TTC officials are working at reducing delays and improving service across the system. But even as the TTC rolls out small improvements like back-door boarding on the King streetcar, it is closing in on the holy grail of Toronto transit — the elimination of the dreaded short-turn.

The TTC has reduced the number of St. Clair streetcars that short-turn from between 400 and 500 a week to fewer than 10 since October, according to chief service officer Rick Leary.

On the busy Dufferin bus route, the number of short-turns has dropped from about 350 to as few as 30 a week, using the same seemingly obvious line management to improve the service.

Short-turns, which involves riders being asked to get off a bus or streetcar so that vehicle can be used to close a gap somewhere else down the line, constitute one of the biggest beefs among customers, said Leary.

“We no longer ask customers to get off a perfectly good vehicle because there’s a big gap on the other side of the system and we have to start putting service back in the other direction,” he said. “Nobody likes to get kicked off a warm bus in the winter.”

To reduce bunching and gapping on the 512 St. Clair, the TTC added four minutes to the official run time in each direction. That allows for the true time it takes to get from one end of the line to the other.

It means that in many cases riders wait between 30 seconds and a minute longer for the streetcar, but once they get on, they won’t be asked to get off until they’ve reached their destination.

The TTC also devoted six supervisors solely to managing service on the 512 from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Friday. They make sure the cars leave the yard and arrive at their starting point on time.

Transit officials spoke with the union and operators on the line to make sure they understood the new approach. They also worked with the city to accurately account for signal timing so those times could be built into the schedule.

Finally, the TTC added a couple of extra streetcars to the route — contingency vehicles that could be inserted into gaps in the service.

“If you know you have gaps in there, why don’t you address it? Put an extra vehicle in. Don’t short-turn to fill in the gaps, put another bus in,” he said.

The TTC employed a similar technique on the 29 Dufferin, using up to five contingency buses — which Leary notes never stood idle.

“It’s a new way of thinking. It’s a new way of doing business. You don’t short-turn. Short-turns are a last resort. We know our business well enough that we should be able to forecast our needs for service and for customers,” said Leary.

Prior to this program, only about 60 per cent of streetcars arrived at their destination on time. Since mid-October, up to 95 per cent of vehicles are on time.

Now Leary is trying to figure out how to draw some of the resources from St. Clair and Dufferin so the benefits of these changes can be imported to other lines without displacing the gains made.

With few supervisors or spare vehicles, he admits it will be a challenge in the near term.

Longer term, the TTC is getting a new computer-aided dispatch/automatic vehicle location system that will ensure the control room can locate each bus and streetcar at any given time. It will be able to tell transit controllers which vehicle is sitting for too long in one spot, or where it encounters delays.

But that system won’t be in service for about four more years.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

In the meantime, said Leary, “The key to expanding it is more vehicles, better schedule adjustments, so we’re working on that.”

Asked why the strict line management hasn’t been applied sooner and in more places, he said it’s largely a matter of fresh eyes as well as scarce resources.

The TTC had been doing the job the same way for a long time, said Leary.