TTC Service Changes

[Kumiko Oumae]

On 11/17/2023 at 8:46 AM, Xtrazsteve said:

Oh look, we finally have a report of stuff they are going to implement. https://cdn.ttc.ca/-/media/Project/TTC/DevProto/Documents/Home/Public-Meetings/Board/2023/November-22/3_2024_Annual_Service_Plan.pdf

It's been clarified the 906 Airport-Humber College Express would still loop as proposed, not through the Airport.

The 985C changes has been decoupled from the ASP studies. The Sheppard corridor will receive a renumbering for wayfinding too. The 85J (Line 4 parallel service) would be renumbered to 185 SHEPPARD CENTRAL. (will people think it's the Don Mills Rocket when it arrives at Don Mills Stn?). The 985A will be renumbered as 904 Sheppard-Kennedy Express. 985B would receive a midday service and the 985C would have the same M-F am, midday and pm peak operating periods. The current 85B to Zoo branch would become 85C. The currently displayed 85C to Meadowvale would become 85B. (Who thought this is a good idea?)

They explained that the 178 BRIMORTON is not recommended as they projected low ridership along with extensive work to build tons of accessible boarding locations for a trial.

They still plan on implementing the 150 EASTERN as a replacement to the 143. The 191 UNDERHILL is suppose to help as a replacement to the 144. This is supposes to be the time they accept the death of the 14x routes.

With the 54B extension to Morningside, 954 would operate express to that point.

107 will be renamed back to ALNESS-CHESSWOOD after the Line 6 changes. 128 will merged into the 101 and it's designation will disappear. 

There's a whole lot of things to read that I will not write here.

 

Post Implementation performance reviews

30 HIGH PARK NORTH is on the chopping block
43C KENNEDY branch to Village Green Square is on the chopping board
174 ONTARIO PLACE-EXHIBITION was impossible to operate
203 HIGH PARK is axed for good for bad performance.
941 KEELE EXPRESS midday operating speed was barely nay faster than the 41 KEELE.
943 KENNEDY EXPRESS wasn't making the ridership or speed performance. It will remain "suspended indefinitely" till they know what to do.
968 WARDEN EXPRESS is doing so-so but will remain for now.

Hmmm.... The only area that they missed is the Jarvis bus. Jarvis was served by the 141 and a replacement local route could be feasible. Why not have a proposed JARVIS bus running from St. Clair Station to Union Station running via St. Clair, Mt. Pleasant, Jarvis, Queens Quay, Bay, looping on Wellington, York, King and Bay before continuing northbound? There hasn't a full service on Church since 1996 and the 97C YONGE buses running on peak periods, leaving the 19 BAY and 75 SHERBOURNE local buses to rely on going downtown despite the high volume of people use LINE 1 on a daily basis.

At least they may look over to extend the 13 AVENUE ROAD south to Queen's Quay via York, Queens Quay, Bay and Harbour as a viable replacement to the 142 route.

[Young]

On 11/15/2023 at 6:22 PM, WoodbineSecondExit said:

901/906 looping through the terminals? They said they were looking for ways to serve the employment zone around the airport but this will do squat to help. Glad to see they ignored all suggestions!

Speaking of the 901 and 906 I assume either Mount Dennis or Wilson or even Queensway would make sense to run the 901 and Arrow or Wilson for the 906

[Mike]

On 11/18/2023 at 9:34 AM, Kumiko Oumae said:

Hmmm.... The only area that they missed is the Jarvis bus. Jarvis was served by the 141 and a replacement local route could be feasible. Why not have a proposed JARVIS bus running from St. Clair Station to Union Station running via St. Clair, Mt. Pleasant, Jarvis, Queens Quay, Bay, looping on Wellington, York, King and Bay before continuing northbound? There hasn't a full service on Church since 1996 and the 97C YONGE buses running on peak periods, leaving the 19 BAY and 75 SHERBOURNE local buses to rely on going downtown despite the high volume of people use LINE 1 on a daily basis.

At least they may look over to extend the 13 AVENUE ROAD south to Queen's Quay via York, Queens Quay, Bay and Harbour as a viable replacement to the 142 route.

Church hasn’t been a full service route since June 1979 when evening and weekend service was discontinued and from Feb 1994 to Feb 1996 was rush hours only.

There is already service on SHERBOURNE which is 300 meters from Jarvis so before you introduce parallel service on Jarvis you should probably look at fixing reliability issues elsewhere on the system.

Are you sure a viable alternative for routes (141 and 142) that very few people used are needed?

P.S. given that the TTC got rid of the 97 routing via Bay and Queens Quay (due to traffic constraints) the routings you suggest for looping around Union Station for Jarvis and Avenue Rd buses would be ill advised.

[Ed T.]

21 hours ago, Mike said:

Church hasn’t been a full service route since June 1979 when evening and weekend service was discontinued and from Feb 1994 to Feb 1996 was rush hours only.

There is already service on SHERBOURNE which is 300 meters from Jarvis so before you introduce parallel service on Jarvis you should probably look at fixing reliability issues elsewhere on the system.

Are you sure a viable alternative for routes (141 and 142) that very few people used are needed?

P.S. given that the TTC got rid of the 97 routing via Bay and Queens Quay (due to traffic constraints) the routings you suggest for looping around Union Station for Jarvis and Avenue Rd buses would be ill advised.

• Yonge to Church (measured along Wellesley): 306 m
• Church to Jarvis (measured along Carlton): 223 m
• Jarvis to Sherbourne (along Carlton): 300 m
• Sherbourne to Parliament (along Carlton): 434 m

You can use https://map.toronto.ca/toinview/ to do this kind of stuff.

The Church/Jarvis corridor is a lot different now than it was in 1979, or even 1996. Thirty to forty-plus storey condos going in on every corner. I lived in the area until 2006, and the changes are startling. So what TTC planners figured decades ago should not really be relevant.

I suspect that Church is a better corridor for a transit line. At the north end, the bus can loop at Rosedale station, giving a link from the Yonge line to residential areas, with the bonus of not having to deal with Bloor-Yonge. And Church is a fair distance from Yonge and over 500 m from Sherbourne.

I would advocate bringing back the Church (and Parliament) streetcars, but I doubt that will happen.

 

[Mike]

22 minutes ago, Ed T. said:

• Yonge to Church (measured along Wellesley): 306 m
• Church to Jarvis (measured along Carlton): 223 m
• Jarvis to Sherbourne (along Carlton): 300 m
• Sherbourne to Parliament (along Carlton): 434 m

You can use https://map.toronto.ca/toinview/ to do this kind of stuff.

The Church/Jarvis corridor is a lot different now than it was in 1979, or even 1996. Thirty to forty-plus storey condos going in on every corner. I lived in the area until 2006, and the changes are startling. So what TTC planners figured decades ago should not really be relevant.

I suspect that Church is a better corridor for a transit line. At the north end, the bus can loop at Rosedale station, giving a link from the Yonge line to residential areas, with the bonus of not having to deal with Bloor-Yonge. And Church is a fair distance from Yonge and over 500 m from Sherbourne.

I would advocate bringing back the Church (and Parliament) streetcars, but I doubt that will happen.

Are you really pointing out to us (in 2023) that we can measure distance on something like google maps?  

Yes there are a lot of new buildings on Church, but where are the people living in those new buildings going (i.e. would service down Church be useful to them)?  If they are young and impatient will they wait for an infrequent Church bus (unless you are proposing running 10 min or better service along Church) or will they simply walk over to the subway? 

The message I was trying to convey was that rather than throwing buses and operators at Church or Jarvis, the TTC should first look to fix service along established corridors.

[Ed T.]

21 minutes ago, Mike said:

Are you really pointing out to us (in 2023) that we can measure distance on something like google maps?  

Yes there are a lot of new buildings on Church, but where are the people living in those new buildings going (i.e. would service down Church be useful to them)?  If they are young and impatient will they wait for an infrequent Church bus (unless you are proposing running 10 min or better service along Church) or will they simply walk over to the subway? 

The message I was trying to convey was that rather than throwing buses and operators at Church or Jarvis, the TTC should first look to fix service along established corridors.

TO Inview has a lot of features and you can get information. Google maps has less information; its purpose is deliver advertising to you, and delivering you to paying advertisers.

There are lots of reasons to avoid the Yonge subway for short trips downtown. I'll bet you Uber and Lyft get lots of rides up and down Church and Jarvis. Of course 19 BAY seems to be going the way of 19 CHURCH. Back when the subway was overloaded in the late '80s, 6 BAY was an extremely busy route. The "urban clearway" signage survives as a relic of past times.

[CJ.]

996 should have always went to STC. Only today i really realize how close it was from ellesmere

[wheelindealin]

TMU would be well served if a bus was on church.  It gives direct access to Kerr Hall, Rogers Communications Building, George Vari Engineering Building, Maple Leaf Gardens, and several residences along Gerrard. A connection to Rosedale station would give students an alternate route coming from the north, or a connection to Union Station would directly serve students taking the GO. While I'm not a student anymore, I would have appreciated alternate routes to get to TMU. 

The only positive I see putting it at Jarvis is that it would incentivize getting rid of that moronic centre-switching lane and restoring either the bike lane or at least introducing a diamond lane.

[Xtrazsteve]

1 hour ago, wheelindealin said:

TMU would be well served if a bus was on church.  It gives direct access to Kerr Hall, Rogers Communications Building, George Vari Engineering Building, Maple Leaf Gardens, and several residences along Gerrard. A connection to Rosedale station would give students an alternate route coming from the north, or a connection to Union Station would directly serve students taking the GO. While I'm not a student anymore, I would have appreciated alternate routes to get to TMU. 

The only positive I see putting it at Jarvis is that it would incentivize getting rid of that moronic centre-switching lane and restoring either the bike lane or at least introducing a diamond lane.

It’s difficult to connect to Line 2 with a Church bus. A second entrance from Gould Street would be way nicer than an infrequent bus. 
 

Union Station is a mess for surface traffic. There will be no reliability for such traffic and would perform as bad as the 97 does.

[Mike]

6 hours ago, wheelindealin said:

TMU would be well served if a bus was on church.  It gives direct access to Kerr Hall, Rogers Communications Building, George Vari Engineering Building, Maple Leaf Gardens, and several residences along Gerrard. A connection to Rosedale station would give students an alternate route coming from the north, or a connection to Union Station would directly serve students taking the GO. While I'm not a student anymore, I would have appreciated alternate routes to get to TMU. 

The only positive I see putting it at Jarvis is that it would incentivize getting rid of that moronic centre-switching lane and restoring either the bike lane or at least introducing a diamond lane.

It would be a huge waste of time though, no one except for transit fans would do it (unless you happened to live close to where the bus runs).  If you are already on the subway, why would you get off at Rosedale and subject yourself to a slow  bus ride instead of just getting off at College/Dundas and walking 400-500m?  

[CJ.]

A lonely Scarborough centre station, never to see a single passenger again.

 

Embarrassing what transit in Scarborough has become

[lifty4ever]

On 11/30/2023 at 1:10 PM, CJ. said:

A lonely Scarborough centre station, never to see a single passenger again.

 

Embarrassing what transit in Scarborough has become

Blame the Ontario government of the mid 90s for forcing a technology on us that whilst it does work, didn't work for what we had planned and already half built when they handed it to us. If we stuck to streetcar trains, we'd be talking about Line 7 Ontario rather than Line 3 Ontario and the Line 2 extension would've gone further east rather than north to Sheppard. 

[Ed T.]

12 hours ago, lifty4ever said:

Blame the Ontario government of the mid 90s for forcing a technology on us that whilst it does work, didn't work for what we had planned and already half built when they handed it to us. If we stuck to streetcar trains, we'd be talking about Line 7 Ontario rather than Line 3 Ontario and the Line 2 extension would've gone further east rather than north to Sheppard. 

Unless Mike Harris is also Dr Who, I'd rather blame Bill Davis in the '70s for admirable but misguided high-tech transit dreams.