Streetcar News

[Xtrazsteve]

1 hour ago, Transit geek said:

Technically speaking, this is no news. Flexity cars have been in service (even being signed as 501) along much of the route during their trips to and from Leslie Barns.

What would be news is if the Flexity cars would be running a continuous Neville Park-Long Branch service without turning back at Humber. And this would be unlikely especially with the worst of the season just around the corner.

Those aren't running during rush hour when they are mostly needed. Most yard trips occur before and after rush hour missing out when it's most needed. Mostly they'll run empty not on any schedule. That's not deployment means.

[nfitz]

There's still the odd CLRV on 504B during PM rush hour - and with 504B service currently so terrible, it's causing problems. The other day I was on a crush-loaded Flexity short-turned at Parliament, with everyone expected to get on the already pretty full CLRV behind it (which looked like a disaster waiting to happen, so I stayed on the 504B up to Dundas and walked to my 506 from there!).

Hopefully this use of Flexities on 501, isn't going to push more CLRVs to 504 in PM peak. (I haven't seen more than one CLRV on 504 at once for a couple of weeks, or more than two since Thanksgiving - but I don't check every day!).

One thing for sure - 504B service on Broadview has been a nightmare since October, with lots of short-turns and huge gaps. I've been walking from King to Gerrard up Parliament faster than taking 504 many days!

 

 

[bus_7246]

1 hour ago, nfitz said:

There's still the odd CLRV on 504B during PM rush hour - and with 504B service currently so terrible, it's causing problems. The other day I was on a crush-loaded Flexity short-turned at Parliament, with everyone expected to get on the already pretty full CLRV behind it (which looked like a disaster waiting to happen, so I stayed on the 504B up to Dundas and walked to my 506 from there!).

Hopefully this use of Flexities on 501, isn't going to push more CLRVs to 504 in PM peak. (I haven't seen more than one CLRV on 504 at once for a couple of weeks, or more than two since Thanksgiving - but I don't check every day!).

One thing for sure - 504B service on Broadview has been a nightmare since October, with lots of short-turns and huge gaps. I've been walking from King to Gerrard up Parliament faster than taking 504 many days!

 

 

The way the scheduling department made those run assignments isn’t the fault of the dispatcher, the route supervisors, or the drivers. It’s the fault of the scheduling department themselves because of the way the crews are setup. Hopefully beginning next week, all runs are low floors for the simplicity of uniformity in fleet usage. 

[ttc rider]

 

1 hour ago, bus_7246 said:

The way the scheduling department made those run assignments isn’t the fault of the dispatcher, the route supervisors, or the drivers. It’s the fault of the scheduling department themselves because of the way the crews are setup. Hopefully beginning next week, all runs are low floors for the simplicity of uniformity in fleet usage. 

Yesterday (Nov. 13) was the first day since the Oct board began when all 38 PM peak runs on 504 were actually operated with Flexitys. it is too bad that crewing could not be set up a little better in the PM to have all runs pull out from Leslie. Fleet availability shouldn't be problem, since they were able to consistently deploy 82 Flexity runs in the AM , so 77 scheduled Flexity runs in the PM should be a non-issue.

 

19 hours ago, CB4Raptors said:

This is a new development as the new cars will be deployed for the first time on 501 Queen on weekday scheduled runs (3 in total). They are currently deployed on up to 10 or 12 scheduled runs on Sundays (since early September).

They started with one Flexity run on 501 as early as yesterday afternoon (although that car was pulled from 504). They managed to deploy two Flexitys so far today.

[Cityflyer]

Did they changed the deployment schedule again by putting 501 in front of 511 and 505 as per the schedule below because of the lack of ALRVs available? When 511 revert back to streetcars, will it take precedence of the Flexities over 501?

http://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/New_Streetcars/index.jsp

[Xtrazsteve]

30 minutes ago, Cityflyer said:

Did they changed the deployment schedule again by putting 501 in front of 511 and 505 as per the schedule below because of the lack of ALRVs available? When 511 revert back to streetcars, will it take precedence of the Flexities over 501?

http://www.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Projects/New_Vehicles/New_Streetcars/index.jsp

Without the ALRVs, they'll need the Flexitys to make up the capacity. The line has been running with much lower than intended capacity as half the cars are scheduled with ALRVs but operated by CLRVs. Buses on the 505 and 511 operate the same desired capacity as the line needs. I hope they fix the 501 soon enough.

[MK78]

I saw a Flexity 4410 on 501 Queen at Greenwood, going westbound to Humber. And it didn't come out of Russel, because I saw it coming down from Coxwell, it had a bunch of people onboard.

[ttc rider]

31 minutes ago, Xtrazsteve said:

The line has been running with much lower than intended capacity as half the cars are scheduled with ALRVs but operated by CLRVs.

This is not correct. Ten runs on "501A" branch are scheduled with ALRV's at all times, seven days a week, the rest are intended to run with CLRV's.

 

20 minutes ago, MK78 said:

I saw a Flexity 4410 on 501 Queen at Greenwood, going westbound to Humber. And it didn't come out of Russel, because I saw it coming down from Coxwell, it had a bunch of people onboard.

4410 & 4434 are the two Flexitys running in full-day service on 501 today.

[nfitz]

4 hours ago, bus_7246 said:

The way the scheduling department made those run assignments isn’t the fault of the dispatcher, the route supervisors, or the drivers. It’s the fault of the scheduling department themselves because of the way the crews are setup. Hopefully beginning next week, all runs are low floors for the simplicity of uniformity in fleet usage. 

I thought they were doing very well to only have 1 or 2 CLRVs out on 504 each day. Looking right now, they still have 2 Flexities out on 501, and 504 is 100% Flexity (39 cars right now) - with a total of 80 cars out - which is 3 more than I've ever seen out at PM peak (though I certainly don't check most days ... though I've seen 82 out during AM peak a few times - hmm, I didn't look until 10 AM this morning and it was 82 then - probably was a bit higher at peak I'd guess).

[ttc rider]

2 hours ago, nfitz said:

I thought they were doing very well to only have 1 or 2 CLRVs out on 504 each day. Looking right now, they still have 2 Flexities out on 501, and 504 is 100% Flexity (39 cars right now) - with a total of 80 cars out - which is 3 more than I've ever seen out at PM peak (though I certainly don't check most days ... though I've seen 82 out during AM peak a few times - hmm, I didn't look until 10 AM this morning and it was 82 then - probably was a bit higher at peak I'd guess).

Looking at my dispatch records, since the Oct board began, perhaps surprisingly they have been able to meet scheduled service with 42 Flexitys on 504 in AM peak (and 82 cars out in total) every single day. In the PM peak, up until the end of last week, they were also very consistent with 36 Flexitys and 2 CLRV's on 504 in PM peak almost every day. It was only yesterday that we have finally met scheduled service in PM peak with 38 (not 39!) Flexity runs. Car 4427 was in service on 504A, but was changed-off around noon and has remained signed in on 504, which is why it still appears in the raw nextbus feed.

With 2 Flexitys on 501 all day today, we have hit all-time maximums of 84 Flexitys in AM peak and 79 (not 80!) in the PM peak.

 

[Xtrazsteve]

6 hours ago, ttc rider said:

This is not correct. Ten runs on "501A" branch are scheduled with ALRV's at all times, seven days a week, the rest are intended to run with CLRV's.

I'll agree with you that it's less than half are ALRVs but the capacity operated have significantly dropped. It was scheduled 33 ALRVs in fall 2016 and 35 CLRV+ALRVs today. The headway is similar going from 5'10" to 4'50". That means the capacity scheduled went from 1510 pphpd to 1423 pphpd (assuming the As are equally spaced). If all the ALRVs operated as CLRVs, the capacity is only 1208 pphpd. Of course there's been Cs all over the place when it was scheduled As only.

The issue is the mix Cs/As schedule is a service cut itself. With most of them being Cs, it's a service cut on top of a service cut. Then they'll give themselves a pat on their back when they replace the line with Flexitys and restore the capacity near 1510 ppdph calling it a major service improvement.

[Transit geek]

On 10/7/2018 at 8:15 PM, kevhu said:

They have the suffix posted kinda like a subscript.

I kind of do not like how the branch suffix on the 504 Flexity is placed as it could be confused with the destination itself. This is barely alleviated by (if it hasn't been mentioned already) the use of mixed casing for the destination.

[ttc rider]

13 hours ago, Xtrazsteve said:

I'll agree with you that it's less than half are ALRVs but the capacity operated have significantly dropped. It was scheduled 33 ALRVs in fall 2016 and 35 CLRV+ALRVs today. The headway is similar going from 5'10" to 4'50". That means the capacity scheduled went from 1510 pphpd to 1423 pphpd (assuming the As are equally spaced). If all the ALRVs operated as CLRVs, the capacity is only 1208 pphpd. Of course there's been Cs all over the place when it was scheduled As only.

Yes, there has been a reduction in service capacity on 501 recently, but I am not sure it would be correct to say that it dropped significantly. While service was scheduled exclusively with ALRVs a few years ago, the reality on the street has been different for a very long time. I don't think there were many days, say in the last 5-6 years, when there were physically 33 ALRV's in service concurrently, so the effective drop in capacity recently is not as dire as those calculations suggest.

Back to the present day, there are 6 ALRV's and 3 Flexitys in full day service today, at least so far. This is pretty close to scheduled capacity, which calls for 10 runs with "extra large" cars.

[WoodbineSecondExit]

28 minutes ago, Transit geek said:

I kind of do not like how the branch suffix on the 504 Flexity is placed as it could be confused with the destination itself. This is barely alleviated by (if it hasn't been mentioned already) the use of mixed casing for the destination.

Who hasn't heard of the DistillerY?

[Ed T.]

38 minutes ago, ttc rider said:

Yes, there has been a reduction in service capacity on 501 recently, but I am not sure it would be correct to say that it dropped significantly. While service was scheduled exclusively with ALRVs a few years ago, the reality on the street has been different for a very long time. I don't think there were many days, say in the last 5-6 years, when there were physically 33 ALRV's in service concurrently, so the effective drop in capacity recently is not as dire as those calculations suggest.

It's plenty dire when there's a gap in service. Like the time I was on a westbound CLRV that bypassed University Ave./Osgoode stop entirely, in rush hour, because it was crush loaded already.

And there's always a gap in service.

[ttc rider]

Flexity #4419 has returned to service as an AM peak tripper on 512 this morning, after a 99-day absence due to flood damage back in early August. It was last in service on August 8.

Flexity cars 4471 & 4478 remain sidelined as a result of that event.

[MK78]

6 hours ago, ttc rider said:

Flexity cars 4471 & 4478 remain sidelined as a result of that event. 

Are they being repaired here, or will they be shipped to Bombardier?

[TechnicaProductions]

1 hour ago, MK78 said:

Are they being repaired here, or will they be shipped to Bombardier?

They're being shipped to a facility in New York for rebuild

[WoodbineSecondExit]

On 11/13/2018 at 7:05 PM, Oc4526 said:

Found this on Twitter 

 

0 today (Thursday 22 Novembre). The Flexity streetcars really haven't been out there much on weekdays. Brad Ross overpromised...

0 today (Friday 23 Novembre)

0 today (Tuesday 27 Novembre)

0 today (Wednesday 28 Novembre)

0 today (Thursday 29 Novembre)

1 (4428) for PM rush (Friday 30 November)

0 today at midday (Monday 3 December)

0 today (Tuesday 4 December)

0 today (Wednesday 5 December)

[dowlingm]

511 now running panto up, it seems

 

[bus_7246]

4 minutes ago, dowlingm said:

511 now running panto up, it seems

 

It’s not 511 if it’s north of Bathurst Stn

[Xtrazsteve]

8 minutes ago, dowlingm said:

511 now running panto up, it seems

 

The 511 runs with hybrid buses powered by diesel.

[dowlingm]

It was the “leaving Bathurst Station” that confused me! I didn’t think 512s ran through there.

[Ed T.]

27 minutes ago, dowlingm said:

It was the “leaving Bathurst Station” that confused me! I didn’t think 512s ran through there.

According to Steve Munro, streetcars heading up to St. Clair loop through Bathurst station; streetcars heading back to the carhouse don't.

[drum118]

1 hour ago, Ed T. said:

According to Steve Munro, streetcars heading up to St. Clair loop through Bathurst station; streetcars heading back to the carhouse don't.

They do that since some 512 northbound cars pickup riders along the route and drop them off at Bathurst Loop that are not going to St Clair. Southbound cars have no riders from St Clair. Been on A few that stops at the loop and bypass it.

511 has been ready for some years for Pans and no idea where pans went up after getting to St Clair. Same for 511.