An Exploration of Priority Signals and Streetcars.

Premier Doug Ford says that he expects that the long-delayed Eglinton Crosstown LRT could be open as soon as September, with plans to hand the line over to the TTC for final testing “in the next coupl...

Today was the first weekday of the King/Church construction diversions. I watch things evolve via NextBus through the morning peak, and then visited King/Spadina during the PM peak. A caveat: Mondays are light traffic days. There was no Gardiner backlog at all on Spadina. Later in the week will likely be more challenging. During the AM peak, the service on 504 King and 503 Kingston Road did not load properly, and many vehicles were clumped together. This took quite a while to unscramble, and there were big service gaps. The 504 buses also ran in packs and huddled together at Wolseley Loop, at one point six of them representing about 20 minutes worth of service at the scheduled headway. The peak period did not encounter queueing frequently at points where streetcars turn because of many wide service gaps. When a bunch of cars arrived, they queued one by one awaiting their turn, but then the intersections would open up again even though in theory there should always have been transit service waiting. In the PM peak at King/Spadina, the major sources of traffic were pedestrians, cyclists and transit in that order. I observed that the traffic signal cycle time was 110 seconds (1’50”). This means that there are 32.7 opportunities (3600/110) per hour for a turn to/from Spadina. The nature of the intersection is that only one streetcar can make the turn per cycle. The combined scheduled service trying to make the EtoN turn per hour at King & Spadina in the PM peak is 23 streetcars. Route| Headway| Cars/Hour ---|---|--- 503 Kingston Road| 8′| 7.5 504 King Car| 10′| 6.0 508 Lake Shore| 20′| 3.0 511 Bathurst Car| 9′| 6.5 Total| | 23 Stir in 12 510 Spadinas straight through northbound on a 5′ headway. When there is a 510 (or any other car) serving the farside NB stop it blocks any car waiting to turn off of King. In a 45 minute visit, I saw this happen four times, and one car missed two turning opportunities because of closely-spaced Spadina cars blocking the stop. Depending on arrival times and bunching, more vehicles can queue up here than there are cycles to accommodate them. This was under probably the best general traffic conditions we will see. There were traffic wardens, but they left just before 5pm. The biggest problem was pedestrians blocking turning streetcars which do not have a protected turn phase EB on King. There is a WB advanced green because autos are forced to turn off King here, but there is no advanced green for eastbound streetcars. The large volume of riders transferring from eastbound streetcars to buses adds to the already substantial pedestrian volumes at this intersection. The Traffic Wardens did not reliably ensure that streetcars got “first dibs” on turning, and after they left, pedestrian interference became worse. I boarded a 504 King eastbound at about 5:10. There was congested traffic over the route across to Church especially on Adelaide and it took over 15 minutes to get from York to Church. Some people complain about space “wasted” by bike lanes, but it was the left turn lane that was almost always empty. Some traffic used it to scoot around stopped streetcars! The severe congestion can be seen in the TransSee maps of service for 504 King and 503 Kingston Road below. The tracking lines for the diversion area are almost horizontal for an extended period. Note that the problem is mainly eastbound (lines reading bottom to top). Tracking data for routes 503 and 504, May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca. I rode a King car east from Spadina and it took a very long time to emerge from the diversion. The car went from 6 minutes early at King on Spadina to 11 minutes late at Queen and Church. Note the length of time spent approaching King and Spadina inching along the street about one carlength at a time. Other locations where the car crept along are also clear in the tracking data. Tracking data for car 4634. Source TransSee.ca. Among the problems enroute were: * Congestion on Queen thanks to stopped vehicles and construction in the curb lanes. * Autos infilling Adelaide Street eastbound leaving no room for a streetcar to merge from York Street onto Adelaide. We were eventually rescued by a Traffic Warden. * Extremely slow progress across Adelaide thanks to a traffic backlog from Church Street. * Extremely slow progress on Church Street thanks to a traffic backlog from Queen Street. My car actually fouled the Church/Adelaide intersection as it was unable to complete the EtoN turn in more than one traffic signal cycle. Ridership on the car was very light and most people got off when the car turned off King onto Spadina. They transferred to the King shuttle buses which were running irregularly and often bunched. These buses were also trapped in the traffic queue eastbound to Spadina of streetcars waiting to turn. (In the chart below, the size of the dot represents the degree of crowding on the vehicle. Tracking data for 504C and 504D shuttle buses May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca. For those who want to watch the wandering streetcars and buses on NextBus, here is a link. This will open a combined display of routes 501, 503, 504, 510 and 511. The map can be scaled to zoom in to the area of interest. Displays of operating charts on transsee.ca are free for TTC streetcar routes. Over coming days I will keep an eye on service performance over the diversion, and once a few weeks’ data have accumulated will delve into the details. ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Like Loading...

Major changes are coming to downtown streetcar routes on May 11 with the next schedule change. This will accommodate a combination of water main replacement, track reconstruction and streetcar overhead upgrades mainly at King and Church. Work is expected to require diversions until the October schedule change on Thanksgiving weekend. The TTC has not yet issued the details from which I would build the usual service change article, but the effects of work an King and Church have been known for some time through the Annual Service Plan and through a City report on the project. (The original report and recommendations were amended at the recent Council meeting to lessen the effect of various proposed lane closures.) Service levels have been published via the electronic version of schedules used by trip planning apps. The information about vehicles/hour at various locations is taken from those schedules. (As an aside, the TTC website has still not been updated to include the 2025 Service Plan even though it was approved by the Board in January.) With the concentration of transit service through various intersections, and the added complexity that most vehicles will make turns at these locations, there simply will not be enough capacity even under ideal conditions. It is no secret that “ideal” is a word rarely appropriate for transit operations downtown thanks to the lack of robust traffic management and real transit priority. In past years, the diversion of services from King Street around the TIFF street fair created problems for transit travel times and reliability, but this lasted for a brief period. The planned diversions for King/Church will last through the summer. Many of the water mains in the “old” city have been in service for over a century. Other parts of King Street have seen renewal, occasionally on an emergency basis following a break and sink hole. The special trackwork at the King/Church intersection has been in bad shape for some time, and was overdue for replacement. Previous reconstructions were in 1983 and 2003. Other competing construction projects got in the way, and the track conditions have worsened year by year. There are many patches, and a well-deserved slow order unlike the standing practice even at freshly rebuilt junctions. This intersection is also old enough that it predates the era of panel track construction where pre-welded sections are trucked in and assembled on site. This replaced the older style of tracks assembled piece-by-piece and often not welded robustly if at all. TTC has not yet been through its entire inventory of “old” track given the 20-30 year cycle depending on the level of service, wear, and disintegration at intersections. Other work planned for this period of suspended streetcar service is the reconstruction of overhead on King and on the Distillery branch for pantograph-only operation. Closing King & Church for an extended period concurrently with the Ontario Line construction at Queen & Yonge will add to the traffic snarls downtown. The City talks about using Traffic Agents to manage key intersections, but whether they provide enough people at enough places at enough times remains to be seen. **_Routes Diverting off of King Street_** Three routes are affected: 504 King, 503 Kingston Road and 508 Lake Shore. The 504 King service will be broken into three sections: * A 504 streetcar service between Broadview to Dundas West Stations operating via the same route as 501 Queen between the Don Bridge and Spadina. * A 504C bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst and east on King terminating at Broadview & Gerrard. * A 504D bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst, east on King and south on Sumach to Front & Cherry. Buses will loop via [to be announced] and will _not_ serve Distillery Loop. The 503 Kingston Road service will be changed so that its western terminus shifts from York Street to Dufferin Loop. Cars will follow the same route as the 504 King via Queen from the Don Bridge to Spadina, then shift south onto King to follow the pre-diversion 504B route to Dufferin. 508 Lake Shore cars will follow the same route as 504 King. Source: City Report at p. 5 For part of the construction period, King/Church will be impassible even to the replacement bus service and it will divert south to Wellington and Front. Source: City Report at p. 5 These maps do not tell the whole story because another set of construction diversions will overlap the King/Church changes until the next schedule change in late June. Although water main work at Bathurst/Fleet/Lakeshore is now complete, track work continues there and on Bathurst Street further north. 511 Bathurst streetcars will continue to divert east via King to Spadina looping via Adelaide and Charlotte. The 511B shuttle bus will be shortened from Wolseley Loop at Queen to an on-street loop via King, Portland and Richmond to Bathurst Street. 509 shuttle buses continue operating between Exhibition Loop and Queens Quay Loop at Spadina. 510 streetcars continue operating to Union Station. The combined effect of the diversions will be greater than during the total meltdown of King service in 2024 when all cars diverted north via Church to Queen because volumes of other routes (510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 501 Queen) will be added to the King services, and more intersections will be affected over a wider area. ### **_Vehicle Congestion on King/Church Diversions_** Several routes will overlap in the diversion area, especially at Spadina and at Bathurst, and their routes will involve many turns that, even with some transit priority assistance, will tax intersection capacity. In addition, the 511 Bathurst service will loop via King, Spadina, Adelaide and Charlotte, and the 511B Bathurst shuttle will loop via King, Portland and Richmond. This will add to the turning demand at Spadina and at Bathurst, at least until the construction on Bathurst at Fleet and associated diversions end in late June. The intersections affected by substantially increased transit turning volumes are: * King & Bathurst * King & Spadina * Spadina & Adelaide * Spadina & Queen * Queen & York * York & Richmond * York & Adelaide * Church & Richmond * Church & Adelaide * Queen & Church The number of vehicles scheduled per hour will be much higher than the intersections now handle. The City plans to provide Traffic Agents at key intersections, but the large volumes of transit vehicles continue outside of peak periods when Agents are usually deployed, and weekend numbers are similar. This is not a problem for a few hours a day, nor for a few locations. At **_King and Spadina_** , there will be from 18-24 left turns per hour eastbound. There is no transit priority signal to assist these turns. In addition, there will be the through north-south service on 510 Spadina (yellow, top band below). Collectively 25-36 cars/hour will attempt to use the farside stop northbound on Spadina. For technical reasons related to intersection geometry, a white bar signal cannot be implemented in the standard way used by the City/TTC at turns. However, the volume of transit left turns all day is such that a transit left turn should simply be provided at all times without the complexity of vehicle detection. There is a similar issue at Queen westbound where the detection point for left turning streetcars is beyond the stop line. A further problem at King is that the eastbound electric switch will be disabled and detection of turning streetcars through it will be impossible. At **_Adelaide and Spadina_** , the 511 Bathurst cars (green, second stripe from the top) will turn off Spadina to Adelaide. There is a white bar priority signal to assist the turn, but the intersection is often clogged, and turning cars could block the northbound streetcar traffic. At **_King and Spadina_** southbound the situation is similar to northbound except that there are no turning 511 Bathurst cars (they come straight west on King from Charlotte Loop). From 12-18 cars/hour will make the turn south to west onto King and the rest, the 510 Spadina service (yellow, top band below), will run straight through. However, cars will stop at the passenger island adding to the time they occupy the area near the intersection. At **_Queen and Spadina_** northbound, there will be a combination of 510 Spadina cars (yellow, top band below) and the routes diverting from King Street. There is a transit priority white bar for turns at this location of which there will be 12-18/hour. Eastbound from **_Queen and Spadina_** , the diverting routes will join 501 Queen for their trip via Queen, York, Adelaide and Church back to Queen Street. The vehicle volumes will be substantially higher than those now operated by only the 501 Queen (yellow, top band) today with 18-25 streetcars/hour making all of the turns enroute. At **_Queen and Spadina_** westbound, the volumes will be similar to eastbound. The 501 Queen cars will use the westbound stop on Queen adding a potential delay to diverting cars on other routes waiting to make the left turn. There is no transit priority signal to assist with this turn. The volume of streetcars shown here also applies to the turns enroute on the diversion at Church, Richmond, York and Queen, and far more streetcars will attempt these turns than today’s service with only the 501 Queen. At **_Bathurst and King_** , most of the vehicles arriving southbound will turn east. This includes the 511 Bathurst streetcars, and the 504C/D replacement buses which will use Wolseley Loop at Queen Street as their turnaround. The northbound 511B shuttle bus will loop via King, Portland and Richmond. The chart below shows the number of vehicles. Only the 511B bus will operate straight through north-south. All other vehicles, from 18-27 per hour, will turn south to east. There is no transit priority signal. Eastbound on **_King east of Bathurst_** there will be many overlapping services. Of these, the 511B Bathurst bus (green, top stripe) will turn left at Portland. All others will run through. The 504C/D King buses (light blue, second stripe) will continue east on King from Spadina, but the streetcar services will all turn left there. All vehicle counts shown here are taken from the GTFS version of TTC schedules published on May 1, 2025 for implementation on May 11. ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Like Loading...