This is an update from previous articles about the 511 Bathurst Streetcar showing the effect of operational changes in recent months. These include:

• A shift from 10-minute to 6-minute headways for daytime service effective mid-November 2025.
• Implementation of red transit-only lanes on Bathurst south from Dundas in Fall 2025.
• Increased headway supervision to reduce bunching and gaps.

These effects took place concurrently, and it is difficult to tease apart the individual effects especially as seen by riders. For example, bunching produces wide gaps in service, but these can be reduced both by better headway regulation and by more frequent scheduled service. Reserved lanes can reduce fluctuations in travel times leading to less irregularity in headways. Some of these effects were seen years ago with the implementation of the King Street transit corridor. This is not a transit epiphany, but rather a rediscovery of what is needed to ensure reliable service.

The first part of this article reviews travel times over various parts of the route from January 2024 to February 2026. Between November 2024 and June 2025, the south end of the streetcar route was diverted for construction. Data for this period is included in the charts only for locations north of King which had streetcar service through the entire 2+ year period.

The second part of the article reviews headways (the interval between cars) at key locations. There is a consistent degradation in headway reliability between the southern terminal at Exhibition and Richmond Street northbound, and this exists even after reserved lanes were in place over the entire distance.

The time saving of transit priority schemes can be undone by unevenly spaced service and the extra wait times this causes. Moreover, because a “gap car” typically has heavier than average loads, more riders experience waits and crowding than would be shown in average counts that the TTC typically publishes.

Another important point is that delays and irregularity are not just a peak period issues, but can affect service at midday and through the evening. (This can also affect weekends, but I have not included them here.) On 511 Bathurst, there is a quite striking “heartbeat” pattern with extended travel times almost always on Friday evenings on the south end of the route due to congestion in the Entertainment District. This substantially disappeared after the implementation of red lanes in the area.

Buckets of red paint alone will not solve reliability issues without a culture of regularly spaced service. Note that this is quite different from “on time performance” where staying “on time” can actually lead to erratic spacing when what is needed is headway regulation. Moreover, TTC standards allow some variation in departures giving a window up to five minutes late while still being “on time”. With cars scheduled every six minutes, bunched service does not ring any alarm bells.

This article is the first in the series of review of routes where transit priority measures have been implemented.

After the red lanes are extended north to Bloor Street, I will publish an update to this article.

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