The City of Toronto has announced that work at King & Dufferin is finished and the intersection will reopen to traffic on Wednesday, October 29 after 7pm.
Regular service will be restored on 29/929/329 Dufferin, and the 503 Kingston Road bus will be extended west from Joe Shuster Way (east of Dufferin) to Roncesvalles at 5am on Thursday, October 30.
TTC will test the new track and overhead during the week of November 3 and will restore 504 King and 508 Lake Shore services from their current Shaw/Queen diversion when the intersection is cleared for streetcar operation.
Meanwhile, the TTC CEO’s Report notes that six minute or better service will come to 505 Dundas and 511 Bathurst from 7am-7pm 7 days/week starting November 16.
Steve Munro 
Hi Steve: left a comment but it doesn’t appear in box as I can’t see any button to push it back…. So here it is again.
I see loads of streetcars idling at Connaught every day and yet buses continue on the 503 streetcar route. What is the problem? Why are streetcars not back on this route? You mentioned something about lack of drivers in the summer. Surely this isn’t still the case?
Thx Paul archer
Steve:
The 503 remains as a bus also because it is covering for various diversions. The roadwork west of Queen & Broadview was supposed to start this month but was pushed back to early November. The 503 will run through the construction zone (along with the 504D bus) and will provide service on Queen to Parliament connecting with the Queen car coming down Parliament from Dundas. The 503 will then swing south to King. This arrangement will continue to next Spring. Other diversions next year also involve a mix of bus and streetcar operations in the east end. I will be covering these in an article about the 2026 Network Plan that was just released today. To read it in advance, go to this link.
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Hi Steve,
Ever since the Oct 12th changes to 504 King, the 504A has been short turning quite frequently to Spadina when going eastbound because of the bunching with the 504B. When heading westbound, 504A short turns at Roncy quite often too and is stuck in traffic with the 501 between Roncy and Shaw. Hopefully this will stop with the 504A returning fully to King (west of Distillery) with 504B returning to Dufferin Gate. But I’m thinking there will still be short turns at Spadina because they’ll all be in Distillery Loop and maybe less short turns westbound at Roncy?
And do you know if they electrified all the switches at King and Dufferin? Most of August, the 504 and 503 operators were getting out all the time to manually switch it (instead of having someone do it like seen on King and Bathurst). It caused awful bunching and was worsens by congestion.
Thanks
Steve: The typical situation after an intersection rebuild is that at least some of the switches are not electrified because the wiring has not been connected up. King and Church was an exception, but this is one of those “oversights” that can afflict service. Only one switch at Dufferin is critical, the west to south, but whether it will actually be reactivated remains to be seen.
The diversion along Queen from Shaw to Roncesvalles causes a lot of delay to the 504s because traffic there is generally slower than on King, and this is compounded by road traffic diverting around the closure at Dufferin Street.
With no active management of the merging of 504A/B service at Bathurst, bunching is common and a perfect excuse to turn 504A cars back at Spadina. This puts a heavier load on the 503 buses which I often see packed with riders at all hours.
Service on Ronces is erratic due both to the short turns you mention and bunching of cars. 20-30 minute gaps are not uncommon.
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Hi Steve,
Thanks for replying.
There’s conflicting information of where the 503 is going to loop in the west in the coming weeks and months. Will 503 be looping in Sunnyside until the 504 returns to King west of Shaw? And then loop at Dufferin Gate with the 504B? Or will it continue to be at Sunnyside until next year. Next year’s watermain diversions show the 503 is looping at Dufferin Gate. The original CNE diversion had it looping at Sunnyside but it short turned at Dufferin St.
As an aside the CNE diversion combined with King and Church construction was awful for eastbound passengers on King. 504 diverted at Shaw leaving Shaw to Spadina for the 503. There was no consistency of when the 503 would resume service. It would be out of service right when it reaches Dufferin then divert via Queen and Shaw. Sometimes it restarted service at the King and Shaw stop. Sometimes they don’t pick up passengers until Strachan.
Will they have 503 buses at Dufferin Gate for the FIFA and CNE diversions? or there would be too much congestion with 29/929 short turns at Dufferin Gate too and use the same diversion as last year. I’m assuming the Sunnyside Loop diversion made the route too long and had to short turn at Dufferin.
Thank you.
Steve: To add to the potential confusion, the TTC’s 2026 plan includes a review of the extended 503 service and concludes that it might be discontinued because it is not cost effective. However, there is a stay of execution because they realize that having that route as an overlay on the 501 and 504 during construction projects is useful. There are other issues with diversion and service management. Anyone who has seen te 503 buses on King will know that they are packed because there are not enough of them. Indeed a common thread in the 2026 plan in comments from riders and operators is that many routes are crowded. Nowhere in the plan do they actually address this.
More to follow when I publish my write-up of the 2026 plan.
As for 503 streetcars returning, I would not hold my breath.
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I had the pleasure of being in a 503 bus within a train of 4, which became 5, this afternoon. It certainly didn’t seem very crowded to me! There were no westbound buses between Parliament and Dufferin though.
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503 has much better service now with buses as your friend L Wall confirms in his comment. Leave the 503 alone as it is, it is working better than when streetcars were serving this particular route.
Steve: Every time I see a 503 bus, it is packed with riders, and sometimes I do not even try to board. If you call that “working better”, you are not allowing for the effective service cut the TTC imposed with the mode conversion. Also, there is a good chance that if it survives as a route, it will go back to daytime only service and will only serve the east side like the historic version of the 503, with the Coxwell bus on evenings and weekends, and a reduction of combined streetcar service on Queen and King east.
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As is to be expected, the TTC has made no effort to deal with the route numbers on their transit stop signage on the parts of the 503 route that are not used (Church & Wellington). One has the awful suspicion that those who plan routes are unaware that TTC Stops now have route numbers so a change in a route ought to also involve some work on the stop signage.
Then there are the ‘temporary’ cardboard Stop signs that are never removed – there is one on Front Street (just east of Lower Sherbourne) announcing the 121 will arrive there – the diversion this applied to ended 6-8 weeks ago and despite 2 notes to TTC complaints it is still there. (The fact that they now seem to attach these temporary signs with zip ties – rather than their old stand-by, string – means that these signs don’t just fall off by themselves!
Steve: The need to change stop signage does actually show up in the “to do” list in the internal service change notices, but this does not always happen. Ad hoc diversions are not organized by Service Planning and so signage installation and removal depends on another group. It’s very hit-and-miss. Today I had the experience of waiting at a stop at Yonge and Eglinton that was installed in front of the new Eglinton Station entrance, and some buses even stop there, but some blew right by because it’s officially not in service despite not being bagged as such. Paper notices, if there are any, don’t last long of course. There is a quite distressing attitude at TTC about this sort of thing.
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Interesting that the plan is to bump service on Dundas and not Carlton. In the past, Carlton generally had more frequent service, and it definitely ran later (I seem to recall that the last Dundas cars through downtown were not much after midnight). Well, Carlton was 24 hours; Dundas was not.
Steve: I think that the choice is also driven by Carlton having two construction projects in 2026.
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I see that you have quietly avoided covering the latest TTC report which shows that buses provide far superior service to streetcars.
Spadina streetcars with their own right of way have been found to be slower than walking. King streetcars even with the entire road reserved for streetcars have been found to be slower than walking. Thanks to streetcars, only one lane is available for traffic in both directions and yet buses when substituting for streetcars on St Clair tend to be significantly faster than streetcars even though that the streetcars have lanes reserved for themselves.
Whenever reports come out that expose the truth about these ultra-slow streetcars, you quietly fail to cover them. You don’t stand for good transit, you stand for streetcars no matter what whether they provide good transit or not (HINT: they don’t).
Steve: You have very greatly distorted the situation to suit your argument. First off, streetcars are not as slow as walking except in situations where traffic is allowed to become so snarled that nothing, not even buses, can move. This was the case on King Street while the City sat on its hands and allow a complete snarl of intersections before implementing traffic wardens to force motorists to actually obey signals. Various construction projects, some of which have not been well-coordinated by the City, hae further fouled up streetcar services.
The bus routes look good by comparison because there are so many of them that don’t have any construction or traffic obstacles. This raises the on time stats for that mode.
It was recently revealed that a large proportion of the so-called transit priority signals do not actually work thanks to lack of maintenance, again by the City. Toronto finds so many ways to screw over transit service while talking a good line about how important it is.
Not to let the TTC off the hook, there are big problems with lethargic streetcar operations thanks to track conditions and an overabundance of concern with safety. This was not always the case, but TTC has let itself run down for many years.
As for streetcars being capable of providing good service, there are many, many systems world wide that put the lie to your claim. The problem here is that the streetcars are not allowed to achieve what they could, and neither the City or TTC seem to care because motorists come first.
BTW I have not “avoided” the latest report. There is a lot on the agenda for the coming Board meeting, and that is only one of many reports that I will be writing up.
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At least the signage for the 72A seem to have finally disappeared for the extended route that ran to King and Parliament. I think some of the stop signs for the downtown express routes were finally taken down as well.
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Steve: As for streetcars [not] being capable of providing good service, there are many, many systems world wide that put the lie to your claim.
Yes of course your streetcars can compete with the Shanghai Maglev and Beijing Metro, right? Canada is lagging behind. 15 years to build one streetcar line (Eglinton) and it is not even open yet. In contrast in only 2 to 3 years, China builds a state of the art, ultra-modern, and vast underground subway system. It is clear that China has a competitive advantage in building infrastructure and countries all over the world are inviting Chinese firms to build their amazing infrastructure, why don’t we ask China for help?
Steve: What China does with maglev intercity trains has nothing to do with surface transit in Toronto. As for the cock-up that is the Eglinton line, the issue there is incompetent project management and construction, compounded by political delays.
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Hello Steve,
TTC put out a service change alert saying the 503 is being shortened to Dufferin Gate Loop effective Nov 6th. But there was no update page for the 504/508 on service advisories, streetcar alerts, the service changes pages, the King Dufferin construction pages either.
In the last few days since it was extended to Roncevalles Ave and Queen at least a quarter of the 503 buses (especially during rush hour) have been short turning at Joe Shuster Way using the temporary construction loop.
Does this mean the 504/508 is returning to normal service or there just won’t be any service between Dufferin and Roncevalles? Thanks.
Steve: This strikes me as a case of an “ooops” by TTC Communications. As of this morning, November 6, I still see 503 buses running to Sunnyside on Nextbus, with the occasional one short turning further east probably due to lack of running time to make the trip beyond Dufferin. The 504 King cars are still on Queen west from Shaw. TTC was supposed to validate the track at Dufferin early this week so that streetcar service could be restored to King, but obviously they have not yet given the “all clear”.
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I have also seen some 504A buses heading to Dundas West subway on Roncesvalles recently. (Once a train of three of them.) Don’t know if they came via Queen or via King, or if they were on Nextbus.
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Looks like streetcars are running through King and Dufferin today, and 504B is back at Dufferin loop.
Steve: Thanks for the update. The TTC has posted a notice giving today as the effective date.
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Hi Steve,
Is there a reason why the 503’s last stop is still Joe Shuster Way (then looping via Mowat/Liberty/Fraser)? The latest update from TTC has them going to Dufferin Gate Loop, but they aren’t going that west.
People are getting mad that they’re getting dropped off early and forced to walk the extra distance or wait for a 504B.
Thank you.
Steve: Yes, except for a brief period on November 11, the buses are still turning back, but there’s no notice about this. I am waiting for feedback from the TTC on this.
Update: TTC confirms that the 503 buses are not running to Dufferin Loop “for route management purposes”. I believe that there is a problem with bus congestion at the loop with 29/929s laying over and blocking the 503s.
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