The Star’s Matt Elliott has reported on the issue of surplus vehicles beyond reasonable spare requirements in the Toronto Star:

• Why hundreds of TTC buses sit idle at rush hour despite millions in government funding

First off, I must report an error in my previous article which includes a table showing that the TTC has 551 spare buses. The actual number turns out to be 478.

The reason for the error is that a chart in the CEO’s report incorrectly shows the total bus count at 2,114. That was the value when this chart was originally used back in early 2021, but it has not been updated to reflect retirements of old vehicles. The actual number of active vehicles, according to the TTC’s Scheduled Service Summary for March 26, 2023, is 2,041. (This number does not appear as a total, but is obtained by adding up the number of active buses for each group in the fleet. See the last page of the summary for details.)

This still leaves the TTC with more buses on their hands than they strictly require for scheduled service plus maintenance, or to put it another way, with headroom to run more service without buying more buses.

The TTC has three new bus orders in the works for delivery in 2023-24:

• 135 40′ hybrids from New Flyer
• 68 60′ hybrids from New Flyer
• 134 40′ hybrids from Nova Bus

It is not clear how many existing buses these will replace and what the resulting fleet mix will be by the end of 2024.

Separately from these will be a new fleet of over 300 battery electric buses. This contract (or possibly contracts) has not been awarded yet while the TTC awaits confirmation of federal funding for “green” buses.