9 thoughts on “TTC Service Changes Effective Sunday, May 10, 2020 (Updated)”

1. Yesterday (Sunday May 10) the TTC website said that 501 buses were running on Lake Shore due to “operational issues”. That service advisory has vanished today. I wonder what the reason is for the bustitution?

   Also, I may have heard streetcars running overnight….so 301 is all streetcar?

   The 123 Sherway (née Shorncliffe) running time has been incredibly padded over the past decade, to the point that many buses on the Long Branch-Kipling routes (123B, 123C) take a nice five to ten minute break in the midpoint at Sherway. Traffic and construction were the reasons the TTC gave for the increased running time. The construction is long gone, and Sherway Gardens is a ghost mall, so it’s more than reasonable to speed the 123 buses up.

   (Traffic problems were really only in certain times of the day, but all running times were padded….so a 6:30 AM run would still be scheduled as if it was peak shopping time.)

   Steve: Please see my reply to another comment re problems with the original Queen schedule. This does not apply to late evening and night cars, and so they can run through as scheduled. We will see how well that works with the main patr of the line running on headways. The through cars to Long Branch need to be in the right place for the changeover.

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2. Yesterday (May 10), the TTC posted on its service alerts page that the bus replacement on 501 between Humber and Long Branch was due to an operational problem. Would you know anything about that problem? It seems to be sudden and ongoing. The TTC’s 501 schedule pages shows almost no scheduled times for Long Branch service. Today, the service alerts page makes no mention about the bus substitution. NextBus does not show any service between Humber and Long Branch.

   Steve: The problem appears to be that the schedule originally designed for 501 Queen was simply not workable. Although it was designed as a 7 minute headway, it was originally announced as a 10 minute headway Neville to Long Branch which represents a major service cut. The line is operating between Neville and Humber on a more frequent headway with the available cars and buses out on Long Branch. The schedule has been thrown out of the window.

   There is an ironic effect of co-existence of the original schedule with what is actually operating. Cars approaching Humber Loop westbound are shown as predicted arrivals at stops on Lake Shore because the version of the schedule NextBus is using assumes that they will continue beyond Humber.

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3. Thanks for your analysis, Steve. I also noticed that service on the 118 and 120 is now at a 30-minute frequency during weekday peak periods.

   Do you know any changes to the 53A to Staines? I ask as rush hour service to Staines is provided solely by the 953A, which has been cut for some time now. I assume they have RAD buses during rush hours filling in and providing service to Staines?

   Also, I noticed that the 45A Kipling service going north and south to Steeles during am rush hour is particularly sparse now, with only two scheduled trips at 7am and 8am. Was this always the case on the 45A?

   Steve: Both of these cases appear to be that Service Planning made no provision in the “local” schedule for the removal of the “express” services. The 45A local only ran every 26 minutes in the April schedules. I am following up on this with the TTC, and will also look at other cases where the local services might be suffering from the absence of the express buses.

   Updated: The gap in 53A service is being covered by extras at the divisional level. No word yet on the 45A.

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4. Steve said: The plan is for Transit Control to manage service by running these lines on headways appropriate to the number of vehicles available.”

   Is ‘managing the route’ not what Transit Control is supposed to do all the time? If so, we all know how good they are at it!

   Steve: They have to actively stay on top of routes managed to headways, as opposed to making occasional interventions. It will be interesting to watch.

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5. “Finally, some routes will have extra service allocated from a pool of spare buses and streetcars as needed. However, these vehicles will not appear on apps or TTC displays of predicted service because NextBus (the data source for all of the apps) does not track vehicles that are not in the schedule.”

   Ah. This explains why this morning I had a surprise 504 streetcar show up heading westbound at my stop, which was also flagged to short turn at Roncesvalles. Not a problem for me on the east side of the line, but I’m sure that was annoying to others in the west given the headways were obviously several minutes wider today than in recent weeks. My return trip eastbound out of downtown required an eight minute wait at University for a 504 streetcar to show up.

   Steve: As I am not sure when your return trip was to occur and what your destination was, I can’t compare your wait with the scheduled service. However, the midday service on each branch was 7’15” in April and is supposed to be the same now. For the 504B Dufferin service, this could be affected by the extension of the route to Sunnyside Loop due to trackwork at Dufferin Loop.

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6. Hi Steve,

   I think the “express network is suspended” will confuse riders as I see 939A and B’s coming to/departing STC (and I’ve seen 939C’s along Finch), but the signs at STC say that they are suspended and to take the 129 then 39 & that additional 36 service is provided to Finch West Stn. These 939s aren’t tracking on apps – so I assume they are divisional extras? Interesting because I haven’t seen 985s at STC.

   The local correspondents of 939 (39A, B & C) don’t go to STC nor Morningside Heights/follow a different route east of McCowan Rd than the 939s. Why didn’t TTC just cancel the 939 completely to avoid confusion and buses randomly appearing at random times?

   Also – I think it is a waste that they ran so many buses at such frequent headways on the 134C since the state of emergency started and classes at Centennial were halted. On weekdays up until today, they ran 7 buses in AM peak, 4 mid-day and 6 buses in the PM peak (most runs were artics) on the 134 to Centennial College. But I see all these empty buses. I think it would’ve been better for them to cancel these 134C runs or reduce it to 1 bus to and from the college (as they do on Saturdays) and redeploy all these buses to the busier routes. Today, I noticed they reduced the 134C – there are 4 buses in PM peak instead of 7 as they had all these weeks. There is a new artic “run #41”.

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7. And just to add to the confusion, the Queen schedule is showing up with at least 16 trips per hour for most of the day Mon-Fri…??

   Have you heard if the service planning department is daring to issue a Service Summary this board period or if they are waving a white flag?

   Steve: The Queen schedule as published is really messed up. There are three separate stop numbers listed on the page you linked, and I think this is responsible for the extra trips shown in the timetable. The version on NextBus only uses one of the three defined stop locations, and it shows the correct scheduled headway of 7’30”.

   We might see a Service Summary, but with a lot of footnotes.

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8. In regards of the 45A Kipling service, I have witness (the the afternoon rush hour) many unscheduled runs operate in additional to the base schedule to make up for the removal of the 945 Kipling Express. This has been the case for the entire April but those extra runs are now signed 45A instead of 945 (operated as local of course). They are also operated from Queensway division if anyone is wondering.

   NextBus tracking is simply a mess for a route like this. Does one take the next bus or wait? TTC is definitely not helping at all with all these RAD buses.

   Steve: Thanks for the update. I have incorporated this into the main article.

   I know that from NextBus’ point of view, there is a way to make extras trackable, but the TTC has never used it. This requires adding dummy runs to the schedule that are normally not associated with any vehicle. Extras sign on using these run numbers and become trackable. An important part of this is that they must not appear in the GTFS feed used by trip planning applications because they are not guaranteed. It’s a bit of a kludge, but it would work. I don’t know how easily the TTC could implement this because both the GTFS and NextBus data feeds have a common source.

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9. I came across an answer from Service Planning on Twitter re: May’s Service Summary:

   Along those same lines, we will not be publishing a Service Summary for the May Board Period as adjustments were made based on constraints by division and route. We expect to be in a more stable state in June to issue a new Service Summary.

   Steve: This does not surprise me one bit because the service on the street is a mixed bag of new and old schedules, cancelled runs, and extras where they are needed. It’s also in line with what I have heard from Service Planning myself.

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