This article details upcoming service changes on the TTC network, most of which will occur on Sunday, November 17.
Updated Nov 14 at 1:10pm: The section about supplementary service on many routes and the possible future for 2025 has been clarified based on additional info from the TTC.
Major changes include:
- Re-opening of St. Clair West Station Loop. 512 St. Clair streetcars return there on Thursday, November 14, and bus service 33 Forest Hill, 90 Vaughan and 126 Christie on Sunday, November 17.
- Note that routes 33 and 126 will return to independent operation and the buses will not interline.
- Route 90 will no longer operate south of St. Clair to Bathurst Station.
- The final stage of overhead reconstruction will occur on the western end of 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst.
- 509 cars will operate to Exhibition Loop until November 24 as part of the extra service for Taylor Swift concerts. After that, they will run only to the loop at Queens Quay and Spadina.
- 511 Bathurst cars will be rerouted to Union Station effective November 14. A shuttle bus will operate from Queen & Bathurst to Exhibition Loop beginning November 17. (The 510D Spadina bus already serves Exhibition Loop.)
- The 35 Jane bus will operate with split service on the regular 35A and the via Hullmar 35B branch at the north end of the route at all times, not just in peak periods.
- Service in southwestern Scarborough will be modified:
- The 12D Kingston Road service to UTSC will now operate weekday midday and early evenings in addition to the existing peak period service.
- The 12C St. Clair branch will be removed
- The 69 Warden South bus will operate to the Barkdene Hills area at all hours replacing the 12C Kingston Road branch.
- A new route 117 Birchmount South will operate between Warden and Victoria Park Stations via Kingston Road.
- Routes 69 and 117 will interline at Warden Station so that passengers can ride through between them.
- The 110C Islington South branch to Kipling Loop is rerouted to better serve Lakeshore Village. Northbound buses will run north on Kipling, then east via Birmingham, Twelfth, Garnett James, Ninth and Birmingham to Islington. Northbound buses will no longer operate on Lake Shore and Thirteenth.
- The stopping pattern for 54 Lawrence East, 954 Lawrence East Express and 154 Curran Hall will be standardized so that all Lawrence corridor services use the same stops in the SRT replacement corridor. Hours of service on 154 Curran Hall will be corrected to match the former 54B service which it replaced.
- Service on 304 King Night and 305 Dundas Night cars will improve from every 20 to 15 minutes.
These and other changes are detailed in the full article.
Southern Scarborough Bus Route Changes
Service in southwestern Scarborough is being reorganized as per a proposal in a previous annual service plan.
The 69 Warden South now operates as a loop via Warden, Kingston Rd., Birchmount and St. Clair with alternate buses going in each direction. This will be changed so that:
- The Warden leg of the service will run east on Kingston Road to serve the loop at St. Clair (Barkdene Hills) now used by the 12C Kingston Road bus.
- The Birchmount leg will become its own route 117 Birchmount South, and it will run west to Victoria Park Station.
- Service on the new 69 and 117 routes will interline at Warden Station.
Midday and early evening weekday service will be added to the 12D Kingston Road branch to UTSC, and the 12C St. Clair branch will be dropped.
Waterfront Transit Changes
The last phase of the streetcar overhead upgrades on Fleet Street will trigger more route changes on the waterfront. The timing of some changes is also related to special arrangements for the Taylor Swift concerts at the Rogers Centre.
Effective November 14, 511 Bathurst cars are routed to Union Station. The 509 Harbourfront cars are running from Union Station to Exhibition until November 24 after which they will terminate at Spadina and Queens Quay.
Effective November 17, a 511B Bathurst shuttle bus will operate from Queen & Bathurst (Wolseley Loop) to Exhibition Loop.
The 510D Spadina bus continues to operate between Exhibition Loop and Spadina Station.
80 Queensway Mimico Station Changes
Service on the 80B Mimico Station branch will be modified to align with GO Train times as shown below.
110C Islington South Rerouting
The routing of northbound 110C Islington/Kipling Loop trips is revised to run via Birmingham, Twelfth, Garnett Janes and Ninth. This replaces the existing route via Lake Shore and Thirteenth.
Other Service Changes
- As noted in the introduction, St. Clair West Station Loop re-opens. 512 St. Clair streetcars will serve the loop, as will the 33 Forest Hill, 126 Christie and 90 Vaughan buses. The 33/126 interline will be broken and these will operate as independent routes. The 90 bus service will no longer run south to Bathurst Station.
- Due to storage constraints at the streetcar carhouses with Russell yard still under construction, night car service is improved to leave more cars on the road. The 304 King and 305 Dundas night cars will move from 20 to 15 minute headways.
- The 334 Eglinton East night bus will gain stops at the South Service Road at Kennedy Station to improve transfer connections with other night services.
- Service on 35 Jane will be changed at the north end of the route so that the 35B Hullmar branch operates during all periods, not just the weekday peaks. Half of the service will run on the regular 35A route, and half on 35B.
- The stop on Finch West at Tangiers eastbound that was added during Line 6 construction will be removed. This affects the 36 and 336 Finch West services.
- Trip times southbound at Steeles on the transition between 337/37 Islington night and daytime services will be adjusted to align with subway service.
- Early Sunday morning service on 43 Kennedy will be rebranded as 343 Kennedy Night bus with no change in service level. Minor changes in some headways and travel times on 43 Kennedy adjust service for reliability.
- 54/954/154 services in the Lawrence corridor will be modified as noted in the introduction to standardize their stopping pattern. 154 Curran Hall service will be adjusted to match the hours of service of the former 54B service it replaced.
- Early morning trips on 86C Scarborough to Sheppard that were deleted in error on a previous schedule change have been restored.
- 95/995 York Mills bus trips that went out of service at York Mills Station will be changed to go out of service at UTSC.
- A 102 Markham Road late evening trip on weekdays and Saturdays to Major Mackenzie that was dropped in a previous schedule change has been restored.
- First and last trip times are adjusted on 905 Eglinton East Express.
- Early morning service is added on weekdays on 944 Kipling South Express to reduce crowding. The first trips will be at 5:20 northbound and 5:49 southbound. An express stop is added at Horner for connections with 110 Islington South.
- The 984 Sheppard West bus will use only the farside stops both ways at Sheppard & Bathurst to reduce travel times.
Supplementary Service
Additional service will be operated on many routes to address crowding. Details are not included in the memo listing the service changes. These are temporary improvements pending formal incorporation into schedules in 2025.
The resources for this service come from operators who have not been transferred to the LRT Lines that have not yet opened. The extra service is unbudgeted and not guaranteed to remain, but TTC will monitor ridership it generates as input to plans for 2025.
The affected routes are:
- 7 Bathurst
- 16 McCowan
- 20 Cliffside
- 24 Victoria Park
- 32 Eglinton West
- 35 Jane
- 37 Islington
- 41 Keele
- 44 Kipling South
- 45 Kipling
- 46 Martin Grove
- 47 Lansdowne
- 49 Bloor West
- 52 Lawrence West
- 54 Lawrence East
- 59 Maple Leaf
- 63 Ossington
- 66 Prince Edward
- 68 Warden
- 73 Royal York
- 80 Queensway
- 89 Weston
- 96 Wilson
- 106 Sentinel
- 111 East Mall
- 112 West Mall
- 119 Torbarrie
- 123 Sherway
- 125 Drewry
- 165 Weston Rd
- 925 Don Mills Express
- 927 Highway 27 Express
- 935 Jane Express
- 939 Finch Express
- 960 Steeles West Express
- 996 Wilson Express
Streetcar Network Maps
Construction Projects
Vehicle Allocations
Run As Directed Buses
Budgeted and Scheduled Hours
The scheduled hours of service for November-December are 2.32% higher than budgeted. This is partly offset by provision for construction service being reduced from original plans.
Detailed Schedule Changes
The PDF linked here contains details of existing and revised operating plans for affected routes.
Steve Munro 
With all the new 6000 EV buses being delivered to Arrow, will there be scheduled changes to accommodate buses running in to be charged?
I recall TTC stating they need to adjust schedules, because to charge a EV will take a longer time and more garage time. Possibly more garage to garage runs.
I love the extra service that aren’t specified. Maybe that extra service could have gone towards new proposed routes.
Steve: A lot depends on whether TTC opts for some on route charging stations to avoid deadhead trips to recharge. This would show up as additional operating hours and mileage, but the real question is how much service we would lose to make up for this inefficiency.
I suspect that the “extra service” shows up this way as a workforce issue in that they are not sure of being able to operate all of it all of the time yet. TTC service growth is often hampered by having too few staff which, in turn, is a budget matter.
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Has the TTC produced an updated map/report on how their plan for the overhead is moving along. I assume all is now pantograph compatible but think there are still major sections that need upgrades – including much of King Street.
Steve: I have not seen a recent one, but hope one might come out as part of the 2025 capital budget papers. Mind you, the last one they published was not entirely accurate. TTC’s record-keeping leaves a lot to be desired as we saw in an auditor’s report on the overhead section.
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I dont understand what the TTC is trying to accomplish the 110C routing changes. These are the 2nd set of changes with this route in the past year, and none of it makes any sense.
Now with these latest changes, people living along Lakeshore will be getting screwed even more by being forced to backtrack over to Kipling, wait for the driver with the layover time, then take a longer route to get back over to Islington? Basically this is going to add another 10-15 unnecessary mins to commutes compared to the routing from 3 years ago. Oh and that’s if the driver decides to be gracious enough to not kick off passengers while laying over at Kipling Loop.
Who is coming up with these idiotic arrangements? Because it doesn’t make any kind of logical sense.
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Announcements on St Clair streetcar eastbound this morning were still saying cars would not stop in St Clair West station and to get off at Bathurst or Tweedsmuir to access the station. The car I was on did go around the underground loop. It’s the little things that show poor planning!
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As someone who occasionally uses the 69 and goes through Warden Station regularly the changeup of the 117 and 69 is a blessing.
You won’t believe how many times I had to hop a shuttle from VP to Warden and this would alleviate some stress.
As for Warden Station, I am surprise it is not on their construction list given how major it is. FYI by the way, the project is so far behind right now it’s comical.
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I like most of these changes the TTC made especially the 69 and 117 routing changes and the 35B all day service. But the TTC needs to focus on increasing service to 7 minutes or better on the 320 Yonge blue night because it’s extremely crowded when it’s on a 15 minute headway. That’s why I stopped taking that route and instead take the 302 Kingston McCowan and the newly implemented 303/503 Kingston Road streetcar from Bingham Loop when I need to get to Union Station in the early morning.
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And still none of Chow’s promised service improvements to subway and streetcars.
The only way we are going to get better than every 10-minute service (i.e. frequent 20-minute gaps) on streetcars is if Russell burns down or something – and they have to go to every 6-minute service because of a lack of storage place.
I just grabbed a 506 from Woodbine to Marjory and back. Service was normal inbound, and the streetcar was surprisingly full by Marjory at 3 pm – certainly at mid-day service loading. I hate to think what it is departing Yonge at that time; let alone at 5 pm when the service is still only once every 10 minutes (with 20-minute gaps).
It’s no wonder ridership is down. I’m much more likely to walk to a bus route or the subway than when a streetcar came every 4-5 minutes.
(Looking at Yonge/College right now – next streetcar westbound in 25 minutes. Eastbound isn’t too bad for a couple of cars, but then an 18-minute gap.)
Steve: I just looked at the tracking info on TransSee, and there was a big gap eastbound from High Park between 10:30 and 11am today (Nov 14). This gap widened to about 45 minutes by the time it reached Main Station, although two cars were short turned to partly fill it. However, the gap echoed back across the city and came eastbound again between about 1:00 and 1:50 pm. Some short turning is still going on to sort this out. There is no obvious event that held the service, it just bunched up with no intervention until things got really bad.
There is a similar problem on Dundas today where a group of five (!!!) cars has been running in a pack since about 9am.
More streetcar service will help only to the extent that it is managed. A parade of five cars is no more useful than a parade of three or four. Service levels are constrained by budget which, in turn, dictates hiring. Mayor Chow has shown little inclination to give the TTC a lot more operating dollars, and the 2025 budget is being prepared under a tight inflationary cap. TTC managed to organize some media events for her from time to time, but they have consistently oversold the amount of benefits each round of changes bring. Moreover there is no advocacy at the Board level to see the cost of more service, let alone to hold management’s feet to the fire about line management and service reliability.
When they screw up subway service with bad track and equipment maintenance, the Board gets testy and asks management just what’s going on, but service quality is rarely mentioned.
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I’m happy they’re modifying the 80B times. I take that route at times and trying to connect with the GO train is impossible. At least now things will (hopefully) be a bit smoother!
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And going home on the 512 St Clair car from St Clair West loop, on first day it’s reopened, none of the display boards are showing when next streetcar is due. How many months was the closure, and TTC still can’t get things right on reopening? No wonder we get frustrated with TTC!
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Who cooked up this arrangement? There are events this weekend at the Exhibition Place too, and it’s not like the streetcars on Queen’s Quay are taking people directly to the Rogers Centre. That’s a long and pedestrian unfriendly walk from the closest stops compared to simply going there on foot directly from Union Station. We manage to handle this just fine for Blue Jays games. Does the TTC actually think tens of thousands of extra people will be riding the streetcar to get to the concert from Union when it would be much faster to walk and free to walk there?
Steve: This streetcar change was in support of the Taylor Swift concerts which began on the 14th. The 509 Harbourfront car still runs from Union to the Exhibition, as does the 510D Spadina bus from Spadina Station.
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Thanks for the summary as always Steve.
The TTC website also lists routes 35, 47, and 80 as having “routing changes” (it doesn’t specify what the actual routing changes are). The links it provides only leads you to the schedule page of the route you want. Sometimes navigating the TTC site feels like a task from Taskmaster.
Is the routing change for the 35 the new branch alternating you mentioned? Or is that a schedule adjustment?
Ditto for the other two routes.
Steve: The 35 Jane change is the all day operation of the Hullmar 35B branch.
On the 80 Queensway, the “change” is only in the location where 80B buses take their end of route layover. Here is the description of the change:
On 47 Lansdowne, there is a change in the operation of some short turn trips at Lansdowne station, but no actual route change.
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Add my own 506 anecdote to the pile. A few weeks ago (Oct 23) I caught a westbound 506 also during PM peak which was clearly late and at the trailing end of a gap. The vehicle was quite full and there were unusually large amounts of people waiting at each stop.
On the journey to Yonge there were two customers who required the use of the ramp along the way which caused the car to fall progressively further behind schedule. I’ve encountered similar situations on the 501 and 505 this year.
If the service were more frequent and better managed then perhaps it wouldn’t have fallen to a single run to absorb the added dwell time for both customer trips.
That’s the problem with the TTC’s service cuts and cutting multiple streetcar routes back to 10 minutes. Once you factor in the inevitable bunching, non-existent service management, and randomness, the fake 10 minute network is really a 40 minute network.
Their preciously curated 10 minute network may as well not exist if a bit of increased dwell time (common) destroys the service even more than their regular operations do.
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The TTC needs to match service to ridership. The ridership on Bathurst and Dufferin night routes is more than twice that on Dundas but Dundas is getting a 15 minutes headway while Bathurst and Dufferin remain at 30 minutes. What’s the point of running nearly empty streetcars so frequently late at night?
Steve: The TTC is running extra streetcar night service because the carhouses are full due to a large chunk of Russell carhouse being out of service for construction (a project that is running late). New streetcars arrived before there was space to store them. The project to convert part of Harvey Shops to a 25-car storage facility is similarly delayed. The word you are looking for is “planning”. (In a previous era of storage shortage, Exhibition Loop was used but with work above on the Gardiner, that’s not an option now.)
Whether the 304 and 305 will keep their more frequent service remains to be seen, but there is also an argument for better service on the bus routes too. This comes up from time to time in Service Plan discussions, but never quite seems to become a real proposal. A remark at a recent TTC Board meeting indicated that the more frequent night services are attracting enough riding to meet the daytime service standards.
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6000 EV buses? This sounds like Shenzhen in China or New Delhi in India where tens of thousands of electric buses are running but not here in Canada unfortunately.
Steve: 6000 is the fleet number (yes, it duplicates subway cars), not the quantity.
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Please restore the Bus 501B, very fast and efficient instead of waiting for 501 Queen Street Car which is slow to arrive and very crowded. Thnx
Steve: Any TTC planning folks reading this, take note.
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Is the 70 and 22 combining still going to happen?
Steve: Yes. Sometime in 2025 TBA.
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It will be interesting to see how the service on the 12 and new 117 will be spaced at Victoria Park Station. In the past, as a passenger I feel like the 12D operates on its own, departing Victoria Park close to a 12A/C run.
With Presto One Fare, I believe there could be demand to route some traffic served by 12/117 to the two nearby GO stations – Danforth and Scarborough. I see quite a few people transferring from 135 to Danforth GO in the mornings after One Fare started. But the 135 service is quite poor – 20 min headway is actually worse than the 15 min headway on the Lakeshore East GO in the mornings. Better service to the two Lakeshore East GO stations would be useful during rush hours and on Sat and Sun afternoons and evenings when there is 15 min service to Union – the train is much faster than the subway to Union.
Also, the TTC and GO should coordinate on closures. During the recent closures between Kennedy and Victoria Park, the TTC could ask GO to run more frequent service on the Stouffville line to shuttle passengers heading downtown on the GO rather than have passengers take a shuttle bus to from Kennedy to Victoria Park. A worst case half hour wait (if GO runs rush hour service on the weekends on that line) is better than the shuttle bus. Again this would only help passengers heading downtown.
We’ve got to take advantage of One Fare and have better last mile integration between GO and TTC.
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Hi Steve, this is a little off topic but with all the diversions that have taken place over the past while, has the TTC ever thought about adding track to some streets that do not have it right now but would help with diversions in the future. I have a copy of a map of streetcar track in Toronto from 1946. A lot of those tracks are still left and a lot are gone. Just a thought. I know the province and mayor wanna be Ford would be upset.
Steve: This came up several years ago and some new tracks were approved for “the next time we rebuild the location”. Institutional memory being brief at the TTC, those times came and went. It’s still unclear if we will ever see, for example, an east to north at King & York to connect with the north to east at Adelaide installed in the recent construction.
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Steve, two streetcar routes have been seeing changes to their service.
The entire”509 Harbourfront” route operated with shuttle buses from September 3 to October 5; Phase 1. Starting on October 6 until January 4, 2025, streetcars returned to the Eastern stretch of this route (Queens Quay & Spadina loop to Union Station loop); Phase 2.
Streetcars returned to the entire length of this route, November 1 to 24 for the duration of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour; a pause in work between Phase 2 and Phase 3.
Starting on November 17, the “511 Bathurst” streetcar began diverting eastward to Union Station loop via Queens Quay West, ahead of the official start of Phase 3, with work starting on November 25.
Steve: Yes, and your point is?
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Spadina construction changed from Jan 2025 to first Q1 2025 so no streetcar service in Jan?
Steve: Yes, it appears that work at Spadina Station isn’t finished yet, but I have not heard a new time for service restoration.
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Steve, starting today the “509 Harbourfront” streetcar stopped servicing the Exhibition loop and reverted to turning back/eastward at the Queens Quay and Spadina loop, as Phase 3 officially begins.
When do we expect this route (“509 Harbourfront”) to permanent service the Exhibition loop? The “511 Bathurst” streetcar is expected to also return to the Exhibition loop, on the same date. It will be just in time for the Toronto International Boat Show at Exhibition Place.
Streetcars are expected to return to “510 Spadina”, with that route returning to its regular routing – main branch to Union Station via Queens Quay West and a slightly shorter branch of this route terminating at Queens Quay & Spadina loop.
Steve: Harbourfront and Bathurst should be back to normal with the schedule change on Sunday, January 5. The situation at Spadina Station is uncertain and streetcars might not return for January. The next change after that is mid-February.
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Have you heard any more information about what the supplementary service was supposed to be? It looks like most of these routes are showing up in the November 17 service summary with a pre-November “date of last change”. Was this something that was being floated but ended up not being implemented after all? Or is this something like a couple of school extras that maybe don’t show up on the schedule or in the service summary but provide some spot relief around school times? (In particular I’m wondering about Victoria Park, which was on the list but I don’t think has changed since last month.)
Steve: The extra service is operated as buses and operators are available, not on a scheduled basis. I hope to see the effect in tracking data for November when I receive it. (Note that the NextBus feed, which is used by many prediction apps, does not “see” extra buses because it only tracks scheduled vehicles.)
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Steve according to your reply it looks like the “510 Spadina” route will continue to operate with shuttle buses until at least mid-winter, longer than initially planned. The streetcar loop inside the mezzanine level of Spadina subway station is still under construction. When is it expected to be completed?
Steve: There is no date announced yet for completion.
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Steve: a question – you said that NextBus only sees scheduled service. If I am waiting at my stop and see two tracked buses go by with “out of service” on them between 5:30 and 6:00 am do we have a pair of lazy drivers giving themselves an easy first half trip to the subway? They show as moving right along until 2 stops west of Bathurst wherein they sit each for 5-10 mins, then proceed to the station (Sheppard West line going to Sheppard Yonge Stn). This equates to the missing buses leaving 14 – 19 minute gaps. I have given the offending bus numbers multiple times to TTC customer disservice, and get the standard replies: either we can’t find out anything, or that bus wasn’t out there then. I have sent in pictures, and still crickets – this is what happens when the same union takes complaints against their union members.
Steve: The tracking data do not show whether a bus is actually running in service or not unless an operator “signs off” of the system. Do you have specific dates and vehicle numbers? I can compare them to the tracking data and to the official schedules.
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The notice on the TTC website optimistically estimates March 2025 for the return of streetcars to Spadina. This date is far beyond what was first announced last June.
Steve: That is a recent change. It has been sitting as “early 2025” for a while.
This is the new normal for a lot on streetcar runs out from Leslie Barns in the mornings.
Steve: For as long as I can remember, there has been a conflict between those who feel that garage trips should operate in service, and those who want them to run without stopping.
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Steve said:
As far as I can remember, during the Byford era there was an edict that said garage trips were to pick up customers but it does sound far too ‘customer centric’ for the current TTC. I think things on that front are not improving, for the last couple of weeks a section of The Esplanade was closed due to road work, the TTC did note this on website for the first few days but, for at least the last week, the road remained closed but there was nothing on TTC website or, more importantly, at the stops not served. I emailed TTC early last week but nothing changed and the street fully open again yesterday. The operators clearly knew, the vehicles had the Diversion on Route sign but if you were waiting at a stop in the closed section you would have had a long chilly wait.
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Steve, it looks like it will take until March for track construction on the streetcar loop inside Spadina subway station will be completed, and streetcars to finally return to the “510 Spadina” route. In the mean time, this route will continue to operate with shuttle buses.
However the “509 Harbourfront” and “511 Bathurst” routes will return to regular – and more frequent – service on January 5, 2005.
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