When the TTC talks about service levels, a common comparison is to the pre-pandemic period. I have reviewed this issue before:

• The Mythology of Service Recovery – November 2024 Update
• The Mythology of Service Recovery [September 2024]

This article presents an update on previous reviews to service levels in January 2026 comparing it both with January 2020, and with November 2024 to show what has changed over the past year. Also reviewed is the evolution of travel times on major routes to show the effect of congestion-related schedule changes from 2020 to 2026.

All headway and travel time data here come from the TTC’s Scheduled Service Summaries. An archive of these files is available on this site here.

The usual citation is the number of vehicle and train hours operated today versus the “before times”. Here are the raw numbers:

Planned Weekly Hours	Regular Service	Construction	Total
January 2020	185,825	7,068	192,893
January 2026	193,662	5,234	198,896

These values can be misleading because the 2026 and 2020 networks are not the same. Moreover, one vehicle hour does not provide as much service to riders today because of slower operation and increased recovery times in the schedules.

From a rider’s point of view what matters is the headway, the time between vehicles.

Although many routes have more frequent service today than in 2020, this is not universal. Riders do not travel on “average” routes, but on those needed for each trip. Their experience could reflect a decline in scheduled service on their routes. This is compounded by reliability and the perennial problems of bunching and gapping.

The table below compares January 2020 with January 2026 weekday headways. Five schedule periods are shown in the major groups reading across. Within these are the 2026 and 2020 headways, the percentage change, and the change in wait time.

Where the 2026 and 2020 times are unchanged, the cells are blank to avoid clutter. Otherwise, the 2026 headways are colour coded:

• Green: Improved
• Pink: Reduced
• Blue: New service
• Red: Service discontinued

There is a lot of pink in these charts indicating that many routes are less frequent today than six years ago.

Note that in January 2020, 503 Kingston Road and 505 Dundas operated with buses, and headways then reflected the lower capacity of those vehicles.

Saturday comparisons:

Sunday comparisons:

The full table is in this pdf.

January 2026 vs November 2024

Over the past year, service has improved on many routes, but with the TTC’s constrained budget, this comes with a trade-off where some routes see cuts while others see improvement.

Weekdays

Saturdays

Sundays:

The full table is in this pdf.

Travel Times 2026 vs 2019

The charts in this section compare travel times in January 2026 with values in 2019 and, for streetcars, with 2013. In almost every case, scheduled travel times in 2026 are longer than in 2019.

The times shown are for round trips, and they are subdivided into scheduled scheduled driving and recovery times.

Streetcars

Comparative values for streetcars are shown for 2013 before the introduction of the Flexity fleet and imposition of some of the more restrictive practices at streetcar junctions.

Note that travel times are longer in 2026 even on St. Clair and Spadina which have reserved lanes.

501 Queen times are noticeably longer due to provision for the Ontario Line diversion downtown.

Buses

Like the streetcar routes, bus routes show a growth in scheduled travel times in almost all cases.