Council vote on whether to make King St. transit pilot permanent likely delayed until spring

Thestar.com
November 14, 2018
Ben Spurr

A city council decision on whether to make the King St. transit pilot permanent may not come until March --16 months after the start of the project that was supposed to last approximately one year.

The pilot, which was designed to improve streetcar service on the TTC’s busiest surface route, was installed by the city last November, and the regulations that give city staff authority to operate aspects of it are set to expire Dec. 31.

Barbara Gray, Toronto’s general manager of transportation, said staff will likely recommend the King St. pilot regulations be extended into 2019 to allow staff time to collect a full year’s worth of data.

In an interview Tuesday, Barbara Gray, the city’s general manager of transportation, confirmed that once the new term of council is sworn in next month staff will likely recommend the regulations be extended into 2019 to allow staff time to collect a full year’s worth of data before making recommendations on the fate of the project.

She said there’s a lag of about two months between when some data such as streetcar ridership and travel times is collected and when it can be processed. Fourth quarter economic data collected from local businesses by Moneris, a third-party payment company, isn’t expected until the end of January.

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“We told council we’d come back with a year, 12 months, full of data,” Gray said. “Our goal is to write a fulsome report to council and bring them a recommendation so they can make a decision in 2019.”

She said the timeline is still uncertain, but it’s a “reasonable assumption” that the report won’t go to a vote until March.

In addition to the need to collect more data, the reporting process has been complicated by Premier Doug Ford’s unexpected decision to slash the size of council from 44 to 25 wards.

The smaller council that resulted from last month’s municipal election will necessitate a reorganization of the governance structure at city hall that could change the process by which staff reports make their way to council. Council will debate an as-yet-unpublished report on the proposed governance changes at a meeting on Dec. 5.

Gray didn’t say what staff’s final recommendations will be, but said the results so far have been “really positive.”

“We’ve seen great improvements in transit time. We’ve seen really minimal impacts on the rest of the network, we’ve seen real increases in ridership,” she said. “I’ve been very pleased.”

Local councillor Joe Cressy said “it’s always worthwhile to collect as much data as possible” but as far as he’s concerned, “every metric has demonstrated that the pilot has been a success.”

Cressy, who will represent Ward 10, Spadina-Fort York in the coming term, said he has no doubt his colleagues will decide to make the pilot permanent no matter when it goes to a vote.

He noted only four councillors opposed the project when it was approved in July 2017.

The pilot, which was installed at an estimated cost of $1.5 million, restricts car traffic on King between Bathurst and Jarvis Sts. by compelling drivers to turn off of King at most major intersections.

According to the latest figures published by the city, average streetcar travel times in the pilot area were down by as much as 3.4 minutes in August compared to before the project began. Weekday streetcar ridership has increased by 11 per cent, to roughly 80,000 boardings per day.

Some local restaurateurs have complained the reduced car traffic on King has hurt business.

According to point-of-sale data, spending on King between November and May increased by 0.3 per cent compared to the average rate of spending over the same period the year before. That was less than the 5.7 per cent growth in the area surrounding the pilot. The city says spending trends in the six months since the pilot began are “in line” with the six months preceding its installation.