An ongoing issue with TTC service levels is that TTC claims about crowding do not always appear to align with rider experiences.
The TTC Board’s February 22 agenda includes a report about proposed free transit for Middle and Secondary School students, particularly for group field trips.
See: A Step Towards Free Transit for Middle and High School Students
Among the issues raised by the report is the ability of the transit system to handle the additional loads, and the need to co-ordinate planned outings with the TTC for provision of extra service. There is a map showing existing “hot spots” where mid-day routes are over capacity.
Many bus routes have this problem, but none of the streetcar routes.
A related issue is the degree to which crowding varies by day-of-week and the danger that Monday-Friday averages could mask problems with midweek demand levels.
Of particular note here is that the off-peak capacity shown is 35 per bus, not the higher value introduced with the 2023 budget that is close to a standing load. The heat map shows us where current operations exceed the 2023 standard, i.e. those over 100% occupancy vs a bus capacity of 35. Note that these are six-hour averages and individual bus loads will vary.
This also shows the scale of service changes required to reinstate the pre-2023 standard.
Here are the official Service Standard crowding levels and those implemented in the 2023 Operating Budget. The TTC Board has never formally change the Service Standards, and management plans to work back to the existing standards from the 2023 levels as part of future service and budget planning.
| Service Standards Peak | 2023 Peak | Service Standards Off-Peak | 2023 Off-Peak | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | 50 | 50 | 35 | 45 |
| Streetcar | 130 | 130 | 70 | 90 |
The TTC produces a lot of charts in their monthly CEO’s report, but crowding maps like this one showing actual conditions only appear to support analyses of specific issues. They should be a standard part of the CEO’s Report so that there is an up-to-date indication of service capacity versus demand for all time periods.
Steve Munro 
Hi Steve, thank for as always for your great insights. I have followed your posts as well as personal experience to suggest that Tuesday to Thursday are very crowded on TTC buses. This is of course a result of the post pandemic hybrid work model. And as you rightly pointed out, overall averages over the 5 weekday masks the actual problem.
Yet TTC continues to schedule as Monday to Friday, Saturday, Sunday when the need of the hour perhaps is to have day wise scheduling or at least a seperate schedule for Tuesday to Thursday. Till now there hasn’t even been any acknowledgement that the world we knew before Feb 2020 no longer exists and we need to plan around this mid week rush.
Have you seen or heard anything that the TTC may consider a more granular scheduling soon?
Steve: There has been mention of the problems a 3-day week creates for scheduling, but as yet no public discussion of how to deal with this.
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If you can’t run enough service for a spontaneous surge of 30-60 people then you probably should be running more service…jeez…
This is like saying that the schools should have to coordinate service with sending a class of kids home early – do we really coordinate service with professional development days or with a bank when their Active Directory means everyone gets to go home early?
Steve: This report has the hallmarks of an organization that wants to find a reason to say “no”. In this article, I was only looking at the crowding map, and will comment on the wider issue of student fares when I review the agenda in general.
TTC has to handle field trips today – I see them regularly on the subway and surface routes – and an obvious question is how they manage to do this already. It’s as if the author doesn’t get out much.
Conversely, any school organizing a trip would know that if there was a really big group, they could not possibly all board one bus, and would be at the mercy of service that shows up. Just giving them free rides does not address this problem.
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I’m old enough to remember when schools chartering a TTC bus for field trips was commonplace. Wonder why the practice diminished—beyond the obvious budget cuts.
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The Lawrence east buses are the ridiculously overcrowded in the mornings, but the overcrowding on Sunday mornings is ridiculous. The TTC seems unaware that people actually work on Sundays, and the buses are packed from 7 a.m. until 9.
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I can’t ride streetcars, apparently, seeing as how the last time I did it destroyed my power chair and I was seen as an inconvenience as I deboarded, sliding into the street 🙃
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The TTC is finally realizing what I knew already – they need to get back to pre-pandemic levels ASAP.
The GO trains in rush hour are crowded, so are TTC vehicles in the rush hour. I tried to go north on the Yonge Line about two weeks ago during the evening rush hour – guess what, it was standing room only on the train! And headed north FROM Union Station.
Steve: And the problem will be that their budget does not foresee a return to full subway service this year.
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What is supposed to be the subway service level now. I hit the stations during the afternoon peak and often see wait times in excess of 5 minutes. Last time at Pioneer village 10 minutes was on the board.
Steve: Service in the PM peak is supposed to be every 3’31” on Line 1, 3’45” on Line 2. This is considerably worse than the 2’36” and 2’31” headways scheduled in early 2020 on these lines. That said, the many slow orders for track repairs are making travel times longer and headways wider.
As of February 16, according to the TTC website, the list is a bit shorter than in recent weeks, but there much work still to be completed:
Line 1 (Yonge-University):
Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth):
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