How NOT to build public transit (Toronto’s Streetcars) 

I'll never get over how nice grassy tram tracks are

I have literally walked up Spadina faster than the streetcar. It's insane that they put them on the separated tracks but then didn't give them priority at the lights.

The problem is in our politics. And I don't mean that in a party political partisan way. The problems with Public Transit in North America is that the decision makers-- from the city councillors, city administrators/planners-- don't think of Public Transit in terms of providing service to the public or even in service of creating an efficient city. They think of it in terms of how much taxpayer dollars can be funnelled to Engineering/Contractor firms that both contribute to political campaigns and also hire cooperative city administrators when they want to cash in in the private sector. That's why these projects-- none of which seem bad or faulty when proposed-- fail in the execution in our eyes.

toronto's streetcar network was built in the late 1800s. theres nothing wrong with how it was built, they're just not meant to co-exist with automobiles.

I drive a streetcar in toronto and I agree with everything in this video. Some many easy fixes to make streetcars more reliable but nah, lets prioritize cars instead 😅 Great video!

This is why I love Toronto. You'll have cars blocking the streetcar tracks mixed with the transit operator dealing with a belligerent passenger over why the streetcar is going slow.

I live in Berlin and take the tram every day to work. The ride itself is about 3km, 7 stops, and takes maybe 10 minutes. The tram has a dedicated lane with prioritized signaling, so it's typically faster than taking a car. By the way, we're getting new trams next year that can fit 312 people, and they come roughly every 5 minutes. It's hard to beat.

I have found that public transit being exclusively for the poor is more specifically a U.S. thing than a Canadian thing. My experience riding the bus to Miami Beach when I was in Miami for a conference showed this--it was cheap, worked perfectly fine, the same speed as driving, but yet I was the only tourist on the bus both ways.

I took the 509 Waterfront streetcar and was shocked at how slow it ran - despite having a dedicated right of way. The 511 Bathurst streetcar which runs in mixed traffic runs faster lol. They must have completely botched the signalling, and shocked they haven't fixed it yet.

I own a book detailing how cars took over the streets in my own country. It's excellent, the only reason I haven't finished reading it is it makes me too angry.

Cars cause more congestion in all areas of Toronto than all others forms of transit. Drivers aggressively block busy intersections on a daily basis, which backs up buses and street cars.

Torontonian here. Great video. The most important thing I learned was about the mentality of the city, that when the subway was built, the focus was on making the streets better for cars, not on the wonder of moving all those people by transit. I’m 61 years old, have lived downtown since 1986, and never bought a car. When transit is working, it’s a joy. I love being with my fellow citizens, all going places. I love knowing we are building community and helping to fight the blight of cars. I love people-watching, I love being a piece of society, not an atomized cog, going it alone in my mini-tank.

Everybody hates traffic, but some people don't realize that's what they become when they drive.

Since the new streetcars have been put into use, track repairs have syrocketed. It's clear that the rail system in Toronto was never designed for the larger cars.

I used to live in New Toronto (Lake Shore and Kipling). Taking the streetcar was brutal. Average 90 minutes to get downtown. Most of that was the trudge along Queen through Parkdale. You're right, streetcars and cars don't mix.

I've always wondered why they removed all of the North South streetcars. Now I know. It's because they put the Yonge line in thinking that it made the surface level lines redundant. SMH

I remeber when i showed and guided a american friend coming here to Bangkok firsttime..He was shocked how easy and cheap u get around in a 14 million mega city with skytrains subway busses and even insanely cheap scooter taxis.. sitting in a car is only to be stuck in traffic

Lets not forget that the cars keep on being delayed so it’s not like we are even going to be able to use them. (The transit in my area was meant to finish 4 years ago….)

I have not yet used Toronto’s streetcars, but I personally didn’t have any issues riding their public buses and subway trains!

I totally agree with this video! This can be applied to TTC busses as well! In many of the suburban parts of Toronto where subways and LRT’s aren’t necessarily feasible, busses are still heavily used compared to other North American cities. We should be implementing RapidTO lanes on roads and transit signal priority at intersections across the city. Unfortunately as you said, the mindset of prioritizing cars prevents this, especially when we have idiots like Holyday and Perruzza, car brain gonna car brain. Sad.

Commenting to boost this vid in the algorithm, more people need to see this.

RMTransit has a nice video on Bergen's light rail system. It's been a huge success. I think the video is called something like The city where light rail actually works.

I honestly think that Toronto's streetcars get a bad rep. Sure, they are slow and unreliable, but I think they're still miles ahead of the alternatives most American or Canadian cities choose (the bus), which would not carry nearly as many people and are less efficient.

saw you on St. Clair near Keele earlier this week, shooting for this video it seems. I wasn't sure if it was you, but after seeing this video i know i was correct.

Damn that Houston streetcar looked so nice!!!! If we had that kind of thing in Toronto I'd probably legit go ride streetcars just for fun on my days off

The streetcar tracks on Spadina were completely upgraded 10 years ago, to accommodate the poorly chosen Bombardier streetcars. Now, just a decade later, the streetcar tracks have to have massive repairs again, meaning the dedicated streetcar lanes can’t be used for 6 months, and the replacement buses are stuck in the heavy traffic in the remaining lanes. It’s all ridiculous. The quickest way to get anywhere downtown is to walk.

There is a certain stigma against streetcars even within transit communities. For example, the Lower Mainland of British Columbia which actually has decent transit, at least by North American standards, there are no modern streetcar networks. Vancouver used to have streetcars, but they were ripped out in the 1950s, the dark ages for transit. Part of the reasons for the stigma against streetcars is what you've mentioned, people see them as slow, unreliable, and overall inferior to fully grade separated metros. Of course, there are plenty of uses for streetcars, and the main way to improve their reliability is to give them transit priority and push personal automobiles out of the way. Heck, I would argue that cars should be outright prohibited in large cities, making them fully car-free. We can have free mobility scooter rentals to help folks out. Rather than having this "class-divide" between streetcars and subways, we should unite against the real enemy, cars!

As much as i like the Pokemon good old songs, i feel like they can be distracting and does not match the mood, but this is only my own preference, otherwise i find your videos very enjoyable to watch, thank you for the content !

Watching this while sitting on a Tram in Zurich. They are so good, even tho i finally got my drivers license (at age 30) and have car sharing avilable conveniently just across the street, i have only driven 7 times in that half year where i could. And even those 7 times i struggled to find a reason and mostly just did it for practice.

Love your videos! Always interesting and informative. Keep up the good work!

Toronto’s streetcars are inconsistent but features like shelters, platform markings and next vehicle displays are present at a lot of stops; it feels unfair to criticize this while many other ‘good’ tram systems similarly have stops without all these features.

In Oklahoma City, we recently (Dec 2023) opened a BRT line that mixes with traffic but at a few key intersections with heavier traffic, there are dedicated signals for the buses. Usually there’s a curbside bus lane leading into a stop about 50 to 100-ft from the intersection and when the bus leaves that stop, all the lights at the intersection turn red and it allows the bus to proceed through the intersection without stopping or having to merge back into traffic within 100-ft of the light. It has been EMBARK’s (the city’s public transit agency) best performing route and two more BRT lines connecting the northeast and south sides of the city was approved in recent days.

I appreciate that you add references in the description of your videos. Really makes it easy to learn more about the topics! Do you have any more books/sites/videos to recommend on urban design and public transit?

I take the streetcars everywhere and they are extremely reliable. I have no idea what people are talking about when they call them slow. The only problem is when there are car accidents which can shutdown a line, fortunately you can just walk a block to another line. The biggest problem with transit in Toronto right now is BlogTO, they are constantly posting click bait articles that damage people’s perception of transit (reliability, safety, cleanliness).

I really like your video. Great explanation of the phenomenon.

hell yeah, enjoyed this

You made a lot of good points, but the best point for not taking public transit is that no one is going to stab me in my car.

In Houston, only a small portion of the light rail route in the downtown corridor has cars blocked. The majority of the light rail route shares the streets with cars and blocked by left turning vehicles.

People have all kinds of weird ideas about streetcars and their history. That stretches from historical determinism (Streetcars went away, so streetcars had to go away) to confusing correlation with causality (Streetcars went away and transit is bad, so transit is bad because streetcars went away). As someone who grew up with both trams and busses, I'm convinced (even though I adore the trams) that there is no fundamental difference between streetcars and busses from a customer perspective. Sure, there's differences in ride quality etc., but that depends a lot on rolling stock and isn't that important. What's important to me as a customer is routing, frequency, reliability, speed and capacity, and all local transit options are broadly similar in this aspect. It's the same with questions of traffic and RoW. Without dedicated RoW, local transit suffers when traffic is high. This is true for busses just as much as it is for streetcars. This is not a problem on all corridors, but when it is, it can be solved by painting a transit lane, and that's basically it. If rising traffic volumes were the reason American transit operators bailed on streetcars (it wasn't), that problem could have been solved by sending in the street painters on one sunny Saturday morning in 1940. Switching to rubber-tired operations on the other side did nothing do address that problem (it wasn't meant to). Likewise, if Americans and Canadians want better local transit, they don't need to form a cargo cult around the trams they see in European cities. Steel wheels are not the secret to our success. it's sensible routing, decent frequency, and strategic use of dedicated RoW. All of this can be achieved with busses, and it regularly is.

This was one of the most interesting videos I’ve seen in a while. I noticed a shot of the GRT (Kitchener-Waterloo). I’m curious what your take would be on their implementation of LRT. It’s quite new. As far as I can tell, it’s petty signal prioritized.

Omg 0:09 Kitchener downtown spotted 👀 (It's okay, the parking lot on the left will eventually be the new transit hub/terminal.)

There are a lot of things wrong with Toronto streetcars but I feel like you can figure out a lot of them by just watching the Church-King intersection in St James park. Why's there a stop there, so close to yonge? Why is the infrastructure so bad the streetcars must come to a near stop before crossing? Why does it have signal priority if the streetcar is stopping beforehand to avoid derailing? All good questions. Sadly, city council is gutless. The confusing signage is a tale of frustrating compromise. In a way, automated camera ticketing on the King corridor will be pretty similar to congestion pricing, as more people will use it and take the hit when traffic is bad. I guess I'll take that compromise.

super well put, its incredible to see advocacy for a better transit future growing!

Toronto is lucky to have even kept the street car system. its not perfect, but looking at cities without them, the amount of people thery can haul was worth saving

On Adelaide street, priority traffic lights were installed to tell motorists when they can make left turns and when cyclists can cross an intersection. It took quite a while for everyone to get used to, but it made the flow of traffic better for everyone.

Here in The Netherlands we have the HTM Randstadrail fast trams. These special trams are for a faster transit between the cities The Hague and Zoetermeer. Between trainstation Den Haag LOI and metrostation Leidschendam the tram and the subway metro of Rotterdam share the same track. The subway metro trains from Rotterdam that is part of the Randstadrail on 1 line, use 2 different safety systems, 1 for the subway system and 1 for the tram system in The Hague.

We'd never get detailed info screens on streetcars - they would have to show that it can take you anywhere between 5 - 20 minutes to next stop. Depending on traffic.

Well-said and clearly laid out. Great video.

This is why I use transit whenever I visit Toronto. Vehicle ownership and use still works just fine in the suburbs where I live.

In Detroit, we have the Q,Line developed by Dan Gilbert from Quicken Loans. It's a light rail transit system that runs on Woodward Ave.from the New Center Area to Downtown Detroit. It's free and it's not on the middle of the street and it has its own rail signal system and warning signs are put in place for cars and people not to park, cut in or block its traffic.

Given what is being done on Spadina in Chinatown... the trams are on the way out.

You can come to Bangkok and take BRT. It's a public bus with mostly dedicate lane but it takes decade for people to understand it. At the beginning, many people said this transit stole 1 lane from car. But now people understand better

That was a really great summary of Toronto's poor public transit system. I'm still waiting for the Scarborough LRT to be built, which was long ago fully funded and approved.

Last time i use car was 10 year ago. Here is so good public transit that i dont need car

Lakeshore west had no streetcar service for over 5 years. They kept on redoing the tracks and power lines. With the new extra long streetcars and all the work they have done, the streetcars are running slower overall, slow at intersections move slower than a snail at the loops. I still remember seeing 7 streetcars stuck because one broke down. North America is 50 years behind in so much including public transit. Too many people to pay off in Toronto for better system.

Great presentation! Toronto streetcars could accelerate trips with two commonly used strategies: 1. Curbs on each side of the tracks to prevent cars from sharing the tracks (an inexpensive transitional step towards dedicated streetcar corridors) and the use of a transponder on the street car to change red lights to green as they approach (these are currently used by buses in York region going on Yonge and Hwy.7 to keep the lights green as they pass through the intersections.)

key word for Toronto...."stupid"

They have been improving the screens on buses in toronto to show next stops and such and they even put them at the halfway part of buses

Nice video.

Making the streetcar companies pay for the maintanance and snow removal of the roads with tacks and fair caps really makes it government regulation the real reasons for the demise of streetcars . Some streetcar companies were bankrupt before the automobile came about , like in Port Huron .

Very good points.

Calgary's light rail is mostly separated from car traffic except for downtown where it runs along a transit only street. The only cars permitted on it is emergency vehicles or other transit vehicles

This is the topic that returning to Toronto presses me hard. If better utilized through addressing lower hanging fruit issues with the streetcar network, we could have a competitive system globally and top 3 in North America. The St. Clair and Spadina routes for example have stops that are way too close to each other resulting in these cars never gaining speed and frequently stopping! If treated more like a LRT line and less like a big bus we could dramatically make the rider experience much better.

I like that quote "a developed country is where the rich use public transportation"

Great video. You’ve made excellent points. I took the TTC every day for decades. It has so much potential but they have to invest in maintaining it. There has been a lot of corruption and bad deals that have lead to its decline

Great video.

As a former Streetcar Operator, I can safely say the city layout was not made with public transit in mind. I had to drive 2 hours into the city before my shift, clock in and then take the subway to my scheduled stop. I couldn't take the TTC system because there was no guarantee I'd be able to punch in on time, despite the fact our employee cards track us if we tap them on TTC vehicles.

The problem with streetcars is that they don’t have their own reserved lane, so it always get stuck in traffic and back then there wasn’t big traffic, many people back then couldn’t afford cars, so they took streetcars

My city won't even complete our subway, instead they've let the project rot underground for the past century

transit signal priority can help busses a lot too, just make sure that if a bus is waiting at the traffic lights before the crossing no vehicle can go the intended direction of a bus, it won't solve traffic jams but will 1. ensure busses don't get stuck i merging spots due to lack of free space left and 2. ensure busses won't block other directions trying to move despite the lack of space

I love this video so much. When I moved to Toronto, I immediately saw the problem with the transit system. I lived in Hungary for 14 years prior, and the system there is ridiculously better. This guy has spoken my mind. I really hate the transit system in this city.

I'm from Houston and I am shocked (Shocked, I tell you!) to hear streetcars on Spadina have no signal priority. It is such a minor thing to do that makes such a major difference. Disclosure: For two years I lived two blocks north of Steeles Ave (a long time ago) when I was a kid so I have some familiarity with Toronto.

We were scammed and coerced into cars, they were never the best choice, and I'm radical that I want cars banned within cities as they have no place except in rural areas. Cities are not loud, cars are loud. Car tires are responsible for 80% of microplastics in the ocean and it's safe to assume it's the same on land and in freshwater. Car tires "wear down" but no one considered where that matter was going? Cars are the biggest source of consumer pollutants and our planet is choking on fumes. Entire wars were fought to secure oil to fuel cars. And all this time we had a better option--trams and transit--and threw it away. Imagine the millions of needless deaths, millions of preventable cancer diagnoses, tens of millions of asthma cases, hundreds of millions of crashes, all that could have prevented if cars did not exist. Cars are killing us. We've run this experiment for a century and it's been a catastrophic failure. Cars were forced onto us so I think it's justified to forcibly remove them.

8 months ago I moved to a new place literally 10 steps to a Toronto streetcar stop that goes downtown. I haven't used it once, because it's always been faster to either walk or bike where I am going. Even in the winter. Such a shame...

Great ideas !! However, the key to create a balanced priority for both Cars and TTC Street cars. And you are right in creating efficiencies like signal optimization and signs where possible. Toronto is desperate for more subway lines. Yeah the Bureaucrats built subways in the fifties and completely went to sleep after that. In 75 years they hardly added any Subway lines.

So good

I agree with the sentiment of your channel, however after watching a few videos, they kind of feel the same. Would love to see some video breakdowns of cities outside of North America.

I completely agree, the streetcar system could be so much better if it was just given more attention and even just a sliver of the budget of these new rail lines. Actual dedicated stops would be so nice. One of my least favourite things when using the streetcar is just getting to it in the first place in the middle of busy streets, then waiting on those half bench things that only allow you to lean instead of sit. Unless it was an actual underground stop they were always super uncomfortable and incredibly inconvenient to use! Also grass tracks and pedestrian walkways next to them is such a great idea! It just looks so nice!

Many of the streetcars in Toronto arent usable by those with walkers and canes duecto the steep stairs. In my childhood in Toronto the druvers willing,y helped seniors on and off. Now they are encased in plexiglass, and yell at the dusabled to get off if stuck. Post op, i was lucky to have 3 Chinese men jump up and help me up the stairs as i had to get to the hospital clinic. They also spoke to other riders and arranged for tiders going to Bathurst to help me off.

I live in Toronto, and mostly bike, walk and take TTC, I used to live in Leslieville and work near Eaton Centre, that's 4.5 kilometer, and I used to walk to and from work, one time I was curious and kept track of the streetcar as I leave the office, and sure enough, I was keeping pace with it all the way home, it would overtake me here and there, but I always end up at the same red light with it On this route, there is effectively a single lane, with parked cars taking up one lane, so the streetcar has the same priority as cars on the road and at traffic lights, the only difference is it is a much large vehicle, and it has to wait when car make left or right turns, yes, even right turns because right turn on a green has to give way to people crossing the street, while the cars have to wait while the street car is loading / unloading

8:30 holy crap every day walking home from work I see streetcars get stuck at King and Spadina because car traffic blocks the intersection on red lights. It's so frustrating to watch.

hi flurf, i think you are missed the reasons for ttc streetcars being slow. get on the Queen streetcar in the middle of the night when there is no traffic, you'll notice it has to slow down to a crawl at every bridge and every junction. these are decisions based on the ttc's antiquated rail building techniques. they have worse switches slow down orders than any other city i know of.

I recently moved to Ottawa. While I keep my car around (I can escape the city for less $$ than via rail, it makes camping and visiting family who live in smaller towns possible, and I can pick up groceries easier) I have been making a point of taking public transit within the city, mostly to avoid parking. Using the LRT is great but I must say the buses aren't very dependable, and while there are good bike routes there's also a lot of places where the bike lanes aren't integrated well. I just end up walking a lot of the time if it's less than 40 minutes. I wonder if I'll have time for that once I have a full time job secured again. It took me a while to get my license in the smaller city I used to live in, the breaking point was realizing the ridiculous logistics that would be involved maintaining a relationship with my niece and her parents....it would take an extra 3 hours out of my day to visit them by taking a rube goldberg machine of buses, vs 10 minutes via car.

Torontos streetcars don’t suck. They need improvement and some routes are very slow, but other routes are actually quite efficient. I was on the 507 and I certainly wasn’t going the speed I should have but it wasn’t crawling like I had on some sections of king. There is still hope for Toronto, and the streetcars are still very comfortable

The problem is a whole lot more complex. Streetcars aren't necessarily more efficient. During rush hour, sure, but in non-peak times its not uncommon to find a single person on a double sized streetcar. That's a waste, so the TTC "resolves" this issue by reducing the number of streetcars during nonpeak times. That makes streetcars less usable since it's not available when you need it. Less usability means, it makes more sense to use cars or other means. IMO, a better approach is to have smaller "train cars". During peak times, add on more cars. During slow times, have fewer. Keep service levels the same, so subways are more reliable. As a plus, having more "train cars" gives you more flexibility. If a streetcar goes to the beach, add on bike park train cars. If it goes to the airport, add on some luggage cars. If the route has a lot of elderly or disabled, use more accessibility cars. The reason people use cars is because they're just plain better for some purposes. If you can make streetcars as flexible for those purposes, people will opt for public transit for the convenience of it.

Been to houston street cars are amazing there

Well done! We need fresh thinkers like YOU, Mr. Flurf, in our municipal design offices. This subject is painful for many of us to contemplate - as a commenter alluded to. In Canada “urban planning” is a very bad joke. I’m in Victoria, BC. We have a lot of bicycle infrastructure. The separated bike lanes are turning into a chaotic MAD MAX environment with all sorts of irresponsibly-operated electrified contraptions in use.

I agree about traffic priority for trams and in general always prioritizing and protecting the passengers over cars. I doubt it will ever get done but charging a fee to all vehicles other than transit when the vehicles enter the city might also help to reduce traffic. I have visited cities like Tokyo where people live their entire adult lives without ever owning a car, even if they have children. In Madrid, where there is a fee paid to drive a car in the downtown core, and there is good transit, there is clearly a great environment for pedestrians on major avenues and city streets. A book you might find interesting is Strap Hanger by Taras Grescoe in which the author surveys transit systems around the world and rates their effectiveness.

this needs to be seen by the city council

The main issue I have with streetcars are the speeds it travels at. The main streetcars go down the busiest roads in North America without separation from traffic. That alone is a recipe for failure. It would've been easier if the city had built subways along the main streetcar routes and/or LRT's that are completely separated from traffic.

The other countries built tramways. Toronto never separated transit paths from traffic paths. In Waterloo the new tram/ light rail trabsit runs in grassy pathways alongside rail corridors, and interact with streets only at rare stops. Convenient hut not door to door like Toronto. You have to take a uber from the stations to home.

I have seen how even small numbers of cars destroy traffic flow. First time I went to Vietnam it was pretty much just scooters, absolute mayhem of course, but still flowed fairly well. The second time I went around 10 years later there was a big increase in cars, maybe 1 to every 20 or so scooters, and everything was at a standstill. Now imagine instead replacing the scooters with bikes with public transport on major routes. I can't imagine that ringing bells would be as annoying as the constant horns in almost every Vietnamese city!

Toronto needs to be one way direction at College St, Dundas St, Queen St and King St at leat in the Downtown core.Just imagine how was the traffic when the cars started using those streets and how those are today!!!

Loved that Quote at the end. Facts.

Transit should be prioritized but as someone who lives outside the GTA, I have to drive in whenever I want to get to Toronto, because there is no consistent transit system that allows for arrival and departure into the city. Go Transit is slow and depending on the event, you can't leave same day. Yorkdale mall has the subway line so we don't always have to drive in fully but again, relying on transit is not always ideal for people commuting from outside the region.

flurfdesign for mayor!🤣🤣. excellent comprehensive presentation. hope ppl that can make changes see this and you benefit as well from it

we've got the 7th Avenue 'Free Fare Zone' in Calgary. The stretch of 7 Ave in downtown is for LRT, transit, and emergency services only, it works 98% of the time. I think the majority coming in and out have priority signals these days, its pretty great. Well, I say great as a transit rider, but most priority signals are pretty quick and drivers don't have to wait too long. heh my 2 cents on a great video 😅👍

when you showed the lisbon tram at around 1:17 i laughed out loud. maybe residents will disagree, but when i was there the tram felt more like a tourist attraction than an actual transportation system. there simply isnt enough capacity, and in the neighbourhoods i was in, cars were allowed, but didnt really want to be there because they couldnt park or anything, so mostly werent. all this to say, lisbon's trams remind me a LOT of toronto's streetcars, although theyre a bit faster i think

I've noticed the King Street Streetcar routes (501, 503, 504) have gotten significantly more reliable and useful as I leave St. Andrew station and go west lately. Literally just from attempting to actually enforce the existing laws to limit traffic along King Street. This was the difference between me completely ignoring the streetcar and walking to work, and regularly using it. If those Streetcars actually got signal priority, damn! Or... they could literally just ban cars on that stretch of King. I'm from Calgary, where the entire CTrain system has ridership on par with just Toronto's streetcar network. Transit there is not prioritized in any meaningful way. Even there, 7th avenue in downtown is 100% LRT with signal priority - no cars. There are even vehicle traps on either end of the stretch designed to literally eat cars dumb enough to not figure it out by then. And 8th avenue right next to it is also fully pedestrianized. It's a bit surprising that Toronto, an objectively far more urban city (in both size, built form, and average mindset) hasn't latched onto such obvious wins.

Checkout dubai’s tram.. it has all the priority, its like it never stop unless it in one of it stops