September 21, 2026 – Steve Munro

The TTC has announced a diversion of 501/301 Queen streetcar service between Shaw and Roncesvalles for work by Toronto Hydro. This will begin at 9pm on September 21 and run until 4am on October 15.

I checked with TTC Media Relations that this is an all-day diversion for over three weeks, not the more common overnight diversion for smaller scale repairs.

Streetcars will run both ways via Shaw and King to the Queen/Roncesvalles intersection and then via their normal route west to Humber Loop. Buses will run on Queen between Bathurst (Wolseley Loop) and Roncesvalles (Sunnyside Loop).

This announcement appears only on the TTC’s Service Changes page, and is not linked from the schedule pages for routes 501 or 301 as of 3:15pm on September 21.

It is not yet clear how the eastbound transfer connection at Roncesvalles will work as the streetcar stop is farside and there is no stop on the west side of the intersection, only a small curb between the streetcar tracks and three eastbound traffic lanes.

Riders of the western branch of TTC’s Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina have suffered through long-standing areas of restricted speed opertion for years. However, the problem has crept onto the eastern branch is recent months making for very slow trips over the most heavily used part of the line.

On the past weekend (September 19-20, 2026), Line 1 was closed between St. Clair and College for track repairs, but this is only one in a seemingly unending series of works.

Subway service becomes less and less credible through many types of delay, but also the sense that nothing is done. Much debate recently in social media and now in election campaigns focuses on Platform Edge Doors (PEDs) whose supposed purpose is to keep riders off of the tracks (regardless of their motive) and resulting delays. An installation-in-progress at TMU (formerly Dundas) Station is laughably inadequate to this task.

Any goal of increasing transit use is doomed if the service offered is slow and unreliable. Without downplaying the potential value of PEDs, a far more pervasive problem is part of the daily subway experience – slow zones.

Here is the map of slow zones taken from the TTC’s site on Saturday, September 19. The “downtown” part of Line 1 is particularly bad, but the “Spadina” leg of the subway is close behind.