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!
Comments (57)
Is there somewhere a streetcar can loop around at Shaw? I can't picture a looping area anywhere there...
That's a horrible strategy. Hopefully they revert to sanity November 20th. Let's keep our scenic streetcar ride! Waiting for the queen car has never bothered me.. If they want to "address long-standing concerns regarding the quality and timeliness of service along Queen," add more cars.. space them out better! i'm tired of seeing three cars in a row with the last car empty! What a lame idea.
Great idea! The eastbound section west of yonge is constantly packed during rush hour. And not packed like, oh damn I won't get a seat. Packed like, there is already someone doing a chinup over the rear stairs waiting for the doors to close.
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.
MelS, they DO try to space them out - it's congestion & backlog that have the streetcars all lined up empty, then MIA for 20 minutes. They start spaced pretty well in Mimico or wherever, then as they make their way out to Scarborough, they get bunched up due to lights, heavier ridership on the first ones having to stop at every stop while the later ones sail on by, etc.
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.
This test is doomed to failure from the start. How can one possibly get accurate metrics around "improved" commute times when a section of the route is under construction? (btwn Church/Jarvis). For the past two weeks, my commute from Queen & Spadina to Leslieville has taken close to an hour. I've been taking the King car instead and will continue to through this sham of an "experiment" as I don't feel like waiting god knows how long at Parliament for a streetcar that goes to the east end.
I haven't been looking forward to the split, especially since it's been barely a month since Queen Street construction ended and the route has returned to normal. Still, I took the 501 car from Spadina to Broadview this morning and I never had to transfer. Are you sure this starts today?
The cause of the congestion on the 501 Queen are the single occupant automobiles. Either make Queen Street a pedestrian/transit mall or make it entirely HOV, trucks, and taxis only (no single occupant automobiles).
I took the Terrible Transit this morning from Queen and Coxwell eastbound to Yonge, and it was even slower than usual, with fewer streetcars. What gives? Message to the TTC: if you want your streetcars and subways to run more efficiently, STOP taking them "out of service" all the gosh darned time!
Completely agree Phil - east enders have dealt with enough streetcar chaos lately. We deserve a break.
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 tried to take the streetcar this morning westbound from the Beach to River St and found that the service was even worse then usual. I left at the same time I do every morning, and waited 20 minutes for a streetcar to show up. I eventually gave up waiting, and took a taxi and didn't pass a streetcar until I was almost at work...does not bode well for this test-run if on the first day it screwed up service even worse then usual!
Tinkering with the transit system is going to happen time to time and those adversely effected will of course complain. IF this does help with getting people to the downtown core quickly then i think it's a keeper.
I can't help but think this idea actually makes quite a bit of sense. It isn't going to work for everyone, but for the majority of people, hopefully this will ease some of the insanity of the Queen Streetcar.
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?
Wow. This is goint to be a real mess. Thank Christ I don't have to take the Queen streetcar to work anymore; worst route in the city in terms of rush hour dependability, save maybe College (which gets all screwed up travelling through Little Italy and, in the east end, the Z-shaped path through Cabbagetown). Basically, in my experience, if you have to depend on anything but the subway to get to work you're in for a world of pain. The subway is no day at the beach in terms of the crowding, to be sure, but at least it's semi-dependable in terms of regularity.
You didn't have to transfer because this test run allows anybody at stops between Shaw and Parliament to get to any destination without transferring. There is no transfer required unless you are starting East of Parliament and going West of Shaw, or vice versa.
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.
wonder how this splitting will work. PS the new Humber Bay Express bus looks like a failure. The streetcar was just as busy and a ttc official told me that 7 people only used the service this morning. 7 people for route that make 5 rush hour trips downtown. Sounds like a huge waste of money again by the TTC.
I arrived by subway at Queen and Yonge at 7:30 this morning. I then headed upstairs to catch the streetcar for the second leg of my commute. The first streetcar heading east was looping at Parliament arrived within a minute. I had to wait another minute or so for the Neville Park car to arrive. I got off at Carlaw. Maybe added one or two minutes to my commute. It's pretty dead east of Church that early though.
Using Google street view I see now that there are, indeed, tracks on Shaw. Never noticed them before. While I think this idea might work to help keep streetcars (somewhat) on schedule, the residents on the east side of Shaw must be pretty ticked off now that their street is a full-service streetcar avenue. That's the cost of progress, but their property values are gonna take a hit.
If you're on the east side of Shaw facing CAMH you've got several years of major construction scheduled across the road from you; the streetcars won't even be audible over the sounds of backhoes and dumptrucks rebuilding CAMH.
Alternate ideas:
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.
As long as they add more streetcars at Shaw and Parliament during rush hour so people aren't waiting too long, this should work. But they're stupid, so they won't, which means this is going to SUCK A GREAT DEAL.
+1
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.
Making Streetcar only lanes absolutely does not work. King Street has the same rules in effect from 7am-9am 4pm-6pm and nobody ever follows them. The main reason is because so many people stop or park illegally in the right lane that there is no choice but to use the streetcar lane.
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.
Took the streetcar from Queen and Dufferin to Queen and University this morning and so far so good.
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.
I agree with #1 and #3.
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?
Loving the "can't win don't try" rhetoric above... Give it a chance FFS. There's a reason the trial is going on for a number of weeks, in order to permit optimisation based on observed patterns. You're just playing into the hands of the do-nothings at the Commission.
re: Humber express bus, I think the first day of service is far too early to call the whole project a failure. On the TTC website last night there was still no information about the route at all, no maps, the stops were not clearly marked this morning, there was a lot of confusion. There are definitely still some things to iron out, so it was entirely reasonable that not many people tried it on its first morning of service, especially if they needed a reliable way to get to work this morning. After 6 weeks if there is still nobody riding then you can call it epic fail, but I think it is still too early to judge at this point.
Why is that good? Of course those adversely affected will complain, and rightfully so. The Toronto Transit Catastrophe is saying, "we're going to try to benefit these people over here, but those others over there are SOL." Living in Mimico, now the damn streetcar will take even longer to come than it already does. If they'd just extend some of the Humber Loop cars to Long Branch, that'd be great, but it would make too much sense.
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.
Yet another terrible idea from the TTC. I'm one of those people who take the 501 from one end of the city to the other and this break will only result in more waiting. Why should I have to get off of one car and transfer onto another? How is that convenient?
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.
The problems with the 501 line is congestion and traffic backlogs. Splitting the line would help with that.
That's what they're doing. What are you trying to say?
This is a terrible idea. It is effectively segregating the east/west ends of the city. For those of us who have to cross the city but streetcar, this will be nothing but a frustrating experience.
how about...replace the streetcars with these buses
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.
Yeah... Shaw is just not sufficient. Dufferin or Lansdowne would be significantly more practical.
Do we even care about people in the west or east ends?
Let them find their own way to and fro.
Several cities have discontinued the use of articulated buses due to safety concerns in design and their inability to handle snow and slippery weataher conditions.
Is there any reason in particular the TTC can't keep streetcars on that still run from Long Branch to Neville Park? Put most of the fleet on the split route, but keep around 20-25% of the cars on the regular route?
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.
Streetcars on what are effectively four-lane roads are a disaster, especially if we're still allowing curbside parking, which turns it into a two-lane road in some spots, with the streetcar bottling flow up. It's either streecars or curbside parking - one has got to go. What's really needed is what the city planned for decades ago - a subway along Queen - but no one at this point has a scrap of idealism left to help imagine that anymore.
I know it's early days but so far, it's taken me an extra 1/2 hour to get home on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, I was stranded at Parliament and Queen and I ended up walking all the way to Degrassi before another streetcar came along! And yesterday, I saw a Parliament streetcar coming (with absolutely nothing coming behind it for as far as the eye could see (I'm far-sighted!)), got totally freaked out by my experience the previous day and ended up walking down to King where I caught a Victoria Park.
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!!!
As a Beacher, I've already seen a decline in eastbound service after three days. Service finally improved this summer (construction notwithstanding) and now they're looking to scale it back so people in the far west and east get less transit.
Not happy.
I've been avoiding taking the 501 this week but was stuck with it tonight. I didn't have to wait too long at Parliament, but when a Neville Park car did come, it was packed. Trying to maneuver my way to the back through the crowd wasn't fun.
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.
As they should. The centrally located are more important. I say tax those riders west of Bathurst and east of Jarvis.
Or maybe get rid of this ridiculous one size fits all fare scheme. If the fares were based on distance traveled (like most intelligent transit systems, London, Hong Kong, etc) then this would be rolled in anyways.
Some of you wrote really asinine things - like the one who wrote from Suckers "I walk to work" - very nice. And "WE"? Tax those west of Bathurst and east of Jarvis ?? - yeah, that'll work...dum dee dum dee dum...DUH! I suppose you're saying that to serve your own purpose because you probably happen to reside within your specified boundaries. Get off this forum if you can't be mature enough to write anything intelligent.
I can see this idea potentially working only if there were streetcars already waiting at the transfer points to take passengers further east or west. However, I must say that TTC's track record of co-ordinating routes isn't very good. It makes no sense to have to transfer multiple times...it's simply just inconvenient! They already have shortened west-bound routes that end at Roncessvales, Humber and even Kipling sometimes and it takes people FOREVER to get to Long Branch...and now they wanna add yet another transfer point.
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???
They are also splitting the all night queen route. Why is THIS necessary? I think it is a safety issue for a young woman (any woman) to have to get off their streetcar at 3am at Parliament, to wait for a streetcar headed further east.
Impatient riders trying to push onto the streetcar don't help the situation either. It's not just traffic congestion which slows and bunches up the service.
this has been a truly abysmal, and poorly executed experiment. having 40 eastbound passengers board at yonge, and then, 5 stops later, have 30 of them get off to wait for another car is the height of stupidity and inefficiency.
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.
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