fungus_eater
New Member
TTC is playing too safe with the signalling systems and transit priority. They should give operators more freedom to navigate through intersections so the line can go faster.
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- Thread starter Monarch Butterfly
- Start date
TRONto
Active Member
‘It will be so much better,’ Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Finch West LRT should be faster by the end of the winter - NOW Toronto
Mayor Olivia Chow says the Finch West LRT could become faster by the end of the winter, as she pushes for transit signal priority.
nowtoronto.com
"“When the train gets to a traffic signal, they should have priority. In the past, they didn’t because what Metrolinx had was a system that is conditional priority. They need to have much higher priority because there’s like three or four cars making left turns, and it blocks a train that has 40, 50, 80, 100 people in it. There’s no reason to do that,” she said. "
Looks like Chow wants priority over car turning left. If this one change goes through I imagine the line could get closer to 30 minutes. If all the changes go through (aggressive TSP, raised speed limit) would we be able to get less than 30?
JJTheJetPln
Active Member
What would you suggest they should do in terms of TSP? Conditional in some corridors and unconditional in some? Completely conditional? Completely unconditional?‘It will be so much better,’ Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Finch West LRT should be faster by the end of the winter - NOW Toronto
Mayor Olivia Chow says the Finch West LRT could become faster by the end of the winter, as she pushes for transit signal priority.
"“When the train gets to a traffic signal, they should have priority. In the past, they didn’t because what Metrolinx had was a system that is conditional priority. They need to have much higher priority because there’s like three or four cars making left turns, and it blocks a train that has 40, 50, 80, 100 people in it. There’s no reason to do that,” she said. "
Looks like Chow wants priority over car turning left. If this one change goes through I imagine the line could get closer to 30 minutes. If all the changes go through (aggressive TSP, raised speed limit) would we be able to get less than 30?
Bordercollie
Senior Member
How about at least getting trains up to 50kmph?‘It will be so much better,’ Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Finch West LRT should be faster by the end of the winter - NOW Toronto
Mayor Olivia Chow says the Finch West LRT could become faster by the end of the winter, as she pushes for transit signal priority.
"“When the train gets to a traffic signal, they should have priority. In the past, they didn’t because what Metrolinx had was a system that is conditional priority. They need to have much higher priority because there’s like three or four cars making left turns, and it blocks a train that has 40, 50, 80, 100 people in it. There’s no reason to do that,” she said. "
Looks like Chow wants priority over car turning left. If this one change goes through I imagine the line could get closer to 30 minutes. If all the changes go through (aggressive TSP, raised speed limit) would we be able to get less than 30?
Rascacielo
Senior Member
I took Line 6 for the first time today. Not end to end, just from Finch West to Milvan and back. The outbound journey was painfully slow. The train stopped for about 4 minutes at the tunnel exit (at the point where it joins the street barely 20 seconds after the Finch West platform). For no reason - it's not a stop, there's no intersection. Then it crawled along at 10-15km/hour. It took maybe 6 minutes to get from Finch West to the next station, which is probably no more than 600 m away. Beyond that it continued to crawl at the same speed and only accelerated to maybe 25-30km/hour after the 3rd or 4th stop. So for that trip at least transit priority wasn't even an issue - the main factor was the speed. And the onboard announcement (both 'written' and spoken) was a total mess. At some point it said the next stop was 2 stops AFTER Milvan, which almost made me get off the train. Good thing I checked Googlemap - we were actually about 4 stops BEFORE Milvan. The return trip was much better: the train moved at 'normal' speed (ie. about the same speed as the St Clair or Spadina streetcar) and as far as I noticed the stops were announced correctly. TTC should really change their slogan from "The Better Way" to "Faster Than Walking (most of the time)".
smallspy
Senior Member
The way things are written, as I understand it, the City has no unilateral path to improving things on the line, save for signal priority at intersections. (They can modify their own equipment to change the settings, not the equipment installed on the line itself to be clear.)
Metrolinx, being the contract holder, does. But there will have to be a discussion with Mosaic about it, as they are the ones in charge of maintaining the equipment and plant for the foreseeable future.
And in fairness I have not laid eyes on the contract itself, so I don't know if there are clauses for things such as system performance (beyond availability and downtime). I'm not particularly optimistic that there are, to be truthful.
Dan
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Jonny5
Senior Member
I was in Laval recently, and they seem to have a very advanced and complex priority chain for signals. Not sure how a medium sized suburb can do it and we cannot.
Left turn signals for cars could be before or after the green phase, and they sometimes used the flashing green which would then turn into a solid forward arrow, sometimes a regular green. There were many three-phase signal intersections.
There were advance right turns on occasion, which seemed to be connected to a bus being present.
Buses clearly held lights green, whether there were stops at that intersection or not.
Pedestrian signals in Laval and Montreal also now appear to have some flex timing in them too in that they sometimes were shorter or longer for crossing, but are then linked to the signals such that the left turn phase was bumped to the end of the cycle so the next pedestrian crossing phase happens earlier and lasted longer.
This all at the same intersection, and it seemed to change by conditions both of buses present and the amount of traffic in each direction. I don't have any research on how they manage to do this, but they are doing it there.
I also saw some of their new snow plow signals at the entrance to the neighbourhood which are no parking signs that have LED "no parking" times that update wirelessly with the time snow plow trucks will come and you have to move your car off the street.
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crs1026
Superstar
There are clear lessons learned to any future contracts, around a) ensuring transparency and b) providing options to alter specs based on operating experience
If Mosaic is simply concerned about the added wear on railcar components eg wheels and brakes, COT/TTC/ML ought to be able to offer to pay for these on some accelerated schedule.
If the issue is rail and track life, it's a bit more tricky, as that may imply more intensive construction sooner than planned. But even there, it's a matter of advancing whatever dates are in the current plan, and then costing an incremental replacement program late in the contract term.
If the contract doesn't have any clause contemplating change orders or reopening the contract after a period of time, that's a big mistake. Sounds like cellular service in the subway all over again. Or 407.
- Paul
Coolibop
Active Member
Some delay logs made their way to Steve Munroe, up on his site.
Makes the point on how these should have been caught earlier on, perhaps indicating gaps in testing or operator training.
Unsure how this compares to other line openings or how 'typical' this is of an opening week. It would be interesting to see how line 5 compares should those logs find their way over to Steve (as I'm sure they might)...
Makes the point on how these should have been caught earlier on, perhaps indicating gaps in testing or operator training.
Unsure how this compares to other line openings or how 'typical' this is of an opening week. It would be interesting to see how line 5 compares should those logs find their way over to Steve (as I'm sure they might)...
DSCToronto
Superstar
The logs Steve has posted show an amazing lack of either training, supervision or management.
ThenWhat
Active Member
The headline says "it WILL be much better". The quote in the article "it COULD be much better" --- a crucial difference.‘It will be so much better,’ Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow says Finch West LRT should be faster by the end of the winter - NOW Toronto
Mayor Olivia Chow says the Finch West LRT could become faster by the end of the winter, as she pushes for transit signal priority.
"“When the train gets to a traffic signal, they should have priority. In the past, they didn’t because what Metrolinx had was a system that is conditional priority. They need to have much higher priority because there’s like three or four cars making left turns, and it blocks a train that has 40, 50, 80, 100 people in it. There’s no reason to do that,” she said. "
[…]
Olivia Chow has been Mayor for more than two years now, yet she seems surprised by what's unfolding with Line 6. Was she as uninformed as the rest of us before the opening day?
hawc
Senior Member
I'm starting to wonder whether this City has developed a fetish for all vehicular traffic moving slowly. I mean cars are limited to 30km/h on roads that used to be 60km/h. I think the same fetish has now spread to public transit!
Undead
Senior Member
The City lowers posted speed limits because genuine traffic calming is way more expensive. It requires road reconstruction and major physical design changes.
Speed cameras and artificially low speed limits are a bandaid measure by a City too broke or too cheap to do things properly.
robmausser
Senior Member
This isn't far from the truth. The TTC dramatically lowered the speeds on the new Harbourfront 509 layout, because there were some close calls with tourists wandering onto the tracks. Their solution was to slow down the streetcars to a glacial pace.
NO, you install some kind of physical barrier like these to stop people from wandering onto the tracks!
But I feel like the TTC LOVES any excuse to slow down their vehicles. It means an easier time for their operators and less maintenance. Screw the customers!
Bordercollie
Senior Member
The bigger question is that who though during the testing stage that this was going to fly? They thought people would just accept the fact that they spend several billion dollars for a service that takes twice as long as the service it replaced? Is there no accountability or common sense?