Toronto Cleared Cars Off a Major Transit Corridor | Hacker News Reader

Toronto Cleared Cars Off a Major Transit Corridor

usa.streetsblog.org

133 pointsanonymfus58 comments

From Toronto here, and just wanted to clarify that the headline is somewhat misleading in claiming that "it worked". Article begins:

> One year after Toronto turned King Street in a transit- and walking-priority street, streetcar ridership, biking and walking are way up.

What "worked" is that removing cars did indeed make space for faster streetcars and biking - but this is not surprising, practically a truism!

The purpose of doing a pilot was see if the trade-off is worth it in real life. Worse traffic congestion for cars in the downtown core in exchange for a fast street for transit and bikes. It will be interesting to see what the city decides.

It is not just a matter of traffic throughput. Part of the purpose "complete streets" movement is to enable pedestrian and other slow-moving traffic for the purpose of increasing or preserving the vitality of urban cores. You have a different "kind" of downtown when it has enough foot traffic as opposed to people zooming by at 50 kmh pissed-off about looking for parking or trying to get home asap.

If the metrics only measure throughput of bodies past intersections, they're missing a large part of the point.

Did car traffic really just move elsewhere? Reduced demand [1] is just as real an effect as induced demand.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_demand_...

Yes of course, as that was the purpose of this trial. Increase the cost (in time and convenience) for drivers, therefore reducing the demand to use this particular route by car.

In turn it increases demand for people using other modes of transportation due to the lower "cost" of different ways of getting around.

But if you are asking, did the cars from King St. just clog up other streets? Well, some of them did. But the increase of 20,000 users of the streetcars had to come from somewhere. A number of them were most likely the displaced automobile users.

Now the hard part is making the decision on whether or not the trade-off is worth it. The cynic in me thinks that the local businesses, or a vocal/powerful minority, will end up winning this battle and things will go back to how they were. Maybe they will reduce the restriction to a block or two to keep everyone happy. Time will tell.

The interesting thing is that traffic congestion for cars in the downtown core didn't change at all! The study found that average car travel times on adjacent streets vary by less than a minute compared to before the pilot.

https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/8fe2-King-...

In 1979, Chicago tried making a stretch of State Street pedestrian-only (allowing bus/taxi access). It was considered a failure, and was returned to regular motor traffic in 1996.

It’s too bad – Chicago could certainly benefit from a major pedestrian district (there is a small one up in Ravenswood), but the reasons for the State Street project’s failures are debated. This piece is a good exploration: https://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/03/11/why-was-the-state-str...

Hopefully Toronto’s avoids the pitfalls of Chicago’s experiment, and eventually serves as a model for this kind of conversion.

How long is the blocked-off section? The article doesn't mention it. If it's a long section, that's a lot of businesses affected. Surprising though that the increased passengers of Trams didn't increase business demand in that section.

It's not blocked off. You are only allowed to make a left or right turn when you are on King St.; you're not allowed to travel on it for more than one block. There are jersey barriers by some TTC stops but they're in place to protect pedestrians from being struck and slow traffic.

Ok, how long is the modified section then?

Between Bathurst and Jarvis, roughly 2km.

I lived along there (king & bathurst) for a couple of months last winter and thought it was great. Combined with the new street cars along king st it's really pleasant.

At the time r/toronto would have people complaining about a lack of pedestrians or whatever (it was -20 every day for like a month) but that didn't really jive with my experience. Even in the really cold nights I found that there were a good number of people walking around.

that said I can't really speak to the experience of someone trying to drive in that area, but driving in toronto is horrible to begin with so I don't know what people expect.

Really? King St looks perpetually dead to me these days between Spadina and Bathurst, when it used to seem way more active. I've been walking to work and back home nearly every day for most of the year through there, so I saw the difference.

I'm cool with experimenting with reducing cars but this seemed a bit extreme. And King St seemed like a bad choice... it doesn't have a hundred small retail stores like Queen St or Kensington Market.

FWIW That doesn't seem to match the experience of several others I've discussed this with who have the same pattern (i.e. walking/biking to work along King st for the last few years, including before and after the pilot).

I live right off of King St. west— catch a streetcar along there anywhere bordering rush hour in the past was basically a no-go. You could almost guarantee you didn't arrive on time, and you'd have to plow your way on and off after waiting between 3-5 streetcars in any season. (I thankfully had to catch the 63 north to the subway instead)

Even off peak hours catching a streetcar on King was a nightmare. King St is no wider than any other street in the area so I don't understand the absolute necessity for some drivers to have unbridled access at all hours.

This project made a dramatic difference. It's no longer a major trial to catch a streetcar, and they're no longer late or packed like a sardine tin.

My commute used to take me from the subway over to Spadina. For three years, I just walked 15 minutes rather than ever bother trying to get a street car. It took far less time to walk.

I've definitely done the same many times over.

I worked down in the Portlands and was dating a girl who lived at King & Dufferin. I'd get off the bus near St Andrew station to head to her place and I'd have to wait at least 4 double-long cars in rush hour to get on a crammed one.

Same. I was on King and Bathurst too was lucky to have had the options of walking, driving + looking for parking, biking (having lived in a couple of places in North America, Toronto drivers are mean to cyclists) or taking the streetcar and streetcar during commute time was easily the least reliable (and close to being the slowest). It was precisely because streetcar was treated like such a second class citizen on the road which this hopefully fixes.

Definitely. I've only experienced that "second class citizen" treatment of streetcars on King, too. They run well on Roncesvalles, Queen, Dundas, College, Bathurst, Spadina, etc...

It's definitely improved monumentally. Also in part due to increasing service and the new cars have helped open up space as well. Of course, they couldn't have increased service as such without running the project or it would just bottleneck.

I live in Toronto. Traffic on King Street has improved dramatically, and streetcars roll through smoothly. Quoting from the article to make things clear:

> Using painted jersey barriers and other low-cost materials, the pilot prohibited through car and truck traffic.

Cars are allowed to drive on short segments of King Street, but not allowed to go straight through major intersections. So this means they need to right turn after 200 m or so.

Official web site: https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/planning-development/...

Road diagrams: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/8ead-King-... ; https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/968e-Polic...

Options discussed during the proposal phase: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/97f6-Main-... ; https://www.slideshare.net/CityPlanTO/king-street-pilot-publ... ; https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/programs/metromorning... ; http://urbantoronto.ca/news/2017/02/city-presents-options-ki...

Best comment I heard about the Pilot was that Toronto built a new subway line with concrete curbs and spraypaint.

Buffalo tried this a few decades ago and it did NOT work. The entire area died, all the restaurants & retail closed. It took millions of dollars and many years to undo it and now the area is back and full of people. I don't know for sure the blame lies entirely on the clearing of cars idea, but that sure didn't help. The city (like many) fell pretty hard for a bunch of reasons at the time they tried this.

https://www.buffalony.gov/1054/Cars-Sharing-Main-Street

Likely differences in population density caused the different results

Part of the problem in Buffalo was that they closed main st for 5-6 years to car traffic in the late 70s / early 80s while they built the above-ground portion of the metro rail. During this time, business along the construction zone withered and died because they were too hard to get to, and the department stores retreated to the suburban malls. By the time they finished it, there was no reason to go there, except to transit through that section on the way to Sabers games / concerts at Memorial Auditorium.

I have read some of the restaurants along that stretch of road in Toronto have closed or will be closing. They have said business has fallen off the cliff.

https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2018/07/pearl-king-street-t...

https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/king-st-pilot-forces-...

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/01/22/king-st-business...

Pearl King Street in particular was an overpriced restaurant with poor positioning. Chinatown is a few minutes away and offer much much better food at 1/3 of the price for each dim sum dish. Right beside are some better dining choices and no one ever went in there even when cars were allowed on King St.

I think either way Pearl was destined to close.

King street restaurants have high turnover anyways - most of them have not been open that long to begin with. The area has a lot of competition so you really can't get away with being mediocre for very long.

Lots of business were crying foul at the start of the pilot, but credit card transaction data the city has hasn't borne that out.

It’s important to not conflate cited causes as some of those owners also blame increases in the minimum wage.

You simply cannot trust the reasons people give for going out of business. If there is a visible villain they can blame, they will. Nobody ever says, "look, we just weren't that good," or "we spent too much money," or "we didn't understand the market very well," or "my wife has a cocaine habit and put us in debt," or "we didn't differentiate very well" or any of the thousands of other banal reasons small businesses fail.

If they can say, "it's because of that big new development over there!" or, "it was the street closure!" then that's what they're going to say. It's the story they'll tell their great-great-grandchildren. But who honestly knows? Companies go out of business all the time. That's the default. Keeping a restaurant open is very hard.

It was a popular urban-renewal Hail Mary in the 1970s and 80s. My hometown did it, too, and it was a spectacular failure. [0] Indeed, most of them failed, but I wouldn't read too much into it; a lot of them were done in neighborhoods that were already bleeding people, money, and businesses. It's not a panacea and it's definitely not enough to turn the fortunes of a declining area.

But it can make sense in the opposite kind of neighborhood -- neighborhoods that are growing, that already have a lot of density and foot traffic.

The context matters a lot.

[0] http://www.urbanreviewstl.com/tag/14th-street-pedestrian-mal...

My rust belt city removed main street parking in favor of bike lanes to the same effect but they did it as business was picking back up post-recession. It really pissed people off because all the businesses that folded were the ones that weathered the recession. Our city is somewhat of a commerce destination for the surrounding towns. When they decided to go the bike friendly route all the commerce redistributed itself. The businesses off of main street benefited greatly. They did bring back the prior on-street parking on most of main commercial area of main street and several years later there's a lot less boarded up store fronts.

I think the lesson is that you can't just cave to the bike special interests group or the walk-ability lobby, you have to look at how the economics of your city work and make sure that any changes you make will not shoot it in the foot.

This statement from the article would have me very worried about surviving the next downturn if I were a Toronto business owner.

>Toronto reports business receipts are up along the corridor as well, albeit a tiny 0.3 percent. The rest of the city was up 3.8 percent over the same period.

Did people also live on the same streets? That would change the entire nature of the area. It can't be an amusement park with a giant parking lot around it, it's a city.

You know what else the city could do to clear cars along a major transit corridor?

Stop allowing taxis to park on Richmond just outside the Hilton hotel at University.

Those taxis & cars parked at Richmond & University are singlehandedly responsible for the traffic along Richmond coming off the DVP. It blocks the left-hand turning traffic leaving effectively only a single lane crossing University.

Walk this street to and from work. I choose to walk on King St. specifically because there are no cars.

Street cars are at capacity during rush hour, which is a clear indicator demand for transit not being met by supply (Toronto has a disgraceful subway system given its size and position as global elite city).

Far more street-level retail/food on King than parallel arteries (3-lane 1 way thoroughfares Adelaide and Richmond). Restaurants with patios on these streets are now second-class destinations relative to car-free King St.

I live in Toronto and the pilot project remains a very controversial decision basically pitting the interests of commuters against car drivers in what is for all intents and purposes a zero-sum game.

The next question is whether there's a solution where everyone wins and the most immediate idea is a subway running down that corridor. Of course, the amount of disruption that would bring to businesses already crying foul over the pilot project is a tough pill for any politician to swallow. Ultimately this is a lesson in failed urban planning as a subway built there decades ago before all the condos went up in this city would have alleviated issues for everyone involved.

Why do you think this is a zero-sum game?

That's only if the number of car drivers is equal to transit riders + cyclists (and maybe some pedestrians).

Of course that equation is nowhere near equal. The entire reason behind the pilot is because transit vastly outnumbers car drivers.

If you can improve the situation for 10-100x as many people, then why wouldn't you? (all else being equal of course). I'm simplifying things, but I don't understand why you're implying equal footing to both sides.

It's like nominating a supreme court justice is a zero sum game. Is it really? Either way, you'll never convince both sides that one decision isn't a loser for them

According to this article prior to the change: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/why-all-the-fus...

it was 65,000 transit commuters per day vs 20,000 vehicles per day.

edit, here is the latest data from the city: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/8fe2-King-... (sept/oct is not yet available which is unfortunate because the baseline is october 2017)

Yeah, thanks. 10-100x was a huge exaggeration but 2-3x is still a large benefit and worthwhile on its own.

It simply moved the traffic to the parallel streets thus worsening congesting in the city overall. The overall utilization of an expensive infrastructure is very low. The "440%" increase in cyclist is unlikely to equal the number of people moved through that corridor via motor vehicles.

It is simply untrue that the overall utilization of the infrastructure is low. Streetcars on King and Queen are usually jam-packed, unless you are in the far east and west ends. The bike lanes running east west on King, Adellaide, and other streets are very heavily used.

And it's true that most people who were driving won't trade in their cars for bikes, for various reasons. I am not sure how that factors in at all here.

It's not just car drivers, eleven restaurants in the area have closed since the pilot began. What do you do as a business owner when city is driving away your customers?

Restaurants close all the time. Are those closures due to the pilot? The city has provided numbers on receipts which don't show a huge effect. I'm not saying there's no causation here, but you can't just say 11 restaurants are closed and attribute them all to the pilot.

Correlation does not mean causation. Restaurants close all the time for myriad of different reasons. Do you have any data that can actually support a causal link here?

Those restaurants were already notorious tourist traps. The restaurants in the area that were any good still remain.

Cars driving by those places was not where they got their business. The city didn't reduce parking lot numbers in the area. They got their business from theatre-goers and other foot traffic.

One of the restaurant owners (who I won't name) decided it would be a worthy protest to place a large ice sculpture of a raised middle finger to pedestrians in the area, and the city at large. That came back to bite him in a serious way. He was already a disliked business owner. That seemed to seal it.

He drove his own business away, not the city. Another restaurant in the strip serving similar fare is still kicking... probably because they're not half bad and offer a better environment.

Dense urban centers is one place where I, normally an advocate for privately owned automobiles, think they do not make sense. Too many people in too small a space for everyone to have and use his own car.

I don't live in such an environment, and would never want to.

For the significant number of people that live in the area surrounding Toronto and work downtown it is sometimes the best option. Driving to work, including gas and parking, costs me only a few dollars more per day than taking the GO train and the TTC. It's also faster outside rush hour times and only slightly slower most of the time during rush hour. It might be an obvious choice in some metro areas but public transit in the GTA is not great.

Can it be a zero-sum game if you can usually switch 'sides' from driver to pedestrian/cyclist/transit user reasonably easily?

I remember hearing about this on the radio when it was first proposed and passed. Very controversial. Drivers were PO'ed and transit users rejoiced.

The king cars are a little bit faster. And it's just one street so it's not the end of the world or anything. Overall it seemed to me like the effects were pretty... meh. I used the King streetcar very regularly before and after the project, and honestly, it was acceptable the whole time.

I think you'd have to ask the (great, if trappy) restaurants and boutiques west of Spadina about the effect on their finances. I know a lot of their customers arrived by car before, and many by limousine or other specialty vehicle.

To be clearer than the post is, they did not actually shut out cars on the King street, they made through traffic unlawful* . The distinction between these things is pretty huge.

If you go by the financials given in this blog post, it is clear that the businesses have lost money on this deal. 0.3% is slower than typical gross receipts growth for these shops AFAIK. A 0.3% growth in gross receipts over about twelve months means you're losing to inflation.

I know Angie Schmitt loves rapid transit just as much as all of us, but being too optimistic about transit-focused developments, and too credulous with the claims of politicians and wannabe technocrats is a sure way to ruin people's lives in exchange for phantom glory.

* though taxis, as with most laws in Toronto, don't bother to follow the law because they know the police don't bother to police traffic in the city almost ever

"And it worked" is somewhat of a misnomer. If you asked the hundreds of businesses (bars, cafes, restaurants, etc), they might have a different opinion. Motor vehicles are allowed to travel 1 block then forced to make the next right turn. The human traffic along the corridor has significantly decreased. The businesses are suffering. At minimum, ride-sharing services should be allowed to traverse that corridor unimpeded.

I suppose you didn't make it to the end? "Toronto reports business receipts are up along the corridor as well, albeit a tiny 0.3 percent" is hardly suffering.

..while "the rest of the city was up 3.8 percent over the same period."

Taking inflation into account, downtown receipts are lower than they were before.

Compared to what growth % in past years?

From my estimation, they are going to kill King Street, it feels deserted and the bars and restaurants are very quiet during weeknight evenings. These changes were made 24 hours a day, not just during rush hour. It makes driving complicated and has caused much more congestion on the connecting streets so I would like to know the impact on other transit routes that cross King Street.

The article mentioned restaurant sales are up 0.3% vs 3.8% in the rest of the city, but didn't mention that employers were hit with a 22% increase in minimum wage this year ($11.40/hr to $14) and this should be reflected by higher prices to recover these costs.

There is no reason for this to cause businesses to go under, but commercial leases are long term and difficult to exit so the real impact won't be obvious for years if this does cause them to shut down or relocate.

I both lived and work near there and this is the exact opposite of my impression. King from bathurst to spadina is always jumping. The biggest annoyance for me is all the damn plants the restaurants and bars have been allowed to put on the street for some reason, makes biking there a headache.

And here we have a good demonstration of the value of anecdotal evidence :)

Yeah, I am referring to Spadina East to Jarvis.

Turns out Robbie was wrong after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nySs1cEq5rs

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