The two main rivals in Toronto’s mayoral race are squaring off over who deserves credit for the King St. transit pilot project, with both claiming they’re responsible for its success.

New figures released by the city Wednesday show that after the introduction of the pilot, which restricts car traffic on a downtown section of King in order to prioritize streetcar operations, some of the worst streetcar commute times have been reduced by up to five minutes.

The numbers were collected in May and June, and indicate the $1.5-million pilot project has increased weekday transit ridership on King by 11 per cent. About 80,000 people a day now take the streetcar.

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On Thursday morning, Mayor John Tory did a media blitz to talk about the pilot, making at least four appearances on television and radio shows.

“Mayor John Tory led city council to try something different on King St. last fall,” his campaign said in a press release.

“Whether it’s cars, transit vehicles, bikes, or pedestrians, John Tory wants to find better ways to get people to work or school and home again quickly, safely, and more efficiently. That’s why he’s a supporter of trying different ideas like the city’s King St. transit pilot.”

The release made no mention of the role in the project played by mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat, who was chief planner under Tory’s administration when the streetcar initiative was approved. She stepped down from the position last September, before making a last-minute entrance into the mayoral race on July 27.

In an interview Thursday, Keesmaat said it was she and her planning team who were responsible for coming up with the King pilot idea, variations of which had been discussed at city hall for years, and that Tory was initially reluctant to support it.

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She said she could recall “sketching up this idea with my team on the whiteboard in the office, and really asking the question, how can we fix the mess on King St.?”

“(Tory) took his time, and it took a lot of convincing,” she said. “And that’s why there’s a leadership challenge that we face as a city. We need to be able to bring bold, smart ideas forward much more quickly than they’ve been happening over the past four years (of Tory’s term).”

Council approved the pilot in a vote of 35-4 in July 2017, more than two months before Keesmaat stepped down as chief planner. It wasn’t actually implemented until November, about two months after she left.

In a written statement, Keerthana Kamalavasan, a spokesperson for the mayor’s re-election campaign, said Keesmaat “participated in much of the early media coverage of the King St. pilot concept and contributed to some early designs that were successfully modified by TTC, transportation and planning staff.”

“Making projects like this work requires much more than big ideas and public pronouncements,” Kamalavasan said.

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“Only John Tory was able to lead and work with city council to get on board with this pilot and actually get it implemented.”

The press release about the new King numbers was issued after 8 p.m. on Wednesday, unusually late for the city’s communications department.

The timing meant Tory’s rivals had little opportunity to speak on the issue before the mayor’s Thursday morning media appearances. The pilot is among only a handful of projects with widespread public recognition that Keesmaat, Tory’s only prominent challenger, oversaw during her five years as chief planner.

Kamalavasan didn’t respond to a question about whether the mayor’s office or campaign influenced the timing of the city press release.

The spokesperson for the city planning department who issued the statistics told the Star in an email Thursday that “staff wanted to release the data once it was ready on Wednesday.”

“To make this happen, many factors needed to come together including web updates, approval from stakeholders and the confirmation of availability of spokespeople (both city staff and politicians). As a result, the release was issued at 8 p.m.,” he wrote.

According to the city report, the improvements in transit service on King haven’t come at the expense of increased gridlock or impact on local businesses.

While car travel times increased by as much as five minutes on nearby Queen St. in June compared to before the pilot went in, the city report said the delays could be attributed at least partially to the start of the summer construction season. It states that “the downtown traffic network has been largely able to absorb” changes to traffic patterns caused by restricting drivers on King.

Some restaurateurs in the Entertainment District on King St. W. have complained the installation of the pilot caused steep loses.

But point-of-sale data collected by the city indicates the average rate of spending on King since the pilot began increased 0.3 per cent compared to the same months the year before the project.

Although that was lower than the 3.8 per cent growth experienced by the city overall during the same period, the report said the sales figures “are in line with trends from the six months before the pilot began.”

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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