A Grand Plan

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How Can We Increase TTC Service?

Much discussion in the current election campaign targets TTC fares and proposed changes in 2027. Depending on which candidate you trust, they might go up, selectively, be frozen, or even go down with the effect of future changes to fare capping rules.

Many surveys, including a recent one from Liaison Strategies, show that the key factor in retaining and attracting riders to transit is not fares, but service reliability, frequency, and comfort. This includes many factors, and the “fixes” do not lend themselves to simple campaign slogans.

Drawing lines on maps is a favourite pass-time for politicians and the consultants who feed off their desire for a credible plan. We went through that with John Tory’s ever-vanishing SmartTrack scheme, then later with Doug Ford’s subway plan. They share one thing: nothing needs to be done today, and come tomorrow the plan might shrink thanks to technical challenges and limited financing. The Ford plan survives because of spending (and borrowing) at a level that would never occur without a generous infusion of political ego. Planned spending on the provincial subway plan is on a par with the TTC’s entire state of good repair backlog.

Fare schemes, be they new concession rates, discounts or regional amalgamations, can be quickly implemented at comparatively modest cost, but they do little beyond, possibly, generating added ridership which might, or might not, be translated to added service and capacity. With fare revenue covering only 40% of the operating budget and none of the capital, it is impossible for fare cuts to generate enough new riding and income to pay for service increases.

Toronto has a long-term plan, TransformTO, that seeks “net zero” transportation emissions through complete electrification of transit by 2040. That is comparatively easy to achieve because it is the path the TTC is on already. However, a more ambitious plan originally aimed at a major shift away from autos to transit by 2050, but now has a 2040 target. There is no sense of how Toronto will achieve this.

A technical backgrounder to the 2050 plan proposed, among other things, that Toronto:

  • Convert one lane of traffic to exclusive bus lanes on all arterials.
  • Increase service frequency on all transit routes:
    • bus by 70%, streetcar by 50%, subway off-peak service increased to every 3 mins.
  • Tolls of $0.66/km on all arterial roads.
  • Free transit. No transit fares.

In the current political climate, it is easy to guess the fate of exclusive bus lanes and road tolls. Free transit would cost over $1-billion annually before accounting for the cost of the additional service.

The TTC Capital Plan includes a long-range, unfunded provision for TransformTO:

  • Vehicles (added buses and streetcars): $3.51-billion
  • Infrastructure (2 additional garages, upgrades to existing garages and carhouses, expanded terminals to handle higher service levels): $3.82-billion

There is no mention of operating costs for the larger fleets and all of the added service nor is there even an outline of a plan to get from the transit system of 2026 to the hoped-for 2040.

Somewhere in between the aggressive goals of TransformTO and current service levels is likely what riders will actually see. The TTC has not published a detailed analysis of options, and the Board, in spite of having a “Strategic Planning Committee”, has not asked for one.

Any plan to improve transit service must look at the network as a whole, at how routes in many parts of the city can provide better service. This will require decisions about the size of the transit system, growth of the surface bus and streetcar services, and tradeoffs needed in the use of road space.

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The Plague of Subway Reduced Speed Zones

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.

These are detailed in tables taken from the same TTC page (click to expand).

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Metrolinx Safety Deep Dive: Union Station Derailment

Recently, Metrolinx released a “Deep Dive” report into a derailment at Union Station that severely disrupted GO Transit operations.

As public Metrolinx documents go, this one is refreshingly candid about the events of February 2, 2026, although there are issues not mentioned that deserve both further study and public review.

In brief, a GO train was leaving Union Station westbound when a wheel on the last coach of the train derailed on out-of-gauge track. This affected both the coach and the locomotive which was at the rear (east end) of the train with the engineer in a cab car at the front (west end). The derailment was noticed by a passing UPX train whose crew sounded an emergency alarm, and the GO train stopped shortly thereafter.

Many issues were revealed by the subsequent investigation, and some bear an uncanny resemblance to the TTC’s investigation of its own SRT derailment in July 2023.

The severity of underlying problems with inspection and maintenance on GO’s Union Station Corridor were downplayed at a recent Board meeting by CEO Michael Lindsay who, in best Metrolinx tradition, put as positive a spin on the incident as possible. Only those who read the full report or the detailed media coverage based on it would know the full story. None of the Metrolinx Board members, a group who can be counted on for silence or only the softest of softball question, raised any issues in the public meeting.

An important finding in the report was that although Metrolinx had updated and tightened its standards for track fastening, there was no program to review existing infrastructure nor to bring it up to the new standard. Only if track were undergoing significant maintenance or renewal would the new standards kick in.

A further problem lies with inspection protocols that could detect the type of failure that led to the derailment. Most of this work is done by manual inspection, is repetitive, and problems with track fastenings might not be immediately obvious especially under the snowy conditions in early February. A post-incident review of the USRC (Union Station Rail Corridor) found a large number of similar failures in track fastening, almost one quarter of the areas checked. This is obviously not a problem that developed overnight or after one snow storm. Moreover, the report is silent on a review of the full GO network for compliance with current track standards.

The TTC parallel shows up first in their review of the SRT which revealed previously undetected failures similar to the one at the TTC’s derailment site where loose track fasteners went undetected. In turn this led to greater attention to subway track conditions and public reporting of Restricted Speed Zones (RSZs) that have bedeviled subway operation in past years.

Both the TTC and Metrolinx derailments raise serious questions about the integrity, accuracy and frequency of track inspections and corrective maintenance.

Another section of the report deals with the post-incident response and handling of complex needs for train and station operations, passenger information, and co-ordination of the entire process through various parts of the Metrolinx/GO organization. Processes that were adequate for day-to-day failed under the stress of many concurrent, urgent activities and the need for communication both among bodies responsible for various parts of the operation, and with passengers who needed to know where and when their trains would show up.

Because most of Metrolinx service operates on provincially-owned track, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada was not involved in this review, although they were notified of the incident.

Causes and Recommendations

There is a long section summarizing the causes, findings and recommendations of this report on pp 46-51 which I leave to readers to peruse rather than copying all of that text here.

Among the actions already taken are:

  • Bi-annual inspections of the USRC.
  • Autonomous track geometry testing technology to be operational in January 2027.
  • A $15-million program to address track surface conditions and make localized repairs in the USRC.
  • Additional Metrolinx Track Inspectors have been hired.

Several additional recommendations are in the report [p. 50].

Every Metrolinx meeting begins with a “Safety Moment”, but one cannot help asking how strong a connection to safety exists between this pro forma exercise and actual conditions on the ground. The response to this derailment showed a strong desire by staff to support passengers even, at times, in the face of inadequate supporting command and communication structures. However the derailment itself should not have occurred, and the question remains of just how strong a safety culture extends down to maintenance of critical infrastructure.

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TTC Service Changes Effective September 30, 2026 — Scarborough Busway Opens

The Scarborough busway using the former Line 3 Scarborough RT right-of-way will open on September 30. Most routes now using Midland and Kennedy to reach Kennedy Station will switch to the new busway. Affected routes are 38 Highland Creek, 129 McCowan North, 131 Nugget, 133 Neilson, 154 Curran Hall, 903 Kennedy Stn-Scarborough Express, 904 Sheppard-Kennedy Express, 938 Highland Creek Express & 939 Finch Express.

Buses will stop enroute at the former Ellesmere and Lawrence East stations, as well as a new stop at Tara Avenue midway between Lawrence and Eglinton.

Lawrence East Station will also be served by the 54/954 Lawrence East bus services as shown below. The station building will not be open, but riders can transfer via a walkway at the south end of the platform to the busway station.

Scheduled service levels and travel times remain the same on September 30 because this is a mid-board period change. The next board period with an opportunity for changes begins on Sunday, November 1, 2026. The TTC has not yet announced plans for schedule updates to take advantage of faster travel times on the busway.

I have been collecting tracking data on some routes using Midland and Kennedy for historical comparison, and will review actual operations in November once the October data are available.

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A Coming Transit Capacity Crunch?

Among several reports on their recent meeting agenda, the TTC Board considered an update on the various Metrolinx projects that will add to Toronto’s rapid transit system: the Ontario Line, plus extensions to Line 1 (Richmond Hill), 2 (Scarborough) and 5 (Eglinton West). These are all grand projects collectively worth billions, but discussion turned to capacity problems on the existing subway, especially Line 1 Yonge-University-Spadina.

In the Line 1 section of the Major Projects Update for April 30, 2026, TTC staff warn of risks about future capacity constraints:

  • The YNSE Project currently includes a new train storage facility, which will provide additional storage and dispatching capacity for up to 15 trains, but no maintenance capacity. Based on a fleet of 84 trains after YNSE opening, the maintenance capacity of Line 1 facilities will be completely consumed and will exceed available capacity.
  • Separate long-term travel models from Metrolinx and the City of Toronto agree that prior to 2051, Line 1 service levels, which can be operated with 73 in-service trains will not be sufficient to serve the anticipated demand in the peak hour, while meeting the TTC’s crowding standard. The precise time when additional trains are needed to serve demand on Line 1 is largely affected by how quickly development activity occurs and what the long-term work-from-home pattern will be.
  • The City of Toronto’s 2025 Q4 Development Pipeline shows that development activity continues around the Yonge corridor despite the softer market. The Yonge corridor appears to remain the most desirable corridor for development in Toronto. The projected crowding levels on Line 1 based on the TTC/City of Toronto demand forecast with the service that can be provided with confirmed assets shows crowding emerging in the mid-2030s, coinciding with the opening of the YNSE. The opening of the YNSE is projected to increase Line 1 AM peak hour demand by 11% in the City/TTC model. This adds pressure as demand mounts travelling southbound toward Bloor-Yonge Station. Based on the City/TTC analysis, the quality of service is inadequate and will result in severe crowding levels from Lawrence Station to College Station.
  • To address overcrowding on Line 1, the TTC has identified a program of investments under the Line 1 Capacity Enhancement Program. To achieve a higher level of service on the extended Line 1, further investment is required and is dependent on the funding and procurement of additional growth trains and a new Train Maintenance and Storage Facility. [p. 17]

The TTC Board has, at long last, recognized that there is a problem, and given the lead times for some remedial actions, the time to deal with this is “now”. We have had quite enough of drawing lines on maps and launching decade-long construction projects, but we have not as a city addressed the limitations of the existing system.

There are Capacity Expansion Programs for both Lines 1 and 2 dating back to the last decade, and status reports appear each quarter in the Major Projects Updates. Those reports typically are received by the Board without debate or comment. For its part, management does not provide an overview presentation and this contributes to the sense that the reports are unimportant.

An important factor with the CEPs is that they are not a single project. Moreover, as noted in the last bullet above, there are additional items in the Capital Plan integral to the CEPs but not included in them. This fragmentation can give the false impression that one can cherry pick which plan components to implement. Recent City lobbying efforts for capital funding have been very project focused (e.g. new subway trains, waterfront transit), but the greater challenge is to see the CEPs as a collection of needs requiring sustained and integrated funding.

A further problem is that the CEPs predate the change in planning permissions thanks to the provincial imposition of “Major Transit Station Areas” (MTSAs) around every GO, subway and LRT station. The effect is to substantially upzone permitted densities for large swaths of Toronto. How much of that density will actually be built remains to be seen given current market conditions, but development proposals continue to land at the City for approval.

The Board passed a motion directing staff to take a more active role in commenting on the effect of new development plans for transit growth and the network’s ability to handle added loads.

1. Direct TTC staff, through the City’s development review process, to identify when a proposed development is located in a corridor or network segment where:

  • current or forecast demand indicates insufficient transit capacity based on currently funded plans;
  • additional transit infrastructure, station capacity, service, or accessibility-related improvements may be required to support growth at a reasonable level of service;
  • required improvements are not yet fully funded; and/or
  • the anticipated in-service date of required improvements is not expected to align with projected development occupancy.

2. Request the Chief Executive Officer, TTC, to report back to the Board, through a future Transit Network Expansion Update or other appropriate report, on options for establishing corridor- and station-level service and capacity measures to support long-term planning, including how such measures could be used to inform development review, capital planning, and intergovernmental funding requests.

3. Direct that TTC staff request the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, when reporting to City Council on zoning by-law amendments, Official Plan amendments, or other planning approvals in identified high-demand transit corridors, to include any TTC comments regarding known funded and unfunded transit capacity requirements, including the expected timing of required infrastructure where available.

4. Direct TTC staff, in consultation with the City of Toronto, to develop strategies for funding transit infrastructure growth requirements that support City approved development, recognizing the TTC also has a priority need to address state-of good repair of existing assets.

There is a complementary motion on City Council’s agenda for July 29.

One potential problem with this approach is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” issue. Any individual project might not overload a portion of the transit system, but the collective effect of many projects could be more severe. The same issue comes up with other municipal services such as water and sewage hookups. It is difficult to prove that any one development will cause chaos, and even harder to stop it in the face of a provincial government bent on untrammeled development.

Despite projected needs for considerably more subway capacity in the coming decade, there is little provision for fleet and service growth on the surface network, nor are there demand projections indicating anything beyond modest growth. There are obvious questions:

  • Where will all of the projected new riders come from, and how will this affect surface feeder routes?
  • Is surface network growth constrained by the quality and level of service provided?
  • What about travel demand that does not lie along the subway corridors?
  • How much will development now in the pipeline affect demand on nearby surface routes?

A complete review of the CEPs for both lines, and for the surface network, is essential to inform Council and the TTC Board of the breadth of requirements for system expansion, capital and operating funding needs over coming years. It is ironic that while the capital plans foresee billions in new subway spending, schemes for Ridership Growth focus on small-scale changes and limited additional demand.

This is not just a contradiction in scope and ambition among TTC management, but speaks to City Council’s two-faced attitude to transit improvements. Big construction projects, new rapid transit a decade away, these are noble goals. Better service today is beyond affordability.

The remainder of this article reviews the Capacity Expansion Programs and related projects.

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TTC Board Meeting July 22, 2026

The TTC Board will meet on July 22 at 9:30am in Committee Room 2 at City Hall. The agenda includes several confidential items, and it is not yet clear when they will be considered and what period will be an open public session. As usual, the public portion will be streamed for those not making the trek to City Hall.

Items covered by this article:

  • CEO’s Report
  • Transit Network Expansion Update – Provincial Projects in Delivery
  • New Entrance to Spadina Station
  • New Entrance to Eglinton Station
  • Large Contract Awards
  • A proposed study of speeding up the 506 Carlton streetcar

Items with confidential material include:

  • A update on the Fare Collection System
  • Fitness for Duty Grievance Update

There is also an Accessibility Plan Status Report. I will cover this in a separate article.

This will be the last meeting of the current TTC Board before the municipal election in October.

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TTC Chooses Hitachi for Line 2 Automatic Train Control

On July 15, the TTC announced that it would award the contract for implementation of Automatic Train Control (ATC) on subway Line 2 (Bloor-Danforth). This will include the Scarborough extension now under construction.

Updated July 17 at 8:30am: The value of the contract with Hitachi is $407.7-million according to the summary of contract awards (p. 2).

Between the New Subway Train (NST) contract already awarded to Alstom and the Hitachi signalling contract, both companies will be involved in supplying the TTC for a decade and more.

The NST contract includes trains for:

  • Replacement of the existing fleet of T-1 trains on Line 2 which are approaching end-of-life;
  • Supply of additional Line 2 trains both for the Scarborough extension and for future service improvements;
  • Supply of additional Line 1 trains both for the Richmond Hill extension and for future service improvements.

The ATC contract will cover replacement of the existing block signal system on Line 2. It is linked to the NST contract in the sense that the existing Line 2 fleet cannot be modified for ATC operation. New signalling requires new trains.

The choice of a different ATC technology has implications for the TTC’s fleets and operations:

  • The Line 1 and Line 2 fleets will not be able to operate in “foreign” territory where the signalling system does not match the on-train equipment. Line 1 uses Alstom’s Urbalis system, while Line 2 will use Hitachi’s Seltrac sytem. Any trains which would operate on both lines must have ATC gear for both technologies.
  • The TTC has no intention to interoperate Lines 1 and 2 (e.g. the short lived “integrated” service in 1966 or any variation of that), and regards “Crossline Train Operation” (CTO) as unneeded in the spec for reasons explained later in this article.
  • Any equipment which will operate regularly on both lines (e.g. work trains) will require interfaces to both systems for protection from other traffic.
  • Although “foreign” trains could be moved if needed (e.g. to take trains to another line’s carhouse), this would have to be done off hours under rules for unprotected, manual train operation. Trains could not be “borrowed” or rerouted off of their home lines.
  • Although the Line 2 trains will be fitted with Hitachi gear, the added trains for Line 1 will have to carry Alstom equipment. Moreover, the Line 1 trains will have to be managed as six-car sets because that is the configuration the Alstom system is designed to support. (See TTC report quote below.)
  • With a cutover date to ATC on Line 2, this also sets the earliest date for Platform Edge Doors (PEDs) assuming that the TTC regards ATC as a pre-requisite. Yonge Station on Line 2 might be rebuilt with provision for PEDs but it will be over a decade before the signal system is able to support them.

There is a somewhat surreal aspect to all of this given the timelines. Installation of Line 2 ATC will occur in phases up to 2037 based on the assumption that the existing Line 2 fleet will be retired soon before that. The line cannot be switched to automatic operation with a mix of old and new trains. By extension, any service improvements from ATC operation (closer train spacing, service more frequent than 2’20”) are a decade away, and even that depends on increasing the fleet beyond basic requirements to open the SSE.

Part of this extended timeline can be laid at the feet of former management who felt they could keep the existing trains and signals system running much longer than their planned retirement date. That attitude changed with the ongoing signalling problems on Line 1 before ATC conversion, but years were lost in procurement both of ATC equipment and new trains that could use it.

A September 2024 report on Line 2 modernization stated:

The RFP for Line 2 ATC does not include a Crossline Train Operation (CTO) feature for trains to move between Line 1 and Line 2. The requirement for CTO has been reviewed based on existing and future service plans, and operational needs assessment. It has been determined that CTO is not a requirement for day-to-day service for Line 1 and Line 2. There are also technical challenges that arise with CTO on the revenue fleet with one of the main constraints being that the trains on Line 1 are a permanent six car consist with a fixed ATC Train-Borne equipment configuration, whereas the expected new trains for Line 2 will consist of three married pair cars that will be dynamically configured. The dynamic configuration for the Line 2 ATC Train-Borne equipment is not supported by the ATC Line 1 system architecture. It should be noted that to support the CTO feature, additional funding would be required to redesign and upgrade the existing Line 1 ATC system to accommodate CTO. [pp16-17]

It is clear that the TTC would never return to integration of service between lines, but the need to move trains onto “foreign” territory has come up in the past as a way to deal with major disruptions. That option will be foreclosed. I have asked the TTC for clarification of their intent re emergency operations, carhouse moves and work cars, and will add their reply here when it comes in.

Replacing aging signals and trains is “good news”, but the benefits will not materialize soon for riders.

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Construction Effects at Gerrard and Leslieville Stations

Over coming years, Metrolinx will build new stations on the Ontario Line at Gerrard (Gerrard & Carlaw) and Leslieville (Queen & De Grassi). These structures will span local streets including two streetcar lines. Various partial and total closures of affected streets are needed for this work to proceed. Much of this involves sidewalk and curb lane closures, but there will be a five month period for each station where streetcar service is removed to allow Ontario Line work without energized streetcar overhead.

The full transit changes have not yet been published, but in each case streetcars will divert to the parallel street (Gerrard or Queen) between Coxwell and Broadview. Replacement bus service will bridge the gap diverting around station construction as necessary.

Details including parking restrictions, pedestrian and cycling effects, are in a City of Toronto report on the July 8 agenda of Toronto & East York Community Council:

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Metrolinx Board Meeting – June 25, 2026

The Metrolinx Board met on June 25, and as usual for that secretive organization, most of the agenda was discussed in private session. What they do talk about in public is inevitably “good news”, and there is rarely any indication that the Board might have issues with management.

Items included in this article:

  • Write-Down of GO Transit Assets
  • GO Transit Project Status
  • Update on Line 5 and Line 6 LRT Operations
  • Fare Enforcement Bylaw Update
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TTC Plans Major Maintenance Work on Line 1

Regular users of the Spadina branch of Line 1 YUS will know that speed restrictions have been common in the open cut section of the line between Eglinton West and the north end of Wilson Yard. They appear on the map of reduced speed zones, vanish, and reappear a few weeks later.

Part of the problem is the temporary nature of some repairs, and partly due to underlying problems in the track support system. There are similar problems elsewhere on Line 1, and some of these go back years. A major issue in mounting a repair campaign is that closing a subway line for an extended period is a major upheaval especially over an extended distance or on a busy day.

A major project from June 1-8 will address:

  • Southbound Yorkdale to Wilson: Concrete slab repair to ensure long-term structural integrity, requiring two full days for concrete to cure.
  • Northbound Yorkdale to Wilson and Glencairn to Lawrence West: Installation of new rail.
  • Northbound Dupont to St Clair West: Replacement of track hardware

These areas correspond to some of the remaining RSZs on the current map.

In order to achieve this work, the Spadina branch between St. George and Sheppard West Stations will close early, at 11:59pm, Monday, June 1 to Thursday, June 4. On Friday evening, June 5-6, this section will not close until 12:30am to accommodate an event at the Rogers Stadium.

From Sunday, June 7 at 12:30am to Monday, June 8 at 6:00am, there will be no service over this section. A partial closure will continue through Monday until 6:00am on Tuesday, June 9 with single track operation on the northbound rail between Wilson and Lawrence West Stations. This will necessarily not be at the usual subway frequency.

Shuttle buses will run, but riders are encouraged to use the Yonge branch of the subway via bus and LRT services on Sheppard, Wilson, Lawrence and Eglinton.

This type of major repair is long overdue, and the proliferation of RSZs was a testament to the level of TTC maintenance for many years. This has been compounded recently by availability and reliability issues with the subway work car fleet. A proposal to rebuild Line 1 south of Eglinton Station goes back to the Byford era, but it has always been regarded as impossible due to the volume of riders there and the extent of the work involved.

What we do not know is whether there are additional major works yet to be announced, when and where they would occur. TTC owes it to riders to give a sense of what they actually plan, painful though some of this work may be.

The TTC’s move to a larger scale project is welcome, but is this is a temporary surge to remove as many problem areas as possible for the World Cup period, or will we see a continued effort to deal with and permanently repair track infrastructure problems as they occur. Riders next winter who are not football tourists are entitled to the same level of effort as our summer visitors.