February 14, 2008
The Betterer Way
"The Better Way Gets Better," yesterday's TTC press release proclaimed, teasing the media for today's big announcement of service changes. And, really, it'd be hard to disagree.
As anticipated, today at the TTC's Arrow Road Garage, David Miller and Adam Giambrone announced a fleet of changes to the TTC's fleet of bus and streetcar routes, designed to decrease crowding and increase service across the system: 75 bus and the Queen, King, and Carlton streetcar routes are all getting increased service at various times. All of the changes––some of them drastic, and some of them minor––will be rolled out next week.
The complete, detailed list of changes can be found on the TTC's website. Steve Munro has done his usual TTC wizardry and condensed all of the information into a handy-dandy PDF chart. As Munro notes, "We must hope that this trend will continue into 2009 as the bus fleet builds up with new deliveries, as riding continues to grow, and as the city’s revenues are strong enough to support more transit improvements." For now, it's a start.
Photo by dzgnboy from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Countdown to fare increase...
They try so hard...
Woo hoo! I'll have to wait 45 seconds less for my King Streetcar in the early evening hours!
How about hiring drivers who actually stick to a schedule? Or better yet, getting rid of the damn streetcars, period?
Shit yeah, let's blame the drivers. Because no one in Toronto double parks on a streetcar route, car accidents never happen on surface transit routes. Nothing ever gets in the way of a bus or streetcar being on time, other than the drivers who drive too slow, sit around having coffee and donuts and don't care about you at all.
Doggiez: there are about a million things that could make the TTC late. But of course it's always those drivers, right? And getting rid of streetcars? What would be the point? Are buses any better than the streetcars that we have right now? Maybe if you posted a few, you know, facts.
Now we can look forward to 4 street cars in a minute instead of 3, followed by 20 minutes of waiting on Queen East.
@Mark0
I live almost next door to the Queen/Greenwood Car Yard. You are right that traffic 'can' slow things down so can 'double parking' (which I rarely witness on Queen and I ride everyday 2x)
You are wrong in assuming that Doggiez is incorrect in his statement... If said cars were in fact the only cause of street car delays, why do I constantly see 3-4 Queen cars leaving the Greenwood Car Yard at EXACTLY the same time?
Must have a lot of double parked 'drivers sitting around having coffee and donuts' in that yard :P Oh, you were talking about regular folk, not TTC drivers?
hurray 92 woodbine south!
Torontothegreat: I never meant to imply that the delays the TTC faces are NEVER the fault of drivers. The drivers can be at fault, but I simply tried to express the perfectly acceptable idea that there are other reasons that the TTC experiences delays. How would the TTC weed out the drivers that are making them late anyway? There's no truly effective way to do that and it's a ridiculous assertion. The only times I have seen 3 or 4 cars in a row has been during rush hour, which is entirely understandable.
The 'coffee and donuts' comment was meant to be sarcastic. Doggiez' statement suggests he/she thinks TTC drivers arbitrarily decide to be late and 'sitting around having coffee and donuts' just seemed like something someone would do to waste time. It wasn't a commentary on the habits of TTC drivers or regular folk.
How does any company handle workers who ignore protocol or aren't competent to do their jobs? Fire the a$$holes... Then again most of us don't have a mafioso style union looking after our backsides :P
That being said, I'm still not following your logic... So during peak periods (rush hour is the example you've given) it makes SENSE to send out 3-4 cars right after the other as opposed to staggering them every 5 minutes?
please explain...
I realize that incompetent workers can be fired. I was trying to make the point that there isn't really an effective way of screening potential new employees to weed out the slackers. It was a response to Doggiez' comment that the TTC should hire drivers that aren't slackers. No one goes to an interview and says "yeah, i'll probably just sit around at the station for about 10 minutes longer than i should."
I will concede that four streetcars in a row is excessive. Two in a row during rush hour is entirely understandable, even three on a REALLY, REALLY busy line, but that's pushing it. However, I've never actually seen this before. I don't live next to a streetcar yard, but I do live right on Queen Street and have never seen more than two cars pass by in quick succession.
Mark0:
I do not dispute your comments (which are not to be taken as fact, by the way), but is there ANYONE out there who has not seen three Queen streetcars in a row followed by, umm... NOTHING for 15 minutes! Great system, which, by the way, is the same in fair weather or foul. Yes, let's make the elderly and mothers with strollers stand outside in the cold for no necessary reason, shall we? Give mne a break, Mark0! If it's facts you want, ask a TTC driver what 'work to rule' means when it comes to scheduling, not helping people on and off the streetcar who are disabled or in need, etc.
A few friends of mine are veteran TTC drivers (specifically streetcar, not subway, 20 years plus, one approaching 25 years of service), and I respect their complaints about the public -- yes, cars double-parked, cars cutting off streetcars. The worst, by the way, is spitting at a driver, something no one should ever do, unless you want to lose your teeth. It is repulsive.
By the same token (pardon the pun), I have seen TTC drivers being complete and total shits, swearing at customers (which happened 10 minutes ago on the Queen eastbound at River), with the driver screeching a hearty 'Fuck you! You'll never ride on MY [WTF??? streetcar again, aieeeeee!" This behaviour makes the passengers feel really good about taking 'the better way' (does anyone say that anymore?)
By the way, did I say drivers late are 'sitting around having coffee and donuts'? No, I didn't. Don't be an arse.
Facts: Toronto is one of the only major North American cities to maintain functional streetcars. Let me explain. Many other cities now use buses and vintage streetcars (ah, the beautiful streetcars of the Forties!) on specific routes to please the tourists (New Orleans comes to mind, and before you say 'What about Buffalo?' well, they have a designated right-of-way and island for streetcars, having set them up correctly in the first place). Toronto should follow suit. Streetcars are old, and need to go. Keep a few for Harbourfront, the CN Tower, and other tourist areas, and grind the rest into scrap. The TTC should purchase hybrid buses in their place.
A theory Torontoist should explore: streetcars are heavy, and utterly destroy the roads with their tremendous weight. Perhaps one of the reasons the TTC doesn't want to get rid of them concerns the union: what will track repairmen do instead of fix tracks? Can they be deployed to other union jobs? ARE there other union jobs? How many TTC streetcar track repairmen are there? Are they governed by the same regulations as streetcar track repairmen (to my knowledge, they aren't).
As for the drivers, I don't want to paint them all with the same brush. Some are excellent, while others are jerks, plain and simple. As for the passengers, some are good, and some are jerks. It would be nice, however, to see a little more positive interaction with the public. It's not often you hear a driver actually say 'hello' back now, is it?
You quite obviously rarely ride the TTC then, especially on Queen. This is the most common complaint I hear about streetcars in general.
I totally agree with Doggiez, street cars are a thing of the past. Unless our city is willing to give 2nd priority to drivers (who btw, cost us more for SO many reasons, that's a totally other discussion) . There will always be the mess of streetcars not having designated laneways. At least buses can weave in and out of traffic if need be.
no kidding :P
but then again, people still get fired, so THESE particular people weed themselves out. My point is that TTC does NOT fire these people, their mafia-esque union maintains for them.
It's nice to see that the TTC is 'attempting' at resolving the issue, whether it be for PR (which I suspect it is) or other motivations. They seem to hear the yelling from the public, but still have a problem actually listening to it.
Doggiez: You implied that drivers make the vehicles run late. I was using an example of how they could possibly cause delays. Clearly not referencing anything you specifically said. A general comment about hiring drivers that stick to the schedule needs a bit of elaboration. How could one figure this out during the interview process? There's really nothing the TTC can do until there's an incident and a complaint about a driver.
As for 'work to rule', TTC employees aren't engaged in any job action right now, are they? They still deserve the right, though, as do any employees in any organization, to engage in job action. Not saying that they always strike or work to rule on solid grounds, or that work to rule is the right way to go about it, just that they deserve the right.
Also, I just wondered if you had some facts to back up your arguments, especially reasons to get rid of streetcars. The fact that they're heavy and destroy our infrastructure is a good argument. I totally agree and it's something I never really thought about.
Additionally, I'm curious to know what your opinion is of the TTC's plan to buy new 'Euro style' light rail vehicles? Better than streetcars or same product, different package? Myself, I like the idea (as with many TTC ideas), but I don't like the slow progress, the lack of funding, etc.
I really think the new rail vehicles could work, but the city needs to start making concessions to it's public to accomodate them, otherwise it WILL be a case of same product different package.
- streetcar only lanes, works really well on Spadina.
- car tax for vehicles incoming to 416 areas. Works well in London England and well would raise a TONNE of money for our ailing system.
You know I do feel bad for the TTC in some respects. They ARE extremely under-budgetted. Let's thank Mike Harris for that.
But hey, have you DRIVEN on those beautiful highways in North Bay? Worth it non? Millions of people a decade travel down those roads :P
Doggiez & ttg:
Replace streetcars with buses? Really?
But, unlike Toronto, all the North American cities that did that back in the 60's saw their transit ridership numbers drop dramatically...
In my view, that was in no small part because buses are jerky, loud, uncomfortable and relatively unreliable. Any attempt to read on a bus quickly ends with me feeling queasy, aided by being tossed around as the bus jerks along between lanes.
And buses are no less destructive of infrastructure than a streetcar on properly constructed & maintained track.
And do you really want to run all the extra buses we'd need to provide the same capacity? Running a greater number of vehicles isn't going to help much when the problem's a combination of congestion and poor schedule adherence.
mark0:
It's certainly not a slam on all TTC drivers, but there really are a number who don't even make an attempt to stick to schedule. This isn't entirely their fault; supervisors doing line management have essentially disappeared from the streets so noone's there making sure it all works.
Take a look at Steve Munro's analysis of the Queen streetcar (and others). Drivers are simply not starting their runs at the correct time.
My problem is this: Adam Giambrone said that they HAD to raise fares in order to prevent services from being cut, including the shutdown of the Shepard Subway Line... now just a few months later, he says that he has 20 million new dollars to spend on NEW service....
Now I am not opposed to expansion of the TTC. In fact, I would like to see the entire system uploaded to the province and see billions poured in. Lets have a real system, subways running everywhere, GO CRAZY WITH IT. Make is useful.
But, that hasn't happened. The city is supposed to be broke. Fares just rose because the city could not afford to keep operating the way it was before... but now, all of the sudden, they have money to add 75 more buses. Giambrone even said "this is the 20 million dollars of fare increases at work..." I didn't believe that their was a crisis before, and I don't believe there is one now. I believe this whole game was played out so that the city could raise taxes and fares on the backs of the cities residents, instead of finding their own inefficiencies to correct first.
malocite
Malocite: The city does have a budget problem. There is a 'financial crisis' in Toronto and it's partly because cities were forced to take on costs of social programs in the mid- and late-nineties. This added one hell of a financial burden to city budgets across the province.
Having said that, all of the rhetoric coming out of City Hall was hyped up to push the provincial government to give cities (specifically Toronto and even more specifically the TTC) more money. There is a problem, but the City is making it seem worse than it is in order to get the province to pay up.
@John Duncan
My opinion is based on the TTC's current situation.
I believe streetcars are the way to go, for many reasons, especially the environment.
However, that being said. Problems that occur with scheduling are most often caused (or at least blamed) on traffic.
As I said before, if the city had a mandate to make streetcar only lanes or forced a commuter tax (thus eliminating lots of traffic) then I think streetcars are 'the better way' Until this happens tho, logically we need vehicles that can maneouver through traffic, not get stuck in it.
Count me in on the "sell streetcars for scrap" ballot. People, sentimentalism should not be the basis of city planning. They're relics, they're inefficient, they're bloody stupid.
Hybrid buses. They're kinda environmentally friendly. The net impact on smog will be minimal.
Skippy - that must be why Dublin reintroduced streetcars 50 years after scrapping them, and they can't build them fast enough. The problem with Toronto's is that they aren't modular - Dublin's 30m long ones have already been upgraded to 40m and there's talk of 50m.
As for peak delays - until fines for traffic offences go to Toronto Police rather than the Province I can't see El Jefe Blair providing the necessarily draconian enforcement in downtown to keep the surface system moving adequately.
I'd like to see someone calculate the ACTUAL pollution counts relating to streetcars, including the emissions generated from cars stuck in traffic behind stalled streetcars; the pollution generated by massive trucks hauling rails, tar, concrete, wooden ties, and other supplies; and the pollution generated by TTC repair trucks with torches, propane, and other welding supplies, PLUS the pollution generated by the all too frequest mess generated when repairing tracks (tar fumes, welding smoke, soot, etc.) Funny how everyone in favour of streetcars gets their shorts in a knot whenever anyone talks about replacing these dinosaurs with hybrid buses, but the same pro-streetcar people never discuss the other environmental damages caused directly and indirectly by these cumbersome pieces of crap.
Accoring to this page the TTC loading standards are 60 passengers for a bus, 85 for an articulated bus (of which we dont have any), 75 for a CLRV (standard length streetcar) and 110 for an ALRV (articulated streetcar).
If I'm not mistaken the justification for streetcars is that the remaining lines are all very high demand and it wouldn't be feasable to run buses on the sorts of frequencies required to accomodate all those passengers.
Don't have any if thats just nonsense from the TTC, but I just thought that should be brought up.
I think that replacing the current streetcar routes with busses is a silly idea, you'd have a poorer level of service after that (less comfortable, likely more crowded). However, the current streetcar situation sucks -- too much auto traffic. The sensible thing to do would be to convert to light rail and have private-right-of-way operation for all these lines, whether that be centre-of-the-road-right-of-ways or tunnels. Queen might not need a subway, but it could sure be improved by simply tunnelling the streetcars underground through the downtown area.