Also on the agenda is the quarterly financial report. I will review it in more detail in another article, but it includes material relevant to the Line 2 project
The modernization report updates the status of various projects, notably the proposed purchase of replacement trains for the T1 fleet on Line 2. Related projects include installation of Automatic Train Control, upgrades to Greenwood Yard, and various infrastructure changes to support future service increase.
Recent months have seen much hand-wringing over the timing of a subway car purchase and the state of both the aging T1 fleet and the 1960s-era signal system. The newfound urgency at TTC is due, in part, due to deferral of an entire package of Line 2 upgrades in past years.
A comprehensive plan was presented to TTC management’s Executive Committee in March 2017, but it sat on the shelf. [Note: This plan is not available online.] The plan included many components including a new fleet with a delivery window of 2026-2030, and conversion of Line 2 signalling to Automatic Train Control. Trains, signals and other infrastructure continue to age, costs rise, and the first of the replacement trains is not expected until 2030.
With later delivery of new trains, the existing T1s require another five-year overhaul cycle for continued service. This adds an estimated $163 million to overall costs which are already up due to inflation.
Thanks to the delay when the TTC and City were constraining the capital budget, the need for a Line 2 modernization was not “rediscovered” until 2023.
Toronto is now in the difficult position of having a huge appetite for transit capital, but with funding sources inadequate and uncertain beyond the immediate future. Assuming that each level of government will pony up one third of any project is a foolhardy basis for planning, and hard decisions will be needed about which projects can go ahead.
At a time when Toronto claims it wants to shift urban travel from cars to transit, the level of investment we will likely see will at best preserve existing operations and infrastructure.
Metrolinx work at Queen and Degrassi Streets will require a street closure and diversion of transit service during installation of a new bridge deck for the Lake Shore East GO corridor. As part of the Ontario Line work, the GO corridor will be raised to the now-standard elevation above roads it crosses. This work has been underway at various locations northward from Eastern Avenue along the corridor.
The Metrolinx work will begin on the evening of Friday, September 27 at 9pm, but the TTC will remove its streetcar overhead and power supply beginning on Thursday, September 26 at 9pm.
The Metrolinx work will end on the morning of Monday, September 30 at 5am, but streetcar service will not resume until Wednesday, October 2 at 4am to allow for reinstallation of streetcar overhead. A benefit of the new, higher bridge is that problems with passing trucks tearing down the overhead should cease.
TTC will run a shuttle bus service between River Street and Kingston Road, diverting both ways via Broadview, Dundas and Carlaw around the construction area.
This will affect the daytime and overnight services on 501/301 Queen and 503/303 Kingston Road.
TTC map:
Metrolinx map:
The TTC and Metrolinx notices for this work contain slightly different information. I have confirmed the dates shown above with TTC Media Relations.
With the arrival of an Interim CEO, Greg Percy, at the TTC, the CEO’s Report has been somewhat reformatted, although the overall content has not changed much. All of the performance metrics and associated commentary have moved to a separate file on the TTC’s CEO Report page.
The covering report is signed by Josh Colle, recently appointed as Chief – Strategy and Customer Experience Officer and by Percy. Further changes to format and content are in the works “to align with the new 2024-2028 Corporate Plan”.
In his introductory remarks, Greg Percy announces that there will be an open house and guided tour of the Hillcrest complex on Saturday, September 28. Details are available here.
Ridership Update
In the ridership update, the report notes that weekday boardings reached 2.6 million per day during the week ending September 7, a post-pandemic high since March. Note that this count is not the same as “rides” which are linked trips, in planning terms, from one point to another. “Boardings” are unlinked trips which count each transfer separately. Most ridership numbers cited by TTC, certainly from pre-pandemic times refer to daily trips, not boardings. Here is a sample trip:
Bus–Subway–Streetcar
That trip counts as one ride but as three boardings. When the fare structure was simpler, rides and fares tended to be the same thing because one fare bought one ride. However, with the arrival of passes and now with the two-hour fare, the distinction is much more vague. It is not clear how the TTC reconciles historical “riding” counts with the new fare structure.
This distinction has been misreported in the press where the terms are used interchangeably:
During the first week of September, the Toronto Transit Commission told CTV News Toronto that 2.66 million riders boarded local transit each day—a post-pandemic high since the last week of March 2024.
[…]
Out of all modes of public transportation, the TTC said weekday boardings were highest across its bus routes, with 1.30 million commuters per day. Comparatively, the streetcar saw 230,000 and the subway had 1.13 million riders.
Pre-pandemic, the TTC typically carried 1.6 million rides per day, with two record days being 2 million (Papal visit) and 2.7 million (Raptors win). The TTC is doing better in 2024 than past covid-era years, but it is most definitely not close to 100% ridership recovery across the board.
Bus, streetcar and subway demand are up 3%, 10% and 9% respectively compared to a year ago. The higher increase for the rail modes implies that the downtown area is starting to see a return of peak riding that had already bounced back in the areas served mainly by buses.
Boardings vary greatly depending on the mode and day of the week. Numbers in the metrics are from July which has typically lower demand due to vacations and the absence of student traffic. However, numbers in the main report are cited from early September. This can lead to confusion when monthly numbers are compared from the two sections.
Ridership and boardings are reported in detail in the metrics. Revenue rides to July 27 are reported as 237.6 million, 0.8 million above budget, 8% above 2023, and 79% of the pre-covid level.
Demand continued to vary across weekdays, with Tuesday to Thursday being the busiest, and Thursdays being 11% busier than Mondays. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, average weekday boardings in July were 84% for bus, 65% for streetcar, and 73% for subway. The busiest weekday, however, was 87% for bus, 68% for streetcar, and 77% for subway.
Weekday peak- and off-peak demand recovered to 67% and 79% of pre-pandemic levels in July, respectively; demand in AM and PM peak periods continue to make up about 52% of all-day weekday demand.
That 52% figure is extremely important. Although there is much focus on commuting travel, this is only slightly more than half of weekday demand. There are more off-peak and weekend hours, and so their demand is less concentrated, but these periods carry a lot of TTC’s riders.
Every few months, the TTC brings the cheery news that service is pushing ever closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Approved as part of the TTC 2024 Operating Budget, service investment will increase to 97% of pre-pandemic levels this fall, from 95% at the end of 2023. The first 1% increase occurred in the spring of 2024 and additional investment of 1% will be made through the fall.
These changes will be implemented alongside continued adjustments and reallocation of service to match capacity to demand. Overall, the changes will increase frequency, improve reliability, and strengthen connections throughout the city.
Riders waiting for their bus, streetcar or subway train might beg to differ.
This is an example of the “good news” mentality that overplays the achievement of the TTC and its recently-departed CEO, and contributes to the gap between publicity and day-to-day rider experience.
The basic problem is that the TTC measures “recovery” based on the weekly hours of scheduled service. This is not the same as the service riders see which is most easily expressed in buses/hour or in the scheduled interval between vehicles. (A 6 minute headway of buses is equal to 10 buses/hour.)
Over the years, service hours have grown because of traffic congestion (more buses are needed to provide the same frequency), recovery time (time for breaks at terminals), padding to avoid the need for short turns, and system expansion. None of these contributes more service to existing routes. These changes can inflate total hours needed to operate the network or, conversely, they can spread existing budgeted hours more thinly across routes.
A meaningful comparison looking route-by-route, time period-by-period, shows that in many cases the level of service, measured by frequency, has declined since January 2020, and in some cases the service is substantially worse. Details are shown later in this article.
A compounding factor to service reductions is the unreliability of service. Bad enough that buses and streetcars come less often, but when their spacing is not regular, gaps add considerably to waiting time and to crowding. In theory a route might have a scheduled number of vehicles per hour, but in practice their spacing causes most riders to jam on the first of the duo or trio that shows up. The average rider experience is a packed bus even if the average load over an hour meets standards. Few riders experience the relatively empty second and third buses in a pack. TTC reports crowding based on hourly averages without showing the variation between vehicles.
In brief, it is time for the TTC to start reporting service quality on a basis that corresponds to what riders see day-to-day in their travels. The current scheme may allow feel-good media events, but the contrast with actual experience undercuts the credibility of announcements.
There was also a report updating the status of work on past recommendations of the City’s Auditor General, but this was discussed mainly in camera. The Committee also asked for an update on fare evasion. Staff provided a brief overview of recent events and noted that a full report would be on the Board’s September 24 agenda.
Committee Chair Dianne Saxe continued her style of running a more activist meeting pressing management for details and urging more thorough, data-driven content behind reports and recommendations so that Board members have the ammunition needed to argue TTC positions.
This approach can be seen either as meddlesome, or as actual participation of Board members in understanding the organization under their direction. That balancing act can either encourage management to aim higher, or can force a retreat into inaction. With former CEO Rick Leary now departed, let us hope that management will be inspired.
The City/TTC project to rebuild utilities, track and the roadway on King Street between Dufferin and Shaw Streets has completed earlier than originally planned. The roadway is now open, and TTC will be restoring power to allow testing of its new tracks and overhead.
Streetcar service between Shaw and Roncesvalles on King will resume with the October schedule change on October 6. Affected routes will resume their normal destinations:
501 Queen will operate to Humber Loop.
504B King will operate to Dufferin Loop.
63 Ossington will resume its Liberty Village loop via Atlantic Avenue and King Street. (Although there was a proposal to change this route to use Dufferin Loop as a western terminus in the Service Plan, this is not being implemented.)
This project originally included the reconstruction of the King/Dufferin intersection, but this was deferred to 2025 as part of a planned water main and track replacement project from Dufferin Street west to Close Avenue.
According to the TOInview map of planned construction work, other water main and track projects affecting King Street in 2025 include:
The Church Street intersection
Shaw to Bathurst
Updated September 18, 2024 at 3:40 pm:
The 63 Ossington bus will revert to using Atlantic Avenue, and then King west to Roncesvalles on Monday, September 16 until October 5. From October 6 onward, the Ossington bus will loop east on King to Shaw, its original pre-construction route and streetcars will serve King Street.
The TTC has announced that Greg Percy has been appointed interim CEO effective September 9.
Percy had a 15 year career including the President of GO Transit and Chief Operating Officer of Metrolinx, and since 2019 has been Executive Vice President of CAD Railway.
At a meeting on Friday, September 6, 2024, the TTC Board is expected to appoint an Interim CEO replacing the just-departed Rick Leary for a period of at least six months. Their special meeting will occur online starting at 2pm, but discussion of the appointment will occur in private session with results to be announced following the approval.
This process took longer than originally expected back on June 20 when Leary announced his resignation. Moreover, there have been conflicting reports of whether an Interim CEO could also compete for the permanent role through a search process now underway. An established transit professional is unlikely to uproot his or her career for a short term assignment.
The role brings many challenges, but chief among them will be to right “the good ship TTC” not just from the cumulative effects of the pandemic, but of the Leary years’ damage to organizational culture. It is no secret that he stripped the TTC of many from the leadership team built by former CEO Andy Byford, and that his management style brooked no opposition.
The TTC Board was complicit through their inaction, notably after the scandal of the “near miss” incident near Osgoode Station, and only finally launched an investigation into Leary’s performance in Fall 2023 after a failed attempt to oust him by Chair Jamaal Myers.
Some Board members regard their job as setting overall direction and policy, and leaving running the organization to management. That sentiment is fine in theory, but it assumes that the Board is well informed, ensures that mechanisms to monitor the system’s health are in place, and establishes policy, not just as a rubber stamp. In this they have failed, and even the reconstituted Board in Mayor Chow’s term has not fully addressed several issues, notably service quality and the future operating budget.
If an Interim CEO does little more than keep the lights on and the CEO’s chair warm for an eventual replacement, the TTC will lose vital time when inaction really is not an option. Key issues face the TTC today.
Once again the Toronto International Film Festival will disrupt streetcar service downtown. This year, the effect is more severe because of already existing diversions and construction projects.
The TTC’s announcement of diversions is on their News page and on their Updates page in separate postings. The information differs between the two. There is also an announcement in their Service Advisories.
Updated September 5 at 1:20pm:
A map of the 504B service from Distillery to Woodbine Loop has been added to the Service Advisory. This advisory has been updated, but is still incomplete.
The table comparing the three notices has been modified to reflect recent revisions.
Updated September 5 at 7:50am:
The correct layout of King east diversions appears to be on the map in the Updates page which is included below. There are two services operating:
504A between Broadview Station and King & York via Church and Wellington.
504B between Woodbine Loop and Distillery Loop.
Updated September 4 at 10:00pm:
The three announcements are inconsistent, and the “Update” page for 504 King service in the east end does not make sense.
The TTC is setting a new record here for inconsistent public information. Here is a comparison of the claimed services.
Route
News Item
Update
Service Advisory
East of University
503 Kingston Rd
Turns back from York.
Turns back from York.
Turns back from York.
504A King
Turns back from York. No mention of Distillery District service.
See below. Original version was correct, but this was updated to a nonsensical routing.
Turns back from York. Broadview Station reroute not mentioned.
504B King
Broadview Stn to Distillery
Broadview Stn to Distillery
Turn back from York. No special routing mentioned originally, but a map showing the Distillery to Woodbine Loop service has been added.
303 Kingston Road
Not mentioned.
Turns back from York.
Not mentioned originally. Updated to show turnback from York.
304 King
Turns back from York.
Streetcar not mentioned, only shuttle bus.
Turns back from York.
508 Lake Shore
Turns back from York. (Nonsensical)
No service.
Not mentioned.
West of University
504A King/Dundas West
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina
504B King/Humber
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
304 King
Turns back from Spadina.
Streetcar not mentioned, only shuttle bus.
Turns back from Spadina.
303 Kingston Road
Not mentioned.
Not mentioned.
Not mentioned originally. Update implies there is no service west of York.
508 Lake Shore
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Diversion periods
Sept 5-8 Sept 9-10 (3:30-9:30pm)
Sept 5-8
Sept 5-8 Sept 9-10 (3:30-9:30pm)
Map
Downtown area only.
Full map but 504 east services do not match text.
Downtown area only.
“Update” notice for 504 east end services:
Original (retrieved from archive.org):
504A King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and King and Church streets. Streetcars will then turn south on Church Street, west on Wellington Street, and north on York Street and east on King Street towards Broadview Station.
504B King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Distillery Loop.
Revised version (from ttc.ca):
504A King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Kingston Road and Queen Street East (Woodbine Loop). Streetcars will then turn south on Church Street, west on Wellington Street, and north on York Street and east on King Street towards Broadview Station.
504B King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Distillery Loop.
This is different from the map which showed the 504A running from Broadview Station while the the 504B runs between Woodbine Loop and Distillery Loop. This turned out to be the service actually operated.
From 5am Thursday, September 5 to 5am Monday, September 9:
Service will be broken at University Avenue into east and west halves of routes.
The map below was added to the Service Advisory on the morning of September 5.
The descriptions below have been updated to reflect actual operations on the morning of September 5.
In the east:
503 Kingston Road cars will operate from Bingham Loop to York via Church and Wellington, a cutback from their current terminal at Spadina (Charlotte Loop).
504A King cars will operate from Broadview Station to York via Church and Wellington.
504B King cars will operate from Woodbine Loop to Distillery Loop.
508 Lake Shore cars will not operate east of Spadina.
304 King and 303 Kingston Road night cars will turn back from the east at York.
In the west:
504A King cars will operate between Dundas West Station and Spadina (Charlotte Loop).
504B King cars will operate between Humber loop and Spadina.
508 Lake Shore cars will operate between Long Branch and Spadina.
304 King night cars will operate between Dundas West Station and Spadina.
There is no mention of any 303 service west of York Street.
Shuttle buses:
Replacement bus service will operate between Jarvis and Portland bypassing the TIFF area via University, Richmond (WB) / Adelaide (EB) and Spadina.
303 Kingston Road Night Car
There was no mention in the announcement of the 303 Kingston Road night car in the original TTC notices. It appears that the 303 is running only between Bingham Loop and York Street similar to the 503 daytime service.
I have asked the TTC for clarifications, but they remain silent on the topic.
Monday and Tuesday September 9-10
“Red carpet events” on King Street will require diversions between 3:30 and 9:30pm.
Wednesday to Saturday September 11-24
“Red carpet events” will occur, but are not expected to require diversions. Some service delays are likely.
What About Adelaide/Richmond?
Thanks to the glacial pace of construction on the Ontario Line diversion, an alternate route for streetcar service eastbound via Adelaide around TIFF is not available. Next year we are likely to see Richmond/Adelaide diversions rather than split routes.
Transit Signal Non-Priority
There is no mention in the announcement of signal adjustments, notably eastbound at King & Spadina and westbound at King & Church to support the greatly increased volume of streetcar left turns the 2024 diversions will require. Similarly, there has never been any transit priority for left turns westbound at King & Sumach to support a Broadview Station / Distillery Loop service. A major problem with past TIFF diversions has been queues at turning locations on diversion routes.
This is an example of how the City compounds the traffic issues caused by events such as TIFF with an absence of pro-transit signalling. We have millions to study red lanes and paint streets, but well-known routine diversions must fend for themselves.
As I write this on August 29, the TTC has still not issued the usual memo detailing service changes for the coming schedule changes on September 1. Although information has been published on their website, this is incomplete, and in some cases possibly inaccurate. In particular, the details of travel times and vehicle allocations are only available in the detailed memo, and these allow better understanding of how fleet and staff resources are being shifted around on the system.
Updated August 30 at 12:30 pm: I have received the detailed memo of service changes from the TTC and will be updating this article in stages. Changes in this update:
The memo confirms that the originally proposed removal of 87 Cosburn service to East York Acres is not happening. Schedules on 87 Cosburn and 64 Main are revised to interline the routes during many time periods on a 10-minute headway.
Changes in subway gap trains on Lines 1 and 2.
Several maps added or updated.
Fleet and service summary tables added.
Construction project list added.
Updated August 31 at 9:45 am:
The full spreadsheet showing details of headway, running time and vehicle allocation changes has been added at the end of the article. Note that some of the information in the original version proved to be incorrect when compared with the TTC’s detailed memo due to discrepancies in the TTC’s service change web page.
A list of routes for which the Summer service cut was not restored in the Fall schedules has been added.
Updated September 1 at 4:25 pm:
Headway information for the Sheppard corridor revised to match the service implemented, and to reduce complexity of the description.
Updated September 3 at 2:30 pm:
A reader has pointed out that the TTC’s streetcar night service map incorrectly shows service on routes 303 and 304 heading straight west through Parkdale via King to Roncesvalles rather than via their Shaw/Queen diversion.
At a recent press conference, Mayor Chow and the TTC announced that many changes were coming in September. Two key points were omitted:
When the TTC speaks of service restoration relative to pre-pandemic levels, this is based on vehicle hours operated. However, on many routes so-called reliability adjustments extend the travel times and slow the scheduled speeds of buses. The result is that service arrives less frequently, but there is no change in vehicle hours operated.
Many service increases in September are restorations after the Summer lull when service is normally reduced due to lighter demand, notably on routes serving post-secondary schools.
Steve Munro 