City
The 501 Queen Streetcar Splits in Two
Starting this morning, the TTC has split the 501 streetcar route, one of its longest routes and the one featured in a National Geographic "Top 10" of the most scenic streetcars rides in the world.
The existing 501 ride which currently moves about 43,500 people a day will be split in half as part of a test run in order to try to address long-standing concerns regarding the quality and timeliness of service along Queen.
Until November 20th, streetcars traveling westbound will turn back at Shaw, and vehicles moving Eastbound will loop back around Parliament. The overlapping section between these two intersections runs a total of 4 km, and stretches across the majority of the downtown core. On weekends, the 501 will operate as it usually does - in one piece.
Until push comes to shove, it will be hard to say whether splitting the route will actually work. For those crossing the city (say, from Parkdale to the Beaches), they will now face a longer commute, necessitated by a transfer somewhere during the overlapping area. One rider told me he wasn't looking forward to "transferring instead of sitting in the streetcar for the entire ride."
His work and home are near opposite ends of Queen, so this split is likely to affect him adversely. For the majority of commuters, however, the TTC must be betting this change will be of benefit.
Personally, I'm glad to see that the Red Rocket is trying to alleviate commuter headaches but this approach is far from shaping up to be a slam dunk solution. According to the TTC, this plan was arrived at after two years of testing strategies aimed at improving reliability, short turns and overall travel time.
Results from this trial split will be announced sometime in January.
Riding on the 501 today or tomorrow? Please let us know how it goes!
Discussion
57 Comments
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This gets worse when the snow/cold weather starts, when it can take 2-3 cars to go by before it's possible to even get on.
It happens with almost every route, but is compounded on the 501 line - the gambit here is that the problem lies in the route's length, so they chopped it up to try to minimize the very same problems.
You won't notice the split until going home. You'll have to get off at Parliament and take another car to Coxwell. God only knows how long you'll have to wait for a car going past Parliament though.
I do get the sense that a lot of people are confused about exactly how the service works. Perhaps a look at the map might be helpful?
http://www3.ttc.ca/Routes/501/Map.jsp
Anybody still confused please take a look at the route map: http://www3.ttc.ca/Routes/501/Map.jsp
The VAST majority of 501 riders will be able to get to their destinations without transferring. People between Shaw & Parliament just need to know to wait for the right streetcar, as those stops will now be served by cars going to Long Branch, Humber, Shaw, Parliament and Neville Park.
Laura the Shaw turnaround loops via South on Shaw, West on King, North on Dufferin and back East on Queen.
Telling the TTC to simply space them better is fairly useless when the route length is nearly 40km long. Yes this may affect people going from Parkdale to The Beaches, but very, very few 501 riders go that far. Anybody in Parkdale can still get to any stop until Parliament without transferring.
1) ban left turns on Queen. This would make a huge difference - a streetcar full of people would not have to wait for one (!) person in a car making a left.
2) make the center lanes of queen streetcar-only.
3) Make Queen between Church and University (or further) pedestrian plazas, with streetcar-only lanes in the middle. Since most delays happen because of congestion downtown, let's eliminate congestion on Queen in that area.
There is absolutely no reason why people need to be taking a left turn off of Queen, King,College, Spadina or Bathurst. Taking a couple of quick turns on side streets is not too much to ask drivers to spare a streetcar sitting immobile through 3 light changes letting other cars back up behind them.
Also there seems to be virtually no enforcement of Streetcar or Bus Only Lanes. When is the last time anybody saw somebody getting a ticket for driving in the left lane on King or the right lane on Bay St? This is not the TTC's fault as only Toronto Police can write these kind of tickets, and they don't seem to care about enforcing these rules.
More Left Turn Bans may help, but most major intersections do have left turn restrictions, however they are only 7-9 and 4-6. Banning Left Turns 7am-7pm like they do on Bay St may help.
Banning left turns everywhere 24/7 would be very tricky because many side streets are now a mess of one-way streets, designed to keep traffic from cutting through them to get to major streets.
Got a seat and by the time we reached University the streetcar was full but people weren't packed in like sardines.
Some people might get lucky around Dufferin or Gladstone because you might catch the Shaw car looping around.
I am glad the TTC is trying something.
One thing to note....things on Queen and Dufferin should improve when they connect Dufferin at Queen. During rush hour there is a lot of congestion created when cars have to loop around to get back onto Dufferin north of Queen.
Banning the "left turns" on Queen is already occurring on other streetcar routes - sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. It really depends on the intersection and traffic flow itself. Plus, by the time the Transit City project finishes, we will have an enormous amount of left hand turns to make in the city. People have been complaining about St. Clair for awhile now - just wait until the other routes along Eglinton & Harbourfront begin construction.
As for #3, I agree with the idea right away. The problem is capital and commitment by all levels of government. Rerouting traffic in an efficient manner may also be a problem. I would love to see Queen turned into your idea; maybe Gould St. will be the first example?
And it looks like you can't take the street car all the way home if you live in the burroughs and are out partying on Queen. It'll take you to Roncey after you transfer to a bus at Dufferin and then you're on your own. Better not stay out too late.
It's completely stupid.
The problems with the 501 line is congestion and traffic backlogs. Splitting the line would help with that.
I sincerely hope this is only a trial run.
That's what they're doing. What are you trying to say?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulated_bus
streetcars are not suited for narrow congested streets. i hope they dont get new ones and simply scrap them.
Let them find their own way to and fro.
That seems somewhat practical to me, and potentially helpful to those who still need to get from one end of the city to the other.
I'm not sure yet how I feel about the change - going to work this morning was fine, but going home last night had me passing over 3 Parliament streetcars before the Neville Park showed up. That's going to get old once the temperature drops a little more.
I'm used to slow service on Queen Street but that was uncalled for. There's no options at Parliament. Sometimes the King car turns up Parliament but it doesn't go east. At least at Broadview, there's an option. Either have more cars going all the way east or west for those that need to get to the extreme destinations or scrap the whole idea. Geez, we just went through a summer of track construction on Queen and now this? I guess that's why TTC actually means Take The Car!!!
Not happy.
While the wait tonight wasn't long, I'm not looking forward to having to do so when the temperature dips. I really do hope this is just a temporary thing.
Back in the day, they used to have a streetcar route that went back and forth between Humber and Long Branch, allowing people to transfer at Humber Loop without too much wait-time. Why don't they just bring that back? Why did they pick Shaw anyway? What's at Shaw? At least pick a transfer point in a more populated area like Parkdale where most people would benefit. I don't get this...just makes no sense???
what we have now, at any time between 5pm and 7pm on the queen cars headed east, are people jamming themselves into an overstuffed 502 Victoria car, while double 501 cars go empty.
why not split the east/west at the dividing line of the city--yonge--which makes the most sense? there are tracks on victoria street that could accomplish the turnaound, no?
haven't noticed any reduction in bunching of streetcars either. it's either a long wait for the first of 3 of 4 cars, several of which may be short-turning anyway. at broadview and queen last night, i continued to witness empty street cars turning onto or of broadview, while a group of 30 passengers waited 20 minutes (possibly longer) for the first of 3 streetcars to come by, the first of which resembled a 3rd world bus. the point of the ttc these days seems to be to inconvenience and alienate as many customers as possible. the just announced fare increase is the icing on the cake.