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King Trackwork Diversion Effective June 22, 2025

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.

Source: TTC

Changes happening at the same time are:

  • 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.

7 thoughts on “King Trackwork Diversion Effective June 22, 2025”

  2. As a Downtown Liberal Elite, most of my travel around downtown, where I live, is on foot. I do, however hop on a bus or streetcar when going a little farther than normal or when I’m pressed for time. [grumpy old man yells at cloud] I was out the other day and wanted to get home a little sooner. However, every eastbound route that was within walking distance of where I was (streetcars on Queen, King streetcars, King streetcar replacement buses, and route 121) were essentially useless. TTC website gives very little guidance of the precise locations of diversions and zero info on where temporary stops exist so one can board the diverted vehicles. One has to wander and hope to spot a sign. There’s no way to check when a vehicle is arriving and the vehicles of suburbanites crammed onto the reduced number of roads that are open mean the diverted TTC vehicles are quite slow. I wound up walking home and it felt like they may as well have just cancelled the routes altogether. [/grumpy old man yells at cloud]. I’m fortunate that I rarely need to take a vehicle across downtown. Anyone who must regularly do so has my sympathies.

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  3. One thing they can do is have cars running back to Leslie take Dundas or College/Carlton where it makes sense to do so. Adding just a few more eastbound cars on Adelaide can make the situation much worse at the trailing end of PM peak into early evening.

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  4. One possible explanation could be:
    – 504 will continue to run Roncesvalles-King-Shaw-Queen-York-etc
    – 503 will run Dufferin-Queen-York-etc
    – shuttle bus will run… well it would make sense to have it run on King from Dufferin all the way to Yonge but maybe they think they can’t squeeze it through whatever is the restriction between Shaw and presumably Bathurst

    This makes a bit of sense if the track closure really is between Shaw and Spadina and they want to reduce number of left turns at Shaw. If 503 runs to Dufferin Gate, routing this way avoids turns at King and then at Shaw, and the 504 route would not change from as it is today.

    I expect the worst, though, and personally have given up on the 504 for the summer.

    Steve: What’s really frustrating in this is that whoever wrote the diversion notice and designed the map does not know where the routes are operating today. It is far too common that TTC puts out inadequate or erroneous info like this, including separate ntices for each route, and completely omitting the 504 and 501 streetcars, if only to say that they don’t change.

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  5. Typical TTC… not that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, but that the left hand doesn’t know there IS a right hand… still a couple of signs at Sheppard-Yonge station stating that a) Harlandale entrance will be open Oct. 10 last year, and the bus bay will be open late 2024… neither of which is true… for construction projects why don’t they just say re-open “whenever we get around to it”???

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  6. Yesterday I saw some people waiting, from the looks on their faces, endlessly, for a transit vehicle of any type at King and Niagara. I guess now we know they will be waiting until July 12. I’ll see if I can find them today or if they gave up and chose a different route.

    For what it’s worth, the only notice displayed at the stops indicates that the 508 is done for the summer.

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  7. This is exceptionally confusing, even by the usual standards of TTC streetcar diversion communication.

    Steve: Despite the slogan “doing diversions differently”, this is a monumental cock-up showing that the TTC still excels in some things.

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