What happened at the King Street Pilot public meeting?

weather and rain, there was a great attendance and participation of people from a diversity of neighbourhoods spanning the 504 route.  Community members were eager to talk about the pilot project and how it has impacted them. Some participants even used their social media platforms to amplify the success of this discourse:

Packed room for “One Year In: the #KingStreetPilot.” Good presentation from @TO_Transport and excellent discussions facilitated by @ttcriders. 🚲🚃 Topics include how the pilot needs to encourage integrated multi-modal transportation use & create more liveable communities. pic.twitter.com/zmYEDoE5mI

— The Atmospheric Fund (@AtmosphericFund) November 27, 2018

David Kuperman from the City of Toronto’s Surface Transit Priority team kicked off the evening by sharing the latest available data dashboard collected during the pilot project. The September and October dashboard was released following the event, and the City is preparing a report on the pilot project’s results that will include the full year's worth of results.

Kicking off the meeting with a presentation from the City of Toronto on the data from the #KingStreetPilot pic.twitter.com/gE250Mo0mH

— TTCriders (@ttcriders) November 27, 2018

Representatives from several businesses gave feedback about the city data: they were looking for more info about the sales data information that the City obtained from Moneris, as their personal experience doesn’t line up with the overall trend in sales in the area. We hope that they are able to find the answers they are seeking. We then moved into a series of five discussions focused on different aspects of the King Street Pilot, including the impact its had on traveling and shopping on King Street and the broader community atmosphere. There was a lot of passion in the room for making sure King Street works for everyone, and each group had very constructive conversations about how they believe that can be accomplished.

The #KingStreetPilot meeting is still going strong! There's a lot of passion for our City in this room.

My table tonight agrees that the #ReliefLine should extend west of University. The Pilot is an improvement but cannot keep up with demand.#TOpoli #Toronto #ONpoli pic.twitter.com/ngxts50qb9 — April Engelberg (@AprilEngelberg) November 27, 2018

At One Year In: The King St Pilot by hosts @ttcriders & @cityplacera. My husband & I live on and commute via King St. The pilot improved: TTC reliability, commute time, pedestrian safety & overall livability. We shop/dine more on King St. Time to make it permanent #TOpoli #ONpoli pic.twitter.com/Nn7cYFY2dO

— Grace Ki (@GraceKi) November 27, 2018

Some of the recommendations that came out of the evening included:

• Strategies for delivery drivers, as they are getting ticketed while on the job.
• Improved signage for motorists and pedestrians
• Enhanced use of the curb lane, including allowing more commercial activity, pick-up and drop-off zones, and space for cyclists.

Additionally we heard from Adam Cohoon, chair of the TTCriders Accessibility Committee, who emphasized the need for more accessible stops along the pilot area, including more space for transit riders at busy stops like King and Parliament and more thought to how ramps from street to streetcar function. CityNews covered the event and asked one table how they would score the project on scale of 1 to 10. The pilot received the following marks from the five gentlemen in the group: one 5, one 7.5, two 8’s and one 11 out of 10. This range of scores is pretty representative of what we heard throughout the night. Overwhelmingly, people see the pilot project as a major improvement for transit riders traveling along King Street. But there’s also a recognition that in order to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population in the area, with thousands of residential units under or approved for construction along the King corridor, this should only mark the beginning of efforts to improve transit and connectivity in the area. Source: https://toronto.citynews.ca/video/2018/11/26/king-street-residents-review-pilot-project/ Participants have experienced the change to public spaces in a variety of ways. Some feel the street is safer, more vibrant, and busier than before the pilot, while others see the curb lane space where public installations were installed as underutilized. To close out the discussion, we asked participants to share their personal vision for the future of King Street.

At the @ttcriders discussion on the #KingStreetPilot, one year in. It’s working. Let’s move on to the next phase. King St is a street designed for cars but without the cars. Next steps: redesign King Street for people. Wide sidewalks, patios, events.

— Pedro Marques (@MetroManTO) November 27, 2018

We heard calls for the pilot to:

• Be extended beyond its current boundaries of Jarvis and Bathurst St.,
• Include more streetcars during peak hours to address overcrowding that is being experienced due to the increased transit demand on King St thanks to improved reliability and speed of the streetcars.
• Include exemptions for off-peak hours along King Street
• Re-design the street for people, making more room for cyclists and pedestrians
• Animating the street through the winter (which the City of Toronto is already working on!)

There were many hopeful voices that see the potential for King Street to become a vibrant, world-class destination that attracts residents and tourists alike. TTCriders represents transit riders across the city who want reliable, rapid, and affordable transit. In that regard, we see the King Street Pilot as a big success that the TTC and City of Toronto need to build on. Looking to the future, we want to see the King Street Pilot made permanent, extended to Corktown and Roncesvalles, improved upon, and its concept applied to other busy surface routes that are in dire need of transit priority measures to improve service for transit riders. Later today a vote to extend the pilot's traffic rules until July 31 2019 is on City Council's agenda. This extension is intended to ensure that City Staff have the time they need to capture, analyze, and report on a full year's worth of data and for City Council to consider the findings before making a decision on its permanence. Want to see the pilot extended? Email your Councillor and ask them to support extending the pilot period until July. And make sure to sign the "We Love King" pledge here.