This report is covered in a separate article. Additional comments arising from the meeting have been added there. See The Troubled State of TTC Green Buses.
On June 4, 2025, new reserved bus lanes were installed on Queens Quay westbound from Sherbourne to Bay, and eastbound from Jarvis to Sherbourne. The TTC projected travel time savings of up to 5 minutes, and more reliable service for riders using routes on this roadway including 114 Queens Quay East, 75 Sherbourne, 65 Parliament and 202 Cherry Beach.
Now that the June 2025 tracking data are available, this article reviews the actual change, if any, in travel times and headway consistency. For historic context, the data presented here go back to May 2024 when the 114 Queens Quay East route was split off from the south end of 19 Bay.
Here is a map showing the affected routes and location of the new red lanes.
Over the period before red lane implementation, the 114 Queens Quay East service suffered from schedule problems with an unrealistic high scheduled speed. This was reduced in October 2024, and then raised again recently in anticipation of red lane benefits. The current scheduled speed is not as high as the original design in May 2024. Service frequency has also been changed from time to time mainly in response to seasonal fluctuation, but in some cases to “stretch” buses over a longer running time. (Details later in the article.)
The original eastern terminus was an around-the-block loop via Logan, Lake Shore and Carlaw to Commissioners. This was changed to Lake Shore Garage (the Wheel-Trans garage on Commissioners west of Leslie) to provide a better, off-street location.
Service until the October 2024 schedule change was extremely erratic, especially in the PM peak, as buses could not maintain the original running times. Since October, there has been little change at most times of the day including in June 2025 after red lane implementation.
There is a very strong day-of-the-week effect in the PM peak for westbound travel times on Queens Quay with midweek days being the worst. In June, the worst of the peaks are down from April levels, but that month was unusually bad. There is not yet enough accumulated data to establish whether there will be a permanent “shaving” of peak travel times through the red lane area.
There is an analogy here to the King Street project where the travel times under normal circumstances changed little, but the peaks on days when there was a disruption or special event were shaved off improving overall reliability.
Any analysis of the benefits of the red lanes must be careful not to cherry pick “good” and “bad” days for comparisons.
The data here provides mainly a “before” view of service on 114 Queens Quay East. I will update these charts in the Fall when full traffic conditions have resumed.
Since February 2024, I have tracked the TTC’s posted list of Reduced Speed Zones (RSZs) on subway lines 1 (YUS) and 2 (BD). A pattern has emerged that some RSZs are very long-lasting, others are brief, and some come-and-go.
Former Interim CEO Greg Percy claimed that we should expect about a dozen of these at any time, but the current total as of July 13, 2025, sits at 27.
If these zones came and went in short order as problems were discovered, one might tolerate a period of travel delay. My own recent experiences with glacial trips from Vaughan to St. George makes me thankful that I don’t take this route every day, but regular riders there have my sympathy.
Current reporting makes actual tracking of track defects difficult, and there is no sense of the underlying problems or limitations on performing repairs. Transparency demands that more information is provided for the status of RSZs, specifically:
Location
Date first reported
Defect issue(s)
Planned repairs
Projected date to completion
Actual date slow order is lifted
Whether this will speed repairs depends on available resources (capital, work equipment, crews) and conflict with other works along the subway lines, but at a minimum riders deserve to know when they can expect relief from slow orders. The TTC Board and Council deserve to know how deep-seated the outstanding problems might be, where they originated, and what will be required to fix them.
On January 10, 2025 as part of the budget process, the TTC Board approved:
Establish a Strategic Planning Committee to assist the TTC Board in managing strategic planning and priorities, including through a Ridership Growth Strategy and other existing strategic documents, and direct the Director, Commission Services to report back to the February 24, 2025 TTC Board meeting on a proposed structure and meeting schedule after canvassing Commissioners’ interest in committee membership;
Amend the 2025 Schedule of Meetings to add a Special Meeting of the Board in September 2025 to consider recommendations from the Strategic Planning Committee, receive an update on the 2026 Budget, and discuss budget priorities informing the development of the 2026 TTC Operating Budget; 2026-2035 Capital Budget and Plan and 15-Year Capital Investment Plan and Real Estate Investment Plan Update;
Direct the Director, Commission Services to include a Special Meeting to consider recommendations from the Strategic Planning Committee, receive an update on the next year’s budget, and discuss budget priorities informing the development of the next year’s budgets in future year’s recommended annual schedule of Board and Committee meetings for the Board’s approval, in accordance with Section 20 of the By-law to Govern Board Proceedings;
TTC Staff conduct public consultations and develop a Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0, building upon the Ridership Growth Strategy 2018-2022 and report back to the Board in July 2025;
TTC staff develop a hiring strategy on the basis of the approved Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0 and report back to the Board by October 2025; and TTC staff use the approved Ridership Growth Strategy 2.0 and associated hiring strategy to inform the 2026 TTC Budget process.
I began writing this article before the meeting took place as background based on the then-posted materials. After attending the meeting, I found that it was more productive than I had expected thanks in part to two presentations that were not in the original published agenda.
TTC Chair Jamaal Myers praised Councillor/Commissioner Alejandra Bravo who chairs the Strategic Planning Committee for the work she did in producing a focused agenda that made for a useful meeting. Past attempts by the Board to engage in general policy debates have been rare.
There was much more meat on the presentations than we have seen in a long while at the TTC. Heavy going in places, and some hard truths about the options available. This type of briefing is long overdue, and will provide the foundation for informed discussions at the TTC Board and eventually at Council.
The actual establishment of a committee contemplated in point 11 did not actually occur until the Board meeting of April 16, 2025, and the first meeting only now happened, six months after the original motion. It is not clear how much influence the committee will have on the 2026 budget process considering the length of delay.
Although the next meeting date is currently shown as October 25, 2025, Chair Bravo indicated that she does plan to schedule one in time to feed into the budget.
As for consultations on a Ridership Growth Strategy, these have not yet begun, and the TTC is now only in the first round of its Annual Plan consultations. By extension, any service improvements flowing from a new RGS including hiring required to staff buses and streetcars do not yet exist. How much would be done in the 2026 budget remains to be seen.
The delay in the committee’s initiation places the Board in a familiar position. Actual discussion of policy options is pushed off, if it occurs at all, so late in the year that the next budget is “more of the same” because there was no time to consider alternatives. Options for significant growth are never presented to Council because the TTC Board never discusses what might be done.
“Value for Money”
Almost at the end of the meeting, Chair Bravo made a comment about advising the budget process. She posed two questions about funding:
Is it the best value for money?
Does it create the most value for transit users?
This slipped by quickly, but a vital issue here is that these are not the same question, but two separate issues depending on what one assumes as the role of transit. Best value for money for whom? For taxpayers asked to subsidize transit? For riders awaiting a bus that never comes?
That distinction lies at the heart of every transit funding debate I have heard, but the actual question is never asked, and “value for whom” rarely starts with riders. This can be an important change in budget planning and in advocacy for financial support from the City and Province.
This article continues the analysis of service on routes where the TTC claims to be implementing mid-route headway management. The routes included here are:
24/924 Victoria Park
25/925 Don Mills
29/929 Dufferin
See Part I for a general introduction and details of 7 Bathurst, 100 Flemingdon Park, 165 Weston Road North, 506 Carlton and 512 St. Clair.
A common factor evident in the charts for these routes is that service near the origins of routes is barely within the target range for headways, and more commonly well beyond it. AM peak service might squeeze within the target, but service falls apart from midday onward and does not recover in the evening.
Although the TTC reports performance based on “on time” departure from terminals, they actually have a headway standard, but never report on how well routes meet it. Note that the standard actually is very generous and allows a wider range of headways than the “on time” standard. For example, a bus operating every 10 minutes is allowed a 50% headway deviation either way meaning that the actual headway could be anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, and 40% of the service can be even worse. This is a standard designed to make management look good to those who don’t peer “under the covers”.
For services that operate between 5 and 10 minutes, passengers do not rely on printed schedules, but expect vehicles to arrive at prescribed headways. Therefore, on-time performance for frequent service is measured by how well actual headways correlate to scheduled headway intervals. Trips are monitored at a location based on arrival time, without regard to whether the trip that arrived was scheduled for that time slot. The vehicle is considered on-time when the headway deviation is less than 50% of the scheduled headway. For example, a service that operates every 6 minutes is deemed on-time if the headway deviation falls between 3 minutes and 9 minutes. TTC’s goal is to have 60% of all trips operated within +-50% of the scheduled headway over the entire service day. [Service Standards at pp 15-16]
The TTC plans a review of its Service Standards in coming months. That review and much-needed reporting on service quality are long overdue.
Express routes can have very wide ranging headways making their benefit to riders dubious. The wait for an express bus can be longer than the travel time saving from skipped stops. Meanwhile riders at “local” stops cannot benefit from the express vehicles. The TTC plans a review of its Express Network later this summer, and service reliability should be a major issue. It is not enough to advertise a faster trip, but the network must actually provide it, including waiting time, reliably.
Another factor that appears in some of these charts (as well as in Part I) is that for some periods there is more service on a route than is scheduled. This is due in part to the assignment of the “run as directed” buses to supplement regular routes. However, the base schedule is not adjusted, and the RADs do not create a uniform combined headway. They can even contribute to bunching by running close to a scheduled run.
TTC still has not deigned to release detailed data from their APCs (Automatic Passenger Counters) and only coarse information (corresponding to the three levels of loading shown on their real time info) is publicly available. I have asked many times, but this request goes nowhere. Without detailed data it is impossible to know the loads on buses or to differentiate between a modest seated load and a partially standing one. Considering that the Service Standards call for at most a few standees in the off peak, this distinction is crucial to evaluating how service matches the standards.
When the use of RADs to supplement service began, the intent was to soak up spare bus operators (not to mention spare buses) without committing to a permanent service improvement. There has been no external report on whether the added service improved ridership, or the effect of its withdrawal.
The TTC “Annual Service Plan” has been rebranded as the “Network Plan” in the interest of clarity, but based on the 2026 edition’s meagre content so far, this is an infinitesimal network. In particular, it really does not deal with the transit network as a whole, but only small tweaks at the edges. Big decisions such as long range, city-wide plans, budgets, service levels and the future of transit as part of Toronto are all made elsewhere.
Issues such as strategies for improving ridership and budget reviews which bear directly on the amount of service riders see are not in this plan. Nor is any discussion of basic service quality and management, nor of the fractured nature of TTC information for and communications with its riders.
Round One of the Network Plan consultation addresses only a handful of proposed route changes. More substantial work including an Express Bus Network review and discussion of construction-related service changes won’t appear until Round Two in August.
The Network Plan presentation lists several parallel studies under development parallel to but not included in the Annual Network Plan consultations. Only those keen transit watchers know about all or most of these, and it is a hard slog keeping up. The table below is from the Round One presentation deck.
2026 Annual Service Budget
Sets service levels for each board period in 2026
Includes number of vehicles, service hours and distance
2026-2028 Ridership Growth Strategy (RGS)
Cost-benefit analysis of service, fare, infrastructure and customer experience initiatives
Could achieve ridership growth over the next 3 years (if funded)
RapidTO Transit Priority Lanes
Completed: Queens Quay East
Next: Dufferin St and Bathurst St corridors (pending July 2025 Council approval). Target: ready for 2026 FIFA World Cup
Feasibility and design studies are on-going for the Jane Street, Finch Avenue East, and Lawrence Avenue East roadways
FIFA World Cup Transit Service Plan
Increased service on key downtown routes
Additional service on match days and during Fan Festival
Reducing bunching and gapping
Efforts to reduce bunching and gapping on 10 of the most problematic routes with enhanced on-street presence as well as scheduling related changes
This may suit the TTC’s fragmented internal structure, but it drives people outside of the TTC mad. One does not have to be a seasoned transit advocate, merely a daily rider, to rail at the frustration of “consultation” on a handful of minor route changes. Basic service issues across the system must wait for the budget (no public consultation there at all), the Ridership Growth Strategy (budget limits again) and a Board that, until recently, actually believed (or chose not to challenge) management claims about quality.
Two burning issues are service quality (with associated crowding and unpredictable waits), and the effect of construction projects on routes (not to mention abjectly poor and inaccurate communications to riders). We will have to wait until Round Two in August to address at least some of these problems.
Consultation
An online survey opens July 7-16. There are separate consultations with the Advisory Committee on Accessible Transit (ACAT) and the TTC’s Planning Advisory Group which after many years now has a formal name. (Full disclosure: I am a regular contributor to that group.)
Pop-Ups will be held from 4-6pm at the following dates and locations:
July 9th: University of Toronto Scarborough Campus
July 10th: St. George Station
July 15th: Sherbourne & Rosedale Stations
July 16th: Lawrence West Station & Sunnybrook Hospital
In February-March 2025, the TTC added on-street supervisors on eleven routes in an attempt to reduce the incidence of gaps and bunching. This is described in the June 2025 CEO’s Report and the associated Metrics Report containing performance stats for the system.
Bunching and gapping of TTC service
Last March, the TTC expanded a pilot to improve service reliability on 11 key bus and streetcar routes. Working through the Transit Control Centre, uniformed Supervisors have been deployed mid-route to ensure our service frequency meets customer expectations and that we reduce the bunching and gapping of our buses and streetcars, which is a source of frustration for riders.
The pilot involves the following routes: 7 Bathurst, 24/924 Victoria Park, 25/925 Don Mills, 29/929 Dufferin, 100 Flemington Park, 165 Weston Rd North, 506 Carton, and 512 St Clair.
Starting in July, the CEO’s Report will include a Hot Topic that will provide news and updates on the progress – and challenges – related to this important issue. [CEO’s Report, p. 9]
Also:
TTC expanded a pilot to improve service reliability on key bus routes. Mid-route Field Supervisor presence on the nine priority bus routes was increased throughout the February and March Board Period, where the focus is on reducing bunching and gapping, in order to improve the reliability of service. Bunching and gapping is measured by “Headway Adherence”: the vehicle is considered on-time when the headway deviation is less than 50% of the scheduled headway. [Metrics Report, p. 15]
Mid-route Field Supervisor presence on the two priority streetcar routes continued throughout the February and March Board Period, to reduce bunching and gapping and improve the reliability of service. Bunching and gapping is measured by “Headway Adherence”: the vehicle is considered on-time when the headway deviation is less than 50% of the scheduled headway. [Metrics Report, p. 16]
Although there is a Service Standard for headway adherence, this is not measured and reported publicly, and results are never cited in ongoing service quality reports. For many years, the TTC clung to the concept that if routes were on time at terminals, the rest of the line would look after itself. However, the “on time” standard is sufficiently lax that badly bunched and gapped service can meet the target. That, combined with reporting only average results, hides the real character of service that riders experience day-to-day.
At the June 23 Board meeting, management gave the impression that they would not report on all routes in July and might have to farm some of the analytical work out.
This is a sad admission considering the years of articles I have written on service analysis showing what could be done with the hope that the TTC would develop internal tools to perform similar tasks. Sadly, however, I have been told by some at TTC they have what they need, and, in effect that I should run along and not bother them.
Partly to hold their feet to the fire, and to provide the type of information that should be routinely available to the Board, management and the public, this article will do the work the TTC claims they cannot. Here are headway reliability analyses for the routes involved over much or all of the period from January 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.
In a very few cases, it is possible to see a change in service quality (measured as a smaller spread between minimum and maximum headways, or gaps between vehicles) around the beginning of March 2025. These are rare, and short-lived. February was a really bad time to try to implement any new practice as the city was digging out (or not depending on where you live) of a huge snowstorm. (The extended effect of the City’s poor snow clearing on transit routes is evident in the multi-day peaks in irregular service on some routes.)
I have presented 18 months of data to show that problems with headway reliability have existed for some time. There is more data going further back, but 18 months makes the point. Moreover, a consistent pattern is that headways might be well-behaved in the AM peak and Midday, but evening service does not fully “recover” from PM peak conditions, and erratic service is common.
Quite bluntly, service on all of these routes was poor, well beyond the TTC’s own Service Standards, for 2024 and early 2025, and showed little sign of improvement through to mid-year. It will be interesting to compare whatever stats TTC comes up with to the performance shown on charts here.
Part I of this series includes data for 7 Bathurst, 100 Flemingdon Park, 165 Weston Road North, 506 Carlton and 512 St. Clair. Part II will include 24/924 Victoria Park, 25/925 Don Mills and 29/929 Dufferin.
There are a lot of charts and this is a long read. I will put the “more” break here. Those readers interested in specific routes can soldier on. Thanks for reading!
Starting after Labour Day in September, the TTC will rebuild the track at the King-Dufferin intersection. This work is expected to take about six weeks.
The project is left over from work on King West in 2024 when it could not be completed as planned due to supply problems. It was erroneously reported that the 2024 project finished “early” when in fact this was due to the scope change.
Transit services will be significantly changed in this area.
Source: City of Toronto Report at p. 5
Note that the diversions for King-Church construction are expected to end before King-Dufferin work begins, and transit services on the eastern part of King will be back to normal.
Route changes at King-Dufferin:
Routes diverting east of Roncesvalles via Queen and Shaw to King:
504A King streetcars from Distillery Loop to Dundas West Station
304 King night cars from Broadview Station to Dundas West Station
508 Lake Shore streetcars from Long Branch to Broadview Station
No service on King between Mowat and Roncesvalles
504B King streetcars will operate from Broadview Station diverting from King via Bathurst to Wolseley Loop (at Queen).
Kingston Road services:
503 Kingston Road converted to bus operation and cut back from Dufferin to loop via Mowat and Fraser.
303 Kingston Road night service suspended (it is not yet clear what will replace the 303 on Kingston Road)
Dufferin bus services:
29 Dufferin buses will divert via Queen, Shaw and King looping via Mowat and Fraser.
929 Dufferin Express buses will terminate at Queen looping via Queen, Gladstone and Peel.
No service on Dufferin south Queen nor through Exhibition Place to Princes’ Gate.
Parking and stopping provisions will change on Queen from Roncesvalles to Shaw, and on Shaw between Queen and King. Stopping will be prohibited on both sides of these streets seven days/week from 7:00 to 11:00am and 2:00 to 7:00pm.
Left turns will be banned from Shaw northbound at Queen and southbound at King. Left turns are now banned from King eastbound onto Shaw weekdays from 7:00 to 10:00am, and from 3:00 to 7:00pm. This will be extended to a ban from 7:00am to 7:00pm on all days.
Some existing parking spaces will be removed to make room for transit vehicles on Dufferin north of Queen, Peel, Mowat, Liberty, Fraser, and King. Details are in the report.
These changes will only last for the duration of the construction project.
The TTC plans to “conduct comprehensive targeted engagement to inform and educate customers, residents, local businesses, and other partners of the pending changes.” However, major changes are unlikely as this project is only two months away and temporary transit routes are already decided. The TTC does not yet have a page on its own site for this project.
This issue will be at Toronto & East York Community Council on July 8, 2025.
A major item on the agenda was the subway platform edge doors study. This is covered in a separate article.
There were overlapping threads in discussion of current results, the financial update, and the non-fare strategy all stemming from the 2025 shortfall between budgeted and actual fare revenue and ridership. Although some shortfall was expected thanks to the severe winter, ridership has not climbed to the budgeted level. An unanswered question is whether the TTC aimed too high in its expectations for 2025, or if there is an inherent limit in system growth that will occur over the year.
Midweek rides (Tuesday to Thursday) in Period 4 (roughly the month of April) were about 2% over the corresponding period in 2024, but overall ridership is about 5.1% below the budgeted level.
Fare revenue follows a similar pattern, although it is down by only 4.6% to budget because the average fare/ride is slightly higher than expected.
The use of various payment methods continues to evolve toward Presto with either a Presto card, app (“virtual card” below), or bank card (“open payment”). This chart only goes to week 17 of the year, and legacy media were still accepted for another month although they have dropped to 0.2% of all fare payments. In Period 4 about 46,000 tokens and 12,000 tickets were collected (about 2,000 fares/day).
Boardings continue to be below pre-pandemic levels across the system.
Note that a “boarding” is one link of a trip on a single route, with the exception that transfers are not counted as new boardings on the subway. A “ride” is one or more boardings paid for with one fare or card tap.
The lower recovery level on the rail modes is attributed mainly to the work-from-home pattern which is still felt by the transit system with the average day on Tuesday to Thursday being 6% higher than Monday and Friday.
Weekend demand is important and stands at about 60% of the weekday level (1.53 million/day vs 2.54 million/day). By extension weekend service is also important, although the demand is less concentrated in peak hours, and the high point falls in the afternoon rather than the classic AM and PM “rush hours”.
The main CEO’s Report contains more current data than the Metrics Report and states:
For the week ending May 30, the overall weekday boardings stood at 2.5 million per day and increased by one per cent from the same week last year. Weekday boardings by mode continue to be highest on the bus network at 1.2 million, followed by subway at 1.1 million, and streetcar at 245,000. Compared to a year ago, subway and streetcar demand, respectively, increased by six and four per cent, mainly due to an increase in downtown office commutes, while bus demand declined by three per cent.
There is no analysis of the degree to which ridership growth is constrained by the quality and quantity of service. Those of us who remember back before the pandemic will recall that the TTC was in a period of constrained growth. All surplus capacity had been consumed by new riders, but budgets, fleet size and subway capacity limited the amount of service and its attractiveness for new and increased riding.
Rider complaints continue to rank timeliness of service, missed stops, and vehicle operation as the top three concerns, and these outrank safety by a wide margin. This is not to downplay safety issues, but the TTC has severe problems with the dependability of its service which are probably depressing ridership recovery.
An updated Ridership Growth Strategy is expected later in 2025, and the mix of complaints indicates where they should concentrate efforts to woo back riders.
Two proposals before City Council attempt to deal with congestion issues downtown brought on by the King/Church water main and track reconstruction.
MM31.17 – Speeding Up Streetcars: Traffic Amendments on Adelaide Street, King Street and York Street – by Mayor Olivia Chow, seconded by Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik
This motion proposes the relocation of parking and loading zones from Adelaide Street to nearby streets to free up capacity on Adelaide.
Currently, the Financial District Business Improvement Area and their stakeholders use loading zones on the south side of Adelaide Street West, from Yonge Street to York Street, between 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. Based on the travel time data, streetcar operations are negatively impacted when the loading operations are in effect.
In consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, Transportation Services and the Financial District have agreed that temporary loading zones will be established on the west side of York Street, between King Street West and Wellington Street, and on the north side of King Street West, between Yonge Street and York Street.
Delivery drivers will queue in the new loading zones, where Traffic Control Persons will marshal the delivery drivers into the loading bay only when it is clear. With the temporary loading zones in place, stopping will be prohibited on Adelaide Street West from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday to Sunday.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment to her own motion authorizing payment “to deploy additional paid duty officers at seven locations near the King and Church worksite to manage traffic flow”.
MM31.18 – Re-Opening King Street for Business: Keeping Toronto’s Downtown Core and Canada’s Financial District Moving – by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Stephen Holyday
This motion proposes the reopening of through traffic on King Street where streetcars are not operating during the construction diversion.
City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to make any necessary changes to reopen the portion of King Street between Spadina Avenue and Church Street to vehicular traffic for the duration of the King Street East and Church Street intersection closure, where streetcars are not currently in service.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment limiting the reopened area to portions where “streetcars and buses” are not operating. This effectively neuters the motion because the only portion of King with no transit service now is east of Yonge Street.
The debate was mired by a combination of political rivalries, lack of familiarity with the affected area and transit services, and disinformation either through ignorance or misrepresentation.
The Mayor’s motion MM31.17 and amendment carried on a show of hands.
The Mayor’s proposed amendment to MM31.18 carried by 16-5. The motion as amended carried on a show of hands.
The debate was hampered by the absence of basic information such as a map and detailed information on items such as existing transit services, traffic pinch points and loading zone locations.
In support of his claim that King Street could be reopened, Councillor Bradford showed a photo looking west on King from Simcoe with the street completely devoid of traffic. The photo was taken at 6:30pm on Monday.
Monday is a very light day for office-bound traffic due to work-from-home patterns. This is also reflected in day-of-the-week travel time differences shown later in this article.
The theatre district (Roy Thomson Hall, Royal Alexandra and Princess of Wales Theatres, TIFF) are dark on Mondays, and there is little tourist traffic. There was no major event at the Rogers Centre.
Although an empty road can be found at times, the photo is deeply misleading, and Bradford should know better.
Among the most striking pieces of disinformation was the claim that replacement bus service carries far fewer riders than the streetcars did along the King Street corridor. When asked, staff gave riding figures of 24,000 on the King Street replacement bus, and 60,000 per day for the streetcars. These are all day values for the entire route, not for riding on the King Street transit corridor itself. At no point was there any discussion of the frequency (and hence capacity) of service. These numbers were cited by various Councillors to claim that transit priority was not needed on King because so many fewer people were riding there.
City staff should be chastised for failing to correct this point and for giving an answer that did not properly illuminate the comparison between service levels.
For the record, the scheduled service on the central portion of King Street with streetcars and buses is shown below. Note that there is substantially less scheduled capacity with the replacement bus service. Buses on King are quite crowded, and service is bunched and erratic.
It is quite likely that there are fewer riders on the buses than on the streetcars, although a major contributing factor will be the level of service provided by the TTC. From a capacity viewpoint, a service of 18 buses/hour with 50/bus (greater than the Service Standard level) would be 900 riders per hour past a point. The streetcar service would have a capacity more than double that level.
PM Peak Service
Streetcar Service (Apr/25)
Bus Service (June/25)
504A Distillery-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
504B Broadview-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
503 Kingston Road (EB from York)
10′ (6 cars/hour)
508 Lake Shore
20′ (3 cars/hour)
504D Broadview-Bathurst
5′ (12 buses/hour)
504C Distillery-Bathurst
10′ (6 buses/hour)
In the course of the debate, Mayor Chow noted that work at King & Church is progressing well and should be finished by August 8. This may allow the road to reopen, but resumption of streetcar service depends on the TTC finishing their work including reconstruction of streetcar overhead at that intersection and along King Street East.
The remainder of this article updates previously-published charts about streetcar travel times on Richmond and Adelaide Streets.
