A major item on the agenda was the subway platform edge doors study. This is covered in a separate article.
There were overlapping threads in discussion of current results, the financial update, and the non-fare strategy all stemming from the 2025 shortfall between budgeted and actual fare revenue and ridership. Although some shortfall was expected thanks to the severe winter, ridership has not climbed to the budgeted level. An unanswered question is whether the TTC aimed too high in its expectations for 2025, or if there is an inherent limit in system growth that will occur over the year.
Midweek rides (Tuesday to Thursday) in Period 4 (roughly the month of April) were about 2% over the corresponding period in 2024, but overall ridership is about 5.1% below the budgeted level.
Fare revenue follows a similar pattern, although it is down by only 4.6% to budget because the average fare/ride is slightly higher than expected.
The use of various payment methods continues to evolve toward Presto with either a Presto card, app (“virtual card” below), or bank card (“open payment”). This chart only goes to week 17 of the year, and legacy media were still accepted for another month although they have dropped to 0.2% of all fare payments. In Period 4 about 46,000 tokens and 12,000 tickets were collected (about 2,000 fares/day).
Boardings continue to be below pre-pandemic levels across the system.
Note that a “boarding” is one link of a trip on a single route, with the exception that transfers are not counted as new boardings on the subway. A “ride” is one or more boardings paid for with one fare or card tap.
The lower recovery level on the rail modes is attributed mainly to the work-from-home pattern which is still felt by the transit system with the average day on Tuesday to Thursday being 6% higher than Monday and Friday.
Weekend demand is important and stands at about 60% of the weekday level (1.53 million/day vs 2.54 million/day). By extension weekend service is also important, although the demand is less concentrated in peak hours, and the high point falls in the afternoon rather than the classic AM and PM “rush hours”.
The main CEO’s Report contains more current data than the Metrics Report and states:
For the week ending May 30, the overall weekday boardings stood at 2.5 million per day and increased by one per cent from the same week last year. Weekday boardings by mode continue to be highest on the bus network at 1.2 million, followed by subway at 1.1 million, and streetcar at 245,000. Compared to a year ago, subway and streetcar demand, respectively, increased by six and four per cent, mainly due to an increase in downtown office commutes, while bus demand declined by three per cent.
There is no analysis of the degree to which ridership growth is constrained by the quality and quantity of service. Those of us who remember back before the pandemic will recall that the TTC was in a period of constrained growth. All surplus capacity had been consumed by new riders, but budgets, fleet size and subway capacity limited the amount of service and its attractiveness for new and increased riding.
Rider complaints continue to rank timeliness of service, missed stops, and vehicle operation as the top three concerns, and these outrank safety by a wide margin. This is not to downplay safety issues, but the TTC has severe problems with the dependability of its service which are probably depressing ridership recovery.
An updated Ridership Growth Strategy is expected later in 2025, and the mix of complaints indicates where they should concentrate efforts to woo back riders.
Two proposals before City Council attempt to deal with congestion issues downtown brought on by the King/Church water main and track reconstruction.
MM31.17 – Speeding Up Streetcars: Traffic Amendments on Adelaide Street, King Street and York Street – by Mayor Olivia Chow, seconded by Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik
This motion proposes the relocation of parking and loading zones from Adelaide Street to nearby streets to free up capacity on Adelaide.
Currently, the Financial District Business Improvement Area and their stakeholders use loading zones on the south side of Adelaide Street West, from Yonge Street to York Street, between 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. Based on the travel time data, streetcar operations are negatively impacted when the loading operations are in effect.
In consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, Transportation Services and the Financial District have agreed that temporary loading zones will be established on the west side of York Street, between King Street West and Wellington Street, and on the north side of King Street West, between Yonge Street and York Street.
Delivery drivers will queue in the new loading zones, where Traffic Control Persons will marshal the delivery drivers into the loading bay only when it is clear. With the temporary loading zones in place, stopping will be prohibited on Adelaide Street West from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday to Sunday.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment to her own motion authorizing payment “to deploy additional paid duty officers at seven locations near the King and Church worksite to manage traffic flow”.
MM31.18 – Re-Opening King Street for Business: Keeping Toronto’s Downtown Core and Canada’s Financial District Moving – by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Stephen Holyday
This motion proposes the reopening of through traffic on King Street where streetcars are not operating during the construction diversion.
City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to make any necessary changes to reopen the portion of King Street between Spadina Avenue and Church Street to vehicular traffic for the duration of the King Street East and Church Street intersection closure, where streetcars are not currently in service.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment limiting the reopened area to portions where “streetcars and buses” are not operating. This effectively neuters the motion because the only portion of King with no transit service now is east of Yonge Street.
The debate was mired by a combination of political rivalries, lack of familiarity with the affected area and transit services, and disinformation either through ignorance or misrepresentation.
The Mayor’s motion MM31.17 and amendment carried on a show of hands.
The Mayor’s proposed amendment to MM31.18 carried by 16-5. The motion as amended carried on a show of hands.
The debate was hampered by the absence of basic information such as a map and detailed information on items such as existing transit services, traffic pinch points and loading zone locations.
In support of his claim that King Street could be reopened, Councillor Bradford showed a photo looking west on King from Simcoe with the street completely devoid of traffic. The photo was taken at 6:30pm on Monday.
Monday is a very light day for office-bound traffic due to work-from-home patterns. This is also reflected in day-of-the-week travel time differences shown later in this article.
The theatre district (Roy Thomson Hall, Royal Alexandra and Princess of Wales Theatres, TIFF) are dark on Mondays, and there is little tourist traffic. There was no major event at the Rogers Centre.
Although an empty road can be found at times, the photo is deeply misleading, and Bradford should know better.
Among the most striking pieces of disinformation was the claim that replacement bus service carries far fewer riders than the streetcars did along the King Street corridor. When asked, staff gave riding figures of 24,000 on the King Street replacement bus, and 60,000 per day for the streetcars. These are all day values for the entire route, not for riding on the King Street transit corridor itself. At no point was there any discussion of the frequency (and hence capacity) of service. These numbers were cited by various Councillors to claim that transit priority was not needed on King because so many fewer people were riding there.
City staff should be chastised for failing to correct this point and for giving an answer that did not properly illuminate the comparison between service levels.
For the record, the scheduled service on the central portion of King Street with streetcars and buses is shown below. Note that there is substantially less scheduled capacity with the replacement bus service. Buses on King are quite crowded, and service is bunched and erratic.
It is quite likely that there are fewer riders on the buses than on the streetcars, although a major contributing factor will be the level of service provided by the TTC. From a capacity viewpoint, a service of 18 buses/hour with 50/bus (greater than the Service Standard level) would be 900 riders per hour past a point. The streetcar service would have a capacity more than double that level.
PM Peak Service
Streetcar Service (Apr/25)
Bus Service (June/25)
504A Distillery-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
504B Broadview-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
503 Kingston Road (EB from York)
10′ (6 cars/hour)
508 Lake Shore
20′ (3 cars/hour)
504D Broadview-Bathurst
5′ (12 buses/hour)
504C Distillery-Bathurst
10′ (6 buses/hour)
In the course of the debate, Mayor Chow noted that work at King & Church is progressing well and should be finished by August 8. This may allow the road to reopen, but resumption of streetcar service depends on the TTC finishing their work including reconstruction of streetcar overhead at that intersection and along King Street East.
The remainder of this article updates previously-published charts about streetcar travel times on Richmond and Adelaide Streets.
Approve addition of PEDs requirements, including operational and technical system requirements to the TTC Design Manual and Master Specifications for implementation at future new stations.
Direct staff to include funding based on estimates for the implementation of a pilot installation at TMU Station (Dundas) as part of the 2026 budget submission.
Approve ongoing planning work, including prioritizing stations for implementation of appropriate technologies based on specific needs and drivers of each station.
At the meeting, there was an attempt to refer the report to staff for further study:
Motion to Refer Item moved by Fenton Jagdeo (Lost)
Refer the report back to staff for further analysis to compliment [sic] the platform edge door study that includes:
Other technology, infrastructure, or passenger management solutions at stations that could improve operational efficiency, customer experience, and safety.
Prioritization of stations that would most benefit from platform edge doors and those that could realize safety, operational, and customer experience improvements utilizing other solutions.
Capital budget costs of (non platform edge door) station enhancement investments that could be implemented in 2026 to improve safety, operations, and customer experience.
Expanded business cases that include metrics for potential operational cost savings, service reliability improvements, and customer delay time savings that could be realized with platform edge doors at the highest priority stations.
A jurisdictional review of alternate platform edge door funding models that leverage non-fare (advertising) revenues.
There was also a motion to refer the report to the Strategic Planning Committee for further discussion:
Motion to Amend Item (Additional) moved by Councillor Dianne Saxe (Carried)
The TTC Board requests that staff provide the Strategic Planning Committee with class 5 estimates of the costs and benefits to the TTC of technically feasible options to detect or discourage track-level intrusions at subway and LRT stations, including those being installed by Metrolinx on new stations in Toronto.
The Feasibility Report by AECOM is a long document, but the core of it lies in the first 90 pages covering many aspects of potential implementations and designs. One significant conflict between this report and the management recommendations lies in the choice of stations for a trial installation. Although management recommends Dundas/TMU, a busy downtown station, the Feasibility Report recommends lightly used stations where problems can be worked out without a major upset to service and riders.
It is further highly recommended that TTC implement a number of PED installation pilot projects at different stations representing the typical condition for each type of design solution. Representative stations are proposed based on low ridership numbers to minimize impact to the subway system and ridership inconvenience associated with performance of the work and the anticipated learning curve. Potential stations include North York Centre, Lawrence, Glencairn and Old Mill. This variety of stations will allow contractors to familiarize themselves with all station groups and structural solutions. [p. 19]
The project is estimated to take over 20 years to complete system-wide at a substantial cost:
The total capital cost for the implementation of the PEDs system for Lines 1, 2 and 4 is estimated at $4.1 billion, with average costs of $44 million to $55 million for two platforms of a station based on the preliminary (Class 5) cost estimate, which includes a cost escalation to the midpoint of construction projected in 2036. The estimated cost was also included in the 2025-2039 Capital Investment Plan and remains unfunded. Subject to the approval of the recommendations of this report and available funding room available, $44 million will be included in the 2026-2035 Capital Budget and Plan submission for the implementation of a pilot installation at TMU Station (Dundas) for Board consideration. The preliminary cost estimate does not include the ATC interface. This will be further reviewed and discussed with the Line 1 ATC supplier as the PEDs project progresses and an implementation strategy is developed. [Management Report, p. 2]
Note that the study lists many other aspects of the project for which costs are not included. I will turn to these in the detailed part of this article.
The PED project is not funded in the Capital Plan and would have a significant effect on annual spending, especially if there is political pressure for a compressed timeline.
The study reviewed four different implementations:
Full-height doors with a roughly 300mm ventillation space at the top.
Partial height doors.
Intrusion detection systems (IDS)
“Rope” barriers.
Based on a scoring system full-height doors were favoured because they are the only proven system that completely prevents track level access. However, this is only one component of the evaluation and the differences overall are small, except for “rope” systems due to a “less-proven” ranking.
The costs for full- and half-height doors are substantial thanks to the station modifications needed for their installation many of which are common to both schemes.
Adapted from Board Report, Table 1, pp. 6-7
An important issue in such a review is to determine just what reason lies behind the desire to install PEDs. The commonly cited issue is suicides, and yet the TTC has a greater problem with people walking at track level. Other problems include fires caused by debris blown onto track level, and the potential contact between passengers on the platform and trains. Various implementations address each of these to a greater or lesser extent.
If the intent is to make track level access difficult and deter the majority of intrusions, then walls of some height are required. Sensors can detect unwanted intrusion, but they will not prevent it, and could be prone to false positives.
The operative word in “IDS” is “detection”. Such a system can detect entry into the guideway, but not prevent it. This will be used on the underground portions of the soon-to-open Lines 5 and 6 in Toronto, and we will see how well it works, especially in distinguishing between real intrusions and false positives that would halt service.
Installing PEDs is not simply a matter of erecting a wall along the platform. There are issues of structural integrity of platforms, relocation of services in the under-platform area, station and tunnel ventilation, power supply and control systems, and emergency operation of the doors. Most of these are common to half and full-height implementations, although the effect on ventilation is less for half-height doors.
The implementation of PEDs at existing stations will require extensive planning, with the majority of the work taking place at track level during non-operating hours and will need to be implemented alongside ongoing State of Good Repair (SOGR) work in subway tunnels and stations. Implementation of the PED system as part of major works, such as Bloor-Yonge Capacity Improvements (BYCI) will minimize operational and customer disruptions while addressing cost and schedule efficiency.
Extensive subway station closures and station bypasses will be necessary to effectively complete track-related work for the PED system and to minimize the challenges. Partial and full closures of subway lines and stations were used in Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Copenhagen, and Seoul’s Metros to successfully retrofit the PED system in existing stations. [Management report pp 1-2]
The TTC has never undertaken an “extensive” closure of a station, let alone a line, beyond weekend maintenance shutdowns. This has substantial implications at busy stations near major destinations or with extensive surface feeder services.
The Business Case (also by AECOM) presents the advantages and disadvantages of PEDs.
The Business Case is a troubling document because it purports to show the monetary value of the project, albeit over an extended period. I am not convinced that this is an appropriate way to address the issue. The majority of the savings comes from fatality incidents which contribute to many of the factors below, notably to the imputed value of lost lives. Some of these savings are not direct dollar spending (such as emergency response costs), and cannot be recouped as an offset to the capital cost.
Arguing the preservation of life as a “business case” begs the question of whether fiscal hawks would agree to the project if there were not a good “return on investment”. Conversely, a 20-year implementation plan has little sense of urgency. The question, then, is how quickly the project could actually unroll, at what cost, and a what disruption both to ongoing subway operations and the overall capital plans for the TTC.
The footnote above refers to anticipated longer dwell times at stations as the control systems for both the platform doors and trains agree with each other about opening and closing while trains are stopped.
There is some irony to the proposal of Dundas/TMU Station as a trial installation. At the previous TTC Board meeting, the University made a proposal to set up a research effort with the TTC based on their business startup model. The idea was that there were potential developments that could be marketed to the world. One of the focus areas was to be intrusion detection, although such systems have existed for decades in various forms. In December 1985, SkyTrain in Vancouver opened with an Intrusion Detection System, although a replacement technology is now under consideration. IDS is not a new concept, and whether TMU can bring some enhancement that does not already exist in the market remains to be seen.
At this point, management asks the Board for approval to continue study of a potential PED rollout. This would include evaluation of appropriate technologies for different types of stations. and make budget provision for a trial implementation at Dundas/TMU. Any installation work is still a few years away, and a full rollout further still. An obvious question is whether an interim Intrusion Detection System is worthwhile, or even sufficient for the less heavily-used stations.
The challenge is to define the system’s goal and the level of protection needed to achieve this. Will problems simply migrate from stations with full segregation between platforms and trains to others with lesser or no detection or barrier? What proportion of the system must be converted to achieve a significant reduction in unwanted events? How long would it take to achieve this?
The remainder of this article delves into the technical review of PEDs and what their implementation on the TTC network would entail.
Effective Monday, June 23 at 7am until Thursday, June 26 at 7am, all streetcar service on Queen Street East will divert both ways via Coxwell, Gerrard and Broadview for emergency water main repairs at Vancouver St. just west of Russell Carhouse.
Notice of this change has not yet been posted on the TTC’s site.
Source: Councillor Paula Fletcher
Also effective June 23 at 11pm until Tuesday, July 8 at 4am, buses will replace streetcars on the Queen and Long Branch routes west of Humber Loop for track work.
Updated June 24, 2025: The TTC has now standardized the 504 King and 503 Kingston Road diversions so that both routes (and associated night services) operate via Queen and Shaw Streets
The diversions for track reconstruction on King Street will change again on Sunday, June 22. The TTC has posted conflicting information both on its website and in its weekly update memo regarding construction and special events. I have asked TTC for clarification and will update this page if and when they reply.
In an email on June 19, the TTC announced:
From 6 a.m. on Sun., June 22, until 4 a.m. on Sat., Jul. 12, the 503/303 Kingston Road streetcars will divert to accommodate streetcar track work on King St. between Shaw St. and Spadina Ave. 503/303 Kingston Road streetcars will run along Queen St. between Shaw St. and Dufferin St. 504D King replacement buses will be extended to run from King St. and Bathurst St. to Dufferin Gate Loop.
Affected routes:
503/303 Kingston Road cars which now operate via Queen, Spadina and King to Dufferin Loop will change to run via Queen Street to Dufferin and then south to Dufferin Loop. This changed on June 24. See below.
504D shuttle buses (Broadview/Bathurst) will be extended west from Bathurst via Queen and Dufferin to Dufferin Loop. In fact the buses ran west via King, not Queen.
Here are the original TTC maps.
Source: TTC 503 and 504D Diversion Notices (No longer online)
It appears that whoever designed this change notice is unaware that the 503 does not now operate via Queen and Shaw, but in fact runs on King from Spadina westward.
Updated Monday, June 23 at 10:45pm: The erroneous map of the 504D diversion has been replaced on the TTC’s site. Here is the corrected map.
Updated Tuesday, June 24 at 5:00pm: The diversion of 503/303 and 504/304 services has now been standardized via Queen and Shaw Streets, and the notice/map also include the 504D bus extension west from King and Bathurst to Dufferin Loop.
511 Bathurst cars resume service to Exhibition Loop and will not operate east on King from Bathurst to Charlotte Loop at Spadina.
508 Lake Shore service is discontinued for the summer.
There is no reference to the existing 504 streetcar route which operates via Queen and Shaw to King, nor is there any explanation of why the 503 and 504D services cannot use the same route. (Corrected effective June 24.)
Here is the construction plan included in the June 22, 2025 service change memo clearly showing where the 503 car runs today, but this will not, in fact, be how the routes operate starting June 22.
Taking the TTC notices at face value, this means that service on parts of King will be affected in different ways:
From Spadina to Bathurst, only the 504C/D shuttle buses will operate and will, presumably, dodge around construction as they have been doing in recent weeks during track margin repairs along King Street.
From Bathurst to Shaw, there will be no transit service. This affects stops at Tecumseth, Niagara and Strachan. Updated: The 504D buses are supposed to run west on King from Bathurst to Dufferin, but few of them actually get beyond Bathurst.
From Shaw to Dufferin depends on the continued operation of 504 King cars. As of June 24, 503 Kingston Road cars were also running via Queen, Shaw and King.
This is a repetition of the classic TTC communications cock-ups of past years where diversions are poorly or inaccurately explained. They are supposed to be “doing diversions differently” this year, but this is not a sterling example.
Updated 4:50 pm June 20: There are separate pages on the TTC website describing the 503/504 diversions which make no mention at all of the change effective June 22. They refer to the summer suspension of the 508 Lake Shore, but assure riders there are no other changes:
Starting Monday, June 23, 508 Lake Shore streetcar service will be suspended until early September for seasonal service adjustments. There will be no changes to 503/303 Kingston Rd, 504/304 King streetcars or to 504/304 King replacement bus routing. [Source: TTC Streetcar service changes.]
As of Tuesday, June 24, the separate streetcar diversion pages for the King and Kingston Road services still make no mention of the changes west of Bathurst Street.
In a recent article, I detailed the headway reliability of night buses on several routes. In a comment, a reader asked if I could relate that data to “on time” performance.
There are a few problems with that concept, not least that the TTC’s own standard is so lax. The charts presented here are an attempt to show the degree to which departure times on two routes are scattered (307 Bathurst) or more closely bunched in a more-or-less reliable group (335 Jane).
Depending on reader feedback, I will include these charts, or possibly a modified version of them, in future articles about night services.
Updated June 20, 2025: The charts for 307 Bathurst Night Bus have been modified to show the advertised times of buses to show the degree to which service is “on time” or not.
A separate set of charts has been added to show the evolution of departure times northbound over the route from Front to Steeles.
The TTC will modify service on several routes on June 22, but the majority of these changes are for seasonal reductions or improvements. Seasonal changes will affect:
508 Lake Shore suspended for the summer
11 Bayview
15 Evans
29 Dufferin service to Princes’ Gates Loop removed due to activities within Exhibition Place
329 Dufferin Night Service routed to Princes’ Gates Loop via Liberty & Strachan
34 Eglinton East
36 Finch West
41 Keele
54 Lawrence East
60/960 Steeles West
61 Avenue Road North
62 Mortimer
66 Prince Edward
76 Royal York South
83 Jones
84/984 Sheppard West
90 Vaughan
92 Woodbine South weekday evening service improved
96/996 Wilson
107 York University Heights
108 Driftwood
112 West Mall
114 Queens Quay East
134 Progress
161 Rogers Road
165 Weston Road North
200 Toronto Zoo weekday service added
201 Bluffer’s Park weekday service added
900 Airport Express
924 Victoria Park Express
927 Highway 27 Express
989 Weston Express
All extra school trips are removed from schedules
Service reliability changes will affect:
15 Evans
48 Rathburn
135 Gerrard
With the completion of water main and track work at Bathurst & Lake Shore, various routes will return to their standard configuration:
509 Harbourfront will operate from Union Station to Exhibition Loop.
510 Spadina will operate from Spadina Station to Union with half of the service turning back at Queens Quay Loop.
511 Bathurst will shift from its temporary terminus at Charlotte Loop to serve Exhibition Loop.
See the spreadsheet linked below for service design details on affected routes.
[The original version of this file still had the May 2025 date in its heading, but the information was for June. This has been fixed.]
Some routes will be adjusted so that day and night services blend properly in the late evening and early morning.
501/301 Queen and 507 Long Branch
505/305 Dundas
15/315 Evans, 123 Sherway
The modified diversion for track work at King and Church with buses operating via Jarvis, Front/Wellington and Yonge will be officially in the schedule. It was actually implemented on June 2 because of a change in the City’s project plans.
New Routes:
203 High Park from High Park Station to Colborne Lodge, weekends daytime only, every 20 minutes.
406 Scarborough Guildwood is a new Community Bus that will operate every 60 minutes during the midday and afternoon peak periods (9:30am – 6:00pm) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Bus bay allocations will change at Main Street and Scarborough Centre Stations.
This article begins a series to review the TTC’s overnight services, aka the Blue Night network. Most of these are bus routes, but a few of the older lines still operate with streetcars.
The overnight network is designed so 95% of the population and employment is within a 1,250 metre walk (15 minutes) of transit service. Consequently, overnight services may be provided on different routes than the base network in order to meet these requirements. Where possible, however, overnight routes will follow daytime routing and be identified in a manner consistent with the daytime route. The overnight network is an important part of the TTC’s commitment to maximizing the mobility of people in the City of Toronto and meeting all of their diverse travel needs.
Hours of service: 1:30am to 6:00am (8:00am Sunday)
% of population and employment served: 95%
Within walking distance: 1250 metres
Within walking time: 15 minutes
Minimum service frequency: 30 minutes
Headway performance: Service is considered to be on time if it is no more than 1 minute early and no more than 5 minutes late. TTC’s goal is to have 60% of all trips meet the on-time performance standard.
The one minute early standard was informally dropped in early 2025 and on time performance is now measured by TTC against a -0/+5 scale. That applies to on-time departure at terminals, but not to headways. The standard allows a swing of headways between 25-35 minutes for a half-hourly service as shown below. The service is “on time”, but unreliable, especially when the compounding effect of the swings is considered at transfer points.
Moreover, the “standard” need only be achieved 60% of the time, and then only at terminals. Almost half of the service is held to no standard at all.
Trip
Scheduled Time / Headway
Actual Time / Headway
1
2:00
2:00
2
2:30 / 30m
2:35 / 35m
3
3:00 / 30m
3:00 / 25m
4
3:30 / 30m
3:35 / 35m
5
4:00 / 30m
4:00 / 25m
The TTC does not have any planned meets in its night network, and these would require scheduled, protected departure times enroute, not the current catch-as-catch-can arrangement. On a half-hourly base and with long routes, the gaps between buses can vary a lot, and riders cannot count on their arrival. This is a common annoyance on the daytime network, but on the night routes where a missed bus can make a large difference in trip time, this should be unacceptable.
Most night services operate every 30 minutes, although there are exceptions on both the bus and streetcar networks. That service level is provided generally from 2am onward to about 4am, later on some routes depending on when demand begins to build up for the morning. There is also some overlap of daytime and night time route number usage, although the TTC has been sorting out its schedules for consistency in past months.
Some routes do achieve a narrow band of headways around 30 minutes for terminal departures, although this band widens along the route just as it does with daytime service. However, some routes have erratic headways even near their terminals, but the standards are lax enough that these still can count as mostly “on time” in reports of service quality.
For all that the night services are supposed to be for shift workers and the night economy, reliability leaves much to be desired because, like so much TTC service, the time a vehicle will arrive is unpredictable. The situation varies from route to route as the sample in this article will show. Some routes are not too bad, but still leave riders vulnerable to missed trips and connections. Others are a real mess with 307 Bathurst taking the prize here. (There are likely competitors for that title, but I have not worked through every route yet. Be patient, gentle reader.)
May is an ideal month usually free of major storms, hot or cold, and conditions are about as good as one can expect. Service in February will not be as good as the examples shown here.
The TTC’s common bugbear/excuse for erratic service, traffic congestion, does not apply to these night services. Uneven headways are caused by lack of line management, the absence of a policy to maintain on time performance along routes, and in a minority of cases by schedules that are too tight to allow for terminal recovery time.
Through this series, I will review the quality of night service provided on the TTC system. This will take a while, and the articles will appear as time permits in between other topics.
Note: This is a long article with a lot of charts. I don’t expect most people to read every word or review every route. For some, this might validate their own experience. For others, it will show the variations across the network. Happy reading.
The TTC continues to issue notices of Restricted Speed Zones (RSZ) for the subway system. Some appear and disappear in short order, while others are extremely long-lived. I have been tracking the status of these since early 2024, and the charts below show where and when the zones were in place.
Some areas have had RSZs in place continuously for over a year. The TTC has not given any indication of when these will be repaired, although the list has thinned out over the past year.
The departing interim CEO has claimed that 12 RSZs will be a normal situation. This might be credible if problem areas appeared and disappeared quickly, but this is only the case for some of the zones listed here.
A related problem is that some of these areas have been in bad shape for an extended period thanks to deferred maintenance and the complexity of repairs. TTC management has mused about extended shutdowns to attack these problems, but without any specifics, and especially regarding replacement services.
Where the symbols “>” or “<” are used, the RSZ is only in one direction. Where “<>” is used, the zone applies both ways. The charts are broken by year with 2024 on the top, 2025 below. The dates correspond to my visits to the website.
The Design Review Panel at Waterfront Toronto recently considered the proposed design for the surface portion of the Waterfront East LRT and Queens Quay reconfiguration now that it has reached the 60% level.
Updated June 6 at 4:10pm:
The presentation decks from the meeting will not be posted on Waterfront’s site, but I have set up a page on this site where those interested can access them. There is far more information about the designs in the presentation decks than I have included here.
This article focuses on aspects of the design affecting the Waterfront East LRT project (WELRT), one of several major City of Toronto priorities that is not yet funded. Toronto hopes to see money for this in the Federal government’s collection of key infrastructure projects, but nothing is certain.
How much of this design will survive the inevitable “value engineering” and reduce acres of green to boring concrete remains to be seen.
Responsibility for this project is split:
The segment from Union south to Queens Quay is a TTC project, but work on that has stopped at 30% design pending certainty about funding.
The segments on Queens Quay East, Cherry and Commissioners are split between the Port Lands Flood Protection project (funded) and the WELRT (not funded). Waterfront Toronto is responsible for design of these segments.
Two early works, shown in light blue in the map above, are the reconfiguration of the Yonge Street Slip and the extension of Queens Quay east from Small Street (where it now veers north) to Cherry Street. Readers may recall the overblown Sidewalk Labs proposal for the land around Parliament Slip and south onto Ookwemin Minising (formerly Villiers Island). This design round is far more in keeping with the style and scale of Queens Quay West’s renewal.
In its initial implementation, the WELRT will go as far as the Commissioners Street crossing of the new Don River. Tracks on Cherry will be extended south from Distillery Loop through a new portal under the rail corridor to connect with the line on Queens Quay east from Bay Street. Future expansion in various ways is possible, but how soon this might occur is anyone’s guess given the state of transit funding and the uncertainty of land development schemes. Options include:
Southern extension via Cherry to Polson Street
Eastern extension to a planned Broadview extension and thus to:
Leslie Barns via Commissioners
East Harbour Station on the Ontario Line and beyond to existing trackage on Broadview at Queen Street
This was a design presentation, and issues of constructability and eventual implementation of the WELRT are beyond its scope.
Steve Munro 