A group of King St. business owners is ramping up its fight against the pilot project aimed at improving transit service on the downtown street.

Al Carbone, owner of the Kit Kat Italian Bar & Grill, held a press conference outside his restaurant at King and John Sts. on Monday morning to ask the public to support his push to cancel the pilot.

The event didn’t quite go as planned, however, as the assembled media soon turned their attention to a transit rider who confronted Carbone to voice his support for the King St. project.

The pilot, which gives priority to streetcars on King, is scheduled to last until December, at which point city council will decide whether to make it permanent. But Carbone and other business owners say the decrease in car traffic is driving sales down, and they can’t afford to wait until the end of the year.

“We’d like the mayor to reverse it immediately. It’s hurting too many businesses all at once,” said Carbone, who claimed that revenue for some establishments has dropped by almost 50 per cent.

“We can’t afford to lose every day. They want to do a pilot project for a year, I’ll do a campaign for a year.”

The city started the pilot in November to improve the travel times and reliability of streetcars on King, which is the TTC’s busiest surface route and one of its most congested.

New traffic rules restrict drivers’ movements, forcing them to turn right off King at most major intersections. The city has also removed all 180 on-street parking spaces on King in the project area, which runs between Bathurst and Jarvis Sts.

Carbone has been among the plan’s most vocal opponents. In a show of defiance that provoked the ire of many transit riders, this month he erected an ice sculpture of a raised middle finger outside his restaurant.

The hashtag for his new social media campaign calls on the city to end the “King car ban.” However, cars are not banned from King. When a reporter pointed this out, Carbone acknowledged “they’re not banned,” but said the pilot was not “friendly” to drivers.

Carbone also faced questions about a figure he included in a press release, which claimed travel times for drivers on adjacent routes such as Richmond and Adelaide Sts. had “increased an average of 12 minutes.”

According to city figures, in December, average rush hour driving times on Adelaide had increased by 1.8 minutes at most, compared to before the pilot started, while car trips on Richmond were about 30 seconds quicker.

Carbone accused the city of publishing misleading statistics and claimed he had derived his 12-minute figure “from actual experience.”

As Carbone defended his position, a transit user named Trevor Dunseith who had been listening nearby interjected. He challenged Carbone over his refusal to open Kit Kat’s books to prove its losses were as substantial as he claimed, something the restaurant owner had said he wouldn’t do.

At least the city published “open” statistics, Dunseith said.

“I’m not lying,” Carbone shot back. “The city is.”

Moments later, after Carbone retreated to his restaurant, Dunseith told reporters he decided to crash the press conference in part because he was offended by Kit Kat’s profane ice sculpture.

“I’m angry because every time I go past this stretch of King St. I see that middle finger, and I feel like it’s directly at me,” he said. A student and regular transit user who lives near King St. and Jameson Ave., Dunseith said, in his experience, streetcar service has significantly improved since the pilot began.

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“This is a test, and it’s a test that from my experience seems to be working. And I’d like to see it through and decide at the end of it,” he said.

A spokesperson for Mayor John Tory said his administration has no intention of ending the pilot early.

“The mayor … will focus on real data and meaningful actions that will ensure that we are improving the movement of people along one of our busiest transit routes, while keeping the corridor vibrant and supporting local business,” Don Peat wrote in an email.

In response to businesses’ concerns, the city has already taken steps to attract customers to King, including an unprecedented offer of two hours’ free parking at roughly 2,300 city-owned spaces in the area for the duration of the pilot.

The latest figures released by the city show the pilot project has improved service for the 72,000 people who ride King streetcars every day.

The biggest gains have been for westbound riders during the evening rush hour, for whom average trips in the pilot area were 2.5 minutes, or about 13 per cent, faster last month than before the project.

In addition to reduced average travel times, the city says that the number of excessively slow streetcar trips has been significantly reduced.