This article begins a series of reviews of major bus routes in suburban Toronto based on vehicle tracking data from October 2017 (before the subway extension to Vaughan opened) and April 2018. It includes charts showing the behaviour of headways (the times between buses) and travel times in a way that consolidates more information in an overview of how these values change by time (through the day) and along the route.

Many thanks to readers who contributed to the discussion of improvements in how these data are presented. For those interested in the underlying methodology of digesting the TTC data, please refer to this article.

Data for fall 2018 operations are not available because the TTC is in the process of shifting their vehicle tracking to a new system (“VISION”) and do not yet have a data extract tool to provide the kind of archival data I have been using for these analyses. Discussions about how this will be done, including the possibility of an Open Data Portal, are in progress. Buses which have converted to the new system do not appear in the data I receive from the old “CIS” system.

This article deals with headways, the time between vehicles. In Part II I will turn to travel times.

Headways and Service Reliability

A major issue for transit riders is the dependability of service. On most routes, the scheduled frequency is good enough that “on time” is a meaningless concept, but regular spacing between vehicles will guarantee that the typical wait is fairly short and predictable. If service is supposed to be 10 minutes or better, but just missing a bus could cost someone a 20 minute wait, for that rider the concept of a frequent service network rings hollow.

For its part, the TTC only measures service quality at the ends of routes, and then only against the schedule on the premise that if vehicles are on time, regular spacing will take care of itself. This simplistic view ignores the real world of transit operations and presents a rosy picture of service compared to actual experience.

For reference, here are the scheduled levels of service on 60 Steeles West during the months covered by this article [click to enlarge]. Both before and after the opening of Pioneer Village Station on the north side of the York University campus, the route operated with three branches:

• a local service from Finch Station to York U/Pioneer Village
• a local service from Finch Station to Highway 27
• an express service from Finch Station to York U/Pioneer Village (peak periods only)

The level of service during peak periods on each of these is almost identical before and after the subway extension opened.

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