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.
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.
There is no bus data for May 2026 because the TTC’s June 22, 2026 update on the City’s Open Data site did not include it.
The Open Data files include a key translating delay codes to text. However, many codes used in the logs do not appear in the key, and in those cases I have used “?” in the tables. I have asked TTC for an updated code list, but they have not replied.
Among the information shown in these delay logs:
“No Operator Available” is a serious problem related to TTC staffing levels.
Diversions account for a large number of delays, notably on the bus network, not just streetcars.
Collisions involving buses and streetcars are common.
Weather related delays including autos blocking tracks peak in winter months for buses and streetcars.
Streetcar delays related to switches are reported under various codes, but there is no code for derailment thereby masking the number of the most serious track-related events.
The number and length of delays on 6 Finch have fallen by over 50% since the opening months.
A common source of delay on 5 Eglinton relates to guideway intrusion.
Recently, I wrote about a very unsatisfactory online meeting of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee for waterfront east transit. Little came of that meeting beyond a sense that nothing will happen soon to improve transit in the area.
The big news, which was not “news” at all given the media coverage, was that $3-billion had been secured from the City, Province and Federal governments toward the project. Predictably, in the absence of any details, this produced a shower of questions about why such a sum would be spent on a short line and whether that amount would actually be enough to finish the project.
Planning for and development of the eastern waterfront dates from an era when new buildings could be sold as quickly as they were built. This extended all the way from Yonge Street out to the Don River and the massive plans for the East Harbour Station area. Transit demand projections originally assumed a mix of residential and commercial development particularly at East Harbour, but the commercial market collapsed and residential growth is at nowhere near projected rates and time frames.
Toronto always talked of the waterfront as a “transit first” development, but actual delivery falls way short of that goal. Queens Quay East has a mix of infrequent bus services, and access to the city north of the rail corridor is throttled by traffic on limited crossings. The proposed LRT corridor might exist on plans, but bus rapid transit (BRT) as an “interim” solution always lurked in the background. That might be credible if there were a clear transit corridor to the Union Station area, not to mention street capacity to handle buses and riders, but these problems have never been discussed in waterfront plans.
If we cannot get transit “right” in a brand new community, how can Toronto hope to shift existing neighbourhoods away from cars?
Those who have followed this project through many false starts and changes over the years know that this is not a straightforward “streetcar line” extending from Union Station into the planned community on the island now called Ookwemin Minising. Both through delays and added complexity in some components, the price tag keeps rising, but we have yet to see a consolidated budget or a description of just what it will pay for.
There are beautiful drawings of a future city on the water, but no clear transit plan.
This article reviews the major components of the waterfront east proposal, the many outstanding issues, and options such as there may be for getting better transit to an underserved area.
For those who just want the conclusion, here is my take on the current situation.
Previous public consultation sessions gave the sense that plans were heading to a point where in early 2026 there would be construction staging options and a better handle on the project budget. Instead we seem to be going backwards with more uncertainty on the timing and scope of work, and exactly when there will be streetcar service to the eastern waterfront.
Development proposals have consistently run ahead of the provision of frequent, reliable transit service.
There is an undue focus on getting connectivity to the new developments from the west as a top priority causing the northern link (via Cherry to King) to be placed on the back burner.
It is clear that the overall project is constrained by available funding and by the cost of rebuilding Union Station Loop. It is also possible that Union Loop will not reopen in time for first occupancy in the new Ookwemin Minising neighbourhood thereby providing less than ideal transit service to a new “transit first” neighbourhood.
Transit ridership projections for the eastern waterfront date from the era when substantial commercial development was planned, and this boosted the expected peak demand.
Development plans, and hence future demand, will be affected by proposals for a much-expanded Island Airport, but we do not know the scale of the effect.
The continued lack of a staging plan makes discussion of interim service configurations over coming years almost impossible.
The project planners appear to have made up their mind on at least part of the staging plan without fully explaining how it will work, or the “why” behind options chosen. The momentum of 2025, the sense that real work was imminent, has been lost. We now have $3-billion “in the bank”, but with no clear idea of what it will buy, what elements will be missing on opening day and what future completion of the project will cost.
The rebranding of the “Waterfront East LRT” into the “Waterfront East Rapid Transit Line” speaks of desperation and a desire to avoid the “LRT” moniker now poisoned by botched implementations on Finch and Eglinton (Lines 6 and 5). This is most definitely not a “rapid transit line”, it is a streetcar on its own right-of-way. What Toronto needs is honesty about waterfront transit, leadership and real progress on construction.
As I began to write this on June 6 at 5:00pm, the TTC had not yet published the detailed memo of service changes for June 7. There is a web page listing World Cup related service changes, but no details about service frequencies. On an interim basis, I have used the electronic version of the June 7 schedules (GTFS data) as a source for info on scheduled service. On game days, there will be additional service as needed.
Updated: The TTC issued the detailed service memo in the early hours of June 7. Thanks to those burning the midnight oil to get this out. This article has been updated to consolidate info from the memo. Note that June service changes for subway, LRT and bus routes will not occur until June 21, and these will be covered in a separate post.
307 and 311 Bathurst night services: Stopping arrangements at Bathurst and St. Clair West Stations clarified.
Streetcar route maps added at the end of the article.
301L route clarified to include extension to Dufferin Loop.
Streetcar vehicle allocation tables added.
Spreadsheet of detailed changes added. Revised to include 929 Dufferin Express.
List of destination sign changes added.
Bathurst Corridor
Night service on 307 Bathurst bus will be shortened to end at Bathurst Station. Service south to Exhibition will be provided by a 311 Bathurst night car running from St. Clair to Exhibition Loop.
Service on 511 Bathurst will be improved (see table later in this article).
Updates:
307 buses will loop through Bathurst Station, but will lay over and serve a new stop northbound on Bathurst at London (opposite the station).
311 streetcars will run out of service through St. Clair West Station.
Spadina Corridor
Service on the 510 Spadina streetcar will be shortened to turn at Queens Quay Loop. Service to Union Station will be provided by 509/309 Harbourfront and by 310 Spadina. (Corrected)
Waterfront
Service on 509 Harbourfront will be improved (see table later in this article), and a new 309 Harbourfront night car will operate.
Dufferin Corridor
Service on 929 Dufferin express will be added on Sunday evenings on Game Days running every 8 minutes.
King Corridor
Service will be improved on 504 King. On Game Days, the 504B from Broadview Station will turn back via a loop of King, Queen and Shaw without serving Dufferin Loop. See detailed map and schedule in the schedule section later in this article.
Queen / Lake Shore Boulevard West
507/501/301 Long Branch service will be replaced by buses due to construction at Long Branch Loop.
Two branches of the replacement bus service will operate:
507 from Humber Loop to Long Branch Loop via Park Lawn.
507M from Humber Loop to the Humber Bay Shores area looping via Marine Parade Drive.
This configuration will run until Labour Day weekend. In September, 507 streetcars will return as far as Kipling Loop, and the 110 Islington South will be extended west to Long Branch Loop.
508 Lake Shore streetcar service will be suspended for the summer season returning after Labour Day.
Updated: 301L night buses will operate from Long Branch Loop to Dufferin Loop via Queen and Dufferin providing an overlap with the 301 Queen night car.
See map in the schedule details later in this post.
An online meeting of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee for Waterfront East transit was called for May 13. Normally these events provide significant new information about the project, and they are usually just ahead of a new round of public consultation or reports to Council.
That was certainly not the case for this round. What information was conveyed has already appeared in previous announcements and reports, and the presenters from Waterfront Toronto and the City’s Transit Expansion Office were loathe to part with details, assuming they knew anything about the project.
Notable by its absence was any detailed discussion of project phasing: which chunks of the Waterfront East will be built first and what the interim service plans will look like. Any further updates have been punted to early 2027 conveniently beyond the election.
I could not help remembering a conversation with then-Mayor Tory at TTC’s 100th Anniversary celebration at Hillcrest in 2021 where he was quite firm that the Waterfront line was a “priority” for him. We are still waiting.
The meeting was one of those embarrassing affairs with roughly the same number of public participants as staff. Notable by their absence was anyone from City Planning, the TTC or any Councillors’ office.
What was presented is already known:
There is now $3-billion committed by Toronto, Ontario and Canada to fund the project.
Council has authorized continuing with design work as well as “early works” this year in preparation for construction next year. The early work is construction of the ductbank on Small Street north from Queens Quay to Lakeshore to the site of a future substation to be incorporated in a new development there.
Planned construction will be on Queens Quay east but not all the way to Cherry, and it is unclear just how much will be done in 2027.
The opening date, as repeatedly stated, is now linked to the 2032 occupancy of new buildings on Ookwemin Minising (formerly Villier’s Island). It is almost as if all of the development already on Queens Quay does not exist or need better transit service as soon as possible. Reading between the lines, this will be the tail end of a service running east across Queens Quay from Spadina, but not yet to Union Station.
There is no staging plan yet. Obviously an east-west link on Queens Quay is needed first and that is impossible without interrupting service at Bay to Queens Quay and Union Stations. There is no projection for the duration of work that will first shut down streetcar service completely, then reopen only for through east-west travel pending completion of the Union Station rebuild.
Also uncertain is the timing of the branch north via Cherry to connect with Distillery Loop. This would provide an alternate link from the east, but there are timing issues with both Metrolinx work (Ontario Line), and the relocation of the Gardiner/DVP ramps. The legacy Cherry Street Tower just north of the rail corridor also needs to be moved.
This meeting did not discuss the many issues related to the Bay Street tunnel including work needed to expand the streetcar loop and to improve connections to the Ferry Docks at Queens Quay. It is ironic that hours before I wrote this, the City announced the names of two new electric ferries that will substantially increase capacity to the Toronto Island.
At the very least, some of these events already have dates or tentative plans, although they must be stitched together into an overall project. The “players” are notorious for changing plans without notice, and there is no guarantee a plan formed today will last until tomorrow. All the same, the public and politicians deserve to know what all the parts are and what issues might arise. We have $3-billion burning a hole in our pocket, but no idea of how to spend it or even if it will cover all of the planned work.
With the opening off to 2032 and full operation to Union beyond that, other projects potentially serving the waterfront also should be discussed including the Broadview extension south to Commissioners, and the extension of the WERTL east to at least Broadview. Waterfront planning has many moving parts, and nobody seems willing to unpack the complete list let alone speculate on costs and timeframes.
I had a real sense that the presenters were clearly the City’s “B” team, the kind of people one sends to a public meeting with a script to say as little as possible. Either they did not know what the options and decisions are on the table, or they were not telling even with repeated chances to clarify. SAC members had expected an update on staging this spring, but now we (and by extension Council and voters) must wait until 2027 after the election.
In some doublespeak worthy of Metrolinx we learned that the former Waterfront East LRT has been renamed the Waterfront East Rapid Transit Line. The purpose is to distinguish it from Lines 5 and 6, with the WERTL being an extension of the existing streetcar network. A rose by any other name.
Years ago, the TTC’s planning function was spun off to the City’s Transit Expansion Office, a group that has never felt like an “A” team. They seem to have taken over this project from the City’s Planning Department who gave a sense they actually knew what was happening having been involved for so long in redevelopment of the eastern waterfront.
Toronto deserves an open and honest discussion of waterfront transit issues, not a once-over-lightly presentation with almost no detail.
The TTC has announced via a service advisory that 6 Finch West will be closed by Metrolinx from Friday, May 15 to Monday, May 18 (Victoria Day). Regular service will resume on Tuesday, May 19.
The purpose is “planned infrastructure and system improvement work”, but with no details.
Shuttle buses will operate while the line is closed. The 336 night bus service is not affected.
There is no further information on the Metrolinx Finch West site as of May 14 at 5:40am.
Update: The Metrolinx notice went up on May 8, but it is not on the 6 Finch page but rather on the general Media page which is not where riders would look for info.
The hours of service on Line 5 will be extended effective April 5, 2026. Trains will run later into the evening with buses covering the route at other times.
Service now ends just before 11pm inbound from the terminals, but will be extended to 1:20am weekdays and Sundays, 12:30am on Saturdays.
Bus services on Eglinton remain the same:
34 Eglinton provides local bus service every 20 minutes from 6:00am to 1:30am (8:00am start on Sundays).
The Line 5 shuttle bus will continue to run between 10:00pm and 1:00am stopping only at Line 5 stops.
The 334 Eglinton night bus runs from 1:00am to 5:30am (7:30am on Sundays).
Whether the Line 5 shuttle late night operation will continue beyond the next schedule change remains to be seen as it duplicates the extended LRT service.
Work on this article began before the March 30 announcement of tripartite funding for various housing and transit projects. Comments about this have been incorporated here.
At its meeting of March 31, the TTC’s Strategic Planning Committee will consider two reports relating to the financial future of both the Operating and Capital budgets.
The report on a long-term plan is less than its title might suggest in that it merely launches a process to develop a plan, but does not propose anything concrete. Some members of the TTC Board have wanted to see a long-term plan and options for years, but nothing usually comes of this beyond rehashing information we already know from the annual budget cycle. City Council cannot formulate capital and operating budget plans without a clear indication of the needs and trends at its most expensive agency.
A related problem is that conflicting indications come from the Council and the Mayor about spending priorities, and some TTC plans are closely linked to Provincial projects such as the North Yonge subway extension. Major committed projects have already claimed much of the announced Federal funding, and substantial additions will require net new funding.
That, in turn, requires the TTC and Council to think carefully about priorities rather than asking for money project-to-project on the assumption that money will always be available. In the context of high Provincial debt and considerable spending on transit, plus a refocus of Federal priorities and an attempt to decrease spending, Toronto is unlikely to receive everything it wants.
Short-Term Planning
Short-term planning placed the TTC in a very difficult position.
The short-term balancing of the TTC’s financial pressures would not have been achieved without a substantial City subsidy in recent years, including the Ontario-Toronto New Deal providing three-years of operating funding support, and project specific capital grant funding from the provincial and federal governments.
For instance, the injection of $5.1 billion in the 2025-2034 Capital Plan, which was predominantly city funding, reduced the TTC’s state-of-good-repair backlog by $3.9 billion, or nearly 50%. However, fleet plan changes, asset condition assessments and cost estimate increases have increased the SOGR backlog in the 2026-2035 Capital Plan to a projected $6.1 billion at the end of the 10-year planning window. Funding for new trains, buses and streetcars by other orders of government addressed immediate fleet needs, and the operating support through COVID, have kept the system going. While these efforts had significant impact in the immediate term, the TTC still has a long-term financial problem due to a fiscal framework that has not evolved at the same pace as the scale, complexity, and expectations of a world class transit system.
This cycle of finding immediate term solutions to the budgetary pressures of the organization is one repeated annually. With each successive year the balancing act produces increasingly limited opportunities to find new efficiencies and revenue generation opportunities. The TTC’s aging assets continue to drive state-of good repair investment needs to maintain existing levels of service, while struggling to fund capacity enhancements to keep up with growth. [Long Term Plan, p. 1]
As things stand, the projections for Operating and Capital Budgets assume very modest growth in demand, at least in the short term, but there is a long list of projects, mostly unfunded on the Capital side both for State of Good Repair (SOGR) and to accommodate projected demand growth. Rapid transit extensions now underway only include provision for fleets at the level needed to serve current demand, but not the extra trains to increase capacity nor the maintenance facilities to house the expanded fleets. Drawing lines on maps requires not just tunnel construction, but consideration for how the network will operate and what effect extensions and new lines will have on the existing network’s operations.
With all the focus on a few rapid transit projects, there is the much larger issue of subway and surface fleet renewal, not to mention infrastructure work. Any plan to increase service and ridership substantially places an additional load on the Capital budget not to mention the Operating budget to actually deliver new service.
Fare Revenue Will Not Pay For Capital
Fare revenue from ridership growth did not pay for expansion even when the cost recovery rate was 70%. Now that it is below 50%, the effect of additional service is even more acute. We cannot talk about system expansion and moving more people with transit if we are not prepared to pay for it.
Transit funding in other cities comes from a variety of sources as detailed in the jurisdictional review. Toronto’s problem is that actually levying most of these requires cooperation from senior governments, notably Ontario where new taxes or fees of any kind are not welcome. In at least the medium term, Toronto will have to make do with existing funding schemes while hoping/lobbying for increases.
Options For Ridership Growth
The other side of this dilemma is that Toronto has never been presented with options beyond modest business as usual transit service. We do not know what growth and service quality we might aim for because annual budgets only scrape by to keep the system running.
While ridership growth is essential to long-term sustainability, on it own it is insufficient to close the structural fiscal gap without complementary changes to funding, fare policy and cost structures. As a result, other options and strategies must be identified. Recognizing this, at the January 23, 2026 meeting, the City of Toronto’s Budget Committee directed City staff to work with the TTC to develop a multi-year operating budget that both supports ridership growth and addresses the underlying financial pressures.
Growing ridership and increasing the mode share of public transit trips will require additional levels of investment in both service and capital beyond what is currently projected and may demand consideration of other sources of revenue and/or fundamental changes in policy with respect to how transit is prioritized within the City. [p. 3]
The report proposes that various scenarios be developed for levels of future growth and service. This will inform future budgets, but not immediately. A four-phase program is proposed:
Jurisdictional review of major transit systems: See the attachment linked above.
Scenario development and long-term analysis
Balancing strategies including cost containment, fare policy including enforcement, funding, and capital priorities
Recommendations and implementation roadmap
There is no discussion of the range of options that might be considered, nor is there a proposed date to report back. Obviously major change will not occur overnight, but short-term plans should explore what can be achieved within existing resources (fleet, infrastructure) and at what cost to get more out of resources the TTC already owns. Further out, no rapid transit growth will come online until the early 2030s, but the surface system should not be ignored waiting for new trains to roll into Scarborough, Richmond Hill and Thorncliffe Park.
In parallel there is the TransformTO plan which has a very aggressive target for shifting travel away from cars. It includes a massive increase in transit service that will not be achieved overnight even assuming Council approves this and funding is available. The TTC Board and Council need to make hard decisions about the scope of transit expansion, and not just a few rapid transit lines, they are prepared to undertake.
Once again, Middle-East war has exposed economy to rising fuel prices. What this will do to economic growth and transit demand remains to be seen. Toronto is at least in the position of owning a large, if not entirely adequate, transit network serving a goodly chunk of demand. However, this is historically focused on downtown-oriented trips, with considerably less support for the more numerous trips between suburban areas.
Ontario bears some responsibility here too because for decades GO Transit’s downtown focus worked against better use for inter-regional trips, and support for local and regional bus service has not encouraged large-scale growth. Calls for us to “do something” to relieve the high cost of fuel, such as free transit, ignore the fact that transit simply is not present, or is too small-scale, to support a major shift of auto to transit travel. Moreover, this only addresses the cost of driving where transit is an option, not the much wider question of the wider economic effect of higher fuel costs.
The March 30 Announcement
The Federal, Provincial and Toronto governments announced funding for various transit projects, as well as tax relief for some new housing.
The first important point about this is that it affects only the TTC Capital budget, but provides no new support for transit operations. Moreover, none of this announcement addresses the TTC’s unfunded capital backlog. Note that Waterfront East is not part of the TTC capital plan.
The Federal contribution to several transit projects has been confirmed, but this is not “new money”, only the formalization of previous announcements. These projects are: Ontario Line, Eglinton Crosstown West Extension, Scarborough Subway Extension, Yonge North Subway Extension and Hamilton LRT. These are Metrolinx, not TTC, projects.
In the name of stimulating housing, municipal Development Charges will be reduced with the gap made up by transfers from other governments. This benefits housing prices, but has no effect on transit to the extent that TTC plans include a provision (albeit declining) for DC revenue as a capital funding source. The only change is which pocket the money comes from, tempered by the hope that replacement DC funding will match what might otherwise have been expected.
The Waterfront East transit line will be funded at $3-billion with one third coming from each level of government. Any overruns will be the City’s responsibility. Now that funding is announced, the next stage of design can get underway. Waterfront Toronto expects to reveal staging plans for construction soon to Council and to community stakeholders.
Readers with long memories might recall the early days of plans for a new streetcar order including discussions about how large a vehicle should be purchased. A major concern at the time was the possibility that the TTC would change schedules and run less frequent service with the larger cars just as they had when the articulated version of the CLRV (the previous generation of cars) arrived in the late 1980s.
That concern was softened by a TTC claim that service would actually improve. Peak periods would see slightly less frequent service, but a net increase in capacity, while off-peak periods would see little change in frequency effectively doubling the capacity of service. At the time, crowding was a big issue and this persisted right up to the pandemic in 2020, by which time all of the old cars had been retired. The management proposal was approved in July 2013.
As the CLRV/ALRV fleet aged, there were problems with reliability of older cars and the need to operate buses on some lines thanks to a shortage of working vehicles. Some repairs were done at considerable cost, but these were more cosmetic than a true life extension.
Moving forward to 2026, there has been a lot of talk of restoring pre-pandemic service levels. TTC fudges the numbers on this in many cases citing vehicle hours operated, not actual service frequencies which have been degraded by longer travel times.
(For example, if a round trip, including terminal layovers, takes two hours or 120 minutes, then 20 cars will provide a 6-minute service. If the round trip gets longer but no cars are added, the service is less frequent, but the number of vehicle hours stays the same. From a rider’s point of view, service is worse, but from a budget outlook, there is no change. This is at the heart of the discrepancy between TTC service claims and rider experience.)
After years of changing service levels and demand, the TTC’s Five Year Plan foresees a return to six minute headways, at most, as a new standard for daytime service. This has been rolled out on some routes over the past year, but not all.
Already at 6 minutes or better: 504 King, 510 Spadina
Improved to 6 minutes: 512 St. Clair (Sept/25), 511 Bathurst (Nov/25), 505 Dundas (Nov/25)
Pending, but with no committed date: 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 506 Carlton, 507 Long Branch.
The Five Year Plan (at p. 4) includes provision for extra spending in 2027 and 2028, but this is not tied to specific routes. There is nothing in the Plan for 2026.
A related issue is the size of the streetcar fleet. Leading up to 2020, the issue was how many cars were actually available, and some service cuts flowed directly from this. With the recent delivery of 60 additional cars, fleet availability should not be an issue although service can still be limited by a lack of operators. The TTC currently schedules 163 cars at peak out of a fleet of 264. If services now operating with buses due to construction were also using streetcars (503 Kingston Road and the Broadview branch of 504 King), the peak requirement would rise to 178. Allowing for maintenance spares this would drive the total requirement to 214 leaving 42 surplus for service improvements (allowing for 8 spares).
February 2026 Schedule PM Peak
Full Streetcar Service
Possible Service
Peak Requirement
163
178
220
Spares at 20%
33
36
44
Total Requirement
196
214
264
Fleet
264
264
264
Surplus
68
50
0
The problem, of course, is that the TTC barely has budget headroom to operate existing services let alone increases.
In theory, some of the surplus cars will eventually operate the Waterfront East LRT extension, but that service is at least 8 years away even assuming Toronto finds the money to build it. In any event this will not require anywhere near all of the current surplus fleet. Another issue is that the “streetcar network” has not operated with 100% streetcar service for a few decades thanks to various construction projects and vehicle shortages.
There are parallel issues with the bus network, but they are complicated by issues of vehicle reliability and the need for a spare pool to cover the unreliable LRT service primarily on Line 6 Finch West. I will turn to the bus fleet in a separate article.
Back in 2013, the TTC proposed how it would operate with the new streetcar fleet. During peak periods, headways would widen particularly where existing service was very frequent. Notably on 501 Queen, there would only be a slight widening of the time between cars in the AM peak and no change in the PM peak. This reflected the fact that Queen was already running with the 75-foot long ALRVs and needed more capacity.
In the off peak, most routes would see no change in service level except for 510 Spadina due to its already frequent service of 50-foot CLRVs that could not be sustained at terminals with the larger new cars.
The overall fleet plan showed a buildup to a peak requirement of 168 cars plus 20% spares.
This plan gave a bright future for streetcar service and capacity growth, but things did not work out that way. Service today is generally lower than originally projected for the new fleet, and part of this reduction is due to slower operating speeds and greater provision for terminal recovery time even on routes with reserved lanes.
A related question is the effect that less frequent service has had on ridership. There is a post-pandemic slump on the streetcar system in part due to work-from-home for office jobs and remote learning for post-secondary students. However, even allowing for the pandemic era drop, the problem remains in attracting riders back to transit when streetcars are less frequent and slower, compounded by chronic problems with service reliability. Charts tracking streetcar ridership from 1976 to 2024, the last year published by TTC, are at the end of the article.
These routes are in the part of Toronto where transit riders should be easy to win, but a long decline in service frequency discourages those who have the option to use another mode including private autos, ride hailing or cycling. Service cuts during economic downturns do not magically get reversed as times improve, and ridership that might be wooed back to transit instead faces less reliable service and a political attitude that favours big spending on subway projects, not surface transit.
The remainder of this article looks at each route in detail to see how the actual service changed from the 2014 plan through the 2020s to today comparing:
The 2014 headways for AM Peak, Midday and PM Peak in the management proposal.
The proposed headways after routes converted to Flexity streetcars.
The actual scheduled service in January 2014, January 2020 (just before the pandemic) and February 2026. Driving times are shown separate from terminal recovery times to illustrate how each component has evolved.
Quite notable on many routes is the growth in both scheduled driving and terminal times. Although it is common in the mid-2020s to regard extended travel times and traffic delays as a recent, post-pandemic phenomenon, this pattern started earlier and is evident in 2014:2020 comparisons. Surplus time, it was argued, would prevent short turns, a claim that is demonstrably false as most riders know on a daily basis, but it slows service, wastes resources and forces wider headways.
Steve Munro 