With Toronto preparing to deploy the first batch of its new streetcars this summer, there’s been a lot of talk about streetcars in general. Rob Ford has said he wants to get rid of them all together and I hear a lot of other people expressing similar frustrations: Streetcars are rolling stop signs. Streetcars block 2 lanes of traffic. Why don’t we just use more buses? Streetcars cause traffic. And so on.

So what should we do?

First, let me start by saying that buses suck. I’m a huge proponent of public transportation in cities, but there’s nothing quite like a rush hour bus ride to have you question your economic status in life. Bus routes have also been shown to have little economic development value, where as fixed rail lines (such as streetcar, LRT and subway) generally increase surrounding property values and spur investment.

Second, my view is that streetcars themselves as a transportation technology aren’t the problem. It’s our execution. I’ve touched on this topic before on ATC, but I’d like to reiterate a few points here. 

The value of light rail is that it’s a relatively inexpensive way (compared to subway) of efficiently moving a lot of people. But in order to do that, you need deploy it in a sensible way. In my mind, that primarily involves 3 things: giving streetcars their own dedicated lanes (grade separation), having a reasonable number of required stops, and streamlining the onboarding and off boarding process. Today, we don’t do a great job at most of these things (although our new streetcars will use a proof of payment model).

Take a look at this comparison between Dublin’s Luas light rail system and Toronto’s streetcar system. Both images are at the same scale. Notice the dramatically different stop spacing. Much of the Luas system also runs on its own dedicated lanes.

Dublin:

Toronto:

Every time a Toronto streetcar stops it generates waste. Cars are forced to stop behind it. Everyone on the streetcar has to sit and wait while somebody fumbles through their change looking for a token. But there are other ways to do this. There are ways to make light rail more subway-like, despite the fact that it may be above ground.  And so I don’t think we should be so quick to write off all streetcars.

I was cruising the twitter sphere yesterday when I came across the following chart, outlining the various transit vehicle capacities here in Toronto. It was created by Cameron MacLeod of #CodeRedTO, which is a grassroots group advocating for “a rational, affordable, and achievable rapid transit strategy for Toronto.”

On the left you have the vehicle type and then you have the capacity in terms of number of seats and standing room. The planned capacity is essentially the sum of those two numbers and the “unsafe crush load” is the number of people you could fit if you really put your back into it.

Articulated buses refer to the longer (1.5x) bendy ones and, similarly, ALRV streetcars are the longer, articulated version of our regular streetcars. The low-floor streetcar is similar to what 

I’ve talked before about how Toronto doesn’t currently have any true light rail transit lines. LRT does not equal what we have on St Clair Avenue. The stops are spaced far too close together. It’s just a streetcar on its on right of way.

This is better than a streetcar that doesn’t have its own right of way, but it could be better. So here’s an idea for better optimizing some of the transit infrastructure we already have: let’s convert the St Clair and Spadina streetcar lines into true LRT.

Here are 3 things we could do.

1.

First, we need to get rid of some stops. Let’s take the stop spacing being proposed for Eglinton Avenue and apply it to St Clair Avenue and Spadina Avenue. By stopping less, it means performance goes up. Think about how much time is wasted every time the streetcar has to stop for people to get on and off. This is why New York has express trains.

Alternatively—and instead of actually getting rid of some stops—we could also just operate two types of stops: rush hour stops and off-peak stops. In the case of off-peak stops, the streetcar would simply skip them during rush hour. The cost of implementing this would be signage and consumer education.

2.

Second, we finally roll out a better payment system. While tokens do give me a kind of 1960s nostalgia, I hate change and I hate fumbling with microscopic tokens in my pocket. Why isn’t there an app for this?