Have you
noticed lately that your subway train stays a few extra seconds in
some stations? Operators may even announce brief waits for “service
adjustments”.
For years,
regular riders of the Bloor-Danforth line might have paused a while
at Keele, Ossington or Chester. In an effort keep service evenly
spaced and avoid possible crowding, trains were traditionally held
back at specific points.
TTC Operations
General Manager Gary Webster says the subway dispatching system has
been modernized, and trains can now hold at any station. He says not
only does the upgrade “give us a new system to replace the one that
was worn out and obsolete -- with cathode ray tubes and all kinds of
old technology -- (but it) gives us more capability to manage the
line.”
Next time
you’re holding in a station, you can be pretty sure there is a delay
somewhere else on the line -- and gaps are developing between
trains. However, if we have to wait, can the TTC make sure it’s at
stops where a lot of people usually board -- like interchange
stations?
He says,
“People are used to being held at Eglinton and Bloor and Union and
St. George because they’ve always been held there... so we need to
be sensitive to that. By holding customers at stations that are
different, they’re going to have a hard time understanding that it’s
for the benefit to the whole line. They’re not going to get the
benefit necessarily -- as a matter of fact they’re going to get a
disbenefit, because they’re going to have to wait 30 seconds.”
The trade-off
between reliability and longer trips is a topic of ongoing
discussion among TTC staff, and the new scheduling system is still
being fine-tuned. “I don’t think we’re there yet.” he says.
Another
potential delay to riders is when train crews transfer en route to
trains going in the opposite direction. Webster says this system has
not changed much recently, and allows employees on delayed trains to
return to the yard and finish their shifts on time. It is a more
customer-friendly option than turning around the trains themselves.
Ideally the crew would just transfer across a centre platform,
instead of stations where exits are not ideally placed -- but that’s
not always possible.
I checked with
TTC critic Steve Munro, who thinks the amount of time each train has
to finish its run “could be tightened up a bit, but it's not going
to make a huge difference.” In his opinion, subway operations
personnel seem to be “getting fairly clever at managing the service,
but it's impossible to be perfect.”
There is
another area where delays can be common -- at terminal stations. The
TTC’s Webster did not believe that there was a significant problem
there. I’d like to hear from readers who experience this regularly.
Where and when are trains likely to wait before entering the last
station on the line?