A year ago this week, I rode to work along King St. and declared that it felt like a “streetcar miracle.” That was the first weekday morning of the transit priority pilot project, restricting car traffic on the street to get the streetcars moving more quickly and reliably. I rode the 504 route again on Monday, the anniversary of the pilot, and found it still felt like a miracle, albeit a much more crowded one. The stats back up that impression: ridership on the route is up 11 per cent to a subway-like 80,000 boardings per day (or more), travel times from Bathurst to Jarvis are running a full minute faster, and reliability of the streetcars is up over 80 per cent. Cycling in the corridor is also way up, there are more pedestrians on the street, and even car travel times are down.Despite some high-profile whining by some restaurateurs, I have heard from other restaurant owners supporting the project, and data collected by the city tracking sales in the area through the Moneris payment processing system show business is up. All this with only a $1.5 million investment from the city, and an implementation time measured in weeks rather than decades. The debate to have now is not about whether to make it permanent. That’s a no-brainer — a proposition supported by both of the major mayoral candidates in the recent election and, according to a DART Insight poll commissioned by the Toronto Sun and released last month, by 64 per cent of Torontonians. The big thing to get on with is applying the lessons of its success elsewhere. Not on other streetcar routes (or not only on them), but on bus routes. Read more:One year in data deems King St. pilot project a successKing St. pilot project saves riders $11.5 million in time per year: Ryerson studyKing St. middle finger ‘best investment I ever made.’ Man behind sculpture has never been shy about serving up penne and his thoughtsI think the experience of other cities, on a model similar to the ...
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