The TTC has announced its services for the CNE for 2025 to operate from Friday, August 15 to Monday, September 1.
CNE Express buses will operate non-stop between Bathurst Station and Exhibition Loop, and between Dufferin Station and Dufferin Loop.
Extra service will operate on the 29 Dufferin and 929 Dufferin Express bus routes, and on the 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst streetcar routes.
Other routes will change to accommodate the CNE services and traffic conditions.
63 Ossington buses normally loop at King via Strachan, East Liberty, Liberty and Atlantic. This will change so that buses loop via Fraser, Liberty and Atlantic.
503 Kingston Road streetcars will be extended west from Dufferin to Sunnyside Loop between 2pm-1am weekdays and 9am-1am on weekends.
510 Spadina streetcars will terminate at Queens Quay Loop until 7:30pm daily, and will run to Union Station afterward.
This is the third part of a series showing details of travel times in the Bathurst and Dufferin corridors.
For introductory remarks and a discussion of general issues, please refer to Part I.
The main part of this article contains the charts for the streetcar service on 511 Bathurst. Note that data for any bus extras has been omitted from these charts to ensure a presentation of streetcar-only speeds. Data from October 2024 and July 2025 are shown here to be outside of the period when the line was rerouted around construction at Fleet and Bathurst with buses operating a south-end shuttle service.
Thanks to a recent article about the proposed RapidTO lanes on Bathurst and Dufferin, A Contrarian’s View of Bathurst/Dufferin RapidTO, I was dumped on by several people notably on BlueSky in the type of exchange we are more used to seeing on X. The problem was compounded when several of my comments were incorporated in the now-discredited anti-bus-lane campaigns featuring AI-generated “spokespeople” for affected neighbourhoods.
The existence of those campaigns, however, does not invalidate my basic arguments questioning the purported benefits of the project.
While I was working on a series of articles reviewing the actual operating characteristics of 7 Bathurst and 29/929 Dufferin, the debate about red lanes started to heat up. I already knew from the analysis in progress that the issues on these corridors went well beyond parking, and in some cases were completely separate.
Both routes suffer from appallingly irregular “dispatching”, if we can call it that, of vehicles from their northern and southern terminals. Before service even reaches the proposed transit priority areas, the headways are erratic with gaps and bunching. This worsens as buses travel along routes. This happens all of the time, every day of the week. This is not a case of chronically late buses leaving at random times, and tracking data show that much of the service enjoys a reasonable terminal layover time.
A related problem for riders is that the scheduled service on 7 Bathurst is not frequent, compared to other routes in the city with reserved lanes. This compounds with irregular headways to produce unreliable service.
Although Bathurst was part of the “top 20” identified as possible RapidTO candidates, it was not part of the original RapidTO studies reviewing Dufferin, Jane, Steeles West, Lawrence East and Finch East. Lawrence East is only on that short list thanks to efforts of the recently departed Councillor McKelvie who has gone on to a new career as an MP. Bathurst rose to prominence thanks to the anticipated need for transit priority during the six FIFA World Cup games in 2026.
Even the overnight 329 Dufferin Night Bus, operating half-hourly when there is no traffic congestion, does not maintain regular headways. Buses leave terminals at Exhibition Place and Steeles within a narrow band of headways, as one would hope when they are running “on time” relative to schedules. However, just as with daytime service, bus speeds vary, and as they move along the route, the headways spread out. Midway along the route between 3am and 4am, half of the service lies in a 15-minute wide band, well beyond TTC Service Standards, and the other half lies even further from the target.
This is not a problem of congestion but of the lack of headway and “on time” discipline for night services. In turn this makes wait times unpredictable, and transfers between routes can fail because a bus is badly off schedule. Night service is erratic across the city despite political talk of its important role serving shift workers.
TTC Service Standards give considerable leeway to what is reported as “on time performance” and allow management to report better results than a typical rider would find credible. I have covered this topic in other posts and will not belabour the problems here. The “Standards” badly need revision, and along with them, the quality of service management.
This is not to say that transit priority is unnecessary, but that it will not achieve its stated goals without addressing underlying problems affecting far more routes than the Bathurst and Dufferin buses.
As for the Bathurst Streetcar proposal, this originates in the FIFA games. The TTC hopes to run very frequent service between Bathurst Station and Exhibition Loop with transit priority from Bloor south to Lake Shore where the route joins the existing right-of-way on Fleet Street. The question here is whether the installation should be permanent, or only for the period of the games.
The 511 Bathurst car now operates every 8-10 minutes, although the TTC has plans to improve this to every 6 minutes later this year. The route suffers from many delays at crossings of other streetcar routes thanks to the TTC’s blanket slow order on junctions where streetcars crawl through the special trackwork. Those of us with long memories (or anyone who has visited street railways elsewhere) know that this is a Toronto-specific restriction that grew out of problems with electric switch controller reliability dating back to the 1990s.
If service on 511 Bathurst is to be very frequent for the games, the TTC will have to design a mechanism for crew relief that does not include parking vehicles for extended periods. Operators need breaks, but this should not cause transit traffic congestion at terminals.
On a four-lane road, no parking will be possible with a 7×24 reserved streetcar lane. As with the proposed bus lanes, the issue is whether all-day reservation is needed, and what locations would work with shorter hours. The problem of enforcement is trickier because motorists think of middle lanes as “theirs” while the curb lane might come and go. There will also be an issue with any mix of local and express services, and which of these is provided by the streetcars.
The TTC has not published any service design proposals to indicate what the transit demands on the road will be. Many operational issues need to be sorted out for an intensive FIFA service, and much more than red paint is needed.
Toronto talks a good line on transit support, but this is not reflected in system-wide issues including irregular and crowded bus service, and a sense that growth, if any, will be doled out by a parsimonious Council. This directly contradicts claims for the future importance of transit in moving people around the city and supporting increased density on major routes.
Recent newspaper articles and editorials extol the virtues of the RapidTO projects on Bathurst and Dufferin Street, and portray those who object in a less than flattering light.
The urgency of transit priority action for the 2026 FIFA games combines with portrayal of transit priority as an absolute good before which all objections must fall. The word “NIMBY” is thrown about to denigrate residents and businesses in the affected areas, but this is no substitute for hard data proving, or not, that the RapidTO proposal really is “the better way”.
For decades, I have advocated for better transit service in Toronto. Transit priority measures are one, but not the only, factor that can improve transit for riders. Quality and quantity of service are also key, and yet the TTC has a tendency to place most blame for their shortcomings on external factors. To be sure traffic congestion is an issue, and Toronto is already at a point where in some locations and times there simply is not enough capacity to go around. This is not a case of some omniscient transit god or AI bot “parting the waters”, but of a recognition that this can only happen by restricting or eliminating competing demands for road space and time.
Another major factor is financial. Even pre-covid, the TTC faced limits on its operating funds and only grudgingly added service on routes. Recent announcements of “improvements” often hid the fact that the added vehicle hours left scheduled frequencies unchanged, but only offset the effects of congestion.
Service reliability and vehicle loading are key factors from a rider’s perspective, but the TTC uses metrics that bury day-to-day conditions in averages and give a generous interpretation to the concept of reliable vehicle spacing. It is no secret that TTC service management leaves a lot to be desired, and some transit “priority” schemes are are really more about keeping transit out of motorists’ way than they are to speed rider journeys.
The problem is compounded by motorists who regard attempts to corral them as an affront to their virility, but whose actions only recently have been reined in through the use of Traffic Wardens.
The City Transportation Department’s outlook is that if they make cars move faster, transit benefits too – a rising tide lifts all boats. This model collapses when there simply isn’t enough room or time for all vehicles. Some must be able to go first, and some will simply have to go away.
The King/Church construction diversions illustrate another aspect here: the concentration of transit service and traffic in locations that cannot sustain it, especially when transit, running in bunches, overwhelms intersection capacities with many closely-spaced arrivals and turns. TTC has redirected part of the diverting service (504 King) away from Spadina to Shaw so that left turns are spread out, and King/Spadina will further improve on its own when the 511 Bathurst cars return to their usual southern terminus at Exhibition Loop in late June. The east end of the diversion, at Church, does not have the same options for spreading out routes and turning issues.
In the FIFA context, we do not yet know what sort of service the TTC plans to operate, and how it will manage both the vehicle and passenger volumes at major transfer points including not just Dufferin and Bathurst but at other locations such as Union Station and major intersections enroute.
Updated May 16, 2025 at 3:50pm: The TTC has now published a map of the revised diversion routes.
In response to congestion problems for streetcars turning on and off of King and Queen Streets at Spadina, the TTC has modified the route of 504 King.
Instead of running west via Queen, Spadina and King, the 504 will now divert via Queen, Shaw and King. The 503 Kingston Road car will continue to operate via Spadina and King to Dufferin Loop.
The TTC has not yet updated the information on its King-Church diversion page as of 1:30pm May 16, but plans to do so. On-street signage will also be changed. The diversion map and information appear on several different pages, and it will be interesting to see if the TTC changes all of them.
Updated 3:50pm with revised diversion map for routes 504/304, 503/303 and 508. Not shown are routes 501 Queen and 511 Bathurst.
This reduces the peak streetcars/hour attempting to turn east-to-north at King and Spadina from 23 to 17, and west-to-south at Queen and Spadina from 13.5 to 7.5 (plus occasional 508 Lake Shore cars). Off-peak service is almost the same as peak service and so these numbers do not change much during those hours.
Numbers eastbound at King will be further reduced in late June when the 511 Bathurst cars, 6.5/hour, resume their normal route to Exhibition Loop, and 508 Lake Shore cars, 3/hour at peak, are suspended for the summer.
Updated: Now that the map has been published, it is clear that the 504C/D buses will continue to loop at Bathurst, and service on King from Bathurst to Shaw will only be provided by the 503 car.
Problems remain further east on the diversion with all of the 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 504 King and 508 Lake Shore cars making turns to and from Church, Richmond, Adelaide and York, a total of about 23 per hour. There is also severe traffic congestion on Adelaide, but it is not clear how much of this is caused by queuing streetcars, and how much due to traffic volume and road capacity.
The option of using Victoria Street for the link between Queen and Richmond/Adelaide is not available because of Ontario Line construction, even though this would have separated the streetcar diversion from the busier Church Street.
Today was the first weekday of the King/Church construction diversions. I watch things evolve via NextBus through the morning peak, and then visited King/Spadina during the PM peak. A caveat: Mondays are light traffic days. There was no Gardiner backlog at all on Spadina. Later in the week will likely be more challenging.
During the AM peak, the service on 504 King and 503 Kingston Road did not load properly, and many vehicles were clumped together. This took quite a while to unscramble, and there were big service gaps. The 504 buses also ran in packs and huddled together at Wolseley Loop, at one point six of them representing about 20 minutes worth of service at the scheduled headway. The peak period did not encounter queueing frequently at points where streetcars turn because of many wide service gaps. When a bunch of cars arrived, they queued one by one awaiting their turn, but then the intersections would open up again even though in theory there should always have been transit service waiting.
In the PM peak at King/Spadina, the major sources of traffic were pedestrians, cyclists and transit in that order. I observed that the traffic signal cycle time was 110 seconds (1’50”). This means that there are 32.7 opportunities (3600/110) per hour for a turn to/from Spadina. The nature of the intersection is that only one streetcar can make the turn per cycle.
The combined scheduled service trying to make the EtoN turn per hour at King & Spadina in the PM peak is 23 streetcars.
Route
Headway
Cars/Hour
503 Kingston Road
8′
7.5
504 King Car
10′
6.0
508 Lake Shore
20′
3.0
511 Bathurst Car
9′
6.5
Total
23
Stir in 12 510 Spadinas straight through northbound on a 5′ headway. When there is a 510 (or any other car) serving the farside NB stop it blocks any car waiting to turn off of King. In a 45 minute visit, I saw this happen four times, and one car missed two turning opportunities because of closely-spaced Spadina cars blocking the stop.
Depending on arrival times and bunching, more vehicles can queue up here than there are cycles to accommodate them. This was under probably the best general traffic conditions we will see.
There were traffic wardens, but they left just before 5pm. The biggest problem was pedestrians blocking turning streetcars which do not have a protected turn phase EB on King. There is a WB advanced green because autos are forced to turn off King here, but there is no advanced green for eastbound streetcars.
The large volume of riders transferring from eastbound streetcars to buses adds to the already substantial pedestrian volumes at this intersection.
The Traffic Wardens did not reliably ensure that streetcars got “first dibs” on turning, and after they left, pedestrian interference became worse.
I boarded a 504 King eastbound at about 5:10. There was congested traffic over the route across to Church especially on Adelaide and it took over 15 minutes to get from York to Church. Some people complain about space “wasted” by bike lanes, but it was the left turn lane that was almost always empty. Some traffic used it to scoot around stopped streetcars!
The severe congestion can be seen in the TransSee maps of service for 504 King and 503 Kingston Road below. The tracking lines for the diversion area are almost horizontal for an extended period. Note that the problem is mainly eastbound (lines reading bottom to top).
Tracking data for routes 503 and 504, May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca.
I rode a King car east from Spadina and it took a very long time to emerge from the diversion. The car went from 6 minutes early at King on Spadina to 11 minutes late at Queen and Church. Note the length of time spent approaching King and Spadina inching along the street about one carlength at a time. Other locations where the car crept along are also clear in the tracking data.
Tracking data for car 4634. Source TransSee.ca.
Among the problems enroute were:
Congestion on Queen thanks to stopped vehicles and construction in the curb lanes.
Autos infilling Adelaide Street eastbound leaving no room for a streetcar to merge from York Street onto Adelaide. We were eventually rescued by a Traffic Warden.
Extremely slow progress across Adelaide thanks to a traffic backlog from Church Street.
Extremely slow progress on Church Street thanks to a traffic backlog from Queen Street. My car actually fouled the Church/Adelaide intersection as it was unable to complete the EtoN turn in more than one traffic signal cycle.
Ridership on the car was very light and most people got off when the car turned off King onto Spadina. They transferred to the King shuttle buses which were running irregularly and often bunched. These buses were also trapped in the traffic queue eastbound to Spadina of streetcars waiting to turn. (In the chart below, the size of the dot represents the degree of crowding on the vehicle.
Tracking data for 504C and 504D shuttle buses May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca.
For those who want to watch the wandering streetcars and buses on NextBus, here is a link. This will open a combined display of routes 501, 503, 504, 510 and 511. The map can be scaled to zoom in to the area of interest. Displays of operating charts on transsee.ca are free for TTC streetcar routes.
Over coming days I will keep an eye on service performance over the diversion, and once a few weeks’ data have accumulated will delve into the details.
The TTC now has a web page with details of the changes for the first phase of the construction and diversions. This includes a map showing the diversions to west of Bathurst rather than just downtown. I have added this in the body of the article.
May 5, 2025 at 1:40pm:
Information about the 304 King and 303 Kingston Road night services has been added.
May 5, 2025 at 1:55pm:
The TTC has confirmed that overhead upgrades on King Street East and on Sumach/River will be completed before the King/Church track work end, and streetcar service will resume in September.
May 5, 2025 at 4:30pm:
I asked the City if it thought the intersections used by diverting streetcars and buses could handle the volume of traffic. They replied, but didn’t add much. See the end of the article for the exchange.
Major changes are coming to downtown streetcar routes on May 11 with the next schedule change. This will accommodate a combination of water main replacement, track reconstruction and streetcar overhead upgrades mainly at King and Church. Work is expected to require diversions until the October schedule change on Thanksgiving weekend.Streetcar service is expected to return with the September schedule change on Labour Day weekend.
The effects of work an King and Church have been known for some time through the Annual Service Plan and through a City report on the project. (The original report and recommendations were amended at the recent Council meeting to lessen the effect of various proposed lane closures.) Service levels have been published via the electronic version of schedules used by trip planning apps. The information about vehicles/hour at various locations is taken from those schedules.
(As an aside, the TTC website has still not been updated to include the 2025 Service Plan even though it was approved by the Board in January.)
With the concentration of transit service through various intersections, and the added complexity that most vehicles will make turns at these locations, there simply will not be enough capacity even under ideal conditions. It is no secret that “ideal” is a word rarely appropriate for transit operations downtown thanks to the lack of robust traffic management and real transit priority.
In past years, the diversion of services from King Street around the TIFF street fair created problems for transit travel times and reliability, but this lasted for a brief period. The planned diversions for King/Church will last through the summer.
Many of the water mains in the “old” city have been in service for over a century. Other parts of King Street have seen renewal, occasionally on an emergency basis following a break and sink hole.
The special trackwork at the King/Church intersection has been in bad shape for some time, and was overdue for replacement. Previous reconstructions were in 1983 and 2003. Other competing construction projects got in the way, and the track conditions have worsened year by year. There are many patches, and a well-deserved slow order unlike the standing practice even at freshly rebuilt junctions.
This intersection is also old enough that it predates the era of panel track construction where pre-welded sections are trucked in and assembled on site. This replaced the older style of tracks assembled piece-by-piece and often not welded robustly if at all. TTC has not yet been through its entire inventory of “old” track given the 20-30 year cycle depending on the level of service, wear, and disintegration at intersections.
Other work planned for this period of suspended streetcar service is the reconstruction of overhead on King and on the Distillery branch for pantograph-only operation.
Closing King & Church for an extended period concurrently with the Ontario Line construction at Queen & Yonge will add to the traffic snarls downtown. The City talks about using Traffic Agents to manage key intersections, but whether they provide enough people at enough places at enough times remains to be seen.
Routes Diverting off of King Street
Three routes are affected: 504 King, 503 Kingston Road and 508 Lake Shore.
The 504 King service will be broken into three sections:
A 504 streetcar service between Broadview to Dundas West Stations operating via the same route as 501 Queen between the Don Bridge and Spadina.
A 504C bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst and east on King terminating at Broadview & Gerrard.
A 504D bus shuttle from Wolseley Loop south on Bathurst, east on King and south on Sumach to Front & Cherry. Buses will loop via [to be announced] and will not serve Distillery Loop.
The 503 Kingston Road service will be changed so that its western terminus shifts from York Street to Dufferin Loop. Cars will follow the same route as the 504 King via Queen from the Don Bridge to Spadina, then shift south onto King to follow the pre-diversion 504B route to Dufferin.
508 Lake Shore cars will follow the same route as 504 King.
Night Service Changes
The 304 King night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same route as the daytime 504 service diverting via Queen and Spadina.
A 304D night bus will run every half-hour over the same route as the 504D bus from Wolseley Loop to Broadview & Gerrard.
The 303 Kingston Road night car will operate every 20 minutes over the same diversion route as the 304 King night car, and will operate as it does now to Sunnyside.
The maps below are from the City Report about this project originally published in February. An updated map for the first phase has been added later in the article.
For part of the construction period, King/Church will be impassible even to the replacement bus service and it will divert south to Wellington and Front.
These maps do not tell the whole story because another set of construction diversions will overlap the King/Church changes until the next schedule change in late June.
Although water main work at Bathurst/Fleet/Lakeshore is now complete, track work continues there and on Bathurst Street further north. 511 Bathurst streetcars will continue to divert east via King to Spadina looping via Adelaide and Charlotte. The 511B shuttle bus will be shortened from Wolseley Loop at Queen to an on-street loop via King, Portland and Richmond to Bathurst Street.
509 shuttle buses continue operating between Exhibition Loop and Queens Quay Loop at Spadina. 510 streetcars continue operating to Union Station.
The combined effect of the diversions will be greater than during the total meltdown of King service in 2024 when all cars diverted north via Church to Queen because volumes of other routes (510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 501 Queen) will be added to the King services, and more intersections will be affected over a wider area.
Updated May 5, 2025 at 12:50pm:
The TTC’s project webpage has a consolidated map of the diversions for the first phase of the work.
In anticipation of transit demands for the FIFA games in June 2026 as well as general route reliability, Toronto proposes to install transit-only lanes on Bathurst (Eglinton to Lake Shore) and Dufferin (Eglinton to Lake Shore) Streets. Consultation sessions for these projects will be held through May 2025 both online and in person.
Updated Apr 28, 2025 at 1:40pm: Corrections to the Bathurst Street info have been added thanks to responses from the project team.
Updated May 7, 2025 at 10:10am: Links to the presentation decks and maps have been added for both projects.
Additional details and registration links for the online sessions are on the project web sites linked above.
The consultation sessions will be interesting, especially to see whether the FIFA games will be used to bulldoze transit proposals that might not otherwise be approved.
Implementation is planned for fall 2025 subject to Council approval.
Only overviews of the proposals have been posted at this time, but I will update this article when more details are available. The overviews are summarized beyond the “more” break below.
The TTC has announced several service changes to accommodate crowds expected at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts at the Rogers Centre on November 14-16 and 21-23. For full details, see their site.
On concert nights, subway service will be improved between 5-8pm and 11pm-1:30am with Line 1 trains operating about every 3 minutes, and Line 2 trains every 4 minutes.
509 Harbourfront service will be restored between Union Station and Exhibition Loop from November 1-24 with at least 11 cars, up from the usual 7 on the line, on concert days .
511 Bathurst cars will operate from Bathurst Station to Union on November 14-16, and starting on November 17 on a scheduled basis.
19 Bay, a normally infrequent service, will have 10 extra buses. Post-show they will operate express northbound stopping only at King, Queen, Dundas and College enroute to Bay Station.
510D Spadina bus will similarly provide an express service stopping at the same intermediate destinations as 19 Bay enroute to Spadina Station.
The express services will be styled as “Swiftbus”. Extra service on 504 King will be styled as “Swiftcar”.
Access at Union Station will be monitored and controlled to prevent the overcrowding that occurred on past occasions with large events.
The TTC has announced that streetcar service will be suspended, in part, over the 509 Harbourfront and part of 511 Bathurst at various times between Tuesday, September 3 and January 2025. This will allow the reconstruction and upgrading of the overhead system between Union Station and Exhibition Loop to be fully pantograph-compliant.
Information is posted in three separate items on the TTC site with the first being the most extensive.
