Starting after Labour Day in September, the TTC will rebuild the track at the King-Dufferin intersection. This work is expected to take about six weeks.
The project is left over from work on King West in 2024 when it could not be completed as planned due to supply problems. It was erroneously reported that the 2024 project finished “early” when in fact this was due to the scope change.
Transit services will be significantly changed in this area.
Note that the diversions for King-Church construction are expected to end before King-Dufferin work begins, and transit services on the eastern part of King will be back to normal.
Route changes at King-Dufferin:
- Routes diverting east of Roncesvalles via Queen and Shaw to King:
- 504A King streetcars from Distillery Loop to Dundas West Station
- 304 King night cars from Broadview Station to Dundas West Station
- 508 Lake Shore streetcars from Long Branch to Broadview Station
- No service on King between Mowat and Roncesvalles
- 504B King streetcars will operate from Broadview Station diverting from King via Bathurst to Wolseley Loop (at Queen).
- Kingston Road services:
- 503 Kingston Road converted to bus operation and cut back from Dufferin to loop via Mowat and Fraser.
- 303 Kingston Road night service suspended (it is not yet clear what will replace the 303 on Kingston Road)
- Dufferin bus services:
- 29 Dufferin buses will divert via Queen, Shaw and King looping via Mowat and Fraser.
- 929 Dufferin Express buses will terminate at Queen looping via Queen, Gladstone and Peel.
- No service on Dufferin south Queen nor through Exhibition Place to Princes’ Gate.
Parking and stopping provisions will change on Queen from Roncesvalles to Shaw, and on Shaw between Queen and King. Stopping will be prohibited on both sides of these streets seven days/week from 7:00 to 11:00am and 2:00 to 7:00pm.
Left turns will be banned from Shaw northbound at Queen and southbound at King. Left turns are now banned from King eastbound onto Shaw weekdays from 7:00 to 10:00am, and from 3:00 to 7:00pm. This will be extended to a ban from 7:00am to 7:00pm on all days.
Some existing parking spaces will be removed to make room for transit vehicles on Dufferin north of Queen, Peel, Mowat, Liberty, Fraser, and King. Details are in the report.
These changes will only last for the duration of the construction project.
The TTC plans to “conduct comprehensive targeted engagement to inform and educate customers, residents, local businesses, and other partners of the pending changes.” However, major changes are unlikely as this project is only two months away and temporary transit routes are already decided. The TTC does not yet have a page on its own site for this project.
This issue will be at Toronto & East York Community Council on July 8, 2025.
Steve Munro 
This is probably a dumb question…if the King / Church construction is expected to be finished before the King / Dufferin begins, why the need for buses for the 503 line? Can’t the streetcars go back to their regular route of Church-Wellington-York? Or am I missing something?
Steve: The 503 to almost-Dufferin provides through service for people in that area to King Street downtown. Streetcars could not go west of Shaw. Also, they are short of streetcar operators. We have oodles of streetcars, but no budget/staffing headroom to run them.
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If I understand right, the TTCs plans for King in next few years are:
2025.
Special track work Church & King – underway
Special track work Dufferin & King – Scheduled to start in September
2026
Special track work York & King – will they remember or plan for an extra curve here?
Bathurst to Spadina – tangent track
2027 & 2028
Spadina to Parliament – tangent track.
No idea if the special trackwork at King & Parliament need to be replaced nor what their plans are for east of Parliament.
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Will this finally bring to an end the yearly King St. Major diversions?
Steve: See the previous comment about future plans. No.
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Steve:
The past couple of months (due to the track and watermain work at the King-Church intersection), “503 Kingston Road” streetcar route has been extended westward to the Dufferin Gate loop. If it’s proven to be popular, this route/change could be made permanent.
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Is the city planning to install left-turn signals for transit turns onto and off Shaw?
(Rhetorical question, I expect.)
Steve: Yes, rhetorical, I expect. They really don’t seem to want to install special signals even though they would be beneficial generally to support ad hoc diversions.
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This intersection had the unusual red coloured beams underneath.
Steve: It was the first attempt at building special work with an elastic casing around the track. The Queen/King junction at the Don Bridge, which will be rebuilt this fall, was done at about the same time. Since then, TTC has progressed to a better material on the track as well as using pre-welded track panels to speed assembly on site. As for the “beams” (ties), they are painted green now.
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This will be useless if they simply do as they have during past bustitutions and replaced streetcars 1:1 with buses and ran them at the same 10 minute frequency.
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Montréal has added a lot of white bar signals to its streets, some of which help buses turn, but many of which serve simply to give buses a jump on other traffic by getting the white bar before the general green. This is not simply for super-special streets with “transitways” (like Pie-IX) but on ordinary busy streets with two or three bus routes. (Ch Queen Mary has quite a bit of this as I saw.)
Toronto can’t even implement white bar signals at known streetcar and bus turning locations.
Steve: Yes! There are many locations where there should be white bars on an “in case needed” basis, not something we agonize over with reports and weeks-long implementations. But, no, here we distract people with red paint battles while leaving most transit priority problems untouched.
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Speaking of streetcar op shortage, on a transit-oriented forum there have been statements that the TTC is very strictly enforcing all the different streetcar “safety” rules, ops getting disciplined or fired routinely. I shan’t quote as it’s hearsay, but neither would I be shocked, shocked to find this kind of rules-based mismanagement to be common at the TTC.
So it may be that any TTC op with some knowledge will just avoid streetcars.
Steve: This does not surprise me at all. I cannot help thinking that the TTC has a deep-seated bias to screwing up streetcar operations, and the only thing that keeps them running is (a) they are “green” and (b) it would cost a fortune they don’t have to replace them.
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Steve: the only thing that keeps them running is (a) they are “green” and (b) it would cost a fortune they don’t have to replace them.
They are not green when they require constant reconstruction of the infrastructure and need to be constantly rescued by diesel busses. If you want green, then you should advocate for bi-articulated electric busses like the ones running in many Asian countries such as China and India.
Steve: Subways need major reconstruction from time to time and use the same buses for replacement service. Two big problems with recent streetcar projects are: (a) bundling with overdue waterman projects making total closures much longer than just the track would require and (b) compounding effect of track, overhead and water project deferrals bringing on a “we must do this now” crisis.
Strictly speaking it does not take six weeks to rebuild an intersection but as that’s the standard length of a schedule period, that’s what they take. In a good sign the King Dufferin project is planned for only one period as nothing else is piggybacking on the track project.
Another point in this vein is that most intersections now have full foundations and their next round of renewals should not require complete excavation.
Finally, Toronto’s transportation services folks need to take advance planning and road/signal changes for these projects much more seriously rather than waiting to see what happens and then making fixes after the fact.
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Time to add the south-to-west curve at King West and Dufferin? Can complete the grand Union and more diversion flexibility.
Steve: It appears that there is a manhole cover (and access to something under the street) that is foul of a potential StoW curve.
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They seem to have parts of the track bed between Parliament and Sumach ripped up at the moment. Certainly something more than a spot repair.
Steve: But not as extensive as complete reconstruction.
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