In addition to the Queen West diversion I wrote about yesterday, the TTC has announced other changes affecting streetcar routes. These are hidden on the “Construction Notices” page which does not automatically link articles to the route schedule pages. Riders used to looking under “Service Changes” would not find these.
501 Queen Update
While the Queen cars are diverted to King for Hydro work in Parkdale, track repairs will occur on Queen at Brock and at Sorauren during the week of September 21 to 28.
Effective November 1, 501/301 Queen cars will divert both ways via Coxwell, Gerrard and Broadview for rail reconstruction on Queen between Leslie and Vancouver (west end of Russell Carhouse, east of Greenwood).
512 St. Clair Update
The Metrolinx work on the rail bridge at Keele Street is complete, streetcar overhead restoration is in progress.
Track repairs on St. Clair between Bathurst and Vaughan will require a complete replacement of streetcar service for the period from September 28 to October 3.
From September 28, buses will operate on 512/312 St. Clair from Gunn’s Loop to St. Clair Station streetcar platform.
Streetcar service over the full route will resume on October 3.
The 512B shuttle from Gunn’s Loop to Lansdowne Station, and the extension of 340 Junction to Oakwood Loop will continue to October 31.
506 Carlton Update
Track repairs on the Gerrard Street bridge at the Don Valley will run from 11pm on Thursday, October 8 for about 10 days (to the weekend of October 17/18).
506/306 Carlton shuttle buses will continue to run on Gerrard.
This effectively extends the Carlton diversion around work between Yonge and Church east from Parliament to Broadview via Dundas.
The TTC does itself no favours with all these diversions and especially how they are communicated and managed. It’s part of a larger pattern of neglect of the streetcar system and makes me worry if a politician seriously proposes closing the system there will be little political will to fight to keep it open. If the rolling stock wasn’t so new I’m pretty confident the future of the streetcar system would be in question.
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The Queen car sounds like a fun trip as long as you don’t have to be somewhere at a certain time.
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If you have nothing to do and lot’s of time in which to do it then take the streetcar!
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reply to Steve | September 23, 2026 at 2:57 pm:- Long ago, in the “good old days” the TTC kept those streetcars running no matter what:- they would put a temporary third track beside the main tracks and divert trams onto the temp track and they would be very quick in renovating the main tracks. There just were not enough buses to replace the trams plus hardly anyone commuted by car:- cars were just for occasional trips and many people actually put their cars up on blocks in their garages for the winter. Only main streets got ploughed with snow-sweepers doing much of the ploughing and side-streets became clogged with snow which settled down into several inches of ice. Believe it or not:- in mid-September of 1921 2,000+ workers plus plenty of steam shovels and little dump trucks derscended on Yonge St and totally renovated the old tracks from Union Station to just north of the CPR station in Rosedale (ca 6 km) to accommodate the new and much heavier Witt cars and they did all of this in only 10 days but they kept the old Yonge cars running all the while because hardly anyone had a car and basically city-buses did not exist yet. Those were the days!
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With so many streetcar diversions and streetcar detours, one would think that the TTC (and the city) would make sure that the streetcar track switches would be the “best” quality and heavy duty that they would take.
Steve: Sadly, switches used for diversions are not always electrified, and definitely have no signal priority for all the extra turns the streetcars have to make.
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