Amare
Senior Member
TTC route "management", or lack there of is how it normally happens
But looking at the schedules; clearly either one bus was running early, or the other was late.
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- Thread starter drum118
- Start date
But looking at the schedules; clearly either one bus was running early, or the other was late.
Steve X
Senior Member
Do you know if one of the bus was late? Like is suppose to depart at 11:52pm. TTC regularly would have the late bus depart right away along with the on time bus behind it.
nfitz
Superstar
Your information matches the data at Transsee for the Beecroft (aka Greenview) westbound stop - https://www.transsee.ca/stophistory...00:00&endtime=04:00&nextday=1&date=2026-05-26
Essentially the 11:53 pm bus 3603 was about 6 minutes later, and the 11:58 pm bus was 40 seconds late. Looks like the same thing happened for the 11:38 pm and 11:43 pm buses too. Though Wednesday and Thursday looked very good. Looks like they stayed together the entire 15-minute trip to Finch West, by which point the first was only about 90 second late, while the second was 4 minutes early. Looks like at that time of day most of the trips leave a minute or so late and arrive 3 to 5 minutes early!
The reason seems to be that 3603 arrived 5 minutes later on it's previous trip (which it had started at Finch West also 5 minutes late). And on the trip before that it had arrived at Finch West on time. It looks like the operator stopped at Finch West for 7 minutes instead of the scheduled 2 minutes. Perhaps they had to use the toilet?
The root cause I suspect is that the schedule allows 2 minutes layover at one end, and a 1 minute layover at the other end. And if one has to go ...
The good news is the following runs for each bus were pretty much on time.
I"m not familiar with that route. Very odd that the gaps are 5 minutes then 10 minutes then 5 minutes ... rather than just every 7.5 minutes.
Also, is this unusual there? Compared to routes I take, service looks excellent!
urbanclient
Senior Member
You would think the drivers would have the wherewithal not to depart at the same time as their colleague, regardless of if they are late or not. Let the more delayed bus go first, the less delayed bus can wait a bit longer.
At Finch at Greenview/Beecroft there was a red light. So the buses were literally back to back, nothing in between them. Late night, no traffic, this should not happen for a route.
I blame management, the drivers just want to be "on time".
Bordercollie
Senior Member
That light is usually green for finch traffic unless someone on Beecroft wants to make a turn.
Could be a broken sensor.
Northern Light
Superstar
A few quick bits:
1) Early/late are only typically looked at by management at terminals, not mid-point stops, though some longer routes to do have multiple 'timing points' where operators should, in theory adjust if running hot (early).
2) The TTC, generally, only penalizes early departures, not late. Leaving a terminal early can get you written up.
3) The TTC's previous on-time standards were, for a generation, +3/-3 (a six minute window early or late); this was changed under Andy Byford to -+1, -5. so up to 1 min early and 5 min late. While Leary nixed the early, going to 0/-5 as the standard.
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Comment: I think the standard should be 0 (never early) / - 3. A bus should not be more than 3 minutes late w/o explanation. (an operator doesn't need to be in trouble, but deviations should be accounted for, and adjustments made as required).
I also think timing points en route are important, I think there should be one roughly every 10-12 minutes along any route, where buses should hold if running early, and this should be enforced.
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On schedules. Under Rick Leary bus and streetcar schedules were bloated, with terminal or recovery time. This was done to eliminate late departures and short turns,, but has the effect of paying operators to idle vehicles for large amounts of time, for much of the typical day.
Lets take a look a fairly typical Service Summary (thanks to Steve Munro who catalogs all of these)
So you see here that on typical weekday, the service is nominally spending ~25% of its time idle ( 9-10 minutes on a total 40 minute run) in reality, the budgeted drive times themselves have wiggle room in them, which often leads to a bus arriving at Main Station before the previous bus has departed.
Without considering stop removals or TSP or like improvements, the same number of buses, could provide, with a standard 5 minute recovery/terminal time (enough for a quick bathroom break for the operator) and a slightly tighter schedule, every 8 minute service in the AM rush, and the same during mid-day. This would, initially reduce passenger load per bus, the numbers of stops where passengers board/alight, and make the route run faster.
Add some minor tweaks to address the slowest part of the route (exiting Main Stn, Main/Danforth intersection, and Danforth Main to Dawes) and you could drop scheduled run times by 3 minutes or more, cut a couple of stops per direction and make it 4, that's enough to cut headway by another minute.
Most routes have similar schedule bloat and related issues.
nfitz
Superstar
With only a few more minutes (3 minutes and 57 seconds) to the following (third) bus? If there's a long gap between buses, then this makes sense. But that third bus was only a couple of traffic light cycles behind this pair!
The data is not quite granular enough, but it appears that the by the time they got to Beecroft, the second (probably empty) bus overtook the first one. Allowing it to pick up any further passengers, while the late one would only have had to stop to let people off. This kind of skip-stopping helps buses get back on schedule.
Which isn't to say that route management isn't terrible. I'm just surprised that this is unusual enough in that part of town, that it's of note!
When buses are coming every 5 minutes, it's very difficult to stop the buses ending up back-to-back, as the first one has longer dwell times, as soon as the gap starts to close for any reason.
Meanwhile, we've had no end of people complain when a bus or streetcar are running slowly, apparently for no reason; but that's what they are to do to get back on schedule.
DSCToronto
Superstar
Before covid there was an express route (the 141) with a stop on George Street just north of King. The route was suspended with covid and permanently cancelled a few years ago. Over the past 4 or 5 years I have sent suggestions to the TTC to remove the stop sign (and others) and, of course, nothing happened. A few months ago I emailed Josh Colle and he responded saying he would pass it a long and then some PR person told me the work was 'in process'. Again, nothing happened so last week I wrote Mr Colle again and today the George Street stop is finally gone. It is unfortunately common for the TTC silos to ignore each other, if a route is cancelled or changes it hardly seems complicated to send out some junior apprentice with a screwdriver and/or some tape to remove or edit the STOP signage - I realise that some fixes are more complicated and require coordination and skills, fixing STOP signage so it is accurate is really not hard to do but I fear nobody really cares!
urbanclient
Senior Member
I agree. My grievance with the Tuesday Beecroft case is that those buses were barely a few hundred metres from Finch station, even less from Finch & Yonge.
Eventual bunching for 5 minute buses is understandable, bunching a few steps away from the starting terminal is highly questionable.
The bathroom break I get. The hard and fast 0 +5 rule I don't.
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nfitz
Superstar
Generally I agree. But had they not left together, it would not have allowed the later bus to overtake the first bus, and ultimately got everyone to their destinations faster.
That doesn't work for streetcars or subway trains of course ...
smallspy
Senior Member
As an FYI, they recently created a "signage" department who is in charge of such things, and it may be that they finally got around to its removal after having to fix so many other stops elsewhere in the City.
Dan
DSCToronto
Superstar
Thanks, one can only hope!