On September 18, 2025, Toronto & East York Community Council will consider a report recommending a revised proposal for speeding up bus service on Bathurst Street.

• Report and Attachment 1 from the Director, Planning, Design and Management, Transportation Services on Improving the Speed and Reliability of the 7 Bathurst
• Attachment 2 – 7 Bathurst Travel Time Data

Back in July, the original proposal would have seen red transit-only curb lanes in both directions from just north of Bathurst Station to Eglinton Avenue. This proposal encountered substantial opposition, and the revised version is intended to improve transit and traffic operations when and where it is most needed in that segment of route 7 Bathurst Bus. There is no change proposed for the transit priority scheme for streetcars from Bathurst Station south to Lake Shore Boulevard.

The primary time and location of congestion affecting the south end of 7 Bathurst is in the afternoon, Mondays through Saturdays. To address this, the following changes are proposed:

• No stopping will be permitted on Bathurst Street northbound from the north exit of Bathurst Station to Eglinton Avenue from 2-7pm on weekdays, and 12-7pm on weekends.
• North-to-west left turns at Bathurst & Davenport will be banned from 7am-7pm Monday to Saturday, except holidays.
• South-to-east left turns at Bathurst & Dupont will be banned from 7am-7pm Monday to Saturday, except holidays.
• The existing 7am-9am ban on north-to-west left turns at Bathurst & Dupont will be removed.

The chart below shows the weekday and weekend travel time profiles for Bathurst Street with the existing and planned hours of “no stopping” overlaid.

Travel Time Details

Appendix 2 of the report includes charts showing how travel times vary by time, location and direction.

Travel times and the range of values are shown for three segments between Bathurst Station and Eglinton below.

Weekdays

Saturdays

Sundays

An important issue post-implementation will be not just the reduction in average travel times, but the degree to which the variation in times (the grey bars around the averages above) tighten up to provide more reliable trips over this route segment.

Demand Profiles

Appendix 2 also includes profiles of ridership along the route. These are interesting as an example of how a major route behaves, but also raise questions about how the benefit of red lanes was presented in the first place.

Each charts shows the ons and offs at each stop along the route. The grey lines across the chart show the accumulated load which varies as riders board and alight along the way.

7 Bathurst is a route with many transfer points, and the loads do not accumulate from the one terminal to another. For example, southbound in the AM peak, there are many who alight at Finch, Sheppard, Wilson and Lawrence. The accumulated load is actually higher north of Lawrence than it is at Bathurst Station.

The service on 7 Bathurst is 6 articulated buses/hour all day, every day. Based on the Service Standards, this corresponds to a design load of 462/hour peak (6 x 77) and 276/hour off peak (6 x 46). The number of hours covered by each interval is not shown, and therefore we cannot translate the values to riders/hour nor compare them to the Standards.

AM Peak

Weekday Midday

PM Peak

Saturday Afternoon

Sunday Afternoon

Overstating the Benefits

When touting the benefits of red lanes, it is common for the TTC to cite the total ridership on a route and factor this up based on assumptions of elasticity of demand relative to travel time.

Our transit assignment model uses two key inputs:

1. Transit network data – service levels, speed, and reliability from our CAD/AVL system (VISION).
2. Trip origins and destinations – from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey.

The model estimates door-to-door travel times and maps the routes taken. For RapidTO projects, the City uses traffic microsimulation to calculate travel time savings, which are then fed into our model. We apply service elasticity to estimate ridership increases:

• 1.5% increase for every 1% travel time reduction during peak periods
• 2% during midday
• 3% during evenings

The model also shows rider diversion—improved corridors attract riders from others. For example, RapidTO makes Dufferin and Bathurst more appealing, drawing riders from Line 1.

[Source: Email from TTC Media Relations August 21, 2025]

However, it is clear that many riders only travel for a portion of the route and will not be directly affected by any change between Eglinton and Bloor. They might enjoy an indirect effect if service reliability improves and wait times are shorter, but they cannot be counted in any model for increased ridership.

According to the TTC:

Improvements in transit travel time and reliability are expected to increase daily bus ridership by 23%, with 4,920 new riders. Of those new riders, 3,860 are riders attracted from other transit routes, and 1,060 are new transit riders. [Source: Transit Priority Measures on Dufferin Street and Bathurst Street, Table 2. p. 23]

The 4,920 “new riders” are in fact mostly diverted, not net new.

Claims of higher ridership and revenue mislead on three counts:

• A 23% increase in ridership, considering that many riders do not use the section south of Eglinton, is not credible given the expected changes in travel time and the elasticities the TTC uses.
• There are few “nearby” services that might contribute riders in the segment south of Eglinton. It is difficult to believe that subway riders would switch to the Bathurst bus.
• Riders who migrate between routes do not represent new revenue, and could drive up the need for service offsetting revenue from truly new riders.