With Line 5 Eglinton entering its second week of operation, comparison of LRT and bus speeds on the surface portion of the route is inevitable, especially among those who would prefer subways everywhere.

This article reviews the actual travel times in December 2025 and January 2026 for the bus service that was replaced by Line 5. This gives a variety of operating conditions including holidays and winter storms, and reflects stopping patterns and dwell times for the level of demand before Line 5 opened for business.

Actual bus travel times only bettered the scheduled LRT from mid-evening onward on weekdays, and were considerably longer in the PM peak. For trips to/from Kennedy Station, the LRT has an advantage of a more direct path into the station avoiding both the traffic signal at Kennedy Road and the roundabout bus route within the terminal.

The section of Eglinton where the LRT runs at the surface is uncongested during much of the day compared to other routes in the city. Some spots have slower bus travel times, but these do not persist. This is a challenge to “better” performance by the LRT unless it has some advantage over buses notably in faster speed during all operating periods, good priority at traffic signals and reliable travel times when the adjacent road is congested.

The potential for faster LRT trips through transit signal priority lies in the 2-4 minute range, an improvement of 10-20%, depending on how aggressively this is implemented. There are 14 traffic signals over the route between Ionview and the DVP, and a variety of locations with nearside, farside or no stops at these points. The Transit Signal Priority strategy should be tuned to the characteristics of each crossing.

This analysis does not include additional access time to LRT vs bus stops. This affects the surface section of Line 5 less than the underground section where both station spacing and vertical access times add to LRT journeys.

Detailed tracking data for Lines 5 and 6 are not available from the TTC although “next train” predictions are in their public data feed. This hampers analysis of the reliability and travel times of the new LRT lines.