This article updates a series of posts looking at the 7 Bathurst bus and the effect of transit priority changes made on that route. Originally the City and TTC had proposed red lanes from Bathurst Station north to Eglinton. This was substantially changed to parking and turning restrictions, and the elimination of some transit stops. The changes predominantly affected northbound travel and in the interest of brevity, I have included mainly northbound data here. The changes implemented were:

• No stopping on the east side of Bathurst between Eglinton and Bathurst Station North Exit from 2:00pm to 7:00pm, weekdays, and from noon to 7:00pm, weekends, except public holidays.
• No left turns northbound from 7:00am to 7:00pm Monday to Saturday, except public holidays (Toronto Transit Commission vehicles excepted), at Bathurst & Davenport northbound, and at Bathurst & Dupont southbound.
• The existing no left turns restriction northbound at Bathurst & Dupont from 7:00am to 9:00am weekdays was removed.
• Concurrently with these changes, the TTC removed stops from the route, mostly north of St. Clair, with the premise that fewer stops would make faster trips. The actual effect varies depending on how heavily a stop is used, whether each bus or only some trips actually stop there, and whether there is an associated traffic signal that could compound the delay of serving a stop.

A saving of 1/3 in travel times has been claimed between Bathurst Station and Dupont, but this is not supported by actual tracking data. There may be best case comparisons where there is a 1/3 saving, but this does not apply across the board. The primary intent, as explained in the presentation to Council at the time, was to improve the reliability of travel times, not to speed up service.

A major issue on Bathurst is that the service is infrequent (generally every 10 minutes) and very unreliable. How much road capacity should be dedicated to such a route by comparison with other priority implementations such as on King Street or Eglinton Avenue East?

The first set of charts in this article shows the evolution of travel times between Barton (just north of Bathurst Station), St. Clair and Eglinton. The second compares April 2026 with April 2025 in detail. The third reviews the history of headway reliability on the route.