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504 King Diversion Revised

Updated May 16, 2025 at 3:50pm: The TTC has now published a map of the revised diversion routes.

In response to congestion problems for streetcars turning on and off of King and Queen Streets at Spadina, the TTC has modified the route of 504 King.

Instead of running west via Queen, Spadina and King, the 504 will now divert via Queen, Shaw and King. The 503 Kingston Road car will continue to operate via Spadina and King to Dufferin Loop.

The TTC has not yet updated the information on its King-Church diversion page as of 1:30pm May 16, but plans to do so. On-street signage will also be changed. The diversion map and information appear on several different pages, and it will be interesting to see if the TTC changes all of them.

Updated 3:50pm with revised diversion map for routes 504/304, 503/303 and 508. Not shown are routes 501 Queen and 511 Bathurst.

This reduces the peak streetcars/hour attempting to turn east-to-north at King and Spadina from 23 to 17, and west-to-south at Queen and Spadina from 13.5 to 7.5 (plus occasional 508 Lake Shore cars). Off-peak service is almost the same as peak service and so these numbers do not change much during those hours.

Numbers eastbound at King will be further reduced in late June when the 511 Bathurst cars, 6.5/hour, resume their normal route to Exhibition Loop, and 508 Lake Shore cars, 3/hour at peak, are suspended for the summer.

Updated: Now that the map has been published, it is clear that the 504C/D buses will continue to loop at Bathurst, and service on King from Bathurst to Shaw will only be provided by the 503 car.

Problems remain further east on the diversion with all of the 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 504 King and 508 Lake Shore cars making turns to and from Church, Richmond, Adelaide and York, a total of about 23 per hour. There is also severe traffic congestion on Adelaide, but it is not clear how much of this is caused by queuing streetcars, and how much due to traffic volume and road capacity.

The option of using Victoria Street for the link between Queen and Richmond/Adelaide is not available because of Ontario Line construction, even though this would have separated the streetcar diversion from the busier Church Street.

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7 thoughts on “504 King Diversion Revised”

  2. Steve, just as the Bathurst-Fleet-Lakeshore TTC track, overhead, and watermain is reaching its “home stretch” (final weeks before completion), another one had just ramped up. It’s the King-Church TTC track, overhead, and watermain project.

    The intersection which the “503 Kingston Road” streetcars turn south off King Street and on to Church Street is the epi-centre of this project, which gives it its name. This route has been diverted via Queen Street between Church Street and Spadina Avenue,and extended westward to the Dufferin Gate loop. Also, the streetcars on the 504 are also travelling on the same stretch of Queen Street. However, there’s still a TTC presence on King Street, as “504 King” shuttle buses are travelling on it between Bathurst Street and the Distillery District.

    Steve: Yes, we know. This project and diversions are the subject of various articles here. BTW, some of the 504 King buses run to Broadview & Gerrard, not to the Distillery.

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  3. They need to get rid of the eastern half of the 504 and run the 504D for the last 1.4km to Broadview station.

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  4. It will be interesting to see if shuttle bus operators continue to eject riders exclusively at King and Bathurst as they were doing Wednesday evening, even as they proceeded to use Wolseley loop to turn back.

    With streetcar diversions split and the King service they’re replacing not intersecting at King and Bathurst it seems folly to tell riders a bus is out of service at KingBath.

    Steve: This diversion was not well thought out in terms of intersection capacity.

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  5. Do you know what is behind the TTC’s obsession with crazy streetcar diversion, even when it makes no sense?

    In this case, why can’t the TTC pause the King streetcar service and focus the resources on operating a high-frequency and high-capacity replacement bus on King? (As far as I know, this is what most cities would do.)

    Instead, now we have a King streetcar service that has almost nothing to do with King and causes chaos to the whole DT tram network due to the diversion, meanwhile, the actual King Bus service is horrendous.

    Steve: Busing all of the diverted routes would take more operators and spare vehicles than the TTC has, but without question the design leaves a lot to be desired. That’s why I wrote that original article about the volume of steetcars making turns at locations and how this would overwhelm intersections. Now that TTC has reorganized things a bit, I plan to monitor the service to see what the bottlenecks are like. The worst is eastbound on Adelaide and north on Church to Queen where there is a funnel effect with traffic squeezed and intersection capacity monopolized by frequent turning streetcars. There is definitely a disconnect between the City’s claim that they will monitor traffic and adjust signals, and what is happening on the street.

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  6. So someone wanting to get from Roncesvalles to King & Spadina has to make two transfers? (Either streetcar – Line 2 – Spadina or 504 – 503 – shuttle bus) They should be extending some of the buses to Dufferin, or at least to Shaw.

    I’m personally aggrieved as I think it makes four summers in a row where there isn’t a reasonable way for me to take the TTC to work on the days where I don’t want to do bike share.

    Steve: Yes, I agree that the lack of overlap is poor, and TTC needs to change the service design to reduce the number of transfers. How soon this will happen remains to be seen.

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