[drum118]

April 26
Only the centre section of the trackwork south of the Lake Shore for Bathurst needs to be pour, otherwise all the trackwork is done. Striping has taken place for the left turn lane and ready to open.

Now, has TTC done all the new overhead for the intersection as well on Fleet?? TTC needs to put in the zig zag in the current straight line.

Who Knows when the 511 and the 509 will start using this area in place of buses??

 

[evandyk]

What is with this 504 scheduling? No Broadview car for 35 minutes, then no distillery car for 30?

 

[Steve X]

What is with this 504 scheduling? No Broadview car for 35 minutes, then no distillery car for 30?

View attachment 647466

The transit app wasn't doing it's job when I was used it today.

 

[drum118]

What is with this 504 scheduling? No Broadview car for 35 minutes, then no distillery car for 30?

View attachment 647466

Something taking place on line/systems. I was trying to catch the new cars at Russell around 5pm and saw a number of 501's and 503's until about 530 with nothing coming from the west to a point 501 buses to show up and then a 503. Even no cars in sight from the east considering a fair number had past me. Seeing nothing coming, I gave up at 545 and call it a day.

 

[evandyk]

When i got to King to get a streetcar, I noticed that the app was going to be useless in the short term because there was a long line of tour and school buses trying to turn right on Simcoe from King, and all of them blocking the streetcar tracks. It took over a light cycle for each of them to turn, so it took 7 or 8 minutes for a streetcar to go from Simcoe to University. Must have caused quite the ripple effect down the line.

 

[generalcanada]

"streetscape improvements" at bathurst and lakeshore

 

[Undead]

Even Toronto Hydro doesn't wanna rip that up.

 

[drum118]

A summer of streetcar chaos is almost upon us. And TTC riders are already frustrated: ‘Is this the best plan?’​

 

[PL1]

A summer of streetcar chaos is almost upon us. And TTC riders are already frustrated: ‘Is this the best plan?’​

Steve Munro's take (for real this time)

It's going to be ugly

Edit: fixed broken link, thanks to @reinventingthewheel for pointing that out and posting the correct link

 

[reinventingthewheel]

Steve Munro's take

It's going to be ugly

Broken link ^

Article here:

King-Church Construction and Traffic Effects

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 over…

stevemunro.ca

 

[evandyk]

Ugh. I take the 504 downtown every day.

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.

We live in a joke of a city. He focuses on Spadina, which I don't usually see, but Church St between Queen and Adelaide is going to be a gridlock nightmare.

 

[Jonny5]

Ugh. I take the 504 downtown every day.



We live in a joke of a city. He focuses on Spadina, which I don't usually see, but Church St between Queen and Adelaide is going to be a gridlock nightmare.

There's already some kind of construction and excavation work happening now between Yonge and Victoria in the right lane westbound that is pinching Adelaide down to one traffic lane, and the backups are horrendous.
That's on top of the constant deliver vehicles, and Uber pickups and dropoffs that block and choke the traffic to a single lane, which is the streetcar lane.
It's almost comical that we created this new "streetcar priority" route, and now it's actually slower than ever before.
They should have simply routed them down to King. That was so obvious.


Actually, looking at the plan, I wonder if an option should be to drop the King Street vehicle restrictions through the construction period, at least from Spadina to Yonge, to at least get some cars out of the way off Adelaide and on to the road space the TTC won't be using for streetcars.

 

[evandyk]

I'm pretty sure it will be faster to walk from Queen and Church to King and Spadina rather than take the 504 via Church, Richmond, York, Queen and Spadina. Even though that's a 30 minute walk.

 

[Amare]

I'm pretty sure it will be faster to walk from Queen and Church to King and Spadina rather than take the 504 via Church, Richmond, York, Queen and Spadina. Even though that's a 30 minute walk.

It certainly will be.

I can already see 504 cars (eastbound) being backlogged trying to turn northbound onto Spadina from King, and vice versa going westbound. Not even talking about the other turns. Then add to the fact the city wont optimize signal priority for streetcars, then add the TTC's insane rules to special trackwork and what you'll see is a complete disaster.

On a standard day, I could already bike faster then both the 501 and 504 from about Bathurst through to Yonge (it took me less than 10 mins, compared to ~15-20 mins on the streetcar). I can only imagine how dreadful it will be in the summer.

 

[evandyk]

In the downtown core (Bathurst-River, south of Bloor), biking is always faster than any other mode (other than car in the middle of the night or Sunday morning) except subway, if both destinations are close to a station. Streetcar has never been able to compete with biking for speed.

Everyone living in liberty village and working downtown should be planning to walk to work, because they'll be strolling by dozens of streetcars backed up at Spadina.