[T3G]

Well, yeah, your fault. I rarely ride on the streetcars, but even I know the back of them is what they use for their toilet.

I almost never ride any crosstown routes, but I have always found the 509 and 510 to be quite civilized.

 

[Amare]

I almost never ride any crosstown routes, but I have always found the 509 and 510 to be quite civilized.

There's issues on all of the streetcar routes, the 509 and 510 certainly are no exception. I've seen plenty of mentally ill, and homeless individuals on these routes.

The problem has always been there, but in all of my years commuting the issue really started to spike around the time the Flexities started to arrive ~2012-2013. Clearly the new streetcars arent the cause of the issue, it's just that the issues we're seeing today in the TTC started to become exponentially more and more apparent around the same time.

 

[turbanplanner]

Heavens, I took the 506 from Sherbourne to Spadina past noon today to pickup a suit at Tom's Place in Kensington Market. I figured it's cheaper than driving and a nice day for a walk to the stop. But I was not prepared for the cuckoos nest that made up my fellow passengers. It's in part on me for sitting at the very back of a soon to be busy empty streetcar. I would estimate that maybe 4/10 tapped on, and of those 6/10 who did not, most were muttering at themselves, flaying about or otherwise mentally or chemically troubled. I just MMOB, headphones on listening to the RevZilla podcast on landsplitting (should be a thing in ON, imo), but then one guy recognized another from the social and the latter starting shouting that the other go away, whilst the first starting singing toward the second chap. What a circus, but I never felt threatened, and saw it more like I was on safari in an asylum - I could almost hear Sir David Attenborough narrating upon the thrashing, manic behaviour. I suppose all the normies were in class or at work, so this is what's left, just the nutters and a guy buying a suit.

I feel like they should do another survey

‘A Toronto issue’: Ipsos poll shows some TTC riders changing habits after violent incidents | Globalnews.ca

Among several findings, the poll suggests that 44 per cent of residents here feel unsafe riding transit alone, compared to 27 per cent of riders across the country.

globalnews.ca

Since you asked... her antisemitism and 10% increase of my property taxes. As to the homeless/mentally ill situation, she's done absolutely nothing (that's the problem).

She got hundreds of millions in funding from the feds for the homeless people in the city, is that "nothing"
As a homeowner, property taxes have been BELOW inflation for several years, did you not expect reality to catch up?

 

[Northern Light]

I feel like they should do another survey

‘A Toronto issue’: Ipsos poll shows some TTC riders changing habits after violent incidents | Globalnews.ca

Among several findings, the poll suggests that 44 per cent of residents here feel unsafe riding transit alone, compared to 27 per cent of riders across the country.

globalnews.ca

What value would the survey offer?

What would it reveal that we don't already know?

 

[81-717]

it's just that the issues we're seeing today in the TTC started to become exponentially more and more apparent around the same time.

More like since the pandemic, definitely not back in the good old days of 2012/2013. Even in 2019 things didn't seem bad enough to sound the alarm bells.

 

[Admiral Beez]

There's issues on all of the streetcar routes, the 509 and 510 certainly are no exception. I've seen plenty of mentally ill, and homeless individuals on these routes.

It's too pricey to ramp up staffing city wide, but I'd like to see a 6-12 month campaign to greatly increase fare enforcement on all four streetcar routes inside this box between University and Sherbourne. Make it almost guaranteed that you will be caught for non-payment and we'll keep the disruptive folks off the TTC.

 

[evandyk]

I ride the 504 daily and it's quite civilized 99.9% of the time.

 

[Jonny5]

I ride the 504 daily and it's quite civilized 99.9% of the time.

Yes, I alternate between the 503/4 to get to work and I take the 501 home because the 501 detour helps me save some time, though the service is so infrequent and erratic I have to check online and plan out my departure.
However the 501 riders are very very different group from the 504 riders.

Not to say the 504 is perfect; looking at you people having facetime calls on speakerphone and thinking that is totally a normal thing for an adult to do.... most of these being George Brown College students.

But, that being said, the 501 inevitably has very "esoteric riders" on it, and sometimes a lot of them. I've seen open drug use on it multiple times last year, I also saw someone getting a blowjob last week. But it still saves a few minutes to get me home, and I can live with it with headphones set to max volume with white noise app going and my eyes closed.

 

[T3G]

I also saw someone getting a blowjob last week.

Ugh, like I needed more reasons not to sit on the TTC.

 

[ShonTron]

Personally, my single biggest bug bear with the TTC is their atrocious line management. On paper, many services that the TTC runs should be very good, but the issues with line management must run deep in the institutional blood, because it's been on going for decades - surely there must have been some personnel turn over in the last 20 years - and I haven't seen it in such a large capacity in any other city I've been to. Prague's trams (apart from not being slowed down by ridiculous safety rules like they are here) run in a mix of private ROWs, mixed traffic, and pedestrian only zones, and I've never experienced anything like this there.

Also would like to see:

-better communication vis a vis delays
-all door boarding, everywhere, at all times
-for the drivers to be taught finally that they're not the stars of John Wick and to stop yelling at transit photographers

I was in Prague in October 2023, and I rode plenty of trams outside the city centre. They ran trams on temporary track in road/watermain work areas, something we haven’t done since the 1970s.

 

[nfitz]

I ride the 504 daily and it's quite civilized 99.9% of the time.

506 is pretty fine these days when I'm it - even on the spot where some say it's about 60% or so druggies. Sometimes there is someone asleep at the back. Normally well-behaved - more homeless than addicts.

Of course this isn't new. It's been that way for decades - but with TTC stopping enforcement, it's gotten worse.

It's too pricey to ramp up staffing city wide, but I'd like to see a 6-12 month campaign to greatly increase fare enforcement on all four streetcar routes inside this box between University and Sherbourne. Make it almost guaranteed that you will be caught for non-payment and we'll keep the disruptive folks off the TTC.

At best they ask them politely to get off. They don't fine homeless people. And if they are violent, all they can do is call the police. But if non-violent they don't even call it in.

 

[Richard White]

I was in Prague in October 2023, and I rode plenty of trams outside the city centre. They ran trams on temporary track in road/watermain work areas, something we haven’t done since the 1970s.

If I had to fathom a guess that is because of lawyer playing it safe.

Chances are they don't want to assume liability for a temporary track.

 

[DSCToronto]

In early November I wrote to TTC asking them to look again at the stops on the 501 diversion. I just received this reply. Still no stops between Queen/Church and Yonge but ..


"This email is further to your online report dated November 9, 2024.

Management has responded by saying:

Please thank the customer for their feedback. The initial placement of stops along the new Queen Street Diversion (QSD) routing was designed to balance considerations of service coverage while also allowing our vehicles to operate safely and reliably through the diversion area.

Note, based off raised customers concerns and additional review, work is now underway to install a new stop at Richmond Street West and York Street (nearside) and at York Street and Adelaide Street West (nearside), which will be served by westbound 501 Queen and eastbound 501 Queen streetcars, respectively. Such stops will be formally activated by the end of this month (December 2024). These additions address any outstanding issues with the placement of stops as part of the Queen diversion and increase service coverage through the larger gaps between the existing stops. Existing driveways will provide any accessible connection between our streetcars and the boulevard similar to elsewhere on the system.

Requests for additional stops within the vicinity of Bay street (while considered) were ruled out given the close distance (~100m) to the nearest stops at Yonge Street, making them likely to exacerbate existing reliability concerns for our streetcars travelling through this section of the diversion.

With the addition of these new stops, the stop spacing between the following directions of the diversion are as follows:

Westbound movement

Church/Yonge (~330m) Yonge/York (~400m) York/University (~170m)

Eastbound movement

University/York (~320m) York/Yonge (~550m), Yonge/Church (~520m)

Please thank the customer again for reaching out with their concerns."

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

I was in Prague in October 2023, and I rode plenty of trams outside the city centre. They ran trams on temporary track in road/watermain work areas, something we haven’t done since the 1970s.

They also have double-ended trams. They can put in temporary crossover tracks if needed. Could also run the trams alternating on one set of tracks while working on the other set. In Toronto, we switch to buses to "improve" service, which it doesn't.

 

[T3G]

It's not a zero sum game - even a city like Prague will have bustitutions, if that's what the service design calls for.

Running alternating service on one set of tracks only works to some degree, on less busy routes. If you have a super busy corridor with many routes running through it, you're better off switching to buses.