With the many route changes for the opening of Lines 5 and 6, an obvious “project” is to review how all of the new and updated routes are operating. I cannot guarantee that I will get to them all, but will nibble away at the list.
We still cannot see vehicle tracking data for 5 Eglinton LRT, but a route we can see is the vestigial replacement bus 34 Eglinton.
Full disclosure: The Eglinton East corridor is one I have used all of my life, and quality of service affects me personally. However, it also affects the many would-be riders along the line for whom transit “service” has all but disappeared.
This route shows a classic laissez-faire attitude of TTC management where buses appear to run more or less on a schedule of their own making. Riders on other routes are familiar with this problem, but 34 Eglinton shows how an infrequent service can be left to rot and discourage riders from using it. TTC has even talked of the 20-minute service as “interim” and that it might be cut in the future.
The idea of a parallel surface bus was to provide accessibility for those who could not walk to an LRT station, and this is, in theory, a key part of accessibility for the line. However, service is so erratic on this nominally 20-minute route that actually catching a bus requires good timing through a transit app to find one. To add insult to injury, the TTC removed several stops along Eglinton just before Line 5 opened, adding access time to the remaining riders in the name of speeding up a frequent bus service that was about to vanish.
TTC talks about its “family of services” scheme that encourages potential Wheel-Trans users to make part of their trip on the conventional system. 34 Eglinton demonstrates just how badly they actually deliver alternatives.
There is no excuse for the poor quality of service on this route, and three months’ data show that the current operation is “normal” with no visible effort to rein in irregularities.
This article updates a series of posts looking at the 7 Bathurst bus and the effect of transit priority changes made on that route. Originally the City and TTC had proposed red lanes from Bathurst Station north to Eglinton. This was substantially changed to parking and turning restrictions, and the elimination of some transit stops. The changes predominantly affected northbound travel and in the interest of brevity, I have included mainly northbound data here. The changes implemented were:
Extendind the no stopping period on the east side of Bathurst between Eglinton and Bathurst Station North Exit from 2:00 to 7:00pm, weekdays, and from noon to 7:00pm, weekends, except public holidays. Previously, there was no stopping from 4:00 to 6:00pm or 3:30 to 7:00pm, Monday to Friday, depending on the segment
No left turns northbound from 7:00am to 7:00pm Monday to Saturday, except public holidays (Toronto Transit Commission vehicles excepted), at Bathurst & Davenport northbound, and at Bathurst & Dupont southbound. Previous hours were 4:00 to 6:00pm weekdays northbound at Davenport, and 7am to 6pm southbound at Dupont.
The existing no left turns restriction northbound at Bathurst & Dupont from 7:00 to 9:00am weekdays was removed.
Concurrently with these changes, the TTC removed stops from the route, mostly north of St. Clair, with the premise that fewer stops would make faster trips. The actual effect varies depending on how heavily a stop is used, whether each bus or only some trips actually stop there, and whether there is an associated traffic signal that could compound the delay of serving a stop.
A saving of 1/3 in travel times has been claimed between Bathurst Station and Dupont, but this is not supported by actual tracking data. There may be best case comparisons where there is a 1/3 saving, but this does not apply across the board. The primary intent, as explained in the presentation to Council at the time, was to improve the reliability of travel times, not to speed up service.
A major issue on Bathurst is that the service is infrequent (generally every 10 minutes) and very unreliable. How much road capacity should be dedicated to such a route by comparison with other priority implementations such as on King Street or Eglinton Avenue East?
The first set of charts in this article shows the evolution of travel times between Barton (just north of Bathurst Station), St. Clair and Eglinton. The second compares April 2026 with April 2025 in detail. The third reviews the history of headway reliability on the route.
Effective April 27, streetcar service on 501 Queen resumed its normal route between Broadview and Parliament rather than diverting via Dundas Street.
The 503 Kingston Road bus also resumed its normal route between the Don River and Parliament running via King rather than via Queen.
The split operation of 504 King with all streetcars running to Distillery Loop and a 504D shuttle between Parliament and Broadview Station will continue until the schedule change on May 3 when full streetcar service over 504 will resume. Similarly the split 304 King night car and 301 Queen night bus operation will be replaced with 304 streetcars over the full route.
This change has been announced by the TTC via a press release, but does not appear on their Service Changes page. The underlying online schedules will not be updated until May 3, and so trip prediction apps will not give valid information for 501 and 503 services between Broadview and Parliament in the interim.
For a complete list of current and past streetcar diversions, see my Where Is My Streetcar page.
TTC Plans for service to the six World Cup games to be played in Toronto, as well as to the nearby Fan Fest area, were covered in a presentation deck in a recent TTC Board agenda. Because the Board had been rather chatty on previous items, this one was not presented although there was a media scrum afterward.
The plan for transportation to the venues depends on a combination of routes. However, the description of the service varies between the presentation deck and info on the TTC’s World Cup web page.
On the left, the presentation clearly shows the 63 Ossington bus as a World Cup route, but it is missing on the web page.
According to the web page, there will be “expanded service” on subway lines 1 and 2, and “enhanced sevice” on 29/929 Dufferin. Service on 504 King, 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst will run every 5 minutes all day on game days.
Because the 509 and 511 streetcars merge at Bathurst and Fleet, this will mean a 2’30” combined service to Exhibition Loop. That is substantial by current TTC streetcar standards, but it will only provide 24 cars per hour with a capacity of 3,600 riders, generously allowing for 150 per car. The stress on service will be stronger after games when many fans want to leave in a short period. Whether the combined streetcar, bus and GO train service will be able to handle this remains to be seen.
Note the planned access routes to the queuing area on Fleet Street includes fare payment points. This will allow the loading to occur from a fare paid zone without the delay of on board taps, and without the need for fare enforcement in a congested area. This is also shown for access to a contingency bus area at Fort York and Lake Shore, and it is reasonable to assume the same approach will be used at Dufferin Loop.
Aggressive transit priority measures will be needed to keep streets clear. Toronto does not have a good history in restricting motorists to leave the streets for transit service, and the affected areas are not just the downtown business district but residential streets.
Both Bathurst and Dufferin Streets will, by the time of the matches, have RapidTO red lanes south from Bloor. Early plans for Bathurst called for express streetcars and local bus service, but that scheme has been dropped.
I asked Josh Colle, TTC’s Chief Strategy and Customer Experience Officer, about this, and here is his reply:
Earlier iterations of our conceptual service plan envisioned removing intermediate stops along 511 Bathurst to increase the speed of travel along the corridor during the World Cup. Bus service would be provided to serve all existing stops.
With the expected travel time improvements from RapidTO, the implementation of 6-minute or better service, and further service increases during the World Cup period, the express streetcar concept was abandoned. There were also concerns about buses operating in the dedicated lanes and needing to merge in and out of potentially congested curb lanes to serve curbside stops.
This was originally seen as an opportunity to pilot a stop removal program for streetcar while operating a local bus service. However, given the recent priority to improving streetcar operations through other initiatives, our focus remains providing the best service for all customers during the World Cup period.
The TTC intends to provide Blue Night service as shown on the map below beyond the usual level.
Things do go wrong, inevitably, and here are the TTC’s preparations:
Service delivery and performance:
Supplementary supervisors in stations, on-street, and at key locations
Additional standby and change-off vehicles on all modes
Enhanced station staff, customer service and ambassadors
Real-time system oversight and coordinated decision making
Infrastructure readiness:
Streetcar switch duty operators at critical points
Extra janitorial and vehicle cleaning crews
Additional line mechanics, elevator, overhead, subway, signal, and track crews
Standby streetcar support and service trucks
Emergency safety:
Added security personnel on match days
Toronto Police paid duty officers EMS at key locations
Coordinated approach with Station staff, Transit Control and Special Constables
Continued access to social supports and resources through partnerships
This is substantially more than we see for day-to-day operations, and there may be some lessons to be learned about the level of supervisory and support services needed to handle major events and their demand.
(The reference to switch duty operators is a tad embarrassing considering that the planned streetcar routes do not involve any manual switches, and this does not show great confidence in their existing technology.)
There will be “testing exercises” although the exact scale of these is not yet known.
Finally there are plans for enhanced and visible safety and security with the use of Special Constables, Fare Inspectors (Provincial Offenses Officers) and contract security staff. Ideally, as many riders as possible will pass through fare controls at some point in their journey and extensive fare checks on board will not be needed. More important will be visibility of staff who can intervene, if only to report issues and act as a visible deterrent.
Management will bring an updated plan to the June 3 Board meeting.
In response to the “Toronto has the world’s slowest streetcars” meme floating around on line and among some transit advocates, various proposals were floated to speed up our system.
One of these is the idea that there are too many streetcar stops, and if only cars didn’t pause so often for passengers, we could have faster streetcar service. The TTC’s euphemism for this is “stop balancing”.
A chart accompanying the TTC report shows the speed and stop spacing values for several transit systems. Toronto is down in the left bottom corner with the closes stops and the slowest speed. However, Melbourne’s trams are in the same range as Toronto for stop spacing, but they operate faster. Nowhere does the TTC examine what differences might apply to Melbourne lines, nor for the other systems that are both faster and with wider stop spacing.
Although there are some outliers, the bulk of the data points are in the 400-500m range, but this does not examine route characteristics. The original study of slow Melbourne streetcars by Dr. Jan Scheurer commented about Toronto that “CBD-typical speeds seem to extend across the entire city” [p. 8]. Riders who sit in traffic jams on King or Queen Street West, or on Queen Street in the Beach are quite familiar with this problem. Toronto streetcars do not emerge from the core to fly into nearby suburbs.
There is also the issue that Toronto streetcars used to move faster both with the CLRV fleet and the PCCs that preceded them. Something beyond stop spacing is at work even on routes with dedicates rights-of-way. It is easy to go after stops as a source of delay because this would not require an examination of TTC operating practices and the City’s lack of aggressive transit signal priority. Indeed, during the last round of major works on St. Clair, it was discovered that TSP was not actually working in many locations.
Source: TTC
For the sake of argument, assume that the delays to TTC streetcars come from closely spaced stops. Any rider knows that there are other factors including slow operation through junctions, traffic signals that do not give streetcars priority and congestion both in the core and the outer parts of many routes.
The premise is that fewer stops will speed service benefiting those already on streetcars at the expense of those who have to walk further to a stop. This is a bogus argument regardless of stop spacing. There will almost always be more riders passing any individual stop who would “benefit” from its elimination than riders who use the stop. The same argument could be made for some subway stations.
Here are the TTC’s Board-approved stop spacing standards. The target range of 300-400m for local surface routes implies an average stop spacing of 350m giving some leeway to adjust to conditions.
(To give readers a sense of distance, a subway station platform is about 150m long, and so a 300m walk is from one end of a station platform to the other and return.)
Streetcar route averages lie roughly in the 250m-325m range below the standard’s midpoint of 350m. Some stop trimming has already occurred to eliminate very closely spaced stops.
Note that 508 Lake Shore shows the same average as 507 Long Branch even though the 508 travels into the core. The reason is that the stop spacing between Humber Loop and Roncesvalles is quite wide, and this offsets the closer spacing on King Street in the average.
Route
Termini
Stop Spacing (m)
501 Queen
Neville-Roncesvalles (*)
241
Roncesvalles-Humber
448
503 Kingston Road
Victoria Park-York
284
504 King
Dundas West Stn-Distillery (*)
283
Dufferin Loop-Broadview Stn (*)
280
505 Dundas
Dundas West Stn-Broadview Stn (*)
278
506 Carlton
High Park-Main Station (*)
260
507 Long Branch
Long Branch Loop-Humber Loop
312
508 Lake Shore
Long Branch Loop-Distillery
306
509 Harbourfront
Exhibition-Union Station
373
510 Spadina
Spadina Station-Queens Quay
293
511 Bathurst
Bathurst Station-Exhibition Loop
328
512 St. Clair
Gunns Loop-St. Clair Station
270
Source: Calculated from TTC GTFS Schedule Data
Notes:
501 Queen stop data are taken from the pre-Ontario Line construction with service running directly across Queen from Church to York.
Stops near Dundas West and Broadview Stations that are used primarily by overnight services have not been included in the stop counts for 504 King and 505 Dundas.
506 Carlton stop data are taken from the through route before construction diversion around Bay & College.
Some Basic Math
If one wants to achieve a major saving from stop time, many stops have to be cut on a route. One or two will annoy their regular users, but the change in travel time, if any, will be quite small and disappear into the background noise of other variations.
The basic calculation is simple: if a route now has an average spacing of 300m, and you want to raise this to 400m, then one quarter of the stops must vanish. The bigger the change in stop spacing, the more stops must be eliminated.
The numbers of stops for various spacings per 1km are shown below:
250m: 4.0
300m: 3.3
350m: 2.9
400m: 2.5
450m: 2.2
500m: 2.0
With the TTC standard of 300-400m, 350m falls half way along, or 2.9 stops/km. Just to bring routes now at a 250m spacing (4.0/km) to that level would require a reduction of about 1.1 stop/km, or about 12 stops each way on a route the length of 505 Dundas (11km).
If the goal is to move to a 400-500m standard, this means the new target average would be 450m. A route whose average is now 250m would lose almost half its stops. This would be extremely difficult as routes do not have that many “unimportant” closely-space stops to begin with.
The effect would not be on a few riders at a few minor stops, but on many riders all along the routes. They would face extra walking distance lengthening overall travel times, not to mention accessibility issues for those with mobility challenges.
A simple, but important, number is not the space between adjacent stops, but the space that would result if any stop were removed. (In other words, the space between stop N and stop N±2.) In some cases, the existing TTC standard would still be met, but in many the gap between stops would be well outside the standard. For example, if three stops are each 300m apart, getting rid of the middle one creates a 600m gap, well above the standard.
Stops cannot simply be re-spaced to maintain uniformity or iron out problems with stop elimination. For pedestrian safety, stops are almost always at signaled intersections or at least at pedestrian crosswalks so that riders can cross safely to/from stops on the opposite side of the street. The existing street layout, signal patterns and major destinations such as transfer points determine where stops might go. Toronto, unlike Manhattan, does not have a repeating grid as a base for designing standards.
In the sections that follow, I will turn to a few sample routes. There are occasional closely-spaced stops, some with good reason, but not many are ripe for plucking without adopting a considerable increase in the standard and substantial cut to the number of stops. This should be a conscious policy debate, not a change buried in a wider review of Service Standards without a clear indication of the effects on routes across the city.
This post continues a series of articles reviewing travel times for streetcar and bus operations on 510 Spadina. Recent events include winter storms, temporary bus substitution for one week in February 2026 due to power supply issues, and implementation of better transit priority at three intersections.
This article includes data from January 2024 through March 2026 showing travel times on Spadina. Also included are comparisons of speeds and dwell times along the route from October 2025 and March 2026.
For an extended period in 2024-25, the 510 route operated with buses and was, for a time, diverted to St. George Station. Comparisons between streetcar and bus travel times varied through this period depending on the location, time of day, traffic conditions and the degree of priority given to buses, if any.
In February 2026, signals at College, Queen Dundas and King were modified to give streetcars a clear signal before allowing left turns. In the data to March 31, the effect of this change is small. At the level of an individual intersection, this is hard to measure because the change in wait time for a signal is comparable to the frequency with which streetcars report their location. This problem is discussed in more detail at the end of the article. [Corrected at 5:45pm, April 6]
Although signals may clear for streetcars more quickly, there is no change in TTC operating practices that force vehicles to crawl through intersections. The results were not as good as I had hoped, and there are areas on 510 Spadina that need priority far more than the three intersections modified so far.
At this point, confirmation of the benefit of signal changes awaits more data as well as possible expansion of the program.
More generally, the three modified intersections are only part of a larger route, and not necessarily the primary source of delay. Any attempt to improve 510 Spadina travel times must look at the whole route, and at the many locations where streetcars can be delayed.
One point of interest is that streetcar travel times rose slightly after the period of bus operation compared to before (Spring 2025 vs Spring 2024). The change is small but noticeable. What made the difference?
The City and TTC must address why it is possible for buses in mixed traffic to outrun streetcars on reserved lanes during periods when traffic is not congested. A mixture of signalling, stop location and TTC operating practices make this possible.
My apologies to readers who say “oh no, not more charts” and move on to something else. I have deliberately included a lot of them here so that those who are interested can see how the data behave. Any suggestions for changes in presentation or analysis are welcome.
This route had small changes in transit priority in Fall 2025 with removal of parking on the south end of the route during selected periods, and removal of three stops both ways between St. Clair and Eglinton. Although TTC cites stop removal as a travel time saving, this depends on two factors: how often buses actually stop at them, and whether there is a traffic signal that can add to the delay of stopping and falling out of the general traffic flow. None of these stops had signals.
Meanwhile 7 Bathurst is also supposed to be part of the TTC’s pilot to reduce bunching and gapping. That project began in March 2025 on several routes, but was scaled back to peak periods in October.
The tracking data show little effect of the changes which were quite limited in scope. Headway reliability remains a major problem from both ends of the line, and even worse midway along the route. There is also a very large difference between off-peak and peak travel times affecting many parts of the route, not just the portion south of Eglinton.
Improvements are needed both to deal with peak period congestion delays, but also to improve the reliability of vehicle departures and spacing on an all-day basis. With the results to date, it is hard to believe that substantial new ridership will be attracted to the line especially with its chronic problem of irregular headways.
This is an update from previous articles about the 511 Bathurst Streetcar showing the effect of operational changes in recent months. These include:
A shift from 10-minute to 6-minute headways for daytime service effective mid-November 2025.
Implementation of red transit-only lanes on Bathurst south from Dundas in Fall 2025.
Increased headway supervision to reduce bunching and gaps.
These effects took place concurrently, and it is difficult to tease apart the individual effects especially as seen by riders. For example, bunching produces wide gaps in service, but these can be reduced both by better headway regulation and by more frequent scheduled service. Reserved lanes can reduce fluctuations in travel times leading to less irregularity in headways. Some of these effects were seen years ago with the implementation of the King Street transit corridor. This is not a transit epiphany, but rather a rediscovery of what is needed to ensure reliable service.
The first part of this article reviews travel times over various parts of the route from January 2024 to February 2026. Between November 2024 and June 2025, the south end of the streetcar route was diverted for construction. Data for this period is included in the charts only for locations north of King which had streetcar service through the entire 2+ year period.
The second part of the article reviews headways (the interval between cars) at key locations. There is a consistent degradation in headway reliability between the southern terminal at Exhibition and Richmond Street northbound, and this exists even after reserved lanes were in place over the entire distance.
The time saving of transit priority schemes can be undone by unevenly spaced service and the extra wait times this causes. Moreover, because a “gap car” typically has heavier than average loads, more riders experience waits and crowding than would be shown in average counts that the TTC typically publishes.
Another important point is that delays and irregularity are not just a peak period issues, but can affect service at midday and through the evening. (This can also affect weekends, but I have not included them here.) On 511 Bathurst, there is a quite striking “heartbeat” pattern with extended travel times almost always on Friday evenings on the south end of the route due to congestion in the Entertainment District. This substantially disappeared after the implementation of red lanes in the area.
Buckets of red paint alone will not solve reliability issues without a culture of regularly spaced service. Note that this is quite different from “on time performance” where staying “on time” can actually lead to erratic spacing when what is needed is headway regulation. Moreover, TTC standards allow some variation in departures giving a window up to five minutes late while still being “on time”. With cars scheduled every six minutes, bunched service does not ring any alarm bells.
This article is the first in the series of review of routes where transit priority measures have been implemented.
After the red lanes are extended north to Bloor Street, I will publish an update to this article.
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.
This article includes reviews of the 29/929 Dufferin local and express services to the end of 2025. The major item of interest is the introduction of “red lanes” south of Bloor Street and their effect on the bus service. Detailed charts are included here for:
November and December travel times in both directions between King and Bloor.
January 2024 to December 2025 historical stats on travel times.
The segment between Lawrence and Wilson that does not have transit priority, but which has much more congestion than at the south end of the route thanks to Yorkdale Mall.
General observations:
The benefit of the red lanes is more pronounced for northbound than for southbound trips, and only at certain times of the day.
There is much more severe disruption of service northbound near Yorkdale Mall, but no transit priority measures are proposed there.
Headways on Dufferin remain widely scattered near terminals (northbound at King, southbound at Transit Road just outside of Wilson Station).
Even on Christmas Day when weather was relatively benign and travel times were lower than normal, headways were not reliable.
Part of the improvement in travel time in December 2025 could be due to seasonal effects. When the data are in for early 2026, we will see how long-lived the saving actually is. I will publish an update to this article in a few months when the pattern is clear.
There are a lot of charts in this article, and I have put them all after the “more” break. Those who are interested in the details can open the full article.
I will turn to a review of 511 Bathurst streetcar and 7 Bathurst bus which both saw recent changes in future articles.
Update: For clarity, the red lanes currently extend only as far north as Dundas. After work up to Bloor is completed in the Spring, I will publish an update showing the effect.
Steve Munro 