This article continues the review of the evolving travel times on current and proposed RapidTO corridors that started with Travel Times on RapidTO Corridors – December 2023 Update – Part I.

The routes covered here are:

• 60/960 Steeles West
  • Finch Station to Pioneer Village
  • Pioneer Village to Kipling
• 86/986 Scarborough
• 116 Morningside
• 905 Eglinton East Express

Introduction

These charts are intended to show how travel times in many cases have been growing since the early days of the pandemic in March 2020. Where I have them, there is a small amount of pre-pandemic data for comparison.

In most cases, there is a notable drop in travel times in Spring 2020, with gradual growth thereafter. Drops for the year end holidays are common, but this was small in 2020 because isolation was still in effect. In 2021, there was a recovery followed by a combination of the drop for the holidays and the omicron wave. 2022 and 2023 saw bigger declines at the holidays. In some cases, the travel times in January 2024 are higher than the pre-pandemic values.

The Spring 2020 values are likely as good as one can expect from any transit priority scheme as they show the travel times of buses unencumbered by either traffic or heavy passenger loads.

Where the 85th percentiles (orange) spike well above the medians (blue), this shows the day to day variability in travel times that are particularly strong on Steeles West.

An important distinction lies in the location of time savings. Transit priority might not be present over an entire route, and a more detailed review of these data will show the locations of the critical segments. I have not included them here to avoid making an over-long article, but I will bring out more of that analysis as the City gets more deeply in route-specific studies.

A challenge for planners and traffic engineers is that the problem locations are likely to be the hardest to “solve” in the sense that they have the lease spare capacity, if any, to reallocate to transit. Conversely, there are areas where transit priority will make little difference because the road is uncongested most of the time, and signals are not a source of delay. Fine-grained study is essential to any new RapidTO plan.

In the first article of this pair, the charts ended at December 2023, but by the time I was working on this piece, the January 2024 data were also available and have been included.

In the case of routes already operating on red lanes in Scarborough (86/986 Scarborough, 116 Morningside and 905 Eglinton East Express), travel times have grown since 2020, but it is impossible to know how much they might have grown in the absence of transit priority measures other than by analogy to other corridors where conditions might not match.

Updated February 7, 2024: The charts for 116 Morningside have been updated to include data from late October to December 2020 that was omitted from the original version.

60 Steeles West – Finch Station to Pioneer Village

This segment covers the area from north of Finch Station to east of Pioneer Village Station. The screenlines are chosen to avoid confusion from buses laying over or looping nearby or at the stations.

The charts show a consistent growth in travel time from 2020 to 2024. The large peaks coincide with construction projects that brought major problems with traffic congestion.

60/960 Steeles West – Pioneer Village Station to Kipling

The western section of the route has never been part of the RapidTO study list, but it is included here for comparison, and to show that there are areas with far worse variation in travel times than those being examined. An important difference is that service west of Pioneer Village Station is less frequent, and RapidTO concentrates on frequent routes with strong ridership.

Service west of Pioneer Village Station has been provided at times by the 60 Steeles West Local, and at times by the 960 Steeles West Express. Data for both routes are combined in these charts. At times, buses from both the 60 and 960 services operated west to Kipling, and so the charts overlap. In the late evening period, the 60 Steeles Local runs through over the full route.

The reason for the change in the service design in September 2021 was to provide a transfer-free trip for 960 Express bus riders riding between points east and west of Pioneer Village Station.

Congestion is a serious problem on the western part of the route, but it varies by direction, and vanishes completely in the evening.

86 Scarborough – Kennedy Station to Kingston Rd West of Morningside

The 86 Scarborough local service has operated over the Eglinton-Kingston red lanes since their implementation in Fall 2020. A drop in travel times can be seen during some, but not all, time periods coinciding with the RapidTO implementation.

Travel times have grown slightly over the past four years, but to varying degrees by time of day and direction. Recent construction activity for the subway extension has also affected some of the values.

986 Scarborough Express – Kennedy Station to Kingston Rd West of Morningside

The 986 Scarborough Express only operates in peak periods, and during the pandemic only began again in October 2020. I do not have pre-pandemic data for this route.

The route operates on red lanes over the segment measured.

Travel times have grown slightly over the past four years.

116 Morningside – Kennedy Station to Ellesmere

The 116 Morningside bus operates on red lanes on Eglinton to Guildwood Parkway, and on Morningside from Kingston Road to Ellesmere. The portion of the route through Guildwood Village has no transit priority.

Drops in travel times are evident in March 2020 (pandemic begins) and October-November 2020 (red lanes installed), although the amount varies by direction and time of day.

There has been growth in values, particularly in recent years, to at or above pre-pandemic, pre-red lane values. They have become less consistent from Fall 2022 onward in the AM peak both ways. I will turn to a more detailed review in a separate article.

Updated: These charts have been corrected to include data from late October to December 2020 which was omitted in the original version.

905 Eglinton East Express – Kennedy Station to Ellesmere

The 905 Eglinton East Express operates over most of its route on red lanes via Eglinton, Kingston Road and Morningside to Ellesmere. I do not have pre-pandemic comparative data for the 198 UTSC Rocket as it was then known.

Travel times have grown slightly since 2020.

Service Reliability

For the routes using the Scarborough RapidTO lanes, I will include a review of headway reliability in a future article looking at recent growth in travel times and variability, where that has occurred.