From May until early Fall, the TTC and City of Toronto will rebuild an aging water main and track at the intersection of King & Church Streets. A report before Toronto & East York Community Council on February 20, 2025, details plans for service diversions and transit priority measures.
There are two general plans for this project: the first is for phases when the intersection remains open for east-west traffic, and the second for the period when it will be closed. Note that the planned diversions are not the same as in the recent Annual Service Plan. Significant changes are the provision of service to the Distillery District replacing the 504A streetcar with the 504C bus, and the extension of 503 Kingston Road west to Dufferin Loop as opposed to the originally planned McCaul Loop.
Service along Queen Street between River and Spadina will substantially increase with the routes normally on King diverted to the north. Buses will operate as a streetcar replacement.
Traffic restrictions such as parking and turning permissions will change to provide more capacity for transit. Although the report cites the use of traffic wardens and changes to signal timings, it is silent on provisions for the much increased volume of streetcar turns at intersections where no priority signals exist today. (I await feedback from the City on exactly what they propose.)
The entire stretch of Queen Street as well as the Richmond/Adelaide diversion will not be used for CaféTO installations to conserve road space.
As part of this plan, a reserved lane will be created for streetcars eastbound approaching Broadview on Queen, and left turns by other traffic will be banned there.
Restrictions will be in effect from May 11 to October 14, 2025, although the City project is planned to run until August. Streetcar service could return in September, but this will depend on TTC plans for overhead reconstruction on King Street East and on the Sumach/Cherry branch to the Distillery District.
Details of routes and planned changes to traffic regulations follow in the full version of this article.
Transit Diversion Routes
Transit routes will divert around the construction zone with buses filling in where streetcars cannot run. All routes running via Queen will use the Richmond/Adelaide detour around Ontario Line construction at Yonge.
504 King
- The 504 streetcar will operate between Dundas West and Broadview Stations diverting via Queen and Spadina.
- A 504C bus will operate from Wolseley Loop (Queen & Bathurst) to the Distillery District looping from Cherry via Mill, Parliament and Front.
- A 504D bus will operate from Wolseley Loop to Broadview & Gerrard.
During phases 3 and 4 of the work when the intersection at Church is completely closed, the 504 buses will divert via Yonge, Front/Wellington and Jarvis.
503 Kingston Road
The 503 streetcar was originally planned to use McCaul Loop as its western terminus, but this has changed. Instead the 503 will follow the 504 diversion and run west to Dufferin Loop. This will provide additional service on King Street West.
508 Lake Shore
The peak-only 508 service will follow the 504 diversion.
Night Services
Details of service to fill in the central part of King Street overnight have not been announced. The TTC has confirmed that the 303 Kingston Road will continue operating to Roncesvalles although its daytime equivalent, 503, will end at Dufferin.
Service levels have not yet been announced for the revised routes, but the City report states that the combined service will amount to 25 streetcars/hour, up from 7 under current schedules, over the Richmond/Adelaide diversion. Given that peak and off-peak frequencies on these routes are similar, that scale of increase applies to most service hours, not just the AM and PM peaks.
Traffic Restrictions
Left turn restrictions vary from place to place between Spadina and Broadview. They will be standardized as 7am to 7pm every day at Jarvis, Parliament, University, Soho and Spadina.
At Church Street, westbound left turns except by transit will be banned during the same hours. Motorists wishing to turn south can do so at Victoria. Northbound right turns from Church to Queen will also be banned.
Parking will be prohibited on Queen both ways from Spadina to River, and on Richmond/Adelaide from York to Church. These areas will become No Stopping zones from 7am to 7pm.
The south side of Queen from Hamilton Street to 9 metres east of Broadview will become an all-day No Stopping zone to allow traffic to bypass the transit lane.
Traffic Management
The City report states:
A combination of traffic agents and signal timing changes will be implemented along the streetcar diversion route to support the operations. The majority of these management strategies will be focused on the pinch points along Richmond Street and Adelaide Street, from York Street to Church Street.
Anyone who uses Queen Street knows that “pinch points” exist well beyond these bounds, notably west of University Avenue. Streetcar turns to and from Spadina at Queen and King Streets are not supported by transit white-bar signals, and experience during prior years’ Tiff diversions show that these cause considerable delay. (Transit only signals do exist for turns off of Spadina at Queen and King.)
At Church Street, there is a priority signal for streetcars eastbound from Adelaide turning north, but there is no priority for the westbound left turn at Queen. On top of motor traffic there are pedestrians who can also block turning streetcars.
Dedicated turn phases are required, but there is no indication that they will be implemented.
Steve Munro 
Are they still going to only have the one stop on Richmond/Adelaide at Yonge?
Steve: Yes. They have already rejected the idea of stops at Bay because they are “too close”. Strange how this doesn’t apply to King Street, nor Dundas, nor College, nor Wellesley, nor did it apply on Queen when streetcars were there.
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How the hell does King/Sumach streetcar overhead need reconstruction already?
Steve: Final conversion from hyprid pole/pan to pan only.
That said there is absolutely no reason this work cannot occur in parallel with the work at King & Church.
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Who do we have to bribe to run the eastbound 504/503/508 on the newly rebuilt Adelaide track between Spadina and York?
Steve: Oddly enough it has already been used for some emergency diversions, but for this many-months operation, no. I suspect that they want to keep a consistent connection with at least one side of the Line 1 “U” as Osgoode. It would be faster, of course, to go straight along Adelaide.
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So how many turns will the King car make between Broadview and Dundas West? I’ve lost all sense of the route.
Steve: Several, but I think 506 Carlton is still twistier.
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What is the point of creating these transit only turning lanes when the city has no ability to enforce them. Particularly the left turn from Ellesmere to Brimley made for the line 3 bus replacement sees hundreds of abuses either by confused drivers or those purposely taking advantage of it to save time.
Perhaps red light cameras used when non-transit vehicles “runs” the red over a transit phase and development of cameras to enforce no turning restrictions. I would love to see the city address this kind of behaviour as they install more transit lanes.
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Steve, the extension of the “503 Kingston Road” streetcar route to the Dufferin loop, a stone’s throw from Dufferin Gate, is an excellent idea, and will provide east-end and particularly Scarborough residents with another transit option for going to and from Exhibition Place.
This east-west route will intersect with the “511 Bathurst” streetcar, route, a well-established route for people going to and from Exhibition Place for big-ticket events like the Canadian National Exhibition.
Why wasn’t that thought of earlier, as in weeks, months, or years earlier?
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Steve…
It’s coming soon….to the Dufferin loop….it’s the “503 Kingston Road” streetcar route.
It will be extended to – and provide east-end residents an option to get to the Exhibition grounds, a simpler and more direct route.
It starts at the Bingham loop in Scarborough, and it’s running through the eastern part of the city, via the Beaches (Woodbine Park), Leslieville, Old Town Toronto, the Financial District, the Entertainment District, and King West & Liberty Village, before its western terminus at the loop near Dufferin Gate.
It’s a story of East Meets West.
Steve: This is likely a temporary arrangement for the duration of the King/Church work to supplement service on King West with the temporarily restructured 504 where the planned service does not include a Dufferin Loop branch.
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They’ve placed barriers on Queen Street in the areas around Broadview for CaféTO installations…
Steve: Council recently approved the following:
This means that CaféTO patios can be set up on the north (westbound) side of Queen as they were last year. That’s where most of the restos are anyhow. Also some of the originally proposed restrictions on Richmond/Adelaide were dropped due to concerns about delivery vehicles loading.
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It makes no sense to me why they would exempt the curb lanes from installations between Church and Don Roadway and then only bits and pieces from Don Roadway to Broadview. Restricted along 90% of the route but only a few small portions of the last 10%? That seems ridiculous to me. Why not push CafeTO to Hamilton Street?
Steve: The section east from Don Roadway will become a red lane, hence no CafeTO eastbound. There are no restrictions westbound.
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