1.``St. Clair: Have those who were opposed to giving the streetar a separate middle RoW now come to think it is a good idea afterall, on the western portion of the street? How is the bus service on the eastern portion working out? Are people satisfied that the service is as good as when it was a through streetcar line? Are the wire and track still in place?
2. King St. and Qeen St. In the NYTimes, discussing the Brooklyn-Queens Waterfront streetcar planning, used traffic congestion delays on the Queen Street line as an example of why streetcars need dedicated lanes. How serious is this problem on botoh King and Queen? Has any thought been giving to restricting rush hour traffic on these two streets to just the streetcfas and taxis? There are important streets in Jerusalem, with heavy bus traffic, that have this restriction. Would it be practical to make King one-way eastbound and Queen one-way westbound and then have a trasit-only exclusive lane on each of these two streets, same direction as the remianing traffic lane?
A dedicated streetcar lane is not that different from a dedicated bus lane, both will speed up service by a few minutes at the expense of added congestion in the other lanes. Unless such lanes are separated by barricades of some sort, you will still have some intrusion by other traffic. A dedicated lane also doesn't address the delays caused by cross streets.
I agree with your comments. Still, the western St. Clair streetcars are about 15% faster, a reduction of running time of 15%, from this change, from what I have been told.
On a commercial street, I believe much the same improvement can be obtained by banning through traffic and allowing only local traffic. The tracks should remain in the center of the street, loading islands should be provided, absolute banning of passing on the left of streetcars, even a barrier preventing use of the wrong direction lane for passing, location of stops on the far side of the intersection, never across from each other, and most of all transit presumption of traffic signals. The traffic measures themselves will discourage through traffic, but it should be official.
But I am interested in how things are working out in Toronto. It would be good if they could implement the above paragraph's plan on King and Queen.
I gather Carlton-College does not have the problem, and streetcars always move along there.
In addition to St. Clair West, Spadina is reserved, and I think Harborfront. But Long Branch was reserved a century ago and still is.
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