On April 16, 2019, Toronto Council by vote of 22-3 endorsed making the King Street transit and pedestrian priority area between Jarvis and Bathurst permanent. This is the first of two articles updating the collections of statistics I have been publishing about King Street since the pilot began in November 2017. This article reviews travel times and line capacity in the pilot area. The second will turn to service reliability both in the pilot area and in the outer parts of the 504 King route.

My thanks to the TTC for the raw vehicle tracking data on which these analyses are based. Presentation and interpretation of the data are entirely my own.

As a refresher, service on King between Jarvis and Bathurst was provided by two routes for much of the pilot period:

• 504 King between Dundas West and Broadview Stations
• 514 Cherry between Dufferin and Distillery Loops

Service on the 504 was generally more frequent than on the 514.

In 2018, there was a temporary change in service over the summer to a new design. This was reversed in September, but at Thanksgiving weekend in October the new arrangement became permanent:

• 504A King between Dundas West Station and Distillery Loop
• 504B King between Dufferin Loop and Broadview Station

Service on the two branches is generally the same so that, in theory, cars alternate in the central section of the route where service is supposed to be twice as good as on the outer ends. A detailed history of service changes was included in the October 2018 update.

The balance of this article includes charts that have been published previously, but with the data extended out to March 31, 2019. The winter season shows expected effects such as a dip in travel times over Christmas Week when traffic is very light, and a peak at January/February corresponding to a major snow storm. The effects vary depending on time of day.

To view any chart at a larger size, click on it. Full chart sets are available as pdfs at the end of each section.

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