From time to time, a discussion arises about the makeup of the TTC’s surface fleet, how it is utilized and the effect on service levels. This article presents details broken down by vehicle type to show variations across the system.

My apologies to readers if this seems a tad nerdish, but any discussion of future service requires an understanding of the fleet’s makeup and how it is used. Any fundamental differences between vehicle types will affect future planning, but equally there are inherent differences in types of routes and schedule designs that have nothing to do with the vehicles.

The charts in this article are based on tracking data accumulated by Darwin O’Connor at TransSee for the months of November and December 2024, less a few days around Christmas when the site was offline.

First, a basic question about how many vehicles were actually active over the two-month period. The chart below shows the daily count of vehicles that were observed in service by the TTC’s tracking system and TransSee during the period.

The peak number of buses (blue) is higher than the peak service requirement shown on the Scheduled Service Summaries for these months. The difference is due both to “Run as Directed” buses which do not show up in the assigned vehicle counts, and to buses that only work for part of the day and are replaced by other vehicles for various reasons.

The situation for streetcars (red) is similar, but with a smaller difference because there are few “RAD” streetcars and most cars stay in service all day, as shown in the detailed stats later in the article. Another important difference for streetcars is that weekend service is close to weekday service in terms of the number of vehicles used.

The bus fleet is in flux as old vehicles are retired and replaced by new deliveries. If anything, this should increase availability by removing the least reliable vehicles from service. The streetcar fleet is growing with deliveries of new cars that will continue through 2025. Service levels for both modes have yet to catch up with fleet size and availability, although some improvements are planned later this year.

The remainder of this article looks at the stats for individual vehicles, grouped by type.

Continue reading →