514 Cherry

514 Cherry
Route 514 Cherry will provide additional service along King Street, to Toronto's downtown core
Overview
Type	Streetcar route
Status	Planned start June 2016[1]
Locale	Toronto, Ontario
Termini	Dufferin Gate Loop (West) Cherry Street Loop (East)
Operation
Operator(s)	Toronto Transit Commission
Depot(s)	Leslie Barns, Roncesvalles, Russell
Rolling stock	CLRV, ALRV, Flexity Outlook
Technical
Line length	7.0 km (4.35 mi)
Track gauge	4 ft 10 ^7⁄8 in (1,495 mm) - TTC Gauge
Electrification	600V DC Overhead
Route map Legend Dufferin Gate Loop  29  Liberty Street  63  504 King to Dundas West Dufferin Street  29  Fraser Avenue Joe Shuster Way Atlantic Avenue CN Weston Subdivision Sudbury Street Shaw Street  63  Strachan Avenue  63  Niagara Street Tecumseth Street Bathurst Street  145   511  Portland Street Brant Street Spadina Avenue  510  ↓ Blue Jays Way/Peter Street ↑ John Street Simcoe Street University AvenueSt. Andrew Station  142  York Street Bay Street  6  Yonge StreetKing Station  97  Victoria Street Church Street Jarvis Street  141  Sherbourne Street  75  Ontario Street Parliament Street  65  Trinity Street Sackville Street Sumach Street 504 King to Broadview Eastern Avenue Front Street Cherry Street Loop

The 514 Cherry is a new streetcar route planned as part of the Toronto streetcar system in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.^[2][1]

Streetcars will operate through the financial district and downtown Toronto between Dufferin Gate Loop and the Cherry Street Loop.^[2] This will add to the current 504 King service along King Street, specifically to the dense residential areas in Liberty Village,^[3] Canary District and Distillery District. The city of Toronto's "King Street Visioning Study" proposes a transit and pedestrian corridor through which this route would operate.^[4] Transit congestion had become so bad that UberHop launched a rush-hour service for the corridor in December 2015.^[5]

History

Service Initiatives in the Preliminary 2016 TTC Operating Budget called for dedicated resources to implement a new service at an operating cost in 2016 of $0.8 million and $2.1 million annually thereafter.^[6] No additional funding was provided in the 2016 budget.^[7] The TTC proposes no change in operating costs to operate route 514 as it will reallocate existing service along the 504 King streetcar route.^[8]

Operation on the Cherry Street streetcar line is planned to begin in 2016 after the conversion of the 2015 Pan American Games Athletes' Village to apartments^[9] and the opening of a George Brown College student residence.^[10] This new West Don Lands neighbourhood is expected to have 6,000 units once opened.^[11]

Service is expected to be every 8 to 9 minutes in the rush hours and every 15 minutes in the off-peak. The line is projected to attract 51,000 new riders annually and would provide up to 15 per cent more capacity along King Street where the 504 and 514 routes would overlap. The busiest section of the 504 King route is between Bathurst Street and John Street which carries 40,000 of the route’s 65,000 daily riders. The new Cherry streetcars would allow the TTC to redeploy some of the 17 morning and nine afternoon buses it has been using to offload 504 King crowds during rush hours. The 514 service would open with older high-floor CLRV, ALRV streetcars and only one or two low-floor Flexity Outlook streetcars but would ultimately need 10 Flexity streetcars to provide the projected level of service. The introduction of Flexity streetcars on the 511 Bathurst route would be deferred in order to convert the 514 Cherry route to Flexity streetcars earlier.^[11]

On March 23, 2016, the TTC approved the new route, with service to begin in June 2016. Initially, the fleet to serve the new route will be composed of a mix of the old and new streetcars.^[1]

Route

On March 23, 2016, James Bow, writing in Transit Toronto, reprinted several maps, showing earlier proposed alignments.^[12] An alignment under consideration in 2008 had the 514's western terminus at Spadina, had it briefly turn south at Parliament, where it would turn east on Front, to Cherry. But instead of terminating at the railway embankment, the route tunneled through the embankment, crossed the Keating Channel, and turned east on Commissioner, terminating at Commissioner and Leslie.

Eastbound cars will start their trips in Dufferin Gate Loop, then proceed north along Dufferin Street to King Street, then east to Sumach Street where they will turn south to the loop on Cherry Street south of Mill Street.^[2][13]

Westbound cars start their trips in the Cherry Street Loop, then proceed north along Cherry and Sumach Streets to King Street where they will turn west to Dufferin Street where they will go south and loop by way of Springhurst Avenue and Fort Rouille Street to end their trips at Dufferin Gate Loop.^[2]

See also

• Cherry Street streetcar line
• 504 King

References

1. "TTC approves new 514 Cherry streetcar to run alongside 504 King route". CBC News. March 23, 2016. Retrieved March 23, 2016.
2. Robert Mackenzie (November 15, 2015). "New streetcar route 514". TTC surveying passengers: 72 Pape / 172 Cherry St route changes. Transit Toronto. Retrieved January 2016.
3. Sunil Johal (December 16, 2015). "Uber ups the ante. So what’s the TTC going to do about it?". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved January 2016. Overburdened transit lines downtown can barely keep up with demand in dense new residential areas like Liberty Village.
4. Edward Keenan (January 18, 2016). "Plan in the works to redesign King Street — and quickly: Keenan". Toronto Star. Retrieved January 2016. Picture King, just one year from now, from Liberty Village to the Distillery District, as a transit and pedestrian corridor
5. Steve Munro (December 14, 2015). "UberHop symptom of Toronto's transit woes". Toronto Sun. Retrieved January 2016. This week, Uber launched a rush-hour service between the financial district downtown and four nearby neighbourhoods: The Distillery District, City Place, Fort York, and Liberty Village.
6. "Proposed Service Improvements for the 2016 Operating Budget" (PDF). Toronto Transit Commission. November 9, 2015. Retrieved January 2016. This service initiative would benefit approximately 11 million customer-trips each year, requires operating resources only, and could be implemented in 2016
7. "2016 TTC and Wheel-Trans Operating Budgets" (PDF). STAFF REPORT: Impact of TTC Budget Committee Recommendations. Toronto Transit Commission. November 23, 2015. Retrieved January 2016. New Streetcar Service on Cherry Street
8. "Improved Transit Service in East/Central Downtown: 514 CHERRY – Streetcar Service on King Street" (PDF). Toronto Transit Commission. March 23, 2016. Retrieved March 20, 2016.
9. Tess Kalinowski (October 1, 2014). "TTC won't run streetcars on Cherry until at least 2016". Toronto Star. Retrieved January 2016. A planned extension of the King streetcar service down Cherry will wait until after the Pan Am Games and the conversion of the Athletes Village to condos.
10. "Student Residence". STUDENT LIFE. George Brown College. Retrieved January 2016. TTC Streetcar stop right at the residence
11. Tess Kalinowski, Transportation reporter (March 17, 2016). "TTC touts Cherry trolley as ‘creative and ingenious solution’ to crowding on King St.". Toronto Star. Retrieved March 17, 2016.
12. James Bow (2016-03-23). "Route 514 - The Cherry streetcar". Transit Toronto. Archived from the original on 2016-04-06. Retrieved 2016-03-25. Suggestions included extending streetcar tracks south of King via Parliament to the rail corridor, via Cherry to the rail corridor, or via Parliament, Front and Cherry to the rail corridor. Cherry was selected as the preferred corridor because it was closer to new development, and it avoided potential delays by having streetcars negotiating turns at Parliament and Front.
13. "Relief could be coming to King streetcar in June". CBC News. March 16, 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-03-25. Retrieved 2016-03-16. A report made public Wednesday recommends that the new route begin service on June 19. It would operate between the Distillery Loop in the east and the Dufferin Gates loop in the west via Cherry, King and Dufferin streets.

External links

• Map of proposed TTC service changes