Updated September 3, 2022 at 8:45am: Additional diversion details with maps added.
Updated September 3, 2022 at 1:40pm: Photos of Church & Carlton added.
Updated September 3, 2022 at 4:10pm: Route of 506 shuttle bus clarified.
Updated September 5, 2022 at 7:30am: Additional details regarding 504 King and 63 Ossington diversions which are not yet operating as advertised.
Updated September 10, 2022 at 6:25pm: The City of Toronto has announced that the KQQR intersection and construction will switch to “stage 3” configuration on Tuesday, September 13. Construction work on College Street will begin on Monday, September 12. There is no announced re-opening date for King & Sumach yet.
Updated September 13, 2022 at 10:15pm: As of about noon today, the 504C King bus was operating via the “Stage 3” KQQR routing using Parkside Drive.
Some of the streetcar service changes originally planned for September 4 will not occur on that date because of construction projects that are running late.
503/504 King/Kingston Road Diversion via Queen & Parliament
The construction at King and Sumach is not yet complete and this will have the following effects:
- The 503 Kingston Road cars will continue to divert via Queen & Parliament to route.
- The 504A King to Distillery cars will be routed nominally to Broadview Station via Queen & Parliament, although I suspect there will be a lot of short turns as their schedules do not have enough running time for this.
- The 504B King to Broadview Station cars will continue to divert.
The 504/506 shuttle bus which, at least in theory, provided service to the Distillery District, will not be continued due to low ridership. One might observe that the appalling headways on this route contributed to its invisibility and low use.
Riders are advised to use the 121 Esplanade/River service instead.
KQQR Project Diversion
The TTC has a handout for the change to the 504C west end bus diversion around both the Roncesvalles project and the new project at King & Shaw starting this month.
Note that this map shows the 504A service restored to Distillery Loop which is not yet the case (see above).
Updated September 5 at 7:30 am: Although the new diversion via Parkside and The Queensway was supposed to begin on September 4, buses are still operating via Roncesvalles. Also, the south leg of the KQQR intersection is not yet open, and so the diversions through Parkdale via Triller to King eastbound and Dufferin to Queen westbound are still in effect.
The intersection of King and Shaw has not closed yet, and eastbound buses are operating straight through without diverting via Douro Street. Westbound buses are diverting via East Liberty Street as shown on the map.
According to the City’s project site, the north leg of the KQQR intersection is to close on September 6, but the same page also advertised the opening of the south leg on September 2.
At Dundas West Station, 504 King buses appear to still be loading on the street, not in the loop, based on tracking data from NextBus.
Updated September 13, 2022 at 10:15pm: As of about noon today, the service was operating via Parkside Drive as shown in the map below.
63 Ossington King/Shaw Diversion
In addition to the diversion of bus replacement service for the 504 King car shown above, the 63 Ossington bus will change its south end loop as shown below.
Updated September 5, 2022 at 7:30 am: The extended loop had not yet gone into operation because the King & Shaw intersection is still open.
506 Carlton Diversion
By September 4, the work at Church & Carlton was supposed to be complete and the streetcar diversion for the Bay-to-Bathurst project was supposed to begin via Bay-Dundas-Ossington. However, there was a surprise thanks to Toronto Hydro at Church and Carlton where a vault under the intersection conflicts with the new, lower foundation that the TTC would have installed.
Pending a resolution of this problem, the 506 Carlton cars will divert via Parliament-Dundas-Ossington.
The 506 shuttle bus was already planned to operate from Ossington to Castle Frank Station, and so it will cover the extended diversion to Parliament Street although how the transfer connection to the streetcars at Gerrard will work is not yet clear. The service announcement on the TTC’s website does not include a map showing the relationship between the shuttle bus and the diverted streetcar.
Update: A reader has advised that there are notices showing that the bus will divert via Sherbourne, Gerrard and Parliament to retain a connection with the streetcars at Parliament and Gerrard. The stop on Carlton at Ontario will be skipped.
Here is the state of the Church/Carlton intersection on September 3, 2022:
Steve Munro 
There is postings with maps on the 506 stops of the new shuttle. From a quick glance at the map, it will detour south on Sherborne, east on Gerrard, north on Parliament to connect to 506 streetcars at Gerrard & Parliament. This will remove service from the Carlton & Ontario stops both ways.
Steve: That makes sense. Where did you see the posting with a map? Hard copy on the route? None of the online notices I have seen (under the various rocks where the TTC hides these things) has a map.
Thanks for the update. I will amend the article.
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These service changes have to do with the start of school, after Labour Day. There could be further changes with the alleged start of Line 5 service. Most stations are close to being ready. There is some concern with the Eglinton interchange station located between Line 1 and Line 5 at Yonge & Eglinton. However, why do we need the entire line up and ready?
The Eglinton West Subway was to run from York City Centre (near today’s Mt. Dennis) Station to Allen (today’s Eglinton West, soon to be renamed Cedarvale) Station. Construction for that subway line broke on August 25, 1994. Mike Harris killed it in 1995, and work was filled in. It could have opened in 2001.
The Eglinton Crosstown LRT (Line 5) commenced construction in 2011. Delays and more delay (including COVID-19) has delayed it until, allegedly, the autumn of 2022 (or latest the spring of 2023). Could part of Line 5 open in 2022? Astronomical autumn starts on September 22, 2022 and ends on December 20, 2022.
If the Eglinton Station on Line 5 is unavailable, then why not just open Line 5 using the original Eglinton West Subway route as guide, Mt. Dennis to Cedarvale?
Some bus routes would have to be changed or implemented to serve Mt. Dennis, Keelesdale, Fairbank, Oakwood, and Cedarvale Stations, should we only copy the Eglinton West Subway/truncated Eglinton Crosstown LRT routing between Mt. Dennis and Cedarvale. A few years late from 2001.
Steve: There is a basic problem because this is a P3 project and the contract is written for an all-or-nothing handoff when the line is “finished”. Changing the acceptance procedure to do it in stages would require work on what is already a messy contract, and would create the chance of contention and more legal action between Metrolinx and the P3 consortium CTS.
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Can’t wait for the 504C to be delayed by suburban drivers’ traffic jams at Lake Shore / Parkside in addition to all the other places it gets delayed by suburban drivers’ traffic jams.
The map also has the 504C looping endlessly around York-Richmond-University-King. Attention to detail doesn’t appear to be a strong point.
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Is there any indication on how the TTC will deal with the hydro vault problem? Modifying the vault would be an highly complex job, maybe the TTC will have to use a different track construction method for this tiny bit of track.
Steve: No word on this yet, but obviously the previous track structure sat on top of the vault for decades. A small bridging structure might be the simplest answer.
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With the way Eglinton West station look now, the Crosstown won’t be open by 2025, if at all if the P3 decides to cut their losses and run. Nothing looks finished, everything is a mess. It is like the saga of the Lawrence West station elevators, but 10 time worse.
Compare the mess now at every station on the Crosstown to the Elizabeth line before opening this year. The consortium can say they are ready by 2023 but Toronto should be ready for Ottawa LRT levels of FUBAR if Metrolinx accepts it as delivered in 2023.
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The 504/506 shuttle seems to have been routed to Cherry & Mill to in theory cover for 504A service not going there and to give it a place to go to loop while keeping two way service on Carlton. Unfortunately it was trying to do too much. It was not an intuitive route to get to the distillery – most would continue to take the 503/504 streetcars and simply get off at Parliament and head south or take the 121 bus. Having the 504/506 bus also get caught up in construction on Jarvis made the service erratic at best. It looks like the revised 506 bus routing posted will be better and not trying to be too many things at once.
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Report from the field in west end today:
– I saw a streetcar exit from Roncesvalles yard via south gate and cross kqqr eastbound, initially displaying 505, then changing to “not in service”. Running under pan.
– King St is not yet open, 504 replacement buses are running via Triller eastbound and Dufferin + Queen westbound as previously
– Roncesvalles is not yet closed, 504 buses seem to be running up there despite signs posted at stops announcing they will be out of service beginning today. Routing via Parkside seems to now be in Nextbus (it’s called Umo or something now?) which messes up next bus preditions
– The proper car channel of eastbound Queensway is not yet connected up, so eastbound streetcars are going to be in car traffic jams
– 504 buses run to York
– 501 buses are laying over in the bike lane northbound on Dufferin just north of Queen. To be fair that bike lane is not connected to anything useful.
– King and Shaw is not yet closed. 504 driver eastbound did not take the Douro detour. 504 driver westbound did take the East Liberty detour. I saw two 63s taking the Dufferin detour.
– Lots of confused riders and would-be riders
Steve: None of this surprises me at all. The transition to this board period, and especially the public info about it, has been very messy with a lot of inaccurate or incomplete info “out there”. Thanks for the update.
Re NextBus/Umo: The maps shown there depend on route definitions issued by the TTC and they reflect the route as planned. This means that the Carlton and King cars are currently out of synch with actual operations. The nature of the interface between NextBus and TTC makes these hard to update on the fly for last minute changes, and so the map and predictions are out of synch for a time.
That said, it is a preferable situation to one where the updates don’t get loaded into NextBus and dependent prediction apps until several days after the change, and tracking gets completely fouled up. The changeover actually happened on time this month.
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Does anyone have any idea approximately how long the 506 Dundas-Ossington detour is supposed to last?
Steve: According to the table of construction projects the TTC issued (see the original September 4 service change article), this will go to the end of 2022.
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No TIFF diversion this year?
Steve: Yes, but the details have not been announced yet. It will only be for the first five days of Tiff, although I expect some ad hoc detours as we have seen in past years during the latter part of the festival.
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Do we or can we get a checklist of which of the Line 5 stations and stops are “completed” and ready to be used, close to being ready, or not ready? Since we already have had the trains running, the tracks and overhead are essentially ready for use.
Steve: You could ask Metrolinx but I doubt they will tell you. The line has to be handed over to them by the P3 who built it. Don’t forget that the testing now in progress is also by the P3 who are responsible for the vehicles and infrastructure.
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I got an emailed update (from the City’s “Sign up to receive updates on this project” list that, in a few more words, says contractor is currently working on The Queensway west of the intersection and there is no new set date for when Roncesvalles will close.
I’m guessing they want to connect up the new eastbound channel of The Queensway before changing up the intersection. A few days ago there wasn’t even a roadbed in the gap yet, so it will probably be more than a few days.
Looks like contractor blew it by not meeting their communicated deadline. Admittedly the TTC is kind of in a rough spot here, since they have to change routes and schedules ahead of time, but must depend on the contractor’s given dates. I guess they could walk around the intersection and look at how _done_ it looks, but work phasing and order is probably up to the contractor and that should determine dates…
If they’re doing preliminary work this week, it sounds like it won’t be fully closing this week. Wonder if they’ll get it done before the TIFF detours.
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Hey Steve, a note regarding service at Dundas West Stn. All routes are serving at the platforms, not on street, despite what trackers are saying.
Steve: Yes, I can see on NextBus which maps at a fine enough detail I can see the 504C buses going around the loop. However, some of them have extra time and are still looping around the block to lay over. The problem with the trackers is that the database they use to “map” routes is not usually updated to reflect “one of” route changes, only the every six weeks revisions.
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From you photos I’m guessing the hydro vault is on the east side of the intersection. If that’s the case is there any reason work hasn’t wrapped on the west side? Mostly I’m wondering if part of the intersection could be reopened as it it could reduce the length of the bus diversion.
Steve: It is in the middle only slightly east of centre. I too am surprised that the portions of the job not affected by the vault, notably the track west of the intersection, has not been finished off.
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I’m not up to date on this topic, but underground hydro vaults have a very spotty history, especially with vibration and water. The former can open up access for the latter, and I’m wondering if this vault needs to be repaired/protected before any heavy construction can be carried out nearby.
Steve: Considering that it has probably been there under the intersection for at least a century, I suspect the main design problem will be to bridge the load from the streetcar tracks from one side of the vault to the other. Looking at the traffic camera at the intersection which gives a real time view, some work is now underway compared to when I visited.
If you want to do this yourself, go to the Rescu camera webpage. Use the “+” sign on the map to expand it and click on the map to scroll in any direction. There are blue tags showing where the cameras are, and you can click on them to see the current image. They are updated about every 5 minutes.
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Thank you.
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Does anyone know if the Bathurst-Church short turn service of the 504 is unofficially scheduled thing? During the daytime I have noticed what seems like an usually large amount of eastbound 504’s turning back at Church and many cars sitting all around the onstreet loop.
Steve: The scheduled services are from Broadview Station and Distillery Loop to the CNE. Of course the 504A cannot operate to the Distillery, and so it has to travel further to its terminus. This makes actually getting to the CNE problematic for those cars. The turnback at Church is used westbound when the street was blocked for Tiff, or eastbound as an alternative terminus for the 504As. Now that Tiff is finished, I am sure that the balance of what goes where will change, and again when King/Sumach finally opens and the 504As can go to the Distillery Loop as planned.
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