At the TTC Board meeting on November 3, management presented statistics on streetcar delays broken down by type of incident. TTC is quite fond of portraying external incidents, especially those related to congestion, as the root of (almost) all evil. The following page is from the CEO’s Report.

Note that external delays (turquoise) occupy the majority of the chart. During discussion of the problem of autos fouling rails, a passing remark by the Interim Chief Operating Officer piqued my curiosity when he said that there were many delays due to the winter storm.

This sent me to the TTC’s delay statistics which are available on theCity’s Open Data site. There are codes for many types of delay including “MTAFR”, short for “Auto Fouling Rails”.

According to the “In Focus” box above there has been a 400% year-over-year increase in these delays, although they are styled as “fowling” implying a flock of chickens might be responsible for service issues.

Sorting the data by code and summarizing by date produces interesting results.

• Between January 1 and September 30, 2025, there were 843 MTAFR events logged.
• Of these, 586 fall between February 14 and 26 hitting a daily high of 65 on February 17.

These blockages were not caused by the typical traffic congestion, but by the City’s utter failure to clear snow on key streets.

• 105 were on 501 Queen
• 42 were on 503 Kingston Rd.
• 84 were on 504 King
• 93 were on 505 Dundas
• 186 were on 506 Carlton
• 3 were on 507 Long Branch
• 1 was on 508 Lake Shore
• 2 were on 509 Harbourfront
• None were on 510 Spadina or 511 Bathurst
• 6 were on 512 St. Clair
• A few dozen were on various night cars

The pattern here is quite clear: routes on wide roads or rights-of-way were not seriously affected, but routes on regular 4-lane streets were hammered. (How 511 Bathurst was spared is a mystery. At the time it was running with streetcars from Bathurst Station to King & Spadina, and with buses on the south end of the route.)

To claim that the 400% increase from 2024 is some indication of worsening traffic problems is gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. Although this is the CEO’s report and he almost certainly did not assemble the information himself, he wears this issue for having reported misleading data to the Board and public.

Direct comparison with published 2024 data is difficult because until 2025 the TTC used a much coarser set of delay codes that lumped many types of events under generic headings. There was a category “Held by” in which there were 625 incidents from January to September in 2024. The 843 MTAFR codes in 2025 are quite clearlynot a 400% increase over 2024.

Whenever there is a discussion of unreliable service, we hear endlessly about traffic congestion. This definitely is a problem, but not the only one, and certainly not in the way presented by the CEO.

A question arose during the debate about the problem that performance stats are consolidated across all routes. Route-by-route service quality is presented in detail in the second part of this article for all streetcar routes. This shows that problems are widespread in the system, even on routes with reserved lanes.

As for the delay stats cited by the CEO, it is clear that we arenot comparing September 2025 to one year earlier as the text implies, but using events from the entire year to date including a major snowstorm that had no equivalent a year earlier. The so-called 400% jump in delays from blocked tracks is due to snow and poor road clearance by the City.

TTC management owes the Board and the public an apology for blatant misrepresentation of the delay statistics.

There are many diversions coming up in the Fall for streetcar routes. Information on these appears in various places on the TTC site, mainly but not exclusively under Service Advisories. As an aid to riders, this article consolidates the available information in one place.

Updated November 21, 2025

Major events pending and in progress include:

• Construction on Queen between Davies (just east of the Don Bridge) and Broadview.
• Reconstruction of the intersection of College and McCaul, and of overhead in the vicinity.
• Reconstruction of track and overhead at and near Parliament and Carlton.

Other short term diversions will last only overnight or for a weekend.

Many of these are complicated by the ongoing Ontario Line work at Queen & Yonge forcing some diversions to be more complex than they might be otherwise.

This article will be updated when changes are announced.

• November 21: The 501 diversion via Broadview, Dundas and Parliament around water main and track work west of Broadview will begin on November 22.
• November 20: Equipment and material mobilization is underway on Queen west of Broadview.
• November 17: The 506 diversion has been changed today to avoid the intersection of Church & Dundas where construction blocks the northeast corner. Maps have been added from the TTC’s site.
• Effective November 16: The 503 Kingston Road bus will be cut back from Dufferin, and will now loop at York Street via Richmond and University.
• November 15: Diversions announced for two projects on 506 Carlton at Parliament & Carlton, and on Gerrard east of Broadview.
• November 9: King & Dufferin reopened for streetcar service. 503, 504, 508 will operate via their normal routes.
• October 30: King & Dufferin reopens for general traffic and buses. Streetcars to return following track testing.
• October 20: Water main reconstruction on Queen west of Broadview has been delayed until early November. 501 Queen streetcars will continue to operate on Queen Street until further notice.
• October 13: 504 King is operating with streetcars today over its full route except for the King/Dufferin diversion.
• October 9: Maps for 504 King and 506 Carlton diversions added.
• October 8: Construction at Queen & Broadview will not start on October 12, and so some diversions will not be required immediately. Information for 501 Queen and 503 Kingston Road has been updated.
• October 5: Nuit Blanch & Run For the Cure info moved to the archive section.
• October 1: Diversions of 505/305 Dundas and 506/306 Carlton for Nuit Blance and for the Run For The Cure added for October 3/4/5.
• September 23: The King/Dufferin start date has been changed to Sunday, September 28.
• September 12: King/Dufferin start date pushed back to September 29 or later. The project will now extend to mid-November.
• September 9: College/McCaul and Queen East details added.
• August 26: King/Dufferin Project
  • The start date for this project has been changed to mid-September with the exact date to be confirmed. Although new schedules will be in place providing for diversions, service will continue to operate through on King Street until construction actually begins. This likely means that the project will extend further into October than the originally planned Thanksgiving weekend end date. The delay also means that the Tiff diversions will end before the King/Dufferin diversions begin.
  • Branch lettering for 504 King A/B corrected.
• August 25: King/Dufferin Project
  • Information about Kingston Road night service added.
  • 304 King and 329 Dufferin confirmed to be diverted on the same routes as the 504A and 29 daytime services.

The TTC has announced its services for the CNE for 2025 to operate from Friday, August 15 to Monday, September 1.

• CNE Express buses will operate non-stop between Bathurst Station and Exhibition Loop, and between Dufferin Station and Dufferin Loop.
• Extra service will operate on the 29 Dufferin and 929 Dufferin Express bus routes, and on the 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst streetcar routes.

Other routes will change to accommodate the CNE services and traffic conditions.

• 63 Ossington buses normally loop at King via Strachan, East Liberty, Liberty and Atlantic. This will change so that buses loop via Fraser, Liberty and Atlantic.
• 503 Kingston Road streetcars will be extended west from Dufferin to Sunnyside Loop between 2pm-1am weekdays and 9am-1am on weekends.
• 510 Spadina streetcars will terminate at Queens Quay Loop until 7:30pm daily, and will run to Union Station afterward.

Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:50pm:

The TTC now hasa web page with details of the changes for the first phase of the construction and diversions. This includes a map showing the diversions to west of Bathurst rather than just downtown. I have added this in the body of the article.

May 5, 2025 at 1:40pm:

Information about the 304 King and 303 Kingston Road night services has been added.

May 5, 2025 at 1:55pm:

The TTC has confirmed that overhead upgrades on King Street East and on Sumach/River will be completed before the King/Church track work end, and streetcar service will resume in September.

May 5, 2025 at 4:30pm:

I asked the City if it thought the intersections used by diverting streetcars and buses could handle the volume of traffic. They replied, but didn’t add much. See the end of the article for the exchange.

Major changes are coming to downtown streetcar routes on May 11 with the next schedule change. This will accommodate a combination of water main replacement, track reconstruction and streetcar overhead upgrades mainly at King and Church.Work is expected to require diversions until the October schedule change on Thanksgiving weekend.Streetcar service is expected to return with the September schedule change on Labour Day weekend.

The effects of work an King and Church have been known for some time through theAnnual Service Plan and through aCity report on the project. (The original report and recommendations were amended at the recent Council meeting to lessen the effect of various proposed lane closures.) Service levels have been published via the electronic version of schedules used by trip planning apps. The information about vehicles/hour at various locations is taken from those schedules.

(As an aside, the TTC website has still not been updated to include the 2025 Service Plan even though it was approved by the Board in January.)

With the concentration of transit service through various intersections, and the added complexity that most vehicles will make turns at these locations, there simply will not be enough capacity even under ideal conditions. It is no secret that “ideal” is a word rarely appropriate for transit operations downtown thanks to the lack of robust traffic management and real transit priority.

In past years, the diversion of services from King Street around the TIFF street fair created problems for transit travel times and reliability, but this lasted for a brief period. The planned diversions for King/Church will last through the summer.

Many of the water mains in the “old” city have been in service for over a century. Other parts of King Street have seen renewal, occasionally on an emergency basis following a break and sink hole.

The special trackwork at the King/Church intersection has been in bad shape for some time, and was overdue for replacement. Previous reconstructions were in 1983 and 2003. Other competing construction projects got in the way, and the track conditions have worsened year by year. There are many patches, and a well-deserved slow order unlike the standing practice even at freshly rebuilt junctions.

This intersection is also old enough that it predates the era of panel track construction where pre-welded sections are trucked in and assembled on site. This replaced the older style of tracks assembled piece-by-piece and often not welded robustly if at all. TTC has not yet been through its entire inventory of “old” track given the 20-30 year cycle depending on the level of service, wear, and disintegration at intersections.

Other work planned for this period of suspended streetcar service is the reconstruction of overhead on King and on the Distillery branch for pantograph-only operation.

Closing King & Church for an extended period concurrently with the Ontario Line construction at Queen & Yonge will add to the traffic snarls downtown. The City talks about using Traffic Agents to manage key intersections, but whether they provide enough people at enough places at enough times remains to be seen.

Routes Diverting off of King Street

Three routes are affected: 504 King, 503 Kingston Road and 508 Lake Shore.

The 504 King service will be broken into three sections:

• A 504 streetcar service between Broadview to Dundas West Stations operating via the same route as 501 Queen between the Don Bridge and Spadina.
• A 504C bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst and east on King terminating at Broadview & Gerrard.
• A 504D bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst, east on King and south on Sumach to Front & Cherry. Buses will loop via [to be announced] and willnot serve Distillery Loop.

The 503 Kingston Road service will be changed so that its western terminus shifts from York Street to Dufferin Loop. Cars will follow the same route as the 504 King via Queen from the Don Bridge to Spadina, then shift south onto King to follow the pre-diversion 504B route to Dufferin.

508 Lake Shore cars will follow the same route as 504 King.

Night Service Changes

• The 304 King night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same route as the daytime 504 service diverting via Queen and Spadina.
• A 304D night bus will run every half-hour over the same route as the 504D bus from Wolseley Loop to Broadview & Gerrard.
• The 303 Kingston Road night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same diversion route as the 304 King night car, and will operate as it does now to Sunnyside.

The maps below are from the City Report about this project originally published in February. An updated map for the first phase has been added later in the article.

For part of the construction period, King/Church will be impassible even to the replacement bus service and it will divert south to Wellington and Front.

These maps do not tell the whole story because another set of construction diversions will overlap the King/Church changes until the next schedule change in late June.

Although water main work at Bathurst/Fleet/Lakeshore is now complete, track work continues there and on Bathurst Street further north. 511 Bathurst streetcars will continue to divert east via King to Spadina looping via Adelaide and Charlotte. The 511B shuttle bus will be shortened from Wolseley Loop at Queen to an on-street loop via King, Portland and Richmond to Bathurst Street.

509 shuttle buses continue operating between Exhibition Loop and Queens Quay Loop at Spadina. 510 streetcars continue operating to Union Station.

The combined effect of the diversions will be greater than during the total meltdown of King service in 2024 when all cars diverted north via Church to Queen because volumes of other routes (510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 501 Queen) will be added to the King services, and more intersections will be affected over a wider area.

Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:50pm:

TheTTC’s project webpage has a consolidated map of the diversions for the first phase of the work.

The TTC has announced several service changes to accommodate crowds expected at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts at the Rogers Centre on November 14-16 and 21-23. For full details, seetheir site.

On concert nights, subway service will be improved between 5-8pm and 11pm-1:30am with Line 1 trains operating about every 3 minutes, and Line 2 trains every 4 minutes.

509 Harbourfront service will be restored between Union Station and Exhibition Loop from November 1-24 with at least 11 cars, up from the usual 7 on the line, on concert days .

511 Bathurst cars will operate from Bathurst Station to Union on November 14-16, and starting on November 17 on a scheduled basis.

19 Bay, a normally infrequent service, will have 10 extra buses. Post-show they will operate express northbound stopping only at King, Queen, Dundas and College enroute to Bay Station.

510D Spadina bus will similarly provide an express service stopping at the same intermediate destinations as 19 Bay enroute to Spadina Station.

The express services will be styled as “Swiftbus”. Extra service on504 King will be styled as “Swiftcar”.

Access at Union Station will be monitored and controlled to prevent the overcrowding that occurred on past occasions with large events.

The TTC has announced that streetcar service will be suspended, in part, over the 509 Harbourfront and part of 511 Bathurst at various times between Tuesday, September 3 and January 2025. This will allow the reconstruction and upgrading of the overhead system between Union Station and Exhibition Loop to be fully pantograph-compliant.

Information is posted in three separate items on the TTC site with the first being the most extensive.

• News Bulletin August 23, 2024
• Project Page
• Construction Notice

The work will be done in three stages:

• Stage 1: September-Early October 2024
  • Overhead work will concentrate on the area from Spadina eastward.
  • 509 Harbourfront cars will be replaced by buses between Union Station and Exhibition.
  • Buses will use the streetcar right-of-way eastbound between Spadina and York, stopping at the curb at other locations, and at all stops westbound.
  • At Queens Quay Station, buses will serve the existing surface stops used by other routes.
  • At Union Station, buses will drop off on the southeast corner of Front & Bay, and pick up on Bay south of Front.

• Stage 2: Early October to Late November 2024
  • Work will shift to the section between Spadina and Bathurst.
  • 509 Harbourfront streetcars will operate between Union Station and Spadina.
  • 510 Spadina buses will be extended west to Exhibition Place.
• Stage 3: Late November 2024 to January 2025
  • Work will move to the section west of Bathurst.
  • 509 Harbourfront streetcars will continue to operate between Union Station and Spadina.
  • 510 Spadina buses will continue to run to the Exhibition.
  • 511 Bathurst streetcars will operate to Union Station instead of to the Exhibition.

In theory, based on the planned end date for work on 510 Spadina, everything should be back to normal just after New Year’s.

At its November 2023 meeting, Council passed a motion proposed by Councillor Chris Moise whose ward covers the east side of downtown, and who also sits on the TTC Board:

1. City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, in consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, the Toronto Police Service, and the City Solicitor to review and report back to the Executive Committee in the second quarter of 2024, including:
a. an update on streetcar performance over the last five years;
b. suggested improvements to the public realm along King Street until the permanent capital project can be delivered; and
c. the feasibility of implementing automated traffic enforcement on the King Street Transit Priority Corridor, including details on what legislative amendments would be required to provincial legislation including, but not limited to, the Ontario Highway Traffic Act.

This article addresses point “a” with a review of streetcar lines over the past five years. It is important to go back to 2019 before the pandemic fundamentally shifted traffic and transit patterns downtown as a point of reference.

From time to time, there are calls to expand a “King Street” redesign to other parts of the network, but there are two “cart before the horse” issues to address first:

• Figure out how to make King Street operate as it was intended and return at least to its pre-pandemic behaviour, if not better, as a model.
• Understand how other streets operate including where and when problems for transit performance exist.

Anupdate on transit priority will come to Council in February 2024, although this will look more widely at the city, not just downtown. In previous articles I have reviewed the growing problem of transit travel times as traffic builds on the proposed RapidTO corridors, some of which exceeded pre-pandemic levels some time ago. In future articles I will refresh these analyses with data through to the end of 2023.

An important distinction between most RapidTO bus corridors and the downtown streetcar system is the design of suburban vs downtown streets. In the suburbs, the streets are mostly wide, have relatively few points of access (e.g. driveways) or pedestrian oriented uses (e.g. shops), and travel distances tend to be longer. In the core, streets are narrow, mostly four lanes with no possibility of widening, access points are more frequent, there is a strong pedestrian orientation, and trips tend to be short. Even if buses were running, express operations would be almost impossible and would save very little time on the downtown routes.

There are exceptions such as some older parts of the inner suburbs that bring physical challenges for transit priority, but also the political challenge that the transit share of road use is lower as one moves outward from the core. King Street is a very different place from Steeles, and Dufferin is somewhere in between depending on which section one considers.

An important message in all of this is that “congestion” (put in quotes because it is so often cited as a get-out-of-jail-free excuse for all transit woes) varies from place to place and time to time. Simply putting transit priority everywhere will not solve all problems and could even be overkill (even assuming that it is true “priority” and not a sham to keep transit vehicles out of motorists’ way). It is simple to colour a bunch of key routes end-to-end on a map, but much harder to identify changes that will actually make a difference. Meanwhile, a focus on “priority” could divert attention from badly-needed improvements in headway reliability and more reliable wait times.

This article begins with a comparison of scheduled travel speed on each route, and then turns to actual travel speeds by route segment. In the interest of length, I will leave a discussion of headway reliability to future articles. This is an important component of total travel time, especially for short trips or trip segments.

I have also included tables showing the constant change in route configurations on the four major east-west corridors thanks to a never-ending procession of track and water main work, rapid transit construction, and overhead changes for pantograph operation. Some of this work was accelerated to take advantage of lighter traffic conditions during the pandemic, and some to bring forward work to keep staff employed.

However, the rate of route changes persisted well beyond the heart of the pandemic and threatens the credibility of transit service on major corridors leaving riders constantly wondering where their streetcar or replacement bus might be. Some changes occurred without the planned work actually taking place, or work started and ended later than announced (sometimes much later as in the never-ending KQQR project).

An important change over recent years, separate from the pandemic, has been the move to larger streetcars on wider headways. What might have been a tolerable unevenness in service when streetcars arrived every 4 or 5 minutes simply does not work for scheduled headways of 10 minutes with much wider swings. Bunching when it occurs leaves much bigger gaps between vehicles. Alaissez faire attitude to route management, and especially the assumption that routes under construction cannot be managed, has led both to unreliable service and basic questions of how or if the TTC can recover the quality riders expect.

For all the talk of project co-ordination, the last people who seem to count are the riders. Simply studying raw travel times be they scheduled or actual does not capture the frustration, delay and despair from the ever-changing and unreliable services, be they by streetcar or bus.

The TTC has published its planned schedule for various streetcar infrastructure inspection and repair projects for 2023, and a look-ahead to 2024.

See:Subway Closure and Streetcar Diversions – 2022 Review and 2023/2024 Forecast

This article was updated on January 19, 2023 at 8:45 pm with additional illustrations from a staff presentation to the TTC Board.

See:Board Report Briefing Subway Closure & Streetcar Diversions – 2022 Review and 2023/2024 Forecast

Subway

The full list of closures begins on p 13 of the report. There is a variety of full weekend, early closing and late opening events (check the legend to the chart).

There are fewer Line 1 closures in 2023 due to ATC (Automatic Train Control) than in 2022 because the main work is complete. However, there is a follow-up phase that will require some weekend closures for testing and implementation. Other work affecting Line 1 includes repair of station finishes on the University subway, elevator installation at Lawrence, various track replacements, and preliminary work at Finch for the Yonge North Subway Extension.

On Line 2, there will be work at Kipling to add a new storage track, preparatory work at Kennedy for Scarborough Subway Extension, preparatory work on the east end of the line for ATC installation, and some track replacement work. As usual there will be several late openings of service on Sundays for beam replacement on the Prince Edward Viaduct.

Many closures involve only an early shutdown of subway service to give a longer overnight maintenance window than would be possible with normal hours of service.

Streetcar

There is a long list of events for the streetcar system, but many of them are short interruptions of overnight/weekend work for inspections or minor repairs.

The major trackwork planned in 2023 is listed both in the report (starting on p 19) and on theTOInview map of City construction projects. The schedule implies that a good chunk of the streetcar system will be shut down at various times during the year. The Ontario Line contributes some of this to the Queen car, but the long-suffering riders on King do not get a break either after years of work at King-Queen-Roncesvalles. Note that Adelaide from York to Victoria is a Metrolinx project and so does not appear in this list.

Some of the dates in the TTC list do not align with info on TOInview. This is very common.

Parts of the schedule simply do not make sense. Some projects have far more time reserved than they should take based on past experience. Some projects will block the routes from carhouses in the east end to the rest of the network either via Queen Street or via Coxwell and Gerrard Streets, and times for these overlap.

Update:The TTC confirms that planned work on Gerrard Street will not occur at the same time as projects on Queen will block access to Leslie Barns and Russell Carhouse. See the map at the end of this section for a graphic view of the planned work.

Details of the Broadview Station Loop expansion are not yet available, nor is it confirmed whether this will actually occur.

I hope to get clarification of what is going on from the TTC.

• Feb 27-Mar 26: King Street West from Close to Strachan
• Mar 10-Oct 29: Dufferin Loop
• Mar 24-Nov 28: Queen Street East from Carlaw to Leslie & Leslie to Greenwood
• Mar 31-Apr 7: Intersection of King & Church
• May 1-Nov 29: York from Queen to Adelaide (Ontario Line diversion)
• May 6-July 8: Intersection of Lower Gerrard & Coxwell
• May 6-Nov 21: Russell Yard
• May 14-Nov 8: Broadview from Gerrard to Broadview Station
• June 18-July 29: Intersection of King & Parliament
• July 30-Nov 18: Metrolinx work at Queen/Degrassi overpass
• Sept 3-Oct 2: Broadview Station Loop
• Sept 7-Oct 29: Queen from Parliament to River & Davies to Broadview
• Oct 8-Dec 16: Oakwood Loop
• Oct 16-Feb12: St. Clair West Station Loop

The report does not list specifics for 2024, but info already appears on theTOInview map. It is not clear how some of this work will interact with Metrolinx Ontario Line construction at King & Bathurst. There is a proposed track and lane realignment at Bathurst & Fleet, but it is not clear whether this will actually occur, or if the planned work is simply replacement of existing special work as is. Details of the Spadina Station streetcar loop expansion are not yet available.

• St. Clair & Yonge
• St. Clair & Bathurst
• Queen St. W from O’Hara to Triller
• King St. W from Strachan to Spadina
• King & Queen (Don Bridge)
• Bathurst St. from Queen to Front
• Bathurst & Queen
• Bathurst & Fleet
• College St. from Bay to Yonge
• Main & Gerrard
• Russell Yard (continuing from 2023)
• Expansion of the streetcar platform at Spadina Station Loop

Update:The following map was included in the staff presentation to the Board on January 19, 2023.

This map contains several geographic errors:

• The project labelled Queen & Yonge points at King & Spadina.
• The project for St. Clair & Bathurst is shown east of St. Clair West Station rather than west of it.
• The project for St. Clair & Earlscourt is shown well west of Lansdowne rather than east of it.
• Carstops on Queen East at Wineva and at Waverley are shown as west of Kingston Road rather than east of it.
• The project for Queen & Jarvis is shown well west of Yonge.
• The project for Fleet Loop actually points to Exhibition Loop.

There are a few more, but my point in cataloguing them is that this is sloppy work and it speaks to the quality of information presented to the Board by management.

Pantograph Conversion

Gradually, and several years behind the original target date, the TTC has converted overhead wiring designed for trolley poles first to a hybrid pole/pantograph configuration, and then to pure pantograph style. A map of the current status was included in the staff presentation.

There are some problems with this map which is based off of a track plan that is itself out of date. “Wrong way” track has been removed from the one-way streets downtown, although it still appears here. Also, some work is underway on King West even this is not shown with the orange “in progress” colour. The intersection of King & Shaw had already been converted to Hybrid format when I visited it a month ago. (There are other errors in the map, but please don’t bother commenting with fixes.)

One amusing relic is the legend “Hillsdale Ave” on Lake Shore Blvd West. This was the site of a long-removed wye, the last in the system, and the street is called “Hillside Ave”. “Hillsdale” is in North Toronto.

Again, this is an unfortunate example of how the “official” records of the system are out of sync with actual conditions in the field.

The TTC will modify many routes on January 8, 2023, although most of the changes are small tweaks rather than a significant overhaul of service. Current changes are achieved mainly by reallocation of vehicles, modification of running times and headway adjustments.

Updated January 3, 2023 at 4:35pm:A table showing the number of replacement buses on streetcar routes has been added.

In the January schedule period, the planned weekly service is down from November 2022 levels. That is the appropriate comparison because the “December” schedules only cover the holiday period when service is reduced. All of these reductions have been reversed in the January schedules, and some school trips have been added beyond the November level.

Service in the latter part of 2022 ran below budget because riding had not rebounded as quickly as originally hoped across the system. January 2023 continues at a similar level, and a service budget has not yet been published, let alone approved.

Subway Service

There is no change in subway service for January 2023.

Streetcar Service

506 Carlton will return to its normal route over its entire length after an extended sojourn on Dundas Street. The 306 night service will return to streetcar operation. Construction of streetscape changes on College Street is not yet complete, but this will not require a diversion in 2023.

Some streetcar routes will have new schedules:

• 509 Harbourfront and 510 Spadina will be modified to reduce layover conflicts at Union and Spadina Stations.
• Service on 509 Harbourfront will be reduced to match demand in some periods.
• Sunday early evening service on 510 Spadina will be changed so that all cars operate as 510A to Union rather than a split service with 510B turning back at Queens Quay. This matches the Saturday service pattern.
• 512 St. Clair service will be reduced to match demand during some periods.

The allocation of routes to carhouses will change slightly to balance resources. The table below includes a long absent route “507 Long Branch” and the temporarily suspended “508 Lake Shore”, but not the “502 Downtowner”. Make of that what you will.

The number of buses operating on streetcar routes for construction projects is shown in the table below.

Bus Service

Routing Changes

29/329 Dufferin

Due to construction for the Ontario Line’s Exhibition Station, the 29 and 329 Dufferin services will be rerouted as shown in the maps below.

43B Kennedy and 985A Sheppard STC Services

These routes will be modified to access Scarborough Town Centre via a different path in order to provide connecting stops with the temporary GO bus terminal.

95C York Mills and 996 Wilson Express Service to Ellesmere Station

The 95C York Mils branch will be dropped, and in its place the 996 Wilson Express will be extended east to Ellesmere Station.

The levels of service in the “before” and “after” configurations are compared below.

Other affected bus routes

• 600 Run As Directed: The number of scheduled RAD buses is deeply reduced with only 6 weekday crews and none on weekends. Divisions will assign buses locally depending on operator availability.
• 19 Bay: An AM peak tripper to handle demand to the waterfront will be created by diverting one 503 Kingston Road bus to run eastbound as a Bay bus to Dockside Drive and Queens Quay, then deadhead to Broadview and Queen to resume service on the 503.
• 20 Cliffside and 113 Danforth: Headways will be standardized so that an evenly blended service can operate from Main Station on these overlapped routes.
• 25 Don Mills: The split branch structure north and south of Don Mills Station will be extended into the early evening on weekdays.
• 925 Don Mills Express: Trips added during peak periods to match demand.
• 939 Finch Express: Midday and PM peak service improved, evening service reduced.
• 41 Keele: Service reduced to match demand.
• 44/944 Kipling South: Some early express trips will be replaced with local buses. Two school trips from 44 Kipling South will interline with 76 Royal York South school trips.
• 945 Kipling Express: AM peak service improved.
• 48 Rathburn and 112 West Mall: PM school trips serving Michael Power Saint Joseph HS will be changed to match dismissal times.
• 52 Lawrence West: A new trip will be added from Westwood Mall at 6:52am to accommodate demand. A new trip will be added between Lawrence and Lawrence West Stations in the early PM peak. This is a hook-up with an existing school trip.
• 57 Midland: Service reductions to match demand.
• 60C/960 Steeles West: Service between Pioneer Village Station and Kipling on the 60C branch will be reduced in peak periods to match demand. This will be offset by improvement to the express service.
• 960 Steeles West Express: Early evening service reduced.
• 63 Ossington: Service modified for resiliency and to match demand (mainly reductions).
• 68/968 Warden: Schedules adjusted for reliability with less frequent service during many periods.
• 79 Scarlett Road: Service reduction weekdays in peak and midday periods.
• 86 Scarborough: Zoo shuttle will operate only on Saturday to serve Terra Lumina. Sunday service dropped.
• 95/995 York Mills an 96/996 Wilson: 996 Express service extended to Ellesmere Station replacing the 95C local service (see map above). Service changes during many periods to improve reliability with a mix of frequency changes.
• 102/902 Markham Road: New trips to serve school demand to R.H. King Academy and Centennial College.
• 116 Morningside: New PM school trips from Morningside & Ellesmere to serve Jack Milner PS and Sir Wilfrid Laurier CI.
• 122 Graydon Hall: All trips will now enter service eastbound at Don Mills.
• 130 Middlefield: New school trips to serve Henry Kelsey Senior PS.
• 165 Weston Road: Service reliability changes primarily through longer running times and additional buses.
• 168 Symington: Service reduced to match demand.

Peak bus service

The Details

Details of these changes are in the spreadsheet linked below.

TTC Service Changes 2023.01.08 (Revised)

Construction Projects

Updated:

• The spreadsheet detailing all of the changes has been added at the end of this post.
• The number of the Mimico GO shuttle has been corrected to 176.
• Transfer arrangements at Queen & Dufferin for the 501 bus and streetcar services have been clarified.
• Transfer arrangements at Queen & Roncesvalles for the 501 and 504 bus services have been added.

Updated September 5, 2022:

• The spreadsheet listing all of the changes has been corrected for route 504 King. The original version included a description of the route carried over from the August version. This has been changed to reflect the September arrangements.

The TTC will make many changes to its scheduled service on September 4, 2022 with restorations of previous service levels on many routes. This will not get the system back to 100% of pre-pandemic levels.

An important distinction is between three values:

• The amount of service scheduled before Spring 2020
• The amount of service budgeted for 2022
• The amount of service scheduled for 2022

The TTC plans to be back to 97% of budgeted service for bus, 84% for streetcar and 92% for subway. The overall numbers are compared below.

In the original 2022 service budget, the TTC planned to be back to roughly the same level of service as in January 2020 by September 2022. However, slower ridership recovery coupled with staffing constraints produced a lower scheduled service expressed as hours/week.

There are further caveats:

• The distribution of hours by time of day might not be the same in 2022 as in 2020 because of changing demand patterns.
• Changes in running times to deal with congestion or service reliability can mean that the same service hours are stretched over wider headways. Not all vehicle hours are created equal.

All that said, there are many changes in service levels, and with the bus network being back to 97%, the schedules for September 2022 are often based on old versions before service cuts were implemented. Another change for this month is the reintroduction of school trips on many routes.