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Temporary Replacement of 512 St. Clair Streetcars

Starting at 11pm on Friday, November 1 until 5am on Thursday, November 14, streetcars will be replaced by buses over the entire 512 St. Clair route. Buses are already covering the east end of the route due to a sinkhole near Avenue Road and streetcars are diverting south to Bathurst Station.

This substitution will allow various works including completion of reconstruction at St. Clair West Station.

The 10 streetcars assigned to the line will be replaced by 15-30 buses.

Full streetcar service will resume on November 14, subject to completion of construction work.

Bus service on 33 Forest Hill, 90 Vaughan and 126 Christie will return to St. Clair West Station on Sunday, November 17, the next schedule change.

5 thoughts on “Temporary Replacement of 512 St. Clair Streetcars”

  1. Steve: Starting at 11pm on Friday, November 1 until 5am on Thursday, November 14, streetcars will be replaced by buses over the entire 512 St. Clair route.

    This is nothing new. Buses have been rescuing these streetcars for over a hundred years with most streetcar routes being bustituted at all times for decades. In fact, the entire streetcar system has never ever been in service in its entire history.

    Steve: You’re not much of a scholar considering that the very first buses in the TTC’s fleet are just over a century ago and they were certainly not capable of replacing streetcar lines. In its classic days, the TTC bus fleet was far too small to be “rescuing” anything.

    The entire streetcar system has been in full service during much of its history. Problems began toward the end of the CLRV era with poor fleet condition and maintenance as the TTC let these cars run into the ground. That set the pattern for the Flexitys. Also, the TTC does bus replacements because they have a big surplus of buses right now, and the City seems to love ginormous projects that shut down streetcar lines for months. In theory, we should be back to full streetcar service by yearend, at least until the 2025 construction projects begin. Even when there have been substitutions, most routes remained streetcar.

    Your scholarship gets an F.

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  2. Today, October 31st, streetcars were not operating not Bathurst Station from Gunn’s Loop. However, buses were also operating from Gunn’s to St. Clair Station…..just not the full number yet but they were running from Keele.

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  3. Scholar’s comment seems more like an AI chatbot response by a pro-car proponent than anyone who knows their TTC history; and there are a lot of us so I don’t know what the point of their comment was. My goodness, the backbone of the system was the streetcar until 1966! Imagine bustituting the BLOOR line!

    Now, swan service is a different story…

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  4. In June we were told that the work on St Clair had been “finished early”. What we weren’t told was that the St Clair West Stn loop would stay closed for another 5 months and that another 2 week shutdown was coming in the fall.

    I wish the TTC could just be transparent with us.

    Steve: There seems to be a delight in “good news” about construction projects, although the current situation in part relates to the sink hole which is not a TTC problem.

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  5. The St. Clair streetcar line has consistently seen bus replacements over the last few years, sometimes for large periods of time. (Close to a year most recently over construction, but before that to adjust streetcar stop length, among others). The whole point of having streetcars is reliable transit. (Regardless of what the TTC says, buses on St. Clair are currently not it, as they are slow and create traffic havoc by running at street level, which the TTC says is to ensure streetcar dedicated lanes are not damaged by their own buses). St. Clair is going to see an increase in density in the coming years, so it’s really important users in the area find public transit to be a reliable commute option. What should the TTC be doing to ensure streetcars run more consistently on this line?

    Steve: In spite of a lot of talk about project co-ordination in Toronto, there seem to be fairly frequent extended shutdowns of streetcar lines. In part this is due to the Streetcars department not being able to field a full complement of cars, partly due to overlapping work between track repairs, overhead reconstruction for full pantograph compliance and various utility works like water mains (planned or unplanned). As for the St. Clair right=of=way, the problem lies with the original road design that used centre rather than side suspension poles making the streetcar lanes too narrow for buses to use in most places.

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