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.
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.
Steve Munro 
They better hope there’s not a situation that blocks Gerrard Street before the morning build up of service. That almost happened a decade ago after the grocer at Broadview Gerrard burned down when the Broadview Queen intersection was supposed to be in the middle of a replacement.
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Steve, just as one project is just-about completed, Bathurst-Fleet-Lakeshore, another project further west on Lakeshore will soon begin.
The entire length of the “507 Long Branch” streetcar route will operate with shuttle buses from June 23 to July 8, and the reason for this is track replacement.
Steve: It will be spot work only. The whole line was fairly recently rebuilt. Also, this change was announced very late in the day and was not included in the TTC’s weekly wrap-up of coming construction work.
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Unless I’m remembering wrong, the Long Branch loop and the Gardiner underpass have both been paved. So why are the replacement buses using The Queensway/Park Lawn from the regular bus loop? Both these streets can be traffic disasters. This does not bode well for the bustitution’s reliability.
Steve: Paved they might be, but I am not sure buses could pass on the curve within the tunnel. There is also the need for buses to physically get between the streetcar right-of-way and the street. The alternative street route via Lake Shore and Windermere was used in the past.
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Lake Shore and Windermere were used for through 501 buses, Neville to Long Branch. It was never used for 507 shuttles for the obvious reason that you can’t get there from the Humber bus loop.
Before the loop and tunnel were paved, the 507 shuttles used the Queensway/Park Lawn routing, but there was also a (probably underutilized) bus providing service along Lake Shore over to Palace Pier I suppose, to cover off those unserviced stops (2111 and 2155 Lake Shore).
The notice is up on the TTC’s website but of course it makes no mention of the two stops that are losing service (basically anyone who wants to stop somewhere on Lake Shore east of Park Lawn). Unlike previous notices.
I believe that it is a level exit to the street from the Gardiner underpass now, so buses should be able to make it through. I wonder if some of the rationale for the paving done was to accomplish just this. Well, if so, they have forgotten about it.
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I thought work was recently done along Long Branch for the 501/507. Didn’t they add a new turning loop on Kipling?
Steve: They added the ability to turn back westward from Kipling Loop, but that makes no change for the part of the route east from Kipling to Humber. This is likely spot repair work, not major track replacement.
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There were 30 minute headways between replacement buses during the midday on day 1.
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Steve, thank you for your sterling work in keeping the spotlight on transit in this city. As a long time resident of South Etobicoke, more than 25 years, I’m confused as to how TTC can justify the number of times they’ve found it necessary to rip up the car tracks between Humber and Long Branch. This current track work at Park Lawn: I’m confused as to how/why this even happens so soon after the cars started running again. Is there any rationale or published explanation other than ‘track work’?
Thanks again
Steve: You’re welcome! No, there is no explanation for this beyond “track work”. Of course if they ever build Park Lawn Loop as part of the Christie’s site development, it will be torn up again.
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