to come more out of an anti-car mentality than any genuine effort to improve circulation. Why not make King into a continuous one way street, with one lane maintained for parking. That way the streetcar has its own ROW, and road access and on-street parking are maintained.
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The idea is there because they didn't want to completely close the street because that would block deliveries and drop-offs. By alternating directions every block or two that reduces the traffic to only those vehicles that need to be there. If the street is kept one way then streetcars going that one way would be stuck in traffic. If the streetcar tracks are raised into a ROW there would be no stopping or parking preventing deliveries and drop-offs again. The only other way to maintain streetcars on the street but avoiding traffic would be to move the streetcar tracks north or south a lane and leave the remaining two lanes for traffic and parking. The move isn't anti-car as much as it is anti-car slowing down transit.
 
Sorry, that's what I was talking about earlier. Two lanes on one side of the street would be reserved for streetcars running both ways. The other two lanes would be reserved for one-way automobile traffic. Off peak, one lane could be used for parking.
 
People raise the comparison with Calgary sometimes. Calgary's downtown is sleepy compared with Toronto's, and while there are some businesses on the LRT-dedicated streets, they seem not to do very well. Calgary *also* has a pedestrian-only zone downtown, the Stephen Avenue Mall. They have solved the problem with deliveries etc by allowing car traffic at certain times, specifically 6pm to 6am. I would suggest that King St. could be closed off to car traffic all the time except, say, during the day on weekdays, and in the early morning.
 
from munro's blog: http://stevemunro.ca/?p=7952

Simply reserving the streetcar lanes during any period of the day is unworkable if the curb lanes are not guaranteed to be free of taxi stands, parking and loading, not to mention construction occupancy arrangements for new condos. The effect on King will differ between the financial district (east of Yonge to Simcoe) and the entertainment district (Simcoe to west of Spadina), not to mention the Bathurst/Niagara condo district (Spadina to Shaw). A one-size-fits-all configuration is unlikely to work or be acceptable.
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i remember a ttc planner telling a town hall in parkdale (about the 2004-05 queen track reconstruction, no less) that right of way on either king or queen would be great in reducing traffic and increasing the efficiency of the streetcar, but like everything at the ttc, there was no money for it. i suppose he also meant a lack of political will. i spent years dreaming about it. and knowing it would never happen - i worked at the BIA at the time and the board expressed a whole heck of a lot of concern about customers, parking, and revenues lost.

now i'm not so sure. munro is right - barring accidents, king is actually not too bad in the morning. just insanely crowded. i usually take it up roncesvalles anyways, as it is slightly faster to go up to dundas west and take the subway over to yonge than it is to slog it all the way along king east to yonge.
 
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I completely understand the need to make whatever scheme is implemented time-limited, and Steve's right that a single lane of car traffic isn't really going to work. Furthermore, if you're just restricting cars to curb lanes you can't really say that you're improving the street in any other way than as a conduit for traffic.

That's why I'm holding out for an all-or-nothing scheme where drop-offs and deliveries can only be made in certain hours, and in other hours it is exclusively reserved for streetcars and pedestrians. I'd like to think that Toronto is ready for a pedestrian mall.
 
One thing that may be worth considering on either King or Queen would be to put up retractable bollards to restrict through traffic at certain times of the day. The street does not need to be closed to traffic entirely, as long as through traffic is rerouted, it should improve the performance of the streetcar significantly.

You will of course need to watch out for situations such as this:

[video=youtube;BWnfeDtnuds]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWnfeDtnuds[/video]
 
Or at least flexible bollards:
[video=youtube_share;6fxR1unKCJw]http://youtu.be/6fxR1unKCJw[/video]
 
z05Rwd9.png
 
The article I read said that King Street's streetcar track lanes are actually not allowed to be driven on by cars, but that it's just not enforced. I was not aware of this! Is there signage that says this?
 
khristopher said:
The article I read said that King Street's streetcar track lanes are actually not allowed to be driven on by cars, but that it's just not enforced. I was not aware of this! Is there signage that says this?
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Yes....6 hours a day (3 in the a.m. and 3 in the p.m.) driving in the streetcar lanes is illegal, parking is banned and left hand turns are banned. Not sure I have ever seen it enforced but there are signs for all of these restrictions.
 
TOareaFan said:
Yes....6 hours a day (3 in the a.m. and 3 in the p.m.) driving in the streetcar lanes is illegal, parking is banned and left hand turns are banned. Not sure I have ever seen it enforced but there are signs for all of these restrictions.
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No capisce English.
 
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