Route 501 Revisited

by: Jonathan Goldsbie

June 24, 2008 12:04 PM

Comments: (1)

First truth: The 501 Queen streetcar, famously cited by National Geographic as one of the best such routes in the world, is epic and majestic and ambitious and grandiose, in a way that contemporary public projects seldom are. I've long thought it would be neat to do a feature-length film consisting entirely of a single shot from a static camera set up at the back of the streetcar, with stories unfolding in the line of sight as people board and disembark while the vehicle glides from Neville Park to Long Branch. But that's presuming the car doesn't short turn, which leads me to the...

Second truth: The TTC has problems. Lots of problems. And they extend far beyond the inconsistent customer service and irregular wait times; indeed, the issues on which people most frequently vent are merely the most superficial manifestations of insecurities and conflicts that go right to the heart of the organization. If the TTC were a person, the readily-apparent irritants would merely be the neurotics tics rooted in deep-seated oedipal angst.

The first truth is what brought me to last week's "Fixing the 501: A Queen Streetcar Update" forum at City Hall, and the second truth is what I took away from it. Following up on a similar event in December, the purpose was for TTC management to let the public in on the changes gradually being implemented to improve service on the unwieldy line. The PowerPoint delivered by Mitch Stambler, the TTC's manager of service planning, however, was identical to the one he had presented to the previous month's Commission meeting and, not providing any updates (verbal or otherwise), very much gave the impression that no one at the TTC had really given any thought to the 501 in the previous 30 days. The regurgitation of an old presentation reduced the meeting to a public-relations exercise, and a poorly-managed one at that.

The biggest change the TTC is trying to put in place on the 501 is a shift to more "customer-focused rules pertaining to short turning." Previously, short turning was (in theory) about cutting back service at the ends of the line in order to better conform to scheduled arrival times in the middle. Now it's supposed to be about managing headways (that is, making sure vehicles are evenly spaced apart) rather than "schedule adherence," to better reflect the way users experience the system. Exactly why vehicles so frequently fall behind is something about which the TTC is coy; although they're ostensibly keeping records of the causes of short turns, the chart shown as an example — displaying the data for April 15 — listed 100 per cent of the turns as stemming from "traffic congestion." Steve Munro, who was given several minutes to respond to the presentation, was very skeptical of this, having seen much of the raw data himself. The TTC blames all of its service problems on traffic congestion, he said, but even on Christmas Day they can't run vehicles with regular spacing.

The challenge seems to be mostly about how to effect at ground level changes made higher up. Policy decisions don't always filter down to the street, due to second-guessing, open rebellion, passive-aggressiveness or whatever at the various layers between the commissioners at the top and the vehicle operators at the bottom. Whatever chain of command there is seems easily fractured. Stambler explained, as he had the previous month, that they were "still educating operators and supervisors" as to the new way of doing things, which had supposedly been in place since January. "Still educating" certainly sounded like a euphemism, or at least an apology for a "culture" that is resistant to change. As reported by Munro, TTC staff clarified a couple days later that all they meant was "that years of line management style can’t be changed overnight" — to which the obvious response is "Why not?"

Similarly, Munro is concerned that experiments to split the 501 line — something he has been advocating for years — may be sabotaged; the worst places to split the route might be chosen in order to discredit the very idea of the route being split.

And yet the TTC isn't even the only nigh-immutable institution standing in the way of its own paradigm shift. The City of Toronto's Transportation Services division and the Toronto Police Service are arguably even less interested in adapting to new priorities. General Manager of Transportation Gary Welsh offered that as recently as two years ago, his staff was arguing about transit signal priority, something that was not even included in the recently-rebuilt Queensway. (He incorrectly defined signal priority as the ability for a streetcar operator to press a button in order to change or hold a traffic light. In reality, the system is automatic and changes lights based on sensors detecting when a streetcar is about to enter and about to leave an intersection.) He acknowledged that his department has a culture that needs to be changed; traditional traffic engineering is all about maximizing the flow of cars. They could always reduce on-street parking, thereby improving traffic for both cars and transit, but doing so "is a lot harder than it seems" due to "push-back" from the residents and businesses whose parking they would want to restrict.

The majority of the meeting, though, was what Joe Clark affectionately termed "the TTC stitch'n'bitch," with residents from the span of the line offering up their own stories of the 501 failing them, and concluding their rants with strings of questions and suggestions, most of which were (rightly or wrongly) dismissed by the officials present.

The best queries from the attendees were the most direct. Shawna Macivor of Neville Park asked, "What difference will I experience in six months' time?" The answer: less frustration and more even spacing and reliability of service. "For rail-guided vehicles in mixed traffic," said Stambler, "it will be a huge accomplishment."

Former councillor David White was quite blunt when asking why the police can get away with neglecting traffic infractions: "The commitment to enforce exclusive lanes should start from the TTC chair."

"The TTC and the city have exactly zero ability to enforce traffic restrictions" due to legislation "going back over 100 years," responded Chair Adam Giambrone, his annoyance at the status quo bubbling up. "Even a unanimous vote of Council cannot compel police to do anything. I don't have power over health services or national defense, either.... Sometimes the police aren't too pleased when we push [them], but too bad." In his frustration over his legislated impotence, Giambrone — who is usually characterized by his obsessive diplomacy, lest he ever provide a soundbite that could be used against him when seeking higher office — unleashed a fire, a passion, an honesty that he had previously kept muffled in public. Joe Clark and I, somewhat in awe, agreed it was the first time we'd "heard him speak like a human." He should trust himself more, and trust that people are more inspired by an Adam Vaughan than a Sandra Bussin.

Speaking of Bussin, she answered White's question by affirming that they are only in a position to "request" when it comes to the police, and revealed that during the "Quay to the City" experiment on the central waterfront a couple years ago, when the road was equally divided among dedicated lanes for cars, transit and bicycles, the police at the site didn't support the initiative and "would complain to anyone who'd listen."

White's reply, in its perfect encapsulation of the Canadian disposition, spoke to the cause of and solution to so many of our institutional problems: "You can request — and you can request forcefully."

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Route 501 Revisited

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