Although there was no regular TTC Board meeting in October, a CEO’s Report was issued for that month. It contains two separate sets of charts about ridership, one more recent than the other.
In the CEO’s commentary, data for the week ending October 13 are cited:
For the week ending October 13, excluding Thanksgiving Monday, the TTC’s average weekday boardings stand at 82 per cent of pre-COVID levels, or 2.55 million boardings. Weekend ridership continues to exceed weekday demand, being 96 per cent for this week. Bus boardings are leading recovery, at 96 per cent of pre- OVID levels, while streetcar boardings sit at 65 per cent and subway at 73 per cent. Wheel-Trans ridership is at 75 per cent of pre-COVID levels.
October 2023 CEO’s Report p 5
The chart of ridership only goes to the end of August, and reports an expected seasonal decline for that period. Fare revenue follows the same pattern.
The chart of boardings runs to early October, and shows September’s jump in demand.
Crowding levels continue to rise, although stats are reported only for the bus network. An important issue about this chart is that it reports all-day values. There are many routes with uneven demand by direction, and with more lightly-loaded trips at some times of the day or week. Even at the pre-covid demand of January 2020, only 27% of trips reported more than 70% of capacity. However, depending on where and when they are concentrated, they can have a disproportionate effect on the perceived crowding level. An empty bus at 10pm on Sunday evening is of little use to someone who cannot board a packed weekday bus on a busy route in the peak period.
There are two issues that might skew some of the quoted statistics.
First, with the conversion of the SRT from rapid transit to bus, an additional set of “boardings” is created. Boardings for the subway network are treated as a single event with no extra count for transfers between lines. With the SRT replaced by the 903 Scarborough Express bus, former SRT trips create an extra boarding for that leg of their journey. This will change again on November 19 when many bus routes formerly ending at STC will be extended to Kennedy Station, and that leg will no longer count as a separate boarding.
Second, boardings are counted based on the mode actually operating on a route. If buses replace streetcars, the riders count toward the bus total, not the streetcar total.
In January 2020 (pre-covid), the streetcar route service was provided by:
- 501 Queen: Streetcars from Neville to Long Branch, except for 6 bus trippers in each of the peak periods.
- 502/503 Downtowner/Kingston Road: Buses on a combined 503 route.
- 504 King: Streetcars
- 505 Dundas: Buses
- 506 Carlton: Streetcars except for 8 bus trippers in the AM peak.
- 508 Lake Shore: Streetcars
- 509 Harbourfront: Streetcars
- 510 Spadina: Streetcars
- 511 Bathurst: Streetcars
- 512 St. Clair: Streetcars
Over the past years, various construction projects, notably on Queen, have caused bus substitutions and diversions accompanied by declining reliability and challenges for riders in how to get from “A” to “B”. Comments like “I’ve given up on the TTC” are not uncommon, and yet for a large part of the city served by buses, demand is strong.
By October 2023, 503 Kingston Road and 505 Dundas had reverted to streetcar operation, 512 St. Clair operated with buses, and the bus trippers on 501 Queen and 506 Carlton had been removed.
Construction on Broadview causes the east end of 504 King to be replaced by buses, and 505 Dundas streetcars divert to Woodbine Loop. This is expected to end in February 2024. A partial or complete return date for 512 St. Clair service is not yet certain.
It is not clear when the TTC speaks of streetcar ridership recovery whether this refers to the network of streetcar routes regardless of the mode actually operating, or if only riders who are actually on streetcars are counted. I have a query in with TTC to clarify this.
Update: The TTC has confirmed that total riding on the streetcar network is agnostic about the vehicles actually used on these routes.
The TTC’s Planning page does include a chart of streetcar route boardings from 2019 to 2022, but does not reflect the substantial growth in system riding overall in 2023. Note also that these are annual totals that will not reflect current daily demand because of growth through the recovery years.
2023 figures, when they are published, will be affected by the number of construction projects that disrupted streetcar service and the constant wandering paths of some substitute services.
Steve Munro 
A question not answered by your careful analysis. Does the TTC *know* how many people are riding its streetcars?
I am recently retired, no longer a commuter, but I ride the streetcars from my east end home frequently (506, 505, 501) at numerous times of day and into the late evenings.
From my observation: As many as one in two adults who board the streetcars do *not* tap a Presto (or other) card *or* proceed to the kiosk to purchase a ticket. Even supposing that some people have paper tickets or transfers from a previous leg of their journey, the proportion is disturbing.
(Of course, this is an estimate only. The non-paying customers are sometimes so numerous that I have to stop observing in order to preserve my equanimity, such as it is.)
If the TTC’s data is based entirely on card taps, they are missing a significant percentage of actual people taking up actual space on actual vehicles.
Hence my question.
(My own belief is that the problem of non-paying streetcar riders will not be solved by lower fares or by enforcement. It is a streetcar design issue.)
I’ll be interested in your response.
Steve: The TTC claims that with the installation of passenger counters on the streetcar fleet (which is, I believe, finally almost done), they are not dependent on tap counts. They also have a fudge factor to convert taps into boardings based on the ratio of taps to automatic passenger counter data for vehicles that do have them installed.
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There are still people (poor? immigrant? tourist?) who pay cash and get a paper transfer. Good for 2 hours, and no need to scan the “evidence” of fare payment. Putting the transfer into your pocket (and hope it does not fall out), though I would be showing it to the cameras on board the streetcar or bus.
Steve: About 5% of riders still pay by cash. This has been declining slightly since the introduction of open payments suggesting that at least some cash fares were the result of someone whose Presto card ran dry, or an occasional user who can now pay by credit/debit.
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It is my belief that the TTC funding should be tied to ridership but these ridership numbers must be independently measured by a third party and not artificially inflated by the TTC to get more funding. Service should also be adjusted to match ridership, there is no point in running empty vehicles all night long if no one is using them.
Steve: Service matching ridership is a slippery term. Transit is a network, not individual routes that are measured on their own. The usefulness of transit depends on it being available, and that does not happen if we cherry pick the times and places service is offered.
There are major problems today with overcrowded vehicles and unreliable service. I might think a discussion on your terms was worthwhile if there were not already cases where service does not come close to matching ridership, and more should be provided, but isn’t. There is an assumption in some quarters that if only service were provided more efficiently we would not have to pay as much for it. However, off peak services that run with light loads provide transportation for people who need it at those times and locations. That’s an unseen benefit to the public expenditure.
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So, it is official what we have all suspected for long. Streetcars on King St now take longer to travel with the King St Pilot now permanent. These extremely long pilot projects are a good way to override the democratic process, just push through extremely unpopular and ill-thought out projects by telling people that it is only a pilot project that will last for only two years and then quietly make it permanent. Shame on the TTC and I am glad that Metrolinx is taking over the operations of the Eglinton streetcar as well as of the Finch streetcar.
Steve: You certainly have a selective memory. The King car is horrendously slow now because there is no transit priority on King, hence no “pilot”, thanks to the City’s and Police Force’s utter abdication of enforcement. This is compounded by the simultaneous closure of Adelaide and of Queen, not to mention construction on York and on Richmond.
It may suit your thesis to say that the pilot has “failed”, but the failure lies in the City talking a good line about congestion management, but doing bugger all where it really counts. We’re big on passing plans and rules, but enforcement is just about as mythical as a herd of unicorns grazing in front of City Hall.
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The 503 Kingston Streetcar runs 22 hours everyday (5:04am – 3:04am) 7 days per week, every 10 minutes, EVERY 10 MINUTES, and is mostly running empty outside of business/schools hours. The 503 Streetcar has 10% of the ridership of the 501 Queen Streetcar and, yet, it runs the same amount of hours.
There are areas in the City that are grossly under serviced and yet here we have the 503 Streetcar running every 10 minutes with very few, if any, riders. Where is the fairness in that! Where is the logic? Where is the planning?
Steve: When the 22 Coxwell bus ran evenings and weekend on Kingston Road, it too ran every 10 minutes, and I know it was not empty. As for the streetcar service, I have been on 503 cars downtown in the evening and on weekends and they have riders. The biggest problem lies in the blending, or not, of the 503s with the 501 Queen cars which are also on a 10 minute headway much of the time. It is pot luck whether they merge on an even 5 minute headway westbound from Kingston Road or eastbound at the Don Bridge. Branching routes in general are an issue across the TTC and there is no real-time management that the services blend to provide the supposed combined headway. This happens on suburban bus routes too.
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hey, what happened to my 503 streetcar comment?
Steve: All comments are moderated by me before being posted. I am not sitting here awaiting your pearls of wisdom (or otherwise), and some times you just have to wait.
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Ha, ha, I hadn’t realized you responded.
Steve: When I’m here, I’m fast!
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