What if the Spadina streetcar *was* rapid transit?
The Spadina streetcar is one of the biggest opportunities for better transit in North America. Here's how we can make it much faster and more frequent.
Imagine stepping onto a comfortable modern train in a nice underground station and zooming down Spadina Avenue, through short tunnels, big modern surface stops, and over a grassy pair of tracks. You go from Spadina and College to the waterfront in a matter of minutes, and you hardly stop along the way besides to board or deboard passengers. This could be reality — Let me explain.
When I think of transit in Toronto, for some reason the 510 Spadina streetcar always comes to mind: Perhaps because it is a streetcar, but also probably because I used to use it a lot as it runs right next to my alma mater, the University of Toronto. The 510 feels fundamentally Torontonian in many ways: it’s well-used, it’s a streetcar, it runs by many iconic destinations and neighbourhoods, and it’s in serious need of a rethink.
While I like to think that this can and should be driven by its proximity to one of Canada’s most well-attended university campuses alone, the truth is there are other pressing things which should also push us to rethink the Spadina streetcar.
For one, the Spadina streetcar is really well located for a couple of reasons:
It’s anchored by two major transportation hubs, Spadina — the westernmost intersection of Line 1 and Line 2, and Union — the biggest transit hub in the country, and one of the biggest in the Americas from which you can travel to numerous locations near and far, and is at the centre of Toronto’s rapidly developing CBD.
It’s located roughly equally far west of University Avenue (~800m) as University is west of Yonge Street — the two corridors along which the subway’s Line 1 runs, and this makes it a natural western north-south transit artery for Toronto’s core.
It’s seeing major development all around it, from the central waterfront, to Cityplace, to lower Spadina and the Well, as well as a couple of major developments at each big east-west intersection.
For two, it’s at serious risk of having its lunch eaten. Right now (and for at least another decade or so), the Spadina streetcar is quite useful as a last-mile connection, either to locations on Spadina that would be bothersome to regularly walk to from Union, or if you’re headed to a destination along it from Line 2 or the Spadina side of Line 1. However, a few different forces are going to come together to reduce the need for this:
A new Spadina GO station will allow a number of GO passengers to arrive right at lower Spadina, removing the need to go via Union.
The Ontario Line stations at Queen and Spadina will mean that trips in the general circle from Dundas and Spadina to King and Spadina and along Queen from John to Bathurst will likely be much faster on the subway, and perhaps more importantly, more consistent than taking the streetcar.
The inevitable (if too slow) shift towards better walking and cycling facilities will also probably hurt ridership, as more riders may consider walking from Bathurst and University, which generally have faster & more reliable service, or just cycling.
The fact that the Spadina streetcar has serious issues is not lost on the transport community even outside of Toronto, as Marco of
tweeted about recently to great fanfare.Marco is right that the Spadina streetcar is painfully slow, and makes a very good point about how slow transit leads to expensive transit, because operators take longer to travel from end to end. But speed is not the only issue with the 510 — the service is also frequently painfully crowded and very unreliable, with severe bunching and large gaps in service. I should point out that the existence of a dedicated right of way on Spadina is very deceptive as highlighted in this article — other issues including road design and prioritization mean the parallel Bathurst Streetcar with no dedicated right-of-way is usually faster.
Now, I could go on forever about what a massive problem all of this is, but what is likely more helpful is discussing what we could do. Often the biggest barrier to progress is the ability to imagine a positive possible future, and while I was walking along Spadina Avenue the other day, this is what I tried to envision.
FlySpadina (the 510 but fast!)
The charmingly named FlySpadina plan is my vision of what we could achieve with the 510 if we wanted to create a faster and higher capacity rapid transit-esque service (but, this is not a subway - and would not provide the same capacity or speed as one) on Spadina, without spending an enormous amount of money. This is a lens I also tried to apply to my recent proposal for a Richmond Hill Line rapid transit service.
Basically, after all the major capital spending on Eglinton, the Ontario Line, the major subway extensions, and GO Expansion under the Ford provincial government, I think we are likely to have an extended period of much more austere transit spending.
Now, the idea behind FlySpadina is not to fundamentally break the compatibility between the 510 and the rest of the streetcar network — the infrastructure would simply be overhauled to provide a much faster and more consistent service.
First of all, creating a proper rapid transit service requires comfortable high-capacity vehicles.
One of the sort of odd things about the way the Toronto streetcar network is operated right now is that all the different services use the exact same type of vehicle, despite different operating environments, characteristics, and demands. The King streetcar operates very busy vehicles every few minutes through some of the densest neighborhoods in North America, and yet uses the same vehicles as a peak-only, mostly suburban service like Kingston Road.
For a FlySpadina service, I think a lot of good could come from providing a small dedicated sub-fleet of vehicles that could still operate over TTC trackage and be maintained at existing facilities but could be better adapted to the route.
For one, I think the frequent crowding on the route would probably be well-addressed by longer cars — probably 7-segments, likely about 42-metres long, and should fit on all of the existing infrastructure with minor modifications, while also carrying roughly 30-40% more passengers.
I also think that given I have proposed a special sub-fleet for FlySpadina, a distinct colour scheme in alignment with the line colour would make sense, as well as a more modern and even futuristic looking design (the current Flexity streetcars looked dated 10 years in).
The vehicle’s internal design could also be substantially optimized — more comfortable seats with better padding and a much easier to clean vinyl covering, USB charging, Wi-Fi, and lots of space. Modern overhead LCD wayfinding screens would tell you the time (*gasp*), the current temperature, and the next several stops (with ETAs) & the connecting routes at each, and the current system status (is the King Streetcar running again yet?). People would not jam around the much larger doors because you would pay at the stop just as with the Eglinton and Finch LRT routes, and the doors would also be larger and on both sides to enable island platforms.
Of course, getting on and off of these vehicles is an important part of each journey, and the stops and stations would be significantly enhanced.
All stops and stations on the line would feature bright yellow tactile platform edges just as with the subway, and boarding would be level: No chance of slipping, no stepping up into the car, no rolling your ankle, and those with strollers, bikes or with limited mobility can comfortably walk or roll in via any door — no need for the operator to get out and help get you up a steep, slow deploying ramp — a huge win for accessibility.
At each stop, there would be seating space for people to rest and wait for their train (although they would rarely need to wait long) and passenger intercoms for safety and directions if necessary. Wayfinding would be clear and localized to the stop and the Spadina corridor, making trip planning along the line simpler. Meanwhile, overhead LCD wayfinding would tell you when the next vehicle is coming and how crowded it will be, as well as about any delays.
Paying your fare would be as simple as tapping your Presto card on a reader as you enter, and ticket and card vending machines would be available at every stop - not only making using the FlySpadina route easier, but also expanding access to reloading and card purchasing offered by the machines.
In any event I would recommend closing down some of the closely spaced stops, the most egregious of which is Wilcocks at less than 200m from the preceding stop at Harbord, less stops would also mean less upgrade costs. The major headaches that would need to be dealt with would likely be the crossing of Lake Shore Boulevard — which could be improved with better coordination between streetcars and the existing light cycle or a drastic deprioritization of auto traffic, and the turn onto Queens Quay — which could again be improved with better streetcar priority as well as dual-point switches with points indicators.
The last major change to the right-of-way that I think any plan should adopt would be better treatments including a lovely green right-of-way — akin to the Eglinton Crosstown but planted with hardier sedums.
We could also make even more radical changes to the right-of-Way.
For example some of the major streetcar-to-streetcar intersections could be grade separated - it’s probably too much to ask for all of them but, King in particular could benefit a lot from it. To achieve this, you would drop the Spadina portion of a given intersection just below grade using cut and cover construction. The “stations” on the line would be very shallow, only deep enough to take the 510 under the east-west streetcar lines; they would be minimal structures with roughly 60-metre long platforms and a maximum width of 12.5-13 metres, meaning they could all be built entirely within the existing road right-of-way — calling them streetcar underpasses with platforms might be more appropriate. Platforms would be islands (I will address how this could work later), allowing them to be comparatively wider, and they would likely bow out slightly in the middle and narrow at the ends. Access would be via stairs and elevators (these would sit at the extreme ends of each island platform) built in the current Spadina streetcar right-of-way directly above the platforms, with the potential for small entrance buildings on both sides of the east-west streets where the streetcar tracks currently lie — if we were willing to reduce road lanes and get creative in other ways, we could have something even nicer with less need for a big grade separation. But, even Amsterdam has done things like this on the Amsteltram albeit in more suburban areas.
Getting the streetcars into the stations would require roughly 100m ramps on both sides of the stations (based on my observations of the longer up ramp at Spadina station). For the four major intersecting east-west streetcar routes, there is more than sufficient space to ramp down, have platforms, and then ramp back up before encountering another street. If you’re concerned about conflicting with the Ontario Line at Queen, I don’t imagine this would be an issue given its deep construction, and a direct connection is theoretically even possible. This type of approach would be somewhat novel in downtown Toronto, but isn’t all that different from what happens at St. Clair West subway station. Some might protest that grade separations would hurt the appearance of Spadina Avenue, but I would counter that Spadina can be and would be so much more vibrant if getting to it was much easier.
These underpasses would not only mean that the Spadina streetcar wouldn’t have to stop at the whims of east-west (or *left-turning*) traffic, but would also remove the notorious switches that currently force the streetcars to travel through intersections at a snail’s pace. (In any case, I would argue we should be trimming the number of switches to the bare minimum to speed service - it costs us flexibility but, this is a rail system!) Better yet, they would also reduce conflicts and switch-related slow downs for all east-west routes, and possibly also allow a reconfiguration of signal timings to better optimize for them. I think it’s entirely conceivable that such grade separations could cut 30%, or 12 minutes, off the one-way run time on Spadina.
Altogether, even just implementing some of these changes some of the time would seriously improve the speed and reliability of the 510 operation — maybe even enough to give it a proper route number, Line 7 perhaps?
All of this is not only possible, but important to consider when we think about the future of the Spadina streetcar. The history-based way many technical problems on the streetcar network are addressed is problematic, and the major development and transit demand that will continue to degrade service on the current Spadina streetcar.
We need to think big, and rapid transit is a reasonable step.
What are your thoughts on transit signal priority and its value to the Spadina car? I didn't see it mentioned in your article, and it's something that could be turned on right away without capital cost if there was only the political will.
Why not improve boarding and alighting on the FlySpadina (and all streetcars in general) by removing the need to to tap your Presto card when boarding completely - instead passengers tapping on a reader at the actual stations themselves before they board?