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DSCToronto said:
As has been demonstrated repeatedly by Steve Munro, the greatest problem with TTC service is their inability or unwillingness to properly manage routes. Customers need predictability and if a route is chheduled to run every x minutes then a vehicle should arrive every x minutes and if it is advertised as arriving at Stop Y at hh:mm then it should normally arrive then.

The number of stops does, of course, affect speed but one needs to balance customer convenience with speed. The fastest service would be zero stops between the start and the end of a route but this would not be terribly good for the customers who wanted to board or leave vehicle somewhere en route!
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In fairness to the poster, I didn't see advocacy for a zero-stop route, or for a 50% reduction in stops.

I think there is a case to remove superfluous, too-close-together stops on many routes,, both streetcar and bus. I noted how close some of the Spadina stops are up thread.........much closer than nominal ideal bus stop spacing of every 300M. Additionally, of course, the Flexities are much longer than a bus, and you can board/alight at each end, so you could arguably add 30m between stops on that basis alone.

Of course, as @reaperexpress notes up page......obstructive Councillor's are an endless PITA when it comes to stop removals. The same way they are on removing parking....may I add.
 
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DSCToronto said:
As has been demonstrated repeatedly by Steve Munro, the greatest problem with TTC service is their inability or unwillingness to properly manage routes. Customers need predictability and if a route is chheduled to run every x minutes then a vehicle should arrive every x minutes and if it is advertised as arriving at Stop Y at hh:mm then it should normally arrive then.
Click to expand...
The question of line management is a red herring because rationalizing stop spacing in no way hinders efforts to improve line management. Planners and engineers aren't the ones who would be disciplining operators, any more than the supervisors would be designing stops. One effort does not take away any resources from the other.
DSCToronto said:
The number of stops does, of course, affect speed but one needs to balance customer convenience with speed. The fastest service would be zero stops between the start and the end of a route but this would not be terribly good for the customers who wanted to board or leave vehicle somewhere en route!
Click to expand...
It's not just speed. Closely spaced stops also make bunching worse because they increase the effects of gaps in service. A streetcar with a long gap in front of it has a much higher chance of stopping at any given stop, since there's been more time for people to show up there. Which means that they travel slower than the ones with short headways (which might skip some stops).

Longer stop spacing also improves reliability by enabling signal priority to better predict the arrival of streetcars. Like I explained to Steve Munro, one of the biggest limitations with our current signal priority are the near-side stops that make arrival times unpredictable. Better priority is especially helpful to reliability if the priority level is conditional on headway.

The TTC's 300 to 400 metre stop spacing target already takes into account the balance between access and speed. Everywhere along the route is within 200 metres (3 minute walk) of a stop. Shorter stop spacing than that dramatically reduces speed with very little difference in walking distance. Keep in mind that transit routes are 400-600 m apart laterally downtown, and in the suburbs they can be as much as 2000m apart laterally. Extremely close stop spacing is not going create universal coverage.
 
This has been reported before in UT and in August of 2024 in BLOG.TO ( https://www.blogto.com/city/2024/08/toronto-ttc-streetcars-slowest-world/ )...
1749327433655.png

For reference, you can link to the PDF report here ( https://t.co/PUpHoVyctk )
 
Just posting this in case anyone missed it and is interested. It's my video on the old Metropolitan Railway which was an interurban that ran from the CP Rail Tracks & Yonge to Sutton. As I have made these videos I have learned that the TTC of the 1920's was a well oiled machine. For example when the TTC took over the Metropolitan Line in 1927 they re-gauged all 77km of the route from Toronto to Sutton and all of the lines rolling-stock in just 6 days (One and a half kilometres of track an hour). I can't imagine how long it would take to pull something like that off today.

 
I'd like to see the 503 better cover the girth of downtown with tracks continuing on Wellington to Spadina. That stretch along Wellington (to York) moves at a good clip and is faster than comparable services on King or Queen. Of course, it is currently down for the summer, but in general, I mean.
 
JasonParis said:
I'd like to see the 503 better cover the girth of downtown with tracks continuing on Wellington to Spadina. That stretch along Wellington (to York) moves at a good clip and is faster than comparable services on King or Queen. Of course, it is currently down for the summer, but in general, I mean.
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Though this would be handy for those who work @ CBC (hmmm), Wellington is really far too narrow past University (and would be narrower if the bike track is installed) and there is the problem of the park @ Spadina and it is only a one-way street.
 
New video up, this one looking at the Toronto & Mimico Railway which operated an interurban line between Toronto and Port Credit.

 
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Sorry if this has already been covered, but has there ever been any attempt to trial a Melbourne-style hook left turn in Toronto’s history?
 
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