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I have to agree, the replacement bus service has been much faster than the 501 streetcar and i'll give an example:

This morning my travel time from around Kipling and Lakeshore to Queen and Bay was about 50 mins during the rush hour (around 7:30am). A similar trip with the streetcar would have easily taken at least 1 hour and 15 minutes. In terms of the replacement buses, the TTC does a poor job at managing them, but then again what's really new. There have been several times I see 4 buses travel in a pack outside of the downtown core for reasons beyond me. I've also been on buses where transit control will tell a bus to sit and wait for 10 minutes, only for another bus to pass and for the two of them to travel in a pack. But overall, bus service has definitely been faster compared to streetcars

A couple observations on the bus vs. streetcar argument Michael Ford wants to start up:

1) The TTC does at good job a crippling streetcar service, some of which are well documented. The switch issue is part of it but I wont pass 100% of the blame on them. Other things they do to mess with service involve: placing speed restrictions across intersections without switches, poor route management, and recovery and run time issues.

2) Transportation Services cripples streetcar service with the lack of transit priority signaling on routes such as Spadina, and St. Clair West. This city talks a big game about transit and bikes, but yet they continue to prioritize single occupant vehicles over vehicles which can carry in excess of 200 passengers.

He knows very little about how streetcar service is in this city, all he's really doing is drumming up the old Ford "let's tear up streetcar tracks" without having the actual facts in hand.
 
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W. K. Lis said:
See Steve Munro's
Comparison of Streetcar and Bus Operations on 501 Queen
at this link.

CC to Councillor Michael Ford, et al at City Hall.
Click to expand...
As I said earlier....
Admiral Beez said:
For the past few years I've been driving in on Queen from Coxwell to River, nearly every weekday morning at around 8am. And I have to say, with the 501 streetcar converted to buses, holy mother the traffic moves soo.... much faster. There are many more buses than streetcars, but they naturally stick to the right, cars pass on the left, and with rush hour parking bans in place, I got from Coxwell to River this morning in about half the usual time.
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IMO, as they tear up and replace the tracks, they should move them to the curb lane, accommodate bike lanes and eliminate parking, moving cars to the two middle lanes.
 
W. K. Lis said:
In total, 65 buses are replacing 27 streetcars from the Neville Loop in the east end to the Long Branch loop in Etobicoke. Which means the buses are much more expensive because they have to use more drivers and more fuel. From link.

At least, they're air-conditioned.
Click to expand...
That's a lie. CBC should have done better with the numbers. The 501 operated with 33 ALRVs and 7 CLRVs (former 507) before buses were introduced.

The 501 was better with buses to Dufferin than right now. Often after rush hour, there 20+ minute gaps on Lake Shore in Etobicoke cause they are either suck in the west end or east end. Buses isn't making it better. The eastbound to westbound ratio (or vice versa) is often 3:1 or 4:1. There's just enough buses to make it not seem like a big problem.

I do agree buses run faster than streetcars.
 
I don't think the TTC has enough bus capacity to operate the 501 for most of the year. The only reason they can do it now is they run less service in the summer.

Replacing streetcars with buses would probably also require two new bus divisions to be established somewhere.
 
Streetcars get a bad rap in this city because the TTC fails to use them as heavy duty and rapid transit. They should get full signal priority on all streets but which they run. They need to fix the idiotic policies of making streetcars go slowly through interestions stopping and waiting at green traffic lights for no reason. They need to operate quickly and swiftly, especially on the routes within a ROW. The city also needs to drop many stops to improve service. Especially on St. Clair and Spadina. Make them surfaces subways. They could do a much better job of transporting people around but they are stuck in slow-mode. This is why people prefer buses. They are less comfortable a ride but they are faster. TTC continues to ignore the speed of travel at its peril.
 
lead82 said:
Streetcars get a bad rap in this city because the TTC fails to use them as heavy duty and rapid transit. They should get full signal priority on all streets but which they run. They need to fix the idiotic policies of making streetcars go slowly through interestions stopping and waiting at green traffic lights for no reason. They need to operate quickly and swiftly, especially on the routes within a ROW. The city also needs to drop many stops to improve service. Especially on St. Clair and Spadina. Make them surfaces subways. They could do a much better job of transporting people around but they are stuck in slow-mode. This is why people prefer buses. They are less comfortable a ride but they are faster. TTC continues to ignore the speed of travel at its peril.
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They is a reason why the go slowly through intersections. The track switches weren't designed for high speed which wears them out or can cause derailment. TTC hasn't got cash to replace the design to modern technology. The LRT lines won't be using them either. For ROW, they fear cars will make illegal left turns in front of the streetcar. They rather have less damage than to improve speeds. I'm worried that TTC will implement the same thing on the LRT lines
 
Steve X said:
For ROW, they fear cars will make illegal left turns in front of the streetcar. They rather have less damage than to improve speeds. I'm worried that TTC will implement the same thing on the LRT lines
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Which in itself is a ridiculous reason and excuse. With that same logic that they have, they should run buses through all intersections of the city at 10km/h because of cars making illegal left turns and smashing into them.
 
Amare said:
Which in itself is a ridiculous reason and excuse. With that same logic that they have, they should run buses through all intersections of the city at 10km/h because of cars making illegal left turns and smashing into them.
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You have to understand drivers are usually not aware of traffic going in the same direction as them when they are making left turns as normally there is no same direction traffic there on a non-ROW street. Everyone observes on coming traffic as it's in their sight. Buses don't run to the left of cars in the left turning lane (except VIVA rapidways). It's not the same thing. These accident usually happen with drivers that are unfamiliar with the area as they are distracted by reading road signs, checking GPS and misreading the green through signal as the left turn signal and not realizing there is a separate set of lights for left turns. When the Spadina streetcar started in 1997, that route suffer many more collisions than other routes.

Of course no cities beat Houston's LRT crashes:
 
In Ontario (or at least in Toronto), I still have to see the no left turn on red arrow signal.

light.png
 
501 buses are the best thing ever for HBS. They are frequent, quick and my commute is 30 mins door to door.

TV interviews on CP24 are showing a strong preference for the bus.
 
Steve X said:
They is a reason why the go slowly through intersections. The track switches weren't designed for high speed which wears them out or can cause derailment.
Click to expand...

No matter how many times you say this, it's still not true.

Cars used to roll over and through them at traffic speed all the time until 15 years ago. What stopped that was the typical TTC knee-jerk reaction to two incidents involving careless operators.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
W. K. Lis said:
In total, 65 buses are replacing 27 streetcars from the Neville Loop in the east end to the Long Branch loop in Etobicoke. Which means the buses are much more expensive because they have to use more drivers and more fuel. From link.
Click to expand...

That's not correct. The 65 buses are replacing 27 streetcars (31 in the afternoon) and 23 buses, since there was no streetcar service west of Roncesvalles earlier this year. http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/ttc-service-summary-20170212.pdf

Before the new year, the TTC was running 40 streetcars at rush hour: http://transit.toronto.on.ca/archives/reports/ttc-service-summary-20161120.pdf.
 
smallspy said:
What stopped that was the typical TTC knee-jerk reaction to two incidents involving careless operators.
Click to expand...

Streetcars can't just plow through switches at full speed, no matter how well the TTC takes care of them. Nothing is 100% reliable, so they'd always have to slow down enough to check that the switch is actually gonna send the streetcar in the direction it needs to go.
 
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