On June 4, 2025, new reserved bus lanes were installed on Queens Quay westbound from Sherbourne to Bay, and eastbound from Jarvis to Sherbourne. The TTC projected travel time savings of up to 5 minutes, and more reliable service for riders using routes on this roadway including 114 Queens Quay East, 75 Sherbourne, 65 Parliament and 202 Cherry Beach.

Now that the June 2025 tracking data are available, this article reviews the actual change, if any, in travel times and headway consistency. For historic context, the data presented here go back to May 2024 when the 114 Queens Quay East route was split off from the south end of 19 Bay.

Here is a map showing the affected routes and location of the new red lanes.

Over the period before red lane implementation, the 114 Queens Quay East service suffered from schedule problems with an unrealistic high scheduled speed. This was reduced in October 2024, and then raised again recently in anticipation of red lane benefits. The current scheduled speed is not as high as the original design in May 2024. Service frequency has also been changed from time to time mainly in response to seasonal fluctuation, but in some cases to “stretch” buses over a longer running time. (Details later in the article.)

The original eastern terminus was an around-the-block loop via Logan, Lake Shore and Carlaw to Commissioners. This was changed to Lake Shore Garage (the Wheel-Trans garage on Commissioners west of Leslie) to provide a better, off-street location.

Service until the October 2024 schedule change was extremely erratic, especially in the PM peak, as buses could not maintain the original running times. Since October, there has been little change at most times of the day including in June 2025 after red lane implementation.

There is a very strong day-of-the-week effect in the PM peak for westbound travel times on Queens Quay with midweek days being the worst. In June, the worst of the peaks are down from April levels, but that month was unusually bad. There is not yet enough accumulated data to establish whether there will be a permanent “shaving” of peak travel times through the red lane area.

There is an analogy here to the King Street project where the travel times under normal circumstances changed little, but the peaks on days when there was a disruption or special event were shaved off improving overall reliability.

Any analysis of the benefits of the red lanes must be careful not to cherry pick “good” and “bad” days for comparisons.

The data here provides mainly a “before” view of service on 114 Queens Quay East. I will update these charts in the Fall when full traffic conditions have resumed.

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