Canadian Urbanism Uncovered
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photo by Kevin Steele
An often heard complaint about the TTC’s streetcar network is that some routes possess too many stops that are very close together. The argument goes that if you eliminate a few of these stops you could help improve the efficiency of the streetcar line as well as vehicular traffic. We want to know what Spacing readers think:
Should the TTC eliminate some streetcar stops?
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63 comments
I prefer commuting by Streetcar rather than subway… except there are too many stops. There’s very nearly a stop every block up Spadina where every second or third would suffice.
I’d say kill the Sunday stops. They’re often so close to regular stops that they just add to the bottlenecking. For example, on the 504 on Rocnesvalles, there’s a regular stop for Fern halfway between Wright and Fern, and a Sunday stop at Wright itself – about 100 feet away. Now, I understand that the Roncesvalles rebuild will include the elimination of the Sunday stops do to the curb bumpouts, and spacing will be done for the new Bombardier vehicles. I think this could be extended to the rest of the system.
I’m pregnant and every extra couple of feet counts. Please think about pregnant or disabled people who have trouble getting around.
In general I’d say “no” to this suggestion, but there is one stop that has always puzzled me. It’s the Victoria St. stop on the westbound 504 King line. When the car is packed and 80% of riders are waiting to get off at Yonge to connect with the subway, it is odd to stop only a few feet earlier at Victoria to let a handful more people on, who inevitably then block the doors when everyone tries to get off at Yonge. Why not eliminate that stop and let people instead walk that short distance to Yonge, where they can board into a nice empty car after the mass exodus?
A bit of an overly open-ended question, no? I mean, I’m in favour of reducing the number of stops, but get into the specifics of which stops and you might get a different answer.
For example, am I in favour of eliminating the Beaconsfield stop since there’s already one at the Gladstone and one at Dovercourt? Sure, but I suspect the Drake-going crowd would disagree.
It’s not just the streetcar stops, but also the bus stops.
Perhaps some of the Sunday-only streetcar stops could be eliminated, but one of the major features of any real transit system is that access to it be easy: making people walk more than a typical downtown Toronto block is not the way to encourage streetcar use!
Please, please please eliminate the Victoria stop (WB only, there’s no WB one for some reason) and the Simcoe St stops on the King route.
The Victoria stops on King (WB only), Queen and Dundas are questionable, though they are handy. During rush hour, if the route is congested, it is nice to be able to be let off here and walk 10 seconds to Yonge rather than crawl for 3 minutes up to the corner. Also, the stop at at King and Yonge there is not enough space for people to safely wait for the streetcar on the north-east corner.
If you want to really cut travel times. That should come from all door loading and giving operators more control over transit priority signals.
Now how about doing a poll on the infamous both-side-of-the-intersection stops on the bus network.
Perhaps. However, this is the least of the trouble with transit in this city, the greater part of which is not taking priority from private vehicles.
The fact that the 504 stops at Queen and Broadview (at Jilly’s), turn the corner and stops at the Green P 30m away has bugged me for some time. Not as much as the number of times I’ve been short turned, mind.
King Street is a prime example of too many stops, in some patches there’s a stop every block, it’s often faster to walk.
The Sunday stops are for churches, they aren’t a problem for one day of the week.
There might be a handful of stops that could be eliminated but I think the spacing is generally quite good.
As far as subway stops, we can do without Chester.
I think the real issue is that there has to be a standard for bus and streetcar stops, and they can vary tremendously regardless of context, both downtown and in the suburbs.
There are too many stops downtown, and I think this is because stops are never removed when things change – remember that there used to be a complex system of routing loops where many regular and “tripper” routes would terminate, partly explaining why Richmond, York and Adelaide all have old two-way trackage. Stops would be placed at all these track intersections, which were very close together. The Yonge, and later University-Bloor-Danfoth subways made most of these on-street loops obsolete.
The Sunday Stops correspond only to where churches are located (except some early-morning Sunday stops outside of subway loops when the subway is closed).
There’s lots of bus stops too that are not-standard, particularly when there’s no stop at the other direction. The 90 Vaughan Road has a bunch of these. Then there’s some intersections with both near and far side bus stops, and I haven’t been able to figure out why. The 29 Dufferin has two stops at Dufferin Mall, and loading northbound can be painfully slow when the bus stops twice for large crowds of people heading only as far as Bloor Street.
In Europe, bus stops are usually much farther apart, which does improve travel times. Then in Mexico, you just flag down buses at any intersection except in congested areas.
which I could think of at least a dozen streetcar stops that could be eliminated quite easily with minimal issues:
– Dundas and Chestnut (both directions)
– Dundas and Victoria
– King and Victoria (is WB only)
– Queen and Victoria (both directions)
– Queen and Simcoe (is WB only and really close to both University and McCalul))
– Queen and McCaul (particularly EB as the 502 doesn’t stop here either, I guess a case can be made for the WB stop)
– Queen and York
– Spadina at Richmond (NB only)
– Spadina at Sussex
– Consolidate Queen at Beaconsfield and Gladstone; they are close, and the Dufferin Jog project will see the 29 buses do straight north-south, making the Gladstone stop redundant for transfer purposes.
But for these obvious “easy pickings”, there’s, I’m sure more. Really, the TTC should develop standards where to put stops based on distance, transfers and trip generators, and review many of its stops. Perhaps there places where stops are needed now, and others where two stops could be consolidated into one, and where they could be moved to reflect the modern context. It’s much more complex than the simple poll suggests.
I voted no; keeping streetcars as a local service and using the subway and LRT for longer trips is the way to make transit an alternative for all trips. Also, once the new streetcars arrive with all-door boarding and no driver fare collection, dwell time at stops should be reduced dramatically.
Why does it take 20 minutes to get from St Clair W to St Clair? TOO MANY STOPS and no signal priority!!!
Maybe if signal priority was actually used then number of stops wouldn’t matter!!
There is a streetcar stop right at Bathhurst and Bloor.
It is not well signed as well as so close to the station. Redundant. And dangerous.
How about Tweedsmuir coming out of the St Clair station… going east.
Fewer stops makes for quicker service. Speed is far more important than the extra walk. This is also important for our bus network.
Eliminating some stops would be ideal from an operations point of view, but having worked for a transit authority it is an uphill battle since every person who has ever used the stop and has a limp will show up and cry a river of excuses to not have to walk an extra block. it is a frustrating problem. The approach we took was route by route looking at ridership, amenities (shelter, bench, etc), level of service on the route, and the demographics of the area (age, disability info from on-demand services, location near service centres – retirement homes, assisted living, etc). I would recommend a route by route approach. A broad policy will never work – either for practicality sake or getting buy-in from users
Bradley Wentworth: “I voted no; keeping streetcars as a local service and using the subway and LRT for longer trips is the way to make transit an alternative for all trips.”
Huh? There’s no subway under any of the streetcar routes, so how does that make any sense?
Sure, you can give me some complex routing to get me onto a subway, but it doesn’t make sense for many of the commutes in this city: think Parkdale to Cabbagetown. Now in a real city like Tokyo (NY…), most of the numerous train lines have both local and express options, but a real city has real transit: Toronto isn’t and doesn’t.
Eliminating stops would help the new streetcars function more like LRT and less like buses. Do it!
Hey! I work at Dundas and Chestnut! Don’t take my streetcar stop away! (OK, I rarely take the Dundas car, but it’s a 2-block hike to either Bay or University.)
On a less selfish level, the Elizabeth St. terminal of the coach station lets out on Chestnut, and there are a lot of people hauling heavy luggage who probably appreciate having a streetcar stop there.
Fewer stops would certainly benefit the health of those who get too little exercise.
I voted yes, but I wish there had been a choice: “It depends”, because that’s the case. On some bus lines, there are also weird stops. For instance, the Bay bus southbound stops at Elm, then one block south at Dundas and Bay. I’d split the difference and have one stop in front of the bus terminal.
Yes, absolutely. Toronto has the closest spaced stops for transit in any city that I have visited anywhere. This is partially what makes the TTC surface routes brutally slow! People complain about the extra walk, but people here are just way too lazy. Downtown stops should be 250-300m apart for surface, and 600 – 750m. Closely spaced stops are good for small compact cities with light traffic. In Toronto, with it’s slow boarding system, each stop wastes almost a minute. That’s why a 5 minute trip such as one from St Clair W to St Clair takes 15-20 minutes. Extra stops cause the vehicles to go slowly and end up getting stuck at more red lights.
On one hand, I say why reduce stops in order to improve traffic flow (don’t we want fewer cars?), and the comment by the pregnant lady about disabled people etc. is important to consider. On the other hand, I really believe that the main pillar in any effort to get more people using transit is to make them WANT to use it. It should be MORE convenient than driving, and if taking the streetcar takes twice as long than driving, why bother? Extend that thought to buses and the suburbs. It has to be made MORE attractive to use transit. All of these things have to be part of a larger plan, and I don’t really see one at the moment.
There are so many problems with the slow surface routes – numerous stops are only a small part of the problem. What happens at the stops is more of an issue – how many doors can people board at, do they have to slowly pay one at a time, is the streetcar sitting there during a green light only to hit a red as soon as it is ready to depart, etc. All those stops would hardly matter as much if you could board as quickly as on a subway and the light was passed before hitting the platform. Focus on these issues in the design of the new cars and whenever tracks are rehabilitated and then we can talk stops.
However, dropping some stops would certainly send a strong signal that the TTC is serious about treating the streetcar lines as real transit. (Putting them on the maps wouldn’t hurt either.) For what it’s worth, I believe very strongly in learning from examples already proven elsewhere. Since it is not really fair to compare a dedicated ROW type LRT line to a TTC streetcar line, I’d like to know what the typical stop spacing is on these peer systems who run in mixed traffic but have to focus on speed and efficiency in order to move a lot of people:
– Melbourne trams
– SEPTA Route 100/101
– any European tram in a city that does not have a metro line
The stop spacing on these other systems would also be good to know as a counterpoint, since they would be the opposite of a system that is supposed to move people fast. These are intended as tourist, heritage or development routes and quite ponderous by design. If the TTC is matching their stop spacing then we have a problem:
– Portland Streetcar (not TriMet)
– SF Muni F Market line
– Tampa TECO line
– New Orleans St. Charles line
– SEPTA Route 15
Sounds like a good research project for a class of high schoolers armed with Google Maps…
I’ll go one further and suggest that some stops on the Bloor-Danforth line should also be removed. Yonge and Spadina don’t just move commuters within their vicinity quickly, but also move park and ride commuters as well. With their well spaced stations, one can transfer from the 401 to the subway at Yorkdale or York Mills and it is like traveling on a suburban arterial (60km/h, stopping once every kilometer or so).
Besides the fact that every station looks the same, the B-D line stops WAY too frequently outside of Downtown Toronto. Most metros see stations every 1000 meters give or take outside of the CBD, but the B-D has stop spacing approximately every 650 meters give or take between Jane and Greenwood. This makes a park and ride connection for those coming from south Mississauga, Oakville, or south Scarborough less attractive and are more likely to drive into downtown than take transit.
Good grief. I can’t believe this is even up for discussion.
Let’s focus on the bigger picture regarding why TTC service is so poor. Eliminating stops will only hurt those who are most vulnerable – the elderly, the disabled and lower income urban families… – folks who have no choice but to rely on affordable transportation to live their lives.
I realize waiting for rush hour streetcars downtown can be annoying – watching four King streetcars pass by completely full at 8:30am(grrr!), or waiting forever before a handful of empty cars finally show up(Queen Car, I’m thinking of you) – but keep your problems in perspective and take a step back – think about what is best for Toronto’s future growth(for everyone)!
Instead of eliminating sorely needed streetcar stops we need to be looking at long term ways to increase efficiency: TTC signal right of way priority, increasing funding for public transit, and reducing the number of cars on the road during rush hour, as well as other options to improve service – above all, we need to stand together in calling for building sustainable infrastructure for ALL.
Are you serious?! Precisely the /problem/ with the subway extensions in recent decades and the Sheppard line is that the stops are too far apart to sustain any sort of continuous, vibrant development up at street level. Parallel bus service is needed on Sheppard because unless you happen to want to go somewhere exactly at a stop, you will have to walk too far.
Besides, it’s not the TTC’s job to cater to customers wanting a quick ride into downtown from the edge of suburbia. That’s GO’s job, and they do it reasonably well.
I don’t understand Sunday stops. What is their purpose?
Someone said it earlier: churches. Sunday stops are always near churches.
Where to start? I am not going to reply to this entire thread, but a few observations are in order.
First, as other have noted, this is NOT just a problem on the streetcar system, although it is often portrayed as a “downtown” problem. I was amazed on a recent tour around the bus routes that will become Transit City lines just how closely spaced many stops are.
Second, yes, there are a few that are ridiculously close together and some are remnants of old route patterns and/or loading demands. King westbound at Victoria won’t be missed, nor Queen westbound at Simcoe. York Street bothways on Queen should vanish too, if only so that streetcars would not always miss the light by stopping here. Victoria and Dundas is a leftover and should be eliminated, again to avoid problems with the light timings between Church and Yonge.
After that, it starts getting trickier. The Sunday stops on Ronces will disappear with the street’s reconstruction in 2010. They are a lovely remnant of days when churchgoing was an important part of the city, but in any event they are only in use on Sunday, not during peak periods when everyone is bent out of shape about having a fast trip.
The northbound stop on Broadview at Queen was added for the night bus, but is also very well used by people transferring from westbound Queen cars to northbound King cars.
Complaints that close stops make transit slow need to remember that walking time to stops is part of the access time for transit. There’s a tradeoff here.
While we are eliminating subway stops, be sure to get out and campaign for a Council seat in whatever ward holds your favourite unnecessary stop. Be sure to start at Bessarion which handles under 1,000 a day. You could probably drop Leslie and maybe even Bayview while you’re at it if all you care about is a fast trip. Let those going to North York General or the new housing use the Sheppard Bus. On Yonge, Summerhill is tempting, but density is going up and there’s that little railway station upstairs.
I really get tired of how often this issue pops up in various fora as it is a miniscule part of a much larger problem of stop service time, fare collection, signal priority and service design.
Sunday stops are mostly near churches.
Spadina does have way too many stops. Even after the streetcar right-of-way was put in its often still faster to take the Bathurst car because of it.
I don’t find St. Clair West to St. Clair to be too bad though, its never taken me 20 minutes. It was worse before the right of way when the streetcars always had to wait behind left-turning traffic.
If only streetcars could pass each other. In which case, my answer would be No… just have express streetcars (like we have express bus routes which only hit major streets).
Yes, please eliminate all streetcar stops except the ones I use.
Sarcasm aside, I think most people are right in saying that although it might make streetcars faster, it would be one hell of a battle to remove any individual stop, and there are other ways to make streetcars faster.
Personally, I don’t use them almost ever, so I didn’t vote.
There are certainly some stops (both bus and steetcar) which should go – King/Victoria being a good example in my neighbourhood – but there are also some new stops needed. A stop at King and George, at least eastbound, for students at George Brown would be a useful addition since many students use the King streetcar and now get off west of Jarvis.
There are also some Sunday stops which seem to have lasted longer than the churches they once served. An example is westbound College east of University. (This stop may also have been for Sunday hospital visitors at TGH, now MARS.) The TTC should take a careful look at ALL its stops.
@Electric Landlady – except then you’re hauling that luggage up the non-accessible streetcar steps!
to know this is obvious, but streetcars only stop when somebody wants to get on or off, unlike a subway that stops at every stop every time. for this reason, it’s fine with me for streetcars to have lots of marked stops available. the unneeded ones will simply go unused.
My frustration this morning was with the streetcar driver extending loading time significantly with his hectoring calls to “move back” in order to try to jam a few more people onto an already crowded Spadina car. As someone next to me noted, they could probably squeeze a few more people into the aisle at the back if they gave us something to hang on to. It amazes me that Ontario has maximum occupancy laws for patios, but streetcars are allowed to pack people in like sardines.
Of course, if the drivers would focus on staying on schedule, people wouldn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes for the next one.
All in all I like streetcars though, especially with a ROW. I like seeing the neighborhoods I’m passing through.
Sunday stops wont really make a difference as traffic is lighter on Sunday anyway.
I think that accessibility for all citizens is something that spacings younger posters might not appreciate yet.
My 82 year-old mother with a bad hip who takes the TTC everywhere would certainly not be in favour of eliminating streetcar stops. Sure, when you’re 25 and in good health walking an extra block is no big deal, but when you’re elderly or have some physical disability (anything from a bad knee to major injury) which makes extended periods of walking difficult and/or painful, you appreciate that the streetcar stops are relatively close together, especially on commercial streets where people go shopping.
As for elminating stops on the Bloor-Danforth Subway to speed up travel, compare the travel time between Yonge and Coxwell, and between Yonge and Don Mills on the Sheppard Subway, which is approximately the same distance, but has fewer stops. I haven’t ridden this myself, but someone posted on a list a few years ago that the difference was negligible.
There’s a lot of comments here… I just wanted to say that I’ve never even thought about there being too few/ too many streetcar stops. Having thought about it now, it’s still kind of a ‘non-issue’ for me.
And don’t forget that 50% of the time, the street car has to stop at these intersectons anyway to wait for a red light. Might as well let people on and off while you’re stopped. Operator controlled transit-priority signals and headway-based scheduling is the way to go IMHO.
If people are actually disabled, they can’t use streetcars anyways. Wheeltrans exists – use it.
The disabled can’t use the subway either, since there are so very few stations with elevators (something I’ve always thought is a huge injustice). Streetcars can’t be designed for pregnant women or 80 year olds with bad hips. The design challenge destroys the entire purpose of transit.
I do love how this thread has devolved into a ridiculous stereotype of leftist concern “women, diabled, poor people will be hardest hit by this”. This is beyond cliche.
Make transit usable by the vast majority of the population, and get the disabled on to Wheeltrans. Hell have the TTC PAY for cabs for pregnant women and 80 year olds with bad hips – it would be far cheaper than hampering the system to cater for them. Plus, what about the pregnant 80 year old with bad hips who lives 5 blocks off of Bloor. How are we getting her to the streetcar? Should we extend a loop to her front door?
I can walk faster than the King streetcar between Bathurst and Yonge. I can bike faster than traffic, never mind poky streetcars, on Queen between Vic Park and the Don. The Queen streetcar from Woodbine to Yonge takes an hour outside of the rush. It takes 10 minutes at most to drive in the same period.
What we need are subways. Queen subway, Eglinton, Jane, Woodbine, Vic Park, St. Clair, Sheppard, maybe Bayview. Use buses elsewhere and get rid of streetcars.
Its too bad when folks like Reality Check have a somewhat decent point to make yet stoop to dismissive and derogatory comments, and add outright lies like it taking 1 hour from Woodbine to Yonge, to make their case.
Sure, but good stop spacing is only a small part of what can be done to speed up streetcar service.
Other tasks:
1. Space streetcars by headways, not a lunatic schedule. Right now, a streetcar driver is penalized for running fast even if there hasn’t been another vehicle in 45 minutes. Traffic delays are built into schedule, and streetcars are forced to run slow even when there is no traffic.
Instead, operators should try to run a certain time behind the previous vehicle — say 5 minutes — and not bother with fixed schedules at all. Frequent service oriented towards vehicle spacing rather than absolute time is the way to go.
2. All door loading + POP fare system.
3. Signal priority.
4. Ban car left turns downtown.
This is by far one of my biggest beefs with the TTC and indeed the problem seems most acute on the legacy streetcar lines.
I think Sean Marshall has it right when he argues that there are some historical reasons for the number of stops, but that the TTC simply has not rationalized the number of stops as things have changed (and yes, a lot of this probably has to do with being too afraid to “take away” something from somebody as people will cause a stink about this). I asked Giambrone about this at Doors Open a few years back and he made it clear that there’s zero plan or appetite for the TTC to remove any existing stops.
Basically, we need to think of our streetcars as “higher order transit.” Not subways and not busses on steel wheels. However, something in the middle with stops at roughly regular distances and where transfer/generator reasons warrant it. I’ve done a fair amount of travelling and I’ve seriously never seens stop-spacing as close together as we have in our downtown. Once our new rolling stock is delivered we’ll have cases where the front of the vehicle is at one stop and the back at another!
Still, we haven’t even learned our lessons as both the new(er) Spadina and St. Clair lines are saddled with too many stops as well. It’s reasons like this why some are very dubiuos about Transit City offering something truly better.
Let’s look at the 501 Queen as one example. Through the downtown core (let’s say Bathurst to the Don Valley) there are 21 stops (not including Sunday stops). This is nuts and slows down what will already be an incredibly slow experience (as we operate these vehicles in mixed traffic). At most, Bathurst to Don Valley could be serviced with 14 stops.
Oh, and another thing.
5. Automate all switches so streetcars can turn in 10 seconds rather 5 minutes. For example the College to Bathurst switch is used all the time despite being manual. Also, fix them all up, so streetcars can go through switches at full speeds.
@Reality Check: Streetcars can’t be designed for pregnant women or 80 year olds with bad hips. The design challenge destroys the entire purpose of transit.
Oh really? Please explain.
On a more constructive note… I’m definitely of the school that says stop spacing is a pretty insignificant contribution to transit speed. If it’s rush hour, nobody’s moving fast anyway, and the streetcars are stop and go like the rest of the traffic; why not stop and pick up/drop off passengers? And as mkm pointed out, the driver only needs to stop if passengers want to get on or off the streetcar; at other times, the streetcar can just blow right by.
Leo (and perhaps others) note what would likely be a much bigger fix: all door loading. The Carlton car goes through as many as three cycles of the traffic signal while loading people from the subway. In European cities, this would take less than a minute.
Just wanted to make a comment about ‘Reality Check’s’ argument: “Make transit usable by the vast majority of the population, and get the disabled on to Wheeltrans.” In Jan Gehl’s book Life Between Buildings, he basically argues the exact opposite: make public space (including transit) usable for those with mobility issues (disabled, elderly, strollers, etc.) and the public space will be more enjoyable for everyone – no one really like to climb stairs, walk on uneven surfaces, etc.
Besides, I like people (that’s why I live in the city), and I wouldn’t want lots of people forced to take ‘Wheeltrans’ or anything like that – I’d never see/encounter/chat with them.
Is this the same “Reality Check” that always posting about fiscal restraint here — giving us dreamers a “reality check” — yet here he/she wants more subways everywhere. Who pays, reality check? The tax and spend mayor? Long live the mayor, down with the mayor!
Good to see Reality Check is thru the looking glass and his/her rhetoric will be respected as such.
I concur with others that the number of stops is not the real problem with the TTC, but distracts from the big issues.
Just one small example – why does a streetcar with 60 people have to wait for 4 cars with one person each to make a left turn – why couldn’t the streetcar always have the priority over cars?
“Are you serious?! Precisely the /problem/ with the subway extensions in recent decades and the Sheppard line is that the stops are too far apart to sustain any sort of continuous, vibrant development up at street level. Parallel bus service is needed on Sheppard because unless you happen to want to go somewhere exactly at a stop, you will have to walk too far.
Besides, it’s not the TTC’s job to cater to customers wanting a quick ride into downtown from the edge of suburbia. That’s GO’s job, and they do it reasonably well.
Comment by Ian ”
1. Really? Yonge between Sheppard and Finch has seen quite a bit of sustainable development with the North York Center station constructed. This stop spacing (1km/half city block) allows for fast service outside of the CBD while still providing enough transit for most local needs.
Actually, looking at the increased urban density and form, this area is far more worthy of tighter spacing (700m) with an additional stop at Churchill than most places along the B-D line.
2. Funny how I never mentioned Sheppard Ave, only Bloor-Danforth. The Sheppard line was a mistake, but since you brought it up I’ll share my thoughts on its spacing. The only place where there should be a stop is Willowdale Ave. Between Bayview and Don Mills, the stops are far enough part not to slow down service, while close enough that you can walk to destinations in between.
Bessarion could go, but it would make the walk between Bayview and Leslie quite tedious – though there isn’t much in between anyways…
3. I believe an effective rapid transit system both shuttles people into the downtown and inner city, and allows people to get around the downtown quickly and efficiently. MANY subway systems extend beyond the CBD and environs and into the outer suburbs, all while providing quality inner city service. Boston, Chicago, Washington, London, and Madrid are all great examples of systems that extend beyond the city limits and into surrounding municipalities and counties. The TTC also runs several commuter lots, which shows they expect some people to commute by car from far distances to the train, and then into the city.
But I am not talking about extending, I’m talking about removing unnecessary stops to make travel faster through lower and moderate density areas. These are the stops that imo could go on the line:
*Old Mill
*High Park
*Landsdowne
*Christie
*Castle Frank
*Chester
*Donlands
GO is great for getting into downtown during the rush hour, however if someone from say Port Credit wants to go downtown on a weekend for a sporting event, concert, carnival, parade, etc. it would be faster to simply drive into downtown than to park at Kipling because of the frequent stops. Myself coming from the north, rush hour or not it is faster and more efficient to drive to Yorkdale and take the train from there.
Ben is not being totally unreasonable — in Manhattan and Brooklyn there are a half dozen stops there were eliminated by the MTA and PATH for reasons of efficiency and stop spacing over the last 75 years. No one misses West 90th St or Sixth Ave-18th St. However, in an era with scant resources it probably is best to focus on adding service rather than closing stations.
yes – by 50% (and the bus stops as well). less bus shelters (+less ads), less “next bus” screens etc. faster service
I just cannot believe that people like ‘Reality Check’ are out there. Seriously, do you really believe in ‘separate but equal’? This is basically what you are saying with reference to your comments about getting disabled people onto Wheel-Trans. Hell, have you ever used Wheel-Trans? It is not a service you would wish on anyone. It requires you to completely schedule your life to the minute and then wait 45 minutes when the service is late. No last minute changes in schedule for you.
Further, I regularly travel on streetcars with a person with a disability, it is not impossible, and it is their right to use the service that they pay taxes for. Your comment comes from the misconstrued idea that all people with disabilities use wheel-chairs, a completely inaccurate idea.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THIS CITY is an equal member of the community. We are all citizens and are equal, and all services should be accessible to everyone. The TTC is moving (though slowly) in this direction and it should continue to do so. Eliminating stops would only limit their ability to reach the goal of true accessibility, and as Steve Munro said, it would reduce access to the system for everyone.
BTW Castle Frank is at a high school where the vast majority of students come by transit, so it is a well used station at times.
I think some stops can certainly be eliminated, and we should look into it. I echo Steve Munro’s comments, though, that this is not just a streetcar or a “downtown” problem. A full rationalization of Toronto’s stop arrangements would probably do us good.
But lest you think that Toronto’s too generous with the stop spacing, you should check out Des Moines, where I happened to be visiting the other day. There was one stretch north from the Zoo where the Des Moines and Region Transit authority (DART) had placed bus stops at _every_ _second_ _lamppost_.
I couldn’t believe it. And the bus route was operating at a thirty minute frequency, at best. Why so many? But we were near a health clinic campus with a lot of exists, and so perhaps the agency wanted to minimize the amount of walking their patients had to do.
Please offer express lines/streets with less stops. I keep thinking of the B-line buses in Vancouver – they worked really well.
King Street = Express
Queen Street = Normal
“Ban car left turns downtown.”
Why not introduce hook-turns like we have in Melbourne? Basically all turns would be made from the right lane. To make a left turn, you would pull over to the right and wait for a green light in the side street to complete your turn.
Teaching drivers a new technical manoeuvre would require a public education programme and many mouths warning, but would the benefit outweigh the cost?
And how about introducing other rules such as fairways and having left turn phases triggered by streetcars. The idea would be like this, if a car is waiting at a red light and there is a streetcar behind it, when the light turns green, a green arrow is displayed (with opposing traffic still waiting at a red light) so that if the car is turning left, they can clear the tracks without delaying the streetcar. We have this system here in Melbourne.
As for stop spacing, this is a common complaint here in Melbourne. Yes there are some ridiculously close stops, but I think 250 metres in conjunction with request stopping is fine.