King pilot project is wreaking havoc
Re King St. pilot gets streetcars moving faster, Dec. 13 I keep reading about initial city reports that the King St. pilot project is successful. I wonder what King St. and what city the reports are referencing?
The core along King is now a dead zone. North-south main streets, such as Church, are a mess of confused traffic — not only all day and into the evening, but now on weekends as well. Pedestrians and vehicles are confused, due to poor signage and ugly street-blocking structures. To suggest that Front, Adelaide and Richmond Sts. have not been affected is ludicrous. And Jarvis St. has become a parking lot.
You only need to walk the areas to see the havoc being wreaked by this poorly planned pilot project. This is downtown Toronto, but King now resembles the main street of a sleepy town.
How about an alternative? As King is a fairly straight route for streetcars, why doesn’t the city move them to the curbs? That would allow safer loading and unloading of passengers yet leave two free lanes in the middle for vehicles.
I fear city staff are better at justifying poor solutions than seeking eye-on-the-ground facts that might yield more sensible solutions. Richard J. Anobile, Toronto I am strongly in favour of improving transit and assume that everyone wishes to move across the city as quickly and efficiently as possible.
However, you trumpet the success for streetcars, with times improving by 54 seconds westbound and 24 seconds eastbound, while describing the effect on nearby streets as “minimal.” What you regard as minimal for cars — 6 seconds to 2.5 minutes — would appear to be a crowning achievement for streetcars.
So, on balance, maybe the pilot is not such a great success when seen in its totality.
Whatever success the King project may achieve, the effect of restricting left turns and removing some parking could have produced the same results with less disruption. Ken Straiton, Toronto