New data suggests the King Street Transit Priority Corridor has failed, showing that riding a streetcar down the thoroughfare now actually takes longer than it did before the City came up with the idea to alter traffic conditions to ease the flow of TTC vehicles.

Though it seems streetcar travel times on portions of the route did indeed get shorter immediately following the implementation of the initiative, as of this fall, the trip takes longer than it did pre-King Street Pilot, as it was known when it began in 2017.

Numbers sourced by CityNews on Monday show that in September 2023, peak hour TTC travel eastbound from Bathurst to Jarvis via the corridor takes 22 minutes at best, 26 minutes on average and 29 minutes at worst.

This is compared to 19 minutes at best, 23 minutes on average and 26 minutes at worst just before the pilot was launched — hardly faster most of the time, and even more sluggish in the highest-volume traffic.

Many feel that this is nowhere near acceptable, given that these 2017 figures are what prompted the City to launch the pilot in the first place, but don't seem too surprised given all of the factors working against public transit in the area.

Shocker, travel times for streetcars on the King Street transit corridor are getting longer. No shit Sherlock. It is not a transit only corridor, everyone ignores that completely. Cars parked everywhere, trucks, vehicles driving through. It's a joke. #TorontoFail

— "WOKE" BELLA2023 (@BELLA2023590525) November 14, 2023

Residents have long bemoaned a lack of traffic enforcement, with drivers hardly ever seeming to follow the posted signage prohibiting non-TTC vehicles from going straight or turning left through key intersections.

Construction and long-term closures in the area — including the Queen-Yonge and Adelaide-York corners — as well as the loss of the Gardiner East, also mean more cars using King as a detour.

These hurdles all come while office occupancy and traffic levels continue to increase amid the city's recovery from lockdown (and record high immigration numbers, to boot).

Then there is the sad-looking infrastructure on King, which has deteriorated immensely since the early days of the congestion-alleviating scheme: most bollards to protect those waiting for a streetcar are now missing, parkettes with public seating have disappeared, pavement markings have faded and stops are looking embarrassingly ramshackle.

People are complaining that Toronto's King Street transit corridor is completely falling apart https://t.co/skFGgLfOn5 #Toronto #KingStreet

— blogTO (@blogTO) October 7, 2022

Many are pointing to the need for stiffer penalties for motorists who violate the corridor's rules to better dissuade people from ignoring the mandatory right-turn signs.

Photo radar to hold offenders accountable has also been suggested if police, who did not respond to blogTO's request for comment in time for publication, do not plan to be more stringent in monitoring the route — though officers did ticket a streetcar driver for blocking a King intersection just last week, ironically enough.