The TTC will modify many routes on January 8, 2023, although most of the changes are small tweaks rather than a significant overhaul of service. Current changes are achieved mainly by reallocation of vehicles, modification of running times and headway adjustments.
Updated January 3, 2023 at 4:35pm: A table showing the number of replacement buses on streetcar routes has been added.
In the January schedule period, the planned weekly service is down from November 2022 levels. That is the appropriate comparison because the “December” schedules only cover the holiday period when service is reduced. All of these reductions have been reversed in the January schedules, and some school trips have been added beyond the November level.
Service in the latter part of 2022 ran below budget because riding had not rebounded as quickly as originally hoped across the system. January 2023 continues at a similar level, and a service budget has not yet been published, let alone approved.
| Hours/Week | Regular Service | Construction Service | Total |
| Nov 2022 Budget | 182,016 | 4,492 | 186,508 |
| Nov 2022 Planned | 173,249 | 4,187 | 177,436 |
| Dec 2022 Planned | 170,708 | 3,779 | 174,387 |
| Jan 2023 Planned | 171,802 | 5,175 | 176,977 |
Subway Service
There is no change in subway service for January 2023.
Streetcar Service
506 Carlton will return to its normal route over its entire length after an extended sojourn on Dundas Street. The 306 night service will return to streetcar operation. Construction of streetscape changes on College Street is not yet complete, but this will not require a diversion in 2023.
Some streetcar routes will have new schedules:
- 509 Harbourfront and 510 Spadina will be modified to reduce layover conflicts at Union and Spadina Stations.
- Service on 509 Harbourfront will be reduced to match demand in some periods.
- Sunday early evening service on 510 Spadina will be changed so that all cars operate as 510A to Union rather than a split service with 510B turning back at Queens Quay. This matches the Saturday service pattern.
- 512 St. Clair service will be reduced to match demand during some periods.
The allocation of routes to carhouses will change slightly to balance resources. The table below includes a long absent route “507 Long Branch” and the temporarily suspended “508 Lake Shore”, but not the “502 Downtowner”. Make of that what you will.
The number of buses operating on streetcar routes for construction projects is shown in the table below.
Bus Service
Routing Changes
29/329 Dufferin
Due to construction for the Ontario Line’s Exhibition Station, the 29 and 329 Dufferin services will be rerouted as shown in the maps below.
43B Kennedy and 985A Sheppard STC Services
These routes will be modified to access Scarborough Town Centre via a different path in order to provide connecting stops with the temporary GO bus terminal.
95C York Mills and 996 Wilson Express Service to Ellesmere Station
The 95C York Mils branch will be dropped, and in its place the 996 Wilson Express will be extended east to Ellesmere Station.
The levels of service in the “before” and “after” configurations are compared below.
| Buses/Hour | AM Pk Pre | AM Pk Post | Midday Pre | Midday Post | PM Pk Pre | PM Pk Post |
| 95A Pt Union | 7.5 | 6 | 3.3 | 6 | 5.5 | 6 |
| 95C Ellesmere Stn | 7.5 | 3.3 | 5.5 | |||
| 995 UTSC | 5.5 | 5 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 5.5 | 5 |
| 996 Ellesmere Stn | 6.7 | 4.8 | 6 | |||
| Total to Ellesmere Stn | 20.5 | 17.7 | 10.4 | 14.6 | 16.5 | 17 |
| Total to UTSC | 13 | 11 | 7.1 | 10.8 | 11 | 11 |
Other affected bus routes
- 600 Run As Directed: The number of scheduled RAD buses is deeply reduced with only 6 weekday crews and none on weekends. Divisions will assign buses locally depending on operator availability.
- 19 Bay: An AM peak tripper to handle demand to the waterfront will be created by diverting one 503 Kingston Road bus to run eastbound as a Bay bus to Dockside Drive and Queens Quay, then deadhead to Broadview and Queen to resume service on the 503.
- 20 Cliffside and 113 Danforth: Headways will be standardized so that an evenly blended service can operate from Main Station on these overlapped routes.
- 25 Don Mills: The split branch structure north and south of Don Mills Station will be extended into the early evening on weekdays.
- 925 Don Mills Express: Trips added during peak periods to match demand.
- 939 Finch Express: Midday and PM peak service improved, evening service reduced.
- 41 Keele: Service reduced to match demand.
- 44/944 Kipling South: Some early express trips will be replaced with local buses. Two school trips from 44 Kipling South will interline with 76 Royal York South school trips.
- 945 Kipling Express: AM peak service improved.
- 48 Rathburn and 112 West Mall: PM school trips serving Michael Power Saint Joseph HS will be changed to match dismissal times.
- 52 Lawrence West: A new trip will be added from Westwood Mall at 6:52am to accommodate demand. A new trip will be added between Lawrence and Lawrence West Stations in the early PM peak. This is a hook-up with an existing school trip.
- 57 Midland: Service reductions to match demand.
- 60C/960 Steeles West: Service between Pioneer Village Station and Kipling on the 60C branch will be reduced in peak periods to match demand. This will be offset by improvement to the express service.
- 960 Steeles West Express: Early evening service reduced.
- 63 Ossington: Service modified for resiliency and to match demand (mainly reductions).
- 68/968 Warden: Schedules adjusted for reliability with less frequent service during many periods.
- 79 Scarlett Road: Service reduction weekdays in peak and midday periods.
- 86 Scarborough: Zoo shuttle will operate only on Saturday to serve Terra Lumina. Sunday service dropped.
- 95/995 York Mills an 96/996 Wilson: 996 Express service extended to Ellesmere Station replacing the 95C local service (see map above). Service changes during many periods to improve reliability with a mix of frequency changes.
- 102/902 Markham Road: New trips to serve school demand to R.H. King Academy and Centennial College.
- 116 Morningside: New PM school trips from Morningside & Ellesmere to serve Jack Milner PS and Sir Wilfrid Laurier CI.
- 122 Graydon Hall: All trips will now enter service eastbound at Don Mills.
- 130 Middlefield: New school trips to serve Henry Kelsey Senior PS.
- 165 Weston Road: Service reliability changes primarily through longer running times and additional buses.
- 168 Symington: Service reduced to match demand.
Peak bus service
The Details
Details of these changes are in the spreadsheet linked below.
TTC Service Changes 2023.01.08 (Revised)
Construction Projects
Steve Munro 
Finally some positive and interesting changes to the TTC network especially the York Mills bus corridor. Also the TTC seems to have forgotten about the off peak service on the 953 Steeles express. Also what division the extended 996 Wilson bus will operate out of?
Steve: Arrow.
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By checking on the 985A/43B map, this is a reintroduction of the old 43B routing that was used between 1985 and 2004 while the 985A also used the Brimley-Triton routing from 2003 to 2004 when it was the 190.
Would headways on the 996 extension be the same as the 95C? That branch dates back to 1963 but rooted in 1971 as 95A to Victoria Park.
Steve: You have to look at the detailed table because there are also changes on the 95A service that covers the same territory.
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Hi Steve, do you know what time periods data has been used to justify the service reductions? The 168 bus is pretty full and we travel like sardines during AM peaks (7-9am) with the existing headways of 6 mins itself…stretching it to 8 mins would make it really difficult especially during the 8-9 am school time.
Steve: No I don’t. I will have to ask, but that won’t happen until the new year when everyone is back from the long weekend.
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No news on the extension of the 8 Broadview bus to Coxwell stn?
Steve: I don’t think we will see anything on that and other pending changes from the 2022 plan until the 2023 plan comes out early in the new year, and in turn that depends in part on what the budget looks like.
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Nothing about a GO/UPX and TTC discount fare integration. Unlikely, since Doug Ford has such a hate about the TTC, especially union workers.
Steve: This is a regular TTC service update, not a GO/TTC policy paper. Any integration proposals would appear elsewhere, not in this.
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Why is the 996 running from Humber College to Ellesmere. That’s way too long, and I’m sure the ridership is totally different east of York Mills. If anything they should have had an express route from York Mills Stn to STC. Or to Centennial College Progress campus via STC.
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I was hoping to see the 8 Broadview bus extended to Coxwell station. What’s taking that so long?
Steve: Some of the 2022 proposed changes have not happened yet. As I said in a previous response, I expect to see updates on their status in the 2023 Service Plan when it is published early next year.
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They should’ve just extended the 95C to Scarborough Centre Station instead of just cutting it, then the York Mills corridor could have had the most bunched route in the system, however I’m still very happy about the 996 extension 🤤
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Flight81:
Most of the trips on the 96/996 and vice versa are from the 95/995 feeders, it makes sense for the 996 to be extended into the York Mills corridor as it will reduce demand on local routes.
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The easier access project for Lawrence Station started in spring 2022 to add elevators plus an extra staircase from the subway platform to the bus level. The south end of the station is full of hoarding, and a park at the north-east corner of Yonge & Lawrence is now an equipment yard. The project will require the closure of the south end of Lawrence Station including the underground bus terminal from late-March 2023 to early-November 2023. I dread the thought as the northern entrance is about 260 metres to the north. As of July 2022, bus diversion routes were not yet known.
Project link
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This change to the 996 is absolutely to get buses out of York Mills Station. It’s the station with the most bus-bus collisions, and anything they can do to reduce the need to juggle layover space is a benefit.
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Oh yeah Operator Scott knows what’s up, York Mills bus bay is always clogged up and the busses literally have to “tip toe” around each other just to escape the hell hole…
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The 996 will be too long. My idea is that we could maybe introduce a new express routing between Wilson and Ellesmere Stn (or further east to STC) would be better, similar to the 939B. Have the 996 either cut back at Wilson or remain as is, add a 995 branch letter (995B) between between Wilson and STC, and keep the existing 995 (995A) routing from York Mills to UTSC.
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Are there going to be any changes/reallocations to the assigned garages for the streetcar replacement buses?
Steve: No. Originally there were plans to shuffle buses for 501L Queen, but this is stroked out in the service memo.
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Not sure if this is a place to ask, but here goes. Why do routes like 24 Victoria Park and 67 Pharmacy constantly have buses arrive 3 and 4 at a time? I wanted to board the 3rd bus (an express) of 4 in a row but after letting the first two buses unload and load, the express bus failed to stop to pick me up!!
Steve: This is a constant and growing problem on the TTC caused by almost totally absent line management. It used to be that pairs were common, but now we see triplets and quartets fairly regularly. I have written about this many times, but the TTC just doesn’t get the message. They have a mythology that if only buses get lots of time in their schedules, they can stay “on time” and therefore be regularly spaced. This is hogwash, but it’s the Rick Leary school of line management.
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Very glad to see them reducing service to match demand. Work from home will save us so much money as we pay less for inefficient transit.
Steve: “Inefficient” is a relative term. Given that TTC service is already unreliable, running less of it will just worsen the problem. Many people do not and cannot work from home, and they already have horror stories of inadequate transit service. I can think of a few projects, both roads and transit, that are an “inefficient” use of scarce capital, but we justify them by talking about demand in decades to come. Meanwhile we let what we have dwindle and drive away demand.
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Steve, the TTC is a dinosaur and run like one too. They had a chance to win riders back, but decided to close, King, Queen, College and Dundas at the same time and still can’t manage a single construction project. People always defend them by comparing them to Metrolinx. Typical Canadian mentality – “At last we’re not first at the worst!”.
Steve: Dundas was closed by a sink hole from a broken sewer. The TTC did not “decide” to close it. The KQQR project is a year late through a combination of factors, and it managed to overlap the College Street project which was not the original plan. The blame at KQQR lies mainly with various utilities whose underground plant was not where expected, and who took their sweet time redesigning around these problems. If there is a specific issue with KQQR, I think that the City tried to accomplish too much in one project creating a cat’s cradle of sub-projects any one of which could derail the whole thing. I put far more of the blame here on bad project management, than on the TTC, but they take it in the neck. Meanwhile, many routes outside the core are packed, but seeing little relief.
Myself and other millennials bought cars during the pandemic – they lost another generation and we are very grateful for more roads and the Gardiner staying up which I assume is your vague reference to inefficient capital expenditures. The fact is that local foot traffic is down and the City should be grateful people are still driving down to keep businesses alive.
Work from home is changing the world and Toronto is not ready and will never be. The economics will force a crash transition.
Steve: I have been downtown many times, and what is keeping foot traffic alive is the large downtown population who are out in full force even without the commuters. TTC off peak ridership is recovering faster than peak demand thanks to the partly empty office towers. As for inefficient use of capital, yes, the Gardiner is one project, but also overbuilt transit expansion with tunnels where they are not needed in Scarborough and Etobicoke. And don’t get me started about highways whose sole purpose is to enrich donors to the Conservative Party.
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Btw, Steve, I’m not sure why the TTC seems to have under-represented the number of RAD runs working each day. Wilson alone has 16 buses seven days a week, though all of them are on a compressed late relief time slot (about 5pm-3am). I’ve asked around, and heard that there are other divisions with similar work: RADs only in the evening. I’m not sure if the aim is to make these buses cover planned closures to save some capital money, or something else. Happy New Year!
Steve: The transition seems to be not to schedule RADs as formal crews, but rather to run based on available operators. My big issue is that there is still no accounting for how these buses are actually used and what they contribute to service quality.
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After a lengthy absence of 28 years, the “507 Long Branch” streetcar plans to make its long waited triumphant return. In 1995, this route merged with the “501 Queen” streetcar route, with “501 Queen” streetcars running between the Neville Park loop in the east and the Long Branch loop in the west.
In its heyday, the first CLRV streetcars made their debut on the “507 Long Branch” route in 1979 which ran between the Humber loop and the Long Branch loop. This was an exclusively Etobicoke route serving Mimico/Humber Bay, New, Toronto “Lakeshore Village BIA”, and Long Branch communities.
Steve: This is not yet a formal proposal in a Service Plan. I am waiting to see what staff actually propose and what the budget situation will be for 2023. That said, it is long overdue, and the TTC took decades to acknowledge that the combined 501 might not be quite the magic bullet they claim.
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Not related to TTC service changes but there are some on going rumours regarding operations on the Crosstown. The rumors being that the TTC has/intends to implement the same streetcar operations procedures on the Crosstown (10km/h over special work, portals and intersections). This is asinine considering that the line is brand new and built to modern/latest LRT standards. Do you have any knowledge whether this is true?
It would be a great disgrace if the TTC intends on dragging the brand new Crosstown line down to it’s current antiquated streetcar operation procedures. If it is the case, then perhaps we should’ve built the entire line underground to avoid the TTC’s streetcar fears.
One hopes this is just a rumor.
Steve: I have heard similar rumours but this may be something of an echo chamber within TTC. That said it would not surprise me one bit if they were just that pig headed. They will have double bladed switches unlike the streetcar system, and a slow order over them, especially when in ATC territory in the tunnels would be ludicrous. Also, any move to slow operations would increase fleet requirements which would trigger extra costs in the vehicle support contract.
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I was wondering what stops 996 Wilson Express will make when the route is extended to Ellesmere station?
Steve: The service memo states:
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And what is your opinion about allowing development in the Greenbelt in order to enrich donors to the Progressive Conservative Party of Doug Ford?
Steve: The highway and the Greenbelt changes are two sides of the same coin. Pigs feeding at the trough.
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Steve, wouldn’t it make more sense to extend the 996 two more kilometres to Scarborough Centre Station?
The unavailability of a proper transfer bus bay at Ellesmere makes it very unattractive and extending to STC instead would increase ridership.
Steve: I suspect two effects here: budgetary limitations and the already crowded situation at STC once the SRT bus shuttle begins in late 2023. The transfer connection at Ellesmere will probably be much simpler once that becomes a BRT station.
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Why so many 501 today the 7th of January? 14 buses sitting at long Branch loop, extended to browns line/ Lakeshore, with another 3 arriving. One lady waited 20 minutes for bus at 37th/Lakeshore, then two other buses with no customers fly through the stop within 2 minutes?? Your personnel in charge of schedule really, really have to look into it. Bus drivers can sit up there up to 30 minutes and still get paid, where other routes can use it.
Steve: I am not the TTC, and they are not “my personnel”. The problem with buses on Queen having too much running time and piling up with long layovers at Long Branch has been going on for quite some time. In November 2022, the average layover at Long Branch was about 20 minutes with some values considerably higher, particularly on Sundays.
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Yep, well over ten buses observed laying over on Lake Shore by Brown’s line Saturday morning. Two were even laying over eastbound — I’m sure the fact that they were laying over right outside the 38th Street Tim Hortons was entirely a coincidence.
Queen Diversion Notice
I’ll see if I can get a nice picture. Really need a fisheye lens to catch all of them in one shot!
Steve: With the bus shuttle extended further east, there will be a lot of RAD buses on top of the scheduled service.
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Now that the 506 is back to its regular route, is there any reason why the TTC is still running 506C replacement buses? I was near Church and Carlton today at around 9:00am and noticed a 506C bus heading westbound with Dundas West as its destination. I thought the 506 was going to revert back to streetcar only operation as of today but this doesn’t appear to be the case?
Steve: There is a diversion due to a power shutdown that was announced at 11:54 am and is still in effect at 2:15 pm as I write this.
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Steve, where did you get the link to the full version of the newest service plan? The one on the TTC’s website only goes until January 7.
Steve: My information comes from a separate memo that is issued a few weeks before the changes occur. This document is not posted on the website. As for the service summary, that usually appears online shortly into the new Board period.
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