The pull quote here for me... "so if we just got the streetcars working really well, it would be like adding a whole new subway’s worth of capacity: something we can do without digging expensive tunnels!"
Of course you are not Doug Ford, but I have heard about that legislation and what he is doing in Toronto and that he is accused of acting as if he can run that city.
Bravo, all good common sense suggestions for any city. A stop every block is a bane. Doing it to appease a few elderly folks is misguided. While it is not in Toronto, my 80+ year old mother in law is not going to be out walking to or standing at a bus or tram stop. She will instead call the Dial A Ride, which is a subsidized public service and which will come directly to her building, and the driver will help her board.
Is that because she needs a transport solution without fixed routes or timetables? If so, is it because she needs a call-up-door-to-door service?
Stop spacing is, however, contextual and stops need to be closer together in denser areas, due to passenger loads. Perhaps Toronto needs higher density and closer stop spacing, rather than longer stop spacing.
Toronto does not need closer stop spacing. Even in dense areas the spacing is too tight, and its also tight in lower density areas which will not be densifying any time soon.
Sure but should there be better priority and more dedicated lanes before stops and consolidated/removed?
In Melbourne, we consolidated some tram stops as part of accessibility works but it did not increase average speed much. Within the city center, removing stops at Lonsdale street made it harder to interchange with buses.
Say the rate of acceleration is 1.3m/second and the speed limit is 60km/h. If say there are people waiting at every stop and getting off at most (both buses and trams in Toronto run on a request stop basis) stops need to be at least or over 214 metres apart for the top speed to be reached, but even then it may be difficult to reach that speed without good priority and dedicated lanes.
Also, any idea how much stop consolidation (with neither better priority nor dedicated lanes) would really speed up the service?
Mother in law could take the bus, but has some mobility issues and can't stand for a long time. She used to take the bus, but now prefers the Dial A Ride bus that comes to her, rather than her to it. We also prefer she use it.
Curious how much you might have chatted to the TTC about this? Because when I have, all I’ve got back is “you don’t understand Toronto” or “we could never do that <insert quite banal reason, e.g. parking, cost, deliveries etc>
No, those at the top are the ones who could make a difference and are as far as I can tell totally uninterested given the lack of any visible progress.
I’ve spent a bit of time with one very senior TTC executive. He’s a good guy. I like him. But for all the nice conversation, nothing has actually happened.
A level below, one person responsible for passenger experience has been about as condescending as possible. To the point of being delusional.
It’s like they want to pretend a totally different reality exists. But I can’t understand why that’s their strategy.
Alas, almost all the derision directed towards streetcars is due to... cars, mixed traffic befowling streetcar movement and operations. The Mayor and her TTC Chair are missing a once in a generation opportunity to greatly improve priority for streetcars and get people moving faster on them, for a generation. I do not see them being re-elected. we'll get another regressive, cars-first, Ford clone getting rid of more bike lanes, investing billions more in outdated dinosaur car infra like the Gardiner, as a reaction to the current Mayor's many failures. King Street priority lanes have been a success - they need to be expanded to 24 hours, so that it's very clear to all drivers what the rules are. Currently there are taxi & > 10pm exceptions, which on busy evenings snarl 504 King cars getting through. Toronto's going to receive a million new residents in the next decade - the status quo of people driving everywhere is not sustainable. Downtown, the 401, and many busy streets are increasingly stop and go throughout the week. Where is the leadership and vision from the Mayor? Where are the promised new bus lanes? It doesn't take that long to plan & consult for them - we did it in months during the pandemic. Toronto has the best integrated city and regional rail networks in North America, with more subway extensions and interchange stations being built. But the city is ignoring the base layer that carries the majority of passengers - buses and streetcars. Car storage on major arterials is another urban failure, especially on streetcar and busy routes. Cars aren't scalable - there is limited road space. Building more parking downtown is encouraging driving. Fortunatley the condo boom is forcing development of the empty surface parking lots downtown.
I think as you note a lot of blame can be placed on the city / pols and the TTC for not delivering good streetcars. As things stand riders would almost universally be better off in buses.
Streetcars, freed from traffic, have so much potential - carrying more passengers than 2 buses w/ just one driver, w/ alot less jerking about, plus being electric traction but not using heavy, rare metal toxically mined batteries of battery electric buses. Which don't seem to last as long as the companies claim. Steel wheel on steel rail is much more efficient, whereas bus tires add microparticle pollution.
1) They have some potential, but in Toronto even where we do this (St. Clair, Spadina) they are much slower than Euro trams
2) Batteries are not using rare metals / toxically mined metals, increasingly cobalt etc. are not even used - replaced with chemistries like iron phosphate.
I agree trams are nice, but the issue in Toronto is its a bad tram vs a decent bus.
I wonder if this is why so many trams were replaced by buses. The system/network of Toronto was the only one in the whole of the Americas and one of the few in the world, to survive without using alternatives to street running, the alternatives to street running it does have now are quite recent.
Yes, most surviving first generation systems/networks, even in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S - formerly the U.S.S.R) use a lot more alternatives to street running that even we have in Melbourne. This is especially so for second generation systems/networks, they nearly all have a lot of reserved track.
The Berlin tram that you show and the Paris trams that you mention mostly have their own ROW. They are not "Street" cars, which is a principal reason for their success. Also, stops are not to close to each other.
Berlin also has request stopping, like Melbourne and Toronto, typical of first generation tram systems - but in Berlin doors are passenger operated, stops requested using interior doors buttons. In Paris, only buses stop on request (though I am not sure how commonly they actually skip stops) and even trams, though doors are passenger operated, just stop at all stops like the metro trains, typical of second generation systems.
Since you mentioned Amsterdam and Zuerich, trams as well as buses in those cities also run on a request stop basis and it does not stop Zuerich's trams from often coming to the minute on schedule. Again, I am not sure how common stop skipping actually is.
I have heard of people missing their stops because they did not expect to have to request them. That is, a stop is not requested and then someone complains to the driver that they did not stop.
Have you ever seen that in Toronto?
For example, people missing their stops because they expected people to be waiting at their stops (in which case the driver will stop anyway) when there were not. Or unfamiliar users missing their stops because they did not know there service they are using runs on a request stop basis.
Another is if someone looks out a window, sees someone waiting at a stop and so does not bother to request it, but the person waiting at the stop waves past the streetcar so it does not stop and the person hoping not to have to request it misses the stop.
I have at times missed trams in Melbourne because the driver did not see me.
I think that we are still "studying" bus lanes shows a lack of seriousness. Its not a big intervention, it would be positive, its not innovative, studying it shows we can't even do small things quicckly.
Well the Saint Clair line is quite straight and operationally isolated from the rest of the system, that is, non-revenue track is what connects it to the rest of the network.
Also, I wonder if new light rail lines are likely better than expanding a network that cannot take industry standard vehicles, due to extremely tight curves and unusual gauge.
Apparently the Flexities are slower on curves than the ALRVs and CLRVs they replaced. How does the ride quality compare? If they don't ride as well, have there been complaints about that? Asking because they each consist of three wheeled segments (each on four wheels) and two suspended segments and entire segments track curves, unlike the previous generations of streetcar vehicles.
Yes, they have more articulations for their length then pretty much anything high floor and more than both high floor and low floor buses. This is not the case with the Citadis Spirit (longer segments made possible by pivoting bogies, just like on high floor equipment), also about 95% low floor - due to steps beside the aisle over the bogies. However, its low floor area is sloped in places.
Another issue is that Toronto has stuck to unidirectional vehicles with doors on only one side with the low floor order instead of converting to bidirectional running so that the land taken by the loops (and it is surely expensive land) is available for something else.
Yeah, not converting to bidirectional operation feels like a very big mistake!
The ride quality feels a bit worse, less suspension so its not as soft, and the weight is high up on the vehicle so when you come to a stop you have a fair amount of horizontal sway.
> Yeah, not converting to bidirectional operation feels like a very big mistake!
Is that because Toronto's turning loops are really tight and in built-up areas?
Some European operators are sticking to looped unidirectional running and continue to buy new unidirectional rolling stock with doors on only the right, but they have larger turning loops that those of either Toronto or Philadelphia, mostly in open spaces and they also have spiderweb networks - referring to the track layout, not the routes, very different from Toronto or Philadelphia, or Melbourne for that matter.
Some of them have wyes where there is not room for (large) turning loops.
Wonderful comment about ride quality! Which especially in relation to low floor buses gets very little attention. You mentioned hard suspension, and sway dynamics. That's a great start!
I have looked into this because I used to have long transit rides to work, and noticed how bumpy low floor anything is. Around the world low floor has come to dominate, voted in by people who probably never ride the bus.
I even have a letter from at-the-time TTC GM Gary Webster on this topic; he explained that riders would never again enjoy the softer ride quality that was just taken for granted by high floor GM buses of the past.
It would be a worthwhile research topic from some transportation or medical academics to take a jolt meter on various transportation routes in Toronto. My view is that the working classes that make up the bulk of GTA transit system ridership have actual serious negative health impacts because of low floor bumpiness. (Just think of seniors sitting on a TTC bus seat and without the muscle strength to brace themselves against shocks. And so through the ride their spines get one measurable jolt jerk after another. Or a suburban cleaner coming home tired after and night shift, and having a 45 minute ride which just adds to their fatigue or exhaustion.)
A reply above mentioned someone in a TTC "customer experience" role. But passenger ride quality is beyond the consumerist idea of "experience". It's about the material human consequences of fantasy engineering idealism.
This is obviously real to an extent, but the low floor buses in Europe are MUCH more comfortable (and the roads seem to also be in MUCH better condition).
Is it the same with low floor trams in Europe? Even ones with fixed bogies?
Short segments on fixed bogies (like the Flexity Outlook and Flexity Freedom, for examples) are unpopular with railfans, claiming they do not ride as well and cause greater track wear.
There are pivoting bogie models also with stepless aisles, like the Citadis Spirit, Frankfurt T-type, E class Melbourne tram and upcoming G class and Gothenburg M33 and M34. However, the low floor area is sloped in places rather than completely flat.
The pull quote here for me... "so if we just got the streetcars working really well, it would be like adding a whole new subway’s worth of capacity: something we can do without digging expensive tunnels!"
I wish the TTC's leaders and the city's leaders understood this
Doug Ford certainly will not, he focuses on congestion and travel time for suburban conservatives, who are, for most part, motorists.
I don't think you understand the political dynamics in Toronto
What I do understand is that he can, and has, banned creation of bike lanes under certain circumstances where they take space from cars.
I also understand he has the power to, and will get rid of some of Toronto's protected bike lanes, which he claims are clogging Toronto's streets.
One thing that *is* clogging so many city streets around the world is street parking.
Thats not accurate and you are going on vibes as opposed to understanding what is actually happening.
Anyways, I'm not sure why you're saying this stuff to me, I am not Doug Ford.
Of course you are not Doug Ford, but I have heard about that legislation and what he is doing in Toronto and that he is accused of acting as if he can run that city.
Bravo, all good common sense suggestions for any city. A stop every block is a bane. Doing it to appease a few elderly folks is misguided. While it is not in Toronto, my 80+ year old mother in law is not going to be out walking to or standing at a bus or tram stop. She will instead call the Dial A Ride, which is a subsidized public service and which will come directly to her building, and the driver will help her board.
Is that because she needs a transport solution without fixed routes or timetables? If so, is it because she needs a call-up-door-to-door service?
Stop spacing is, however, contextual and stops need to be closer together in denser areas, due to passenger loads. Perhaps Toronto needs higher density and closer stop spacing, rather than longer stop spacing.
Toronto does not need closer stop spacing. Even in dense areas the spacing is too tight, and its also tight in lower density areas which will not be densifying any time soon.
Sure but should there be better priority and more dedicated lanes before stops and consolidated/removed?
In Melbourne, we consolidated some tram stops as part of accessibility works but it did not increase average speed much. Within the city center, removing stops at Lonsdale street made it harder to interchange with buses.
Say the rate of acceleration is 1.3m/second and the speed limit is 60km/h. If say there are people waiting at every stop and getting off at most (both buses and trams in Toronto run on a request stop basis) stops need to be at least or over 214 metres apart for the top speed to be reached, but even then it may be difficult to reach that speed without good priority and dedicated lanes.
Also, any idea how much stop consolidation (with neither better priority nor dedicated lanes) would really speed up the service?
Mother in law could take the bus, but has some mobility issues and can't stand for a long time. She used to take the bus, but now prefers the Dial A Ride bus that comes to her, rather than her to it. We also prefer she use it.
So in that case, do bus stops where she lives have waiting shelters with benches?
My son banded these as “snail cars” when he was about 7 years old. He’s 14 now and we’ve been using this term ever since.
Children have the funniest ways of being frank
Curious how much you might have chatted to the TTC about this? Because when I have, all I’ve got back is “you don’t understand Toronto” or “we could never do that <insert quite banal reason, e.g. parking, cost, deliveries etc>
No, those at the top are the ones who could make a difference and are as far as I can tell totally uninterested given the lack of any visible progress.
I’ve spent a bit of time with one very senior TTC executive. He’s a good guy. I like him. But for all the nice conversation, nothing has actually happened.
A level below, one person responsible for passenger experience has been about as condescending as possible. To the point of being delusional.
It’s like they want to pretend a totally different reality exists. But I can’t understand why that’s their strategy.
Alas, almost all the derision directed towards streetcars is due to... cars, mixed traffic befowling streetcar movement and operations. The Mayor and her TTC Chair are missing a once in a generation opportunity to greatly improve priority for streetcars and get people moving faster on them, for a generation. I do not see them being re-elected. we'll get another regressive, cars-first, Ford clone getting rid of more bike lanes, investing billions more in outdated dinosaur car infra like the Gardiner, as a reaction to the current Mayor's many failures. King Street priority lanes have been a success - they need to be expanded to 24 hours, so that it's very clear to all drivers what the rules are. Currently there are taxi & > 10pm exceptions, which on busy evenings snarl 504 King cars getting through. Toronto's going to receive a million new residents in the next decade - the status quo of people driving everywhere is not sustainable. Downtown, the 401, and many busy streets are increasingly stop and go throughout the week. Where is the leadership and vision from the Mayor? Where are the promised new bus lanes? It doesn't take that long to plan & consult for them - we did it in months during the pandemic. Toronto has the best integrated city and regional rail networks in North America, with more subway extensions and interchange stations being built. But the city is ignoring the base layer that carries the majority of passengers - buses and streetcars. Car storage on major arterials is another urban failure, especially on streetcar and busy routes. Cars aren't scalable - there is limited road space. Building more parking downtown is encouraging driving. Fortunatley the condo boom is forcing development of the empty surface parking lots downtown.
I think as you note a lot of blame can be placed on the city / pols and the TTC for not delivering good streetcars. As things stand riders would almost universally be better off in buses.
Streetcars, freed from traffic, have so much potential - carrying more passengers than 2 buses w/ just one driver, w/ alot less jerking about, plus being electric traction but not using heavy, rare metal toxically mined batteries of battery electric buses. Which don't seem to last as long as the companies claim. Steel wheel on steel rail is much more efficient, whereas bus tires add microparticle pollution.
1) They have some potential, but in Toronto even where we do this (St. Clair, Spadina) they are much slower than Euro trams
2) Batteries are not using rare metals / toxically mined metals, increasingly cobalt etc. are not even used - replaced with chemistries like iron phosphate.
I agree trams are nice, but the issue in Toronto is its a bad tram vs a decent bus.
I wonder if this is why so many trams were replaced by buses. The system/network of Toronto was the only one in the whole of the Americas and one of the few in the world, to survive without using alternatives to street running, the alternatives to street running it does have now are quite recent.
Yes, most surviving first generation systems/networks, even in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (C.I.S - formerly the U.S.S.R) use a lot more alternatives to street running that even we have in Melbourne. This is especially so for second generation systems/networks, they nearly all have a lot of reserved track.
The Berlin tram that you show and the Paris trams that you mention mostly have their own ROW. They are not "Street" cars, which is a principal reason for their success. Also, stops are not to close to each other.
Berlin has lots on street, Paris does not. Toronto could do a lot more than it does. You can do well in mixed traffic, but you need smart design.
Berlin also has request stopping, like Melbourne and Toronto, typical of first generation tram systems - but in Berlin doors are passenger operated, stops requested using interior doors buttons. In Paris, only buses stop on request (though I am not sure how commonly they actually skip stops) and even trams, though doors are passenger operated, just stop at all stops like the metro trains, typical of second generation systems.
Since you mentioned Amsterdam and Zuerich, trams as well as buses in those cities also run on a request stop basis and it does not stop Zuerich's trams from often coming to the minute on schedule. Again, I am not sure how common stop skipping actually is.
I have heard of people missing their stops because they did not expect to have to request them. That is, a stop is not requested and then someone complains to the driver that they did not stop.
Have you ever seen that in Toronto?
For example, people missing their stops because they expected people to be waiting at their stops (in which case the driver will stop anyway) when there were not. Or unfamiliar users missing their stops because they did not know there service they are using runs on a request stop basis.
Another is if someone looks out a window, sees someone waiting at a stop and so does not bother to request it, but the person waiting at the stop waves past the streetcar so it does not stop and the person hoping not to have to request it misses the stop.
I have at times missed trams in Melbourne because the driver did not see me.
Have you seen the RapidTO project that the TTC is studying? What are your thoughts on it?
https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/streets-parking-transportation/transportation-projects/rapidto/
I think that we are still "studying" bus lanes shows a lack of seriousness. Its not a big intervention, it would be positive, its not innovative, studying it shows we can't even do small things quicckly.
Some have suggested that the Saint Clair line should be converted to standard gauge light rail and integrated into the newer light rail network.
I don't see any reason for that
Well the Saint Clair line is quite straight and operationally isolated from the rest of the system, that is, non-revenue track is what connects it to the rest of the network.
Also, I wonder if new light rail lines are likely better than expanding a network that cannot take industry standard vehicles, due to extremely tight curves and unusual gauge.
Apparently the Flexities are slower on curves than the ALRVs and CLRVs they replaced. How does the ride quality compare? If they don't ride as well, have there been complaints about that? Asking because they each consist of three wheeled segments (each on four wheels) and two suspended segments and entire segments track curves, unlike the previous generations of streetcar vehicles.
Yes, they have more articulations for their length then pretty much anything high floor and more than both high floor and low floor buses. This is not the case with the Citadis Spirit (longer segments made possible by pivoting bogies, just like on high floor equipment), also about 95% low floor - due to steps beside the aisle over the bogies. However, its low floor area is sloped in places.
Another issue is that Toronto has stuck to unidirectional vehicles with doors on only one side with the low floor order instead of converting to bidirectional running so that the land taken by the loops (and it is surely expensive land) is available for something else.
Yeah, not converting to bidirectional operation feels like a very big mistake!
The ride quality feels a bit worse, less suspension so its not as soft, and the weight is high up on the vehicle so when you come to a stop you have a fair amount of horizontal sway.
> Yeah, not converting to bidirectional operation feels like a very big mistake!
Is that because Toronto's turning loops are really tight and in built-up areas?
Some European operators are sticking to looped unidirectional running and continue to buy new unidirectional rolling stock with doors on only the right, but they have larger turning loops that those of either Toronto or Philadelphia, mostly in open spaces and they also have spiderweb networks - referring to the track layout, not the routes, very different from Toronto or Philadelphia, or Melbourne for that matter.
Some of them have wyes where there is not room for (large) turning loops.
Wonderful comment about ride quality! Which especially in relation to low floor buses gets very little attention. You mentioned hard suspension, and sway dynamics. That's a great start!
I have looked into this because I used to have long transit rides to work, and noticed how bumpy low floor anything is. Around the world low floor has come to dominate, voted in by people who probably never ride the bus.
I even have a letter from at-the-time TTC GM Gary Webster on this topic; he explained that riders would never again enjoy the softer ride quality that was just taken for granted by high floor GM buses of the past.
It would be a worthwhile research topic from some transportation or medical academics to take a jolt meter on various transportation routes in Toronto. My view is that the working classes that make up the bulk of GTA transit system ridership have actual serious negative health impacts because of low floor bumpiness. (Just think of seniors sitting on a TTC bus seat and without the muscle strength to brace themselves against shocks. And so through the ride their spines get one measurable jolt jerk after another. Or a suburban cleaner coming home tired after and night shift, and having a 45 minute ride which just adds to their fatigue or exhaustion.)
A reply above mentioned someone in a TTC "customer experience" role. But passenger ride quality is beyond the consumerist idea of "experience". It's about the material human consequences of fantasy engineering idealism.
This is obviously real to an extent, but the low floor buses in Europe are MUCH more comfortable (and the roads seem to also be in MUCH better condition).
Is it the same with low floor trams in Europe? Even ones with fixed bogies?
Short segments on fixed bogies (like the Flexity Outlook and Flexity Freedom, for examples) are unpopular with railfans, claiming they do not ride as well and cause greater track wear.
There are pivoting bogie models also with stepless aisles, like the Citadis Spirit, Frankfurt T-type, E class Melbourne tram and upcoming G class and Gothenburg M33 and M34. However, the low floor area is sloped in places rather than completely flat.