The May 2018 service changes bring:
- Addition of two AM peak “gap trains” on 1 Yonge-University-Spadina and other operational improvements.
- An update to the schedules for service on the King Street Pilot to reflect the improved travel time on the street and to reduce vehicle queues at terminals.
- Changes to all routes serving Main Station during construction that will close the loop to transit vehicles.
- Diversions of the Parliament and Carlton routes around track construction at Gerrard & Parliament.
- Changes to Don Mills bus schedules to reflect actual operating conditions and Crosstown construction effects.
- Seasonal changes to reflect declining ridership to post-secondary institutions during the summer.
- Summer improvements including extension of 121 Fort York Esplanade to Cherry Beach during all operating periods, improved weekend service on 92 Woodbine South, and later service to the Zoo.
- There is a new summer route 175 Bluffers Park on weekends between Kennedy Station and the park’s parking lot.
- Service cuts and running time reductions on 6 Bay.
- Weekend reliability improvements on 96 Wilson and 165 Weston Road North.
- Weekday reliability improvements on 199 Finch Rocket.
Here are the highlights:
1 Yonge-University-Spadina
Two “gap trains” will be added to the morning peak schedule to provide additional service as needed southbound on Yonge. One train will be stationed in Eglinton pocket track, and the other on the hostler track at Davisville.
Trains leaving service in the evening to Wilson Yard will now do so southbound from Vaughan rather than northbound at Wilson. This avoids conflicts between the yard movements and southbound service.
King Street Pilot
Running times on 504 King will be reduced during almost all operating periods, and the saving will be converted into slightly shorter scheduled headways with no change in total vehicles. The four peak period ALRV trippers will be replaced by six CLRV trippers. Flexity cars will now be formally scheduled to cover part of the service with priority going to runs that stay out all day.
514 Cherry service will be improved during the AM peak, weekday early evening, Saturday afternoon and Saturday early evening periods by the addition of one or more cars.
Peak period crewing practices will be changed to step back operation to reduce terminal delays.
Main Station
Main Station Loop will be closed until September 2018 for construction. During this time routes serving the station will be reorganized:
- 20 Cliffside and 62 Mortimer will be interlined as a single route from Broadview to Kennedy Station.
- 23 Dawes will be extended west to Woodbine Station.
- 64 Main will be extended north to Eastdale.
- 87 Cosburn will loop on street via Danforth and Chisholm.
- 113 Danforth and 135 Gerrard will be cut back from Main to Victoria Park Station.
- 506 Carlton will be extended east to Victoria Park Station via Gerrard covering the mileage of the shortened 135 Gerrard route.
Parliament & Gerrard
During the reconstruction of this intersection, buses will divert:
- 65 Parliament will divert via Sherbourne between Dundas and Carlton.
- 506 Carlton will divert via Dundas between Sherbourne and River.
Bay Bus
Service on 6 Bay will be reduced by the elimination of one or two buses during most operating periods, and headways will be widened as a result.
This route suffers from excessive running time as shown in a previous analysis I published, and I will be updating this with current data in May.
Steve Munro 
I would hate to be using Victoria Park while Main Street is under construction. It has all those extra bays but if the subway goes down at Kennedy it will be a complete s***show (sorry for that Steve but could not think of a better adjective).
I wonder though, what will the locals think of having no service on Gerrard from Victoria Park to Main Station? It is a large stretch to go without service.
As for the 175 I presume that it is running from Kennedy to the Bluffers Park parking lot?
Steve: Yes. I will update the article.
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@Richard White: the 506 will replace service for that section it seems? Correct me if I’m wrong Steve.
Steve: Yes, the 506 replaces the service on Gerrard between Main and Victoria Park. Anyone on Gerrard wishing to reach Main Station will have to transfer to 64 Main.
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Richard, Steve noted that 506 CARLTON would be extended to Victoria Park Station. Presumably that would be via Gerrard and VP (pity those autos using the left turn lane at VP). Gerrard customers will likely be amazed at the increase in service. It would be ridiculous if they were to use Danforth Av.
Steve: Yes, the 506 will run via Gerrard to Victoria Park.
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Well, I wonder if 506 is extended to Victoria Park via Gerrard, and not Danforth? That would more than substitute for 135 Gerrard service. I don’t see any information one way or the other.
Steve: Sorry, I should have made that clear in the article. It’s in the service memo I was working from. I will update the article.
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For clarity, is the 506 detour (east of Main and Gerrard) via Gerrard and Vic Park, or via Main and Danforth? I was assuming the former, given that the 135 is being concurrently cut back.
Vic Park has 2 extra bus bays but they are often used for layovers, so I imagine ops will need to manage that a lot more proactively with an additional three routes using the extra bays (presumably the 506 in one, and the 113 and 135 sharing the other) — especially considering the frequency of the 506 replacement bus, its run time (layover requirements) and its propensity for bunching.
I would imagine that adding 23 Dawes to Woodbine will be a challenge as well. Five years ago it could have been done fairly easily, back when Woodbine had a spare bus bay. I wonder how they will squeeze in the extra service with only two bays.
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(Sorry, started writing the comment before your response to Richard got posted….)
Steve: No problem. Nice to see such activity!
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Off topic:
With today’s bus announcement, I did a quick check on your February post containing fleet plans. Looks like the announcement may not change anything as the TTC planned for over 1000 new buses in the upcoming years anyways. Do you have any inside scoop on the ‘1000 new buses’? Was this on top of existing fleet plans or part of the existing plan?
Steve: It was part of the existing plan. One of the big problems with PTIF is that it’s very hard for municipalities to spend a lot of money in the short time frame the federal government sets for the program. The TTC took advantage of the situation to do a major replacement of its fleet allowing for retirement of some old clunkers including hybrids that were no longer worth trying to keep running. The big irony here is that the only reason we had hybrids in the first place was that a previous federal program to support transit would only let the TTC buy “green” buses. Whether they worked or not didn’t matter, it just made for good copy in the press releases.
Meanwhile, the purveyors of battery buses are salivating because their more costly product would never get through the door if it were not for extra subsidies for yet another “emission free” bus. That designation might be challenged depending on what type of hydro source is used to recharge the buses. In my various LRT battles, the issue of whether electricity is really “green” comes up regularly, usually as an argument from someone who is anti-LRT. Oddly enough, they don’t ask the same question about subways.
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That’s because subways run off troll power… just like the internet 😛
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Even if all our electricity were to come from burning COAL, it would be greener than vehicles propelled by their own internal combustion engine due to the efficiencies of generating power in a large fixed facility.
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All forms of electricity generation is a derivative of fossil fuels. There are forms of electricity that are greener at the place of generation. But let’s not kid ourselves with zero impact electricity. It does not exist.
Solar, wind and hydro electricity are always said to be green and renewable. Well, fossil fuels pulled the rare earths and silver to make PV panels. There are no electric mines out there. Those giant Caterpillar earth mover trucks burn diesel at a rate measured in gallons per mile. Generation units inside a hydroelectric station are made from rare earths. Fossil fuels also transport those rare earths to the plants that make PV panels. There are no electric ocean container vessels.
The same can be said for nuclear technology. The reactors are made by fossil fuel equipment. Uranium is mined with fossil fuel mining equipment. Transportation is made by diesel trains or trunks. Even the backup generators to run the cooling systems are powered by diesel.
We are burning carbon one way or another. So, let’s not debate a moot point about whether trams or metros are using clean energy or not.
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Weekend subway closures postponed due to TTC and ATU Local 113 contract breakdown. No overtime until contract agreement.
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Is the tunnel that goes directly into the Wilson Yard (north side) from the Sheppard West Station crossovers operational today? In mid-May, will trains leaving service in the evening from Vaughan to Wilson Yard be using this tunnel?
Steve: I checked with the TTC about this, and the new connection will not be operational until the summer. The trains running in from Vaughan will use the existing track connection to the yard.
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Sorry for another off topic question. Do you recall if their was any modelling as to what the impact of the Crosstown will be on Line 2? I don’t remember seeing any.
From what I understand from your content, Line 2 gets most of it’s ridership from feeder buses. I assume most of those riders would come from north of St Clair. I expect that the Crosstown will have a higher up time than Line 2 due to the nature of LRT (no garbage to catch on fire, less likely as a suicide choice). Alternates will be easier to access when required (north /south bus routes should be within a short walk to ride over to Line 2 or north to the next east/west street). Switching lines at Eglinton West should be much better than St George.
For at least all of these reasons, I would expect a big hit to Line 2 ridership after a few years of operation as riders decide they are better off on the Crosstown (also assuming TTC does well on line management for Crosstown … Maybe high hopes on that).
Was there any modelling to reflect this? I wonder what the ridership impacts are at around 2025. I would expect them to be noticeable.
Steve: I have not seen any numbers showing the effect on Line 2 BD of the opening of 5 Crosstown. On the west side, with the line ending at Weston Road, there may not be as much of a shift. It will be interesting to see if Line 5 generates its own “crosstown” demand that is separate from the existing subway.
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It would take detailed rider counts, but I suspect that there is already a fair amount of turnover at Eglinton for N-S routes. When I took 41 Keele pretty regularly, in the counterpeak direction, it was always emptier south of Rogers Road.
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They are also moving / combining / removing a ton of stops in the Beaches effective May 13th per posters posted at stops,and I suspect it may impact areas on Queen outside of the Beaches. It goes beyond what was published a few years ago. There is also nothing I can find on the TTC website regarding an updated plan.
Steve: I have asked the TTC for further details including whether this is part of a larger program, or just a local update.
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It looks like stops are being simply removed. Connaught, Kent, and a bunch of others than I didn’t keep track of. I think the WB Simcoe stop is gone too. Didn’t notice if York was affected.
It’s interesting that the TTC has abandoned its practice of providing analyses of how routing changes affect riders. Or at least putting these analyses on the public record.
Steve: I am still waiting for a response from the TTC to a question about the pending changes.
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The TTC’s Brad Ross sent the following reply to a query about the stop changes:
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Steve – that report is interesting because stops are getting moved that are not in the report. IE in the Beaches not in the report are
a) Spruce Hill is moving to Beech
b) Scarborough Beach + McLean is being combined to one stop at Glen Manor
c) Kippendavie is moving to Elmer
The problem with a and b is that will leave a 400 meter gap between stops, although a wheelchair cutout does exist at the midway point at Balsalm. I’m not one to complain – however accurate updated info from TTC would be nice.
Steve: Furthermore, the TTC Board only approved specific changes, and then in consultation with local Councillors. I am chasing this issue with the TTC, and would not be surprised to find that staff has forgotten that they were supposed to consult about these changes before implementing them.
There was no follow-up report at the “next meeting” as requested in the motion.
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While not a part of this service change, wondering what the plan is for the 502 going forward. I understand it’s buses right now, in part due to 503 running on King linked to the pilot. But, when Wellington re-opens, do both routes revert back to their original streets?
Steve: I don’t think the TTC has made up its mind on this, although they do refer to the 503-Spadina service as “temporary”. That does not line up with it supporting the King Street Pilot, especially if the 503s went back to their bad old habit of short turning back east from Church. Some 503s now short turn via Wellington and York, and never serve the section west to Spadina.
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Brad, is there any follow-up from Brad?
I’m hearing reports that there’s signs to remove the Gladstone/Sudbury stop on Queen, that the city already installed a ramp for in 2015.
And I see nothing about that in the 2014 report, nor any other reference to it at the TTC board.
Steve: I am still awaiting info from the TTC. There is a complete list for The Beach in Cllr McMahon’s monthly newsletter, and it’s written in TTC-ese, so there must be info for other parts of the city. But silence from the TTC.
Not up to snuff for the “Keep you informed” part of “The TTC Way”.
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Will there be an increase in service for the “511 Bathurst” route? This service increase will come in time for the busy tourist season. The “511 Bathurst route uses CLRVs (and ALRVs) and`, especialy on weekends, the low-floor Flexity Outlooks.
There will be some new festivals at Ontario Place, In late summer, there`s the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) which climaxes with the Canadian International Air Show during its last three days, and many people going to the CNE choose to take the `511 Bathurst`streetcar; there`s the high-spirited exitement of the passengers on the streetcar heading to the CNE.
Steve: Typically the TTC switches to larger cars on 511 Bathurst for the busy season at the CNE grounds, but the schedules for the summer have not yet been announced. In any event, larger cars can be operated simply by being assigned as needed, especially on weekends.
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Interestingly, there is no mention in the service note on the website for the 23 Dawes, that it will stop anywhere west of Main Street.
Perhaps someone reminded them, that they now only have 2 very busy platforms at Woodbine for 3 different routes!
Steve: It will be interesting to see if it actually stops for passengers at Woodbine, or just loops there. It seems a long way to go for non-revenue service.
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Well, the map and route info all over the TTC website show it servicing Woodbine Station. I should go up there and take a look. Not sure how it works on a Saturday with 92 going every few minutes to the Beach, and often 2 buses in the station already, plus the 91 and 93 already sharing the second platform!
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I can’t confirm what it’s like on a Sunday morning but I have used the 23 daws from Woodbine station and it runs “express” to main and Danforth with no stops in between.
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