The May schedules will bring many changes across the TTC network including:
- Streetcar network changes due to construction projects
- Route reorganizations in Downsview and Scarborough
- Many service reductions due to reduced pandemic-era riding
- Some service improvements to address crowding
Updated April 10, 2021 at 9:35 pm: References to “117 York University Heights” in the spreadsheet of detailed changes have been corrected to route “107”.
Streetcar Changes
Construction continues at the King-Queen-Queensway-Roncesvalles intersection. Phase 1 now underway is planned to run through August 2021. In Phase 2, work will shift to other parts of the intersection. The full project is planned to run through late 2021.
The only schedule change in May for this project is to give the Roncesvalles 504G shuttle additional running time.
The central-west Queen reconstruction includes conversion of overhead west from Parliament Street for pantograph operation as well as track replacement from University to Fennings (west of Dufferin). The 501 Queen streetcar service will divert via Parliament to King and will loop at Spadina via Charlotte Street. The 501L/P Queen bus service will be extended to Broadview Avenue.
The 503 Kingston Road service which also loops at Spadina & King will be adjusted so that headways and service blend with the 501 Queen service.
Water main reconstruction on Broadview between Danforth and Gerrard will require a bus shuttle until late in 2021. A 504D King shuttle will operate from Broadview Station to Front & Parliament via King. This will replace both the 504 King and 505 Dundas streetcar service north of Gerrard.
All 504 King service will run between Dufferin and Distillery Loops. Service west of Dufferin will continue to be provided by the 504Q shuttle between Shaw and Triller. Service east of Parliament will be provided by the 504D shuttle.
All 505 Dundas service will terminate at Broadview looping via Parliament and Gerrard.
Reconstruction of the overhead for pantographs on the east end of 506 Carlton as well as construction work at Main Station will be complete, and streetcar service will resume over the full route from Main Station to High Park Loop.
Weekday service on 510 Spadina will all terminate at Queens Quay Loop. Riders bound for Union Station will have to transfer to 509 Harbourfront. Weekend and overnight 310 Spadina service is unchanged.
Streetcars from 512 St. Clair running out of service via Bathurst southbound will no longer loop through Bathurst Station to avoid blocking the road and sidewalk when the platform is occupied by a 511 Bathurst car. 512 cars entering service will continue to run through the loop northbound.
The resulting streetcar network is shown in the map below.
Service Reorganizations
Two service reorganizations will occur in May.
In Scarborough, the 116 Morningside service will be consolidated so that all trips operate to Finch. The branch to Conlins Road will now be served by an extension of the 905 Eglinton East Express route.
In Downsview, the 107 St. Regis and 117 Alness-Chesswood routes will be combined as one route 107 York University Heights as shown in the map below.
Service details are in the spreadsheet at the end of the article.
Service Reductions and Improvements
The list of changes for May includes many routes under the heading of pandemic-related service reductions. This is also a time of year when seasonal effects would normally trigger reductions across the system.
Routes with service improvements:
- 35 Jane M-F peaks
- 92 Woodbine South weekends (seasonal)
- 96 Wilson M-F peaks improved; early evening service blended with 165 Weston Road North
- 102 Markham Road service improvements and reallocation from 102A Centennial branch to 102B Steeles branch
- 119 Torbarrie new midday service
- 121 Fort York-Esplande extensions to Ontario Place and Cherry Beach (seasonal)
- 126 Christie Sunday/Holiday service adjusted to be consistent with weekday schedules
- 165 Weston Road North service improved; early evening service blended with 96 Wilson
- 175 Bluffers Park (seasonal)
- 509 Harbourfront M-F (seasonal)
- 510 Spadina M-F service consolidated to Spadina Avenue
- 924 Victoria Park Express weekday peak service restored
- 927D Highway 27 Express M-F peak service to Steeles
- 929 Dufferin Express: articulated vehicles replace standard length buses
- 989 Weston Express weekday peak service restored
Routes with service reductions:
- 1 Yonge University weekends
- 512 St. Clair M-F
- 6 Bay M-F
- 7 Bathurst M-F
- 11 Bayview M-F peaks
- 23 Dawes AM Peak
- 24 Victoria Park M-F early evening
- 32 Eglinton West (weekday running times reduced due to less Line 5 construction delay)
- 34 Eglinton East
- 38 Highland Creek M-F early evening
- 52 Lawrence West M-F midday and late evening
- 60 Steeles West M-F midday and early evening
- 63 Ossington M-F St. Clair 63B short turn trips reduced
- 66 Prince Edward M-F peak service on 66B to Lake Shore reduced
- 71 Runnymede M-F peaks
- 73 Royal York M-F
- 75 Sherbourne M-F (seasonal)
- 76 Royal York South M-F
- 88 South Leaside M-F peaks
- 94 Wellesley M-F
- 100 Flemingdon Park M-F AM peak and midday
- 106 Sentinel M-F peaks and midday
- 109 Ranee M-F PM peak
- 113 Danforth M-F peaks
- 129 McCowan North M-F
- 134/913 Progress M-F
- 900 Airport Express weekends
- 927C Highway 27 Express to Humber College (seasonal)
Routes with revised schedules for reliability
The effect of reliability changes varies from route to route. Usually, the change involves adding running time without adding buses so that scheduled service becomes less frequent. In some cases, running times are trimmed to reflect changing traffic conditions such as the wind-up of construction projects
- 14 Glencairn
- 26 Dupont
- 29 Dufferin
- 32 Eglinton West
- 34 Eglinton East
- 86 Scarborough
- 116 Morningside
- 127 Davenport
- 929 Dufferin Express
- 941 Keele Express
For details of service plans and changes, please see the spreadsheet linked below.
Steve Munro 
I believe many TTC routes could be extremely crowded once everybody gets at least one doses and the economy comes roaring back.
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I believe the TTC’s ten minute network is dead. Am I right?
Steve: Not officially, but it’s going to need some resuscitation when the pandemic is over.
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How hard did your eyes roll when you read that?
Steve: Roll … roll … roll …
“Blended” services rarely work as planned.
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The 504Q between Strachan and Roncesvalles is supposed to loop route Douro street, but if you look at the actual buses, they all go down Strachan and loop around Exhibition Place and back. I guess it is to give them access to a washroom, but it throws off the NextBus.
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Regarding the 107/117 reorganization. Route 117 when it was still operating via Dufferin was always full at rush hours at a 10-12 minute interval. By combining it with 107 it will now operate every 24 min at rush hour so they are making service on the 117 portion worse in an effort to maintain service on the 107 portion. The seems like poor planning.
Yes, there will now be late evening and weekend service along Chesswood and Alness although I see no point in that as those industrial areas seem deserted on weekends.
In my opinion if route 107 doesn’t get any ridership there is no need to keep it alive by making service on 117 worse. Part of St. Regis area that is covered by 107 and not covered by route 108A is no more than 400-500m away from routes 41/108A. Furthest parts of Petrolia industrial area is 800-900m from nearest service (if 107 doesn’t exist), but perhaps they can add a branch of 41 through there every 20-30 min at rush hour.
Steve: This arrangement is a political compromise to keep both routes alive.
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Are you sure Steve that the 506 streetcar is going to resume full service on May 9?
Because I frequently take the shuttle bus on the eastern corridor and I see four issues.
1.) it seems that the streetcar wiring has been removed and so far has not been reinstalled yet at Carlaw Avenue and the wiring seems to also be removed under the GO/VIA bridge.
2.) I thought I heard the project includes repaving Main Street Station, none of that has been happening so far and I have heard no plans about that going to happen.
3.) The overhead wiring on Coxwell Ave has been removed from its original support and at the intersection of Coxwell and Lower Gerrard/Eastwood. The wiring for the junction has not been fixed yet and I see no sign of it being fixed as I pass by.
4.) Isn’t the 506 diverted at Spadina and Dundas due to a watermain break at College and Huron what will happen to that when full streetcar service resumes as you say on May 9th, Will shuttle buses be used or the shut down of the 506 be extended?
Steve: The paving work on Main was supposed to be in the station, not on the street. The wiring is to be complete by the start of May. The streetcars are already diverting around the construction work at Beverley (not Huron). Whether they run through to Main has nothing to do with that diversion.
It is just over 4 weeks to the resumption of service. It does not take that long to string an intersection especially if there is no need to keep service operating over the old overhead.
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The ‘restructuring’ of the 121 route was approved a few months ago – any idea when the TTC will actually put this quite major into effect (and announce how they will then serve Cherry Beach and Ontario Place)?
Steve: My guess is that it will happen with the fall schedule changes when the “seasonal” services end. An option for next year would be to extend the 65 Parliament bus south and east to Cherry Beach. As for Ontario Place, who knows.
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Also when the TTC will fully implement the Scarborough East Study routes?
Steve: No date announced yet, but these things tend to happen in the fall.
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Why are Spadina cars all being turned back at Queens Quay? There obviously should be a lot of spare streetcars with all these bustitutions.
I am surprised that there are no improvements for the 41 Keele bus. I have seen more than enough articulated buses with quite a crowd of standees. The route need more service to alleviate crowding. (It was ever thus, actually.)
Steve: It allows for more frequent service between QQ and Spadina Station with no additional cars. The fleet availability is capped right now because of ongoing repair programs. It will be interesting to see if they ever get back to “full strength” this winter.
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I noticed there is no branch letter mentioned for the 116 service to Finch (currently 116C). If this is the case, I guess they do not expect to bring back the currently suspended 116B short turn service that operated prior to the pandemic any time soon. The 86B PM peak service added when the RapidTO lanes opened is likely enough to help out on Eglinton for now.
Also, I’m surprised they are operating all 905 buses to Conlins on weekdays. That is a very significant improvement to service for the area, going from 20-26 min service to 8-11. When I saw the route proposal I was expecting every second or third bus to extend over to Conlins from UTSC.
Steve: I double-checked the service memo, and definitely there is no letter on the route number, just “116”.
As for the 905 to Conlins, the difference in running times between the existing UTSC service and the planned Conlins service is too small to make a split service with only half of the buses going to UTSC work.
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According to a Facebook post on the Toronto Transit group page, someone says that route 6 Bay might be moving back to Mount Dennis or Wilson in the next June Board Period or so because some people are complaining of the NovaBus LFS buses since there aren’t too many hybrid buses operating in Downtown Toronto after the opening of McNicoll Division. Do you think it might happen?
Steve: I could callously say, well, there are only so many non-diesel buses to go around the system, but I don’t want to sound like certain insensitive pols we all know and love. It just shows how people get used to having the quieter, cleaner buses on their routes. This problem will face the TTC for some years to come as the proportion of diesels falls from its current 85%.
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In your spreadsheet of the route 107/117 changes, do you mean 107A & 107B York University Heights?
Steve: Thanks for catching that. I have corrected the spreadsheet.
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@Darwin, the TTC “route diversions” webpage actually has the updated 504Q routing into Princes’ Gate Loop (even with a map showing this), but evidently this didn’t make it to an updated GTFS/Nextbus feed. Washroom, and I suspect not idling outside a bunch of condos doesn’t hurt politically.
Anecdotally I can report that both 504G and 504Q operations are a shambles with buses frequently operating three to a bunch. 501L/501P doesn’t look much better. Not much surprise there unfortunately.
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Even between express and local routes, allocation seems less than ideal. For example, last Thursday, when I was on my way to my parents’ house for Easter (I live alone, so am allowed to visit with one other household), I passed 2 102s, and 2 902s. Both 102s were diesels, and the 902s were both hybrids. I’d expect better regen. performance on the local route, so wouldn’t it make more sense the other way around?
Steve: The TTC has a very long history of more or less randomly assigning vehicles with little regard for what might be appropriate. The worst cases are the use of standard sized buses and streetcars where longer artics are scheduled, but use of elderly less-reliable vehicles (at least allegedly so) in off-peak periods goes back half a century and more. With a variety of technologies in garages, I am not surprised if hybrid buses find their way to less appropriate routes.
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Reply from “According to a Facebook post on the Toronto Transit group page, someone says that route 6 Bay might be moving back to Mount Dennis or Wilson in the next June Board Period or so because some people are complaining of the NovaBus LFS buses since there aren’t too many hybrid buses operating in Downtown Toronto after the opening of McNicoll Division. Do you think it might happen?”
In my opinion, I think 6 Bay doesn’t need to move to another division. The route operating out of Birchmount is fine because that division is the closest to downtown.
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The 935 Jane Express weekend service is restored and has been running weekend service for at least the February board period. (The last page on your chart reads that the service is still suspended.)
Steve: You are correct. It was restored in January, but this was not noted on the original version of the service change notice I received from the TTC. It was on a revised version issued later. I will go back and update the tables in the January service change article to reflect the restoration of express service, and will update the summary sheet in the current month.
Thanks for catching this.
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