On August 28, 2023, Mayor Olivia Chow and TTC Chair Jamaal Myers held a press conference at Scarborough Centre Station, hosted by TTC CEO Rick Leary, to announce planned service improvements for coming months. The map below shows routes affected by plans for October and November 2023.
The routes in blue, the former SRT colour, are part of the restructuring for the Line 3 replacement service. Note that they are shown as running west from STC via Progress, Brimley and Ellesmere. This is the final routing, although the 903 express bus is now using Progress all the way to Kennedy. The reason for this is that a queue jump lane is planned for Brimey and Ellesmere, but it is not yet ready. When it is completed, the buses will shift to the originally announced route via Ellesmere.
Other routes will see improvements to service and/or to reliability. No details were announced.
Service hours are planned to increase through the fall:
- In September to 93% of prepandemic levels
- By November to 95% of prepandemic levels with bus service rising to 99%.
Note that this does not mean that late 2023 service will be identical to early 2020, but that similar numbers of service hours will be provided. The bus network is especially important because it has the strongest ridership recovery rate.
The improvements planned include restoration of school trippers (a normal fall event), increasing service based on demand, reducing wait times by improving the Ten Minute Network, and adding unscheduled, Run-As-Directed service to supplement capacity.
Funding for the improvements comes from the unspent budget headroom created by the delay in opening the two Provincial LRT projects on Eglinton/Crosstown and on Finch.
I expect to receive the details of September service changes soon and will publish them when they are available.
Steve Munro 
Trying to make sense of the “pink” lines along Jane Street and Annette Street. Guessing it has to do with RapidTO along Jane Street. Must be in the “fine print” somewhere.
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I leave it to others to comment on the practical details, but politically, so far so good with Chow.
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Speaking of the Finch West line, has the TTC been paying attention to the recent month long service disruption of OC Transpo’s Line 1 Confederation? Finch West will be using similar cars, yes?
Steve: I suspect that both the TTC and Metrolinx have watched the Ottawa debacle with great concern. Although the Finch cars are similar, many of Ottawa’s problems stem from other aspects such as poor construction and design, not to mention political meddling.
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Would more funding come from delays with the Ontario Line project?
🤣
Steve: No, because the OL diversions started “on time” in May this year. Those are the only costs the TTC bears a this time.
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I’m glad that there’s a restoration of service levels, and hope the numbers of users come back soon to match this commitment. Nice to have some good arise from the delay in opening of Eglinton: and am I wrong that one reason for delay is that the distance between wheels of vehicles and the distance between the tracks don’t quite match?
Steve: Considering that in recent days people have posted photos of Eglinton trains in operation, I think this may not entirely describe whatever problems they may have had.
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That’s good news; thank you Steve and others. It’s nice to sit corrected.
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Hamish Wilson asked :
…but that’s also a salient problem with Ottawa’s Confederation Line. Have engineers lost the ability to engineer?
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There are some details about the next service increase on the TTC website but I don’t think the announced changes weren’t applied for the September changes..
Those routes which already suffered huge cuts (For example 49 Bloor West and 50 Burnhamthorpe) may have to suffer for a little bit once kids and students are back to school.
Steve: I am working on the article about September changes now that the detailed memo has been released. There is no change to routes 49 or 50.
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