Dufferin Bus

by

Bathurst-Dufferin Revisited

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.

See:

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.

Continue reading →
by

Service Analysis of 29/929 Dufferin Part III: Headways & Travel Times 2024-2025

In the first two parts of this series, I reviewed headway and travel time data for the 29/929 Dufferin bus during April 2025.

This article reviews archival data back to January 2024 to discover how the route’s behaviour has changed in the past 16 months. At the end, there are charts showing travel times over the full route from April 2018 to April 2025 for a long view of their evolution.

The first part of the article looks at headways (the time between vehicles) on both the 29 local and 929 express services at various points along the route. The patterns visible in the earlier articles with ragged headways leaving terminals appear throughout data back to January 2024. A major problem with these routes is that buses do not leave terminals evenly spaced, and this problem grows as they move along the line.

The second part reviews travel times over segments of the route to show areas where these change by time of day, and where they do not. These show that on some segments, travel times are mostly consistent across time periods, whereas others show rises and falls. The segment with particularly wide variations is northbound from Lawrence to Wilson showing the effect of traffic queuing for Yorkdale Mall and for Highway 401.

The original RapidTO proposal for red lanes included the full route, but the current version is only from Eglinton southbound. This will not address congestion issues north of Eglinton, nor will it deal with the operational problem of erratic terminal departures.

Continue reading →
by

Service Analysis of 29/929 Dufferin Part II: Travel Times in April 2025

This article is Part II of my review of service quality on the 29/929 Dufferin routes in April 2025. Part I covered headways (the interval between buses) while this part looks at travel times. Part III will review historic data going back to January 2024.

  • Average travel times are fairly consistent, but for any time of day can vary by 10 minutes or more over a one-way trip, much less for shorter segments of a few kilometres.
  • The major rise in travel times occurs northbound in the afternoon and PM peak. The effect is much smaller in the AM peak and for southbound trips.
  • There is a slight difference between travel times for local and express buses. The time saving either way between King and Wilson lies between three and seven minutes on average. The percentage change is lower in the peak period when travel times rise, but the spread between local and express services does not.
  • The dispersal in travel times is similar for local and express buses. This is reflected both in the standard deviation values and in the quartile breakdowns.
  • Conditions changed in the latter part of the month increasing travel times on the southern part of the route.
  • A considerable part of the PM peak travel time increase lies outside of the proposed RapidTO area notably between Eglinton and Lawrence, and especially between Lawrence and Wilson.
  • The time spent by buses at or near terminals varies quite substantially, and reveals periods when schedules could be too tight or, conversely, too generous.

Transit lanes on Dufferin should be able to shave some peaks off of travel times, but this will only apply to periods where buses are routinely fouled in traffic. Some locations where congestion snarls the route are not proposed for transit priority.

As shown in Part I there is a wide variation in departure times from terminals compared to scheduled headways even though most trips appear to have time for recovery to their schedule. Reducing travel time, and more importantly making travel times consistent will help to make headways more reliable, but the problem of regulating departures and vehicle spacing will still remain.

The remainder of this article is a large set of charts for those interested in a fine-grained view of the route.

Continue reading →
by

Service Analysis of 29/929 Dufferin Part I: Headways in April 2025

This is the first of three articles about TTC services on Dufferin Street, the 29 Dufferin local bus and its 929 Dufferin Express counterpart.

  • This article reviews headway performance at the terminals and along Dufferin during the month of April.
  • Part II will review travel times over the same area.
  • Part III will review historical data back to January 2024 to see whether there have been changes in the route’s behaviour over the past 16 months.

Major points worth noting:

  • Other than the restoration of the 29C service to Princes’ Gate in Fall 2024, there was no change in the scheduled level of service or travel times over the period studied here.
  • Headways are not well-regulated on either the local or express services from either terminal during the entire day.
  • At the point where buses would enter the proposed RapidTO red lanes, the service is already disorganized. Travel times might improve, but the irregular headways will not.
  • Weekend service is even more disorganized than on weekdays.
  • Congestion is evident at some locations and times along the route, but it is not pervasive. Some problem locations are within the proposed transit priority area (south of Eglinton), but some are not (notably near Yorkdale northbound).
Continue reading →
by

A Contrarian’s View of Bathurst/Dufferin RapidTO

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.

Continue reading →
by

RapidTO Dufferin and Bathurst Streets: Public Consultation May 2025

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.

Bathurst Street

  • Virtual public meeting on May 12 from 6:30 to 8:30pm
  • Drop-in events at
    • Harbord Collegiate on May 10 from 11am to 3pm
    • Humewood Community School on May 14 from 4:30 to 8:30pm
  • Consultation materials:

Dufferin Street

  • Virtual public meeting on May 13 from 6:30 to 8:30pm
  • Drop in events at
    • Stella Maris Catholic School on May 15 from 4:30 to 8:30pm
    • St. Mary Catholic Academy on May 20 from 4:30 to 8:30pm
  • Consultation materials:

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.

Continue reading →
by

Actual vs Advertised Wait Times

A central part of any transit rider’s journey is the wait for a vehicle that may or may not show up when expected. Even with an app that tells you where the bus is, the news might not be good. Rather than being just around the corner, the bus might be several miles away, and heading in the wrong direction.

The only statistic the TTC publishes on service quality is an “on time” metric. This is measured only at terminals, and even there “on time” means that a bus departs within a six-minute window around the scheduled time. Performance is averaged over all time periods and routes to produce system-wide numbers, although there are occasional references to individual routes in the CEO’s Report.

Riders complain, Councillors complain, and they are fobbed off with on time stats that are meaningless to a rider’s experience.

The problem then becomes how to measure the extra time riders spend waiting for their bus, and to report this in a granular way for routes, locations and times.

This article presents a proposed method for generating an index of wait times as a ratio comparing actual times to scheduled values, and their effect on the rider experience. The data are presented hour-by-hour for major locations along a route to see how conditions change from place to place.

An important concept here is that when buses are unevenly spaced, more riders wait for the bus in the long gap and fewer benefit from buses bunched close together. The experience of those longer waits raises the ratio of the rider’s waiting experience to the theoretical scheduled value. The more erratic the service with gaps and bunching, the higher the ratio of rider wait time to scheduled time. This is compounded by comfort and delay problems from crowded buses, and is responsible for rider complaints that do not match the official TTC story.

There’s some math later to explain how the calculations are done for those who want to see how the wheels turn, so to speak.

Note that this is a work in progress for comment by readers with suggestions to fine tune the scheme.

Continue reading →
by

Analysis of 29/929 Dufferin – September 2024 (Updated)

This article continues a series of reviews of various routes in September 2024, and in particular the crowding conditions on buses.

The data for Wednesday, September 25 are reviewed in detail to show some of the factors that vanish in stats averaged at the level of a month.

Updated Nov. 4, 2024 at 6:45am: Charts have been added at the end of the article showing the combined local and express service on September 25, and comparing travel times over segments of the route.

General notes:

  • Although the TTC Service Standards are based on the premise that vehicles leave terminals more-or-less “on time”, in practice there is a considerable variation that extends beyond the approved standard.
  • Irregular vehicles spacing tends to grow along a route so that bunches and gaps become more accentuated. There does not appear to much attempt to regulate vehicle spacing enroute.
  • Crowded buses are likely to appear after gaps in service, and loads on groups of buses are not evenly distributed. The average load measured over time might be within standards, but the load experienced by most riders is above that average.
  • Both the local and express services suffer from irregular vehicle spacing. The express buses make the journey between King and Wilson about five minutes faster than the locals.
  • Severe traffic congestion northbound near Yorkdale in the afternoon affects both the local and express buses.

This is a rather long article with a lot of charts to illustrate how vehicle tracking data can be presented in many ways.

Continue reading →
by

King West Construction Update

The City of Toronto has announced that the planned replacement of track at the intersection of King & Dufferin Streets will not occur in 2024 due to “supply chain issues”. Instead this work will be included in the 2025 construction schedule which already included reconstruction of King from Dufferin to Close.

The intersection replacement was originally planned for June-July with full closure of both streets. That will not happen and routes will stay on their current diversions pending reopening of King Street east of Dufferin. That was planned for year-end, but has now been moved forward to November 2024.

The project website contains current details of plans.

by

King & Queen West Service Changes February 18, 2024

For those who have been wondering where my usual wrap-up of coming service changes is, it seems to be stuck in the managerial bowels of the TTC. A few weeks ago I was led to believe that its release was imminent, but as of the evening of February 11, crickets.

See also:

There is an online public event on the evening of Thursday, February 15 for which you can register via the City’s site. You can also subscribe to updates on the City’s page (the link is at the bottom).

Major changes to routes in the Parkdale and Liberty Village area are coming on February 18, and the details have been posted for a while elsewhere. Time for me to catch up. When the service memo comes out, I will flesh this out with service frequency details. Here is a map showing the wandering routes in the west end.

King Street will be closed between Shaw and Dufferin for water main and track work. This is a multi-stage project, although from a transit point of view it will have two configurations.

Effective February 18, 2024:

King Street will close between Shaw and Dufferin. Various routes will change to provide service, such as they can.

63 Ossington will no longer loop northbound via Atlantic and King to Shaw, but will be extended west via Liberty, Dufferin and King to Sunnyside Loop west of Roncesvalles.

29/929 Dufferin routes are not affected at this stage of the project.

501 Queen will vary by time of day. The eastern terminus remains at McCaul Loop, but the western terminus will change.

  • Until 10pm, all 501 Queen cars will run only as far west as Dufferin Street, and they will turn south to Dufferin Loop (CNE Western Gate).
  • After 10pm, all 501 Queen cars will run through to Long Branch as they do now replacing the 507 Long Branch car.

301 Queen night car bus service will continue to operate between Neville and Long Branch.

504 King cars will also vary by time of day:

  • Cars on both the 504A and 504B branches will divert via Shaw and Queen to Roncesvalles.
  • 504A Dundas West cars will run north to Dundas West Station at all times.
  • 504B cars that would normally run to Dufferin Loop will run west on Queen.
    • Before 10pm, 504B cars will run through to Humber Loop replacing the 501 Queen service which will divert to Dufferin Loop.
    • After 10pm, 504B cars will terminate at Roncesvalles.
  • Note that streetcar service to Broadview Station will be restored and so the 504B cars will no longer end at Distillery Loop, but will run to their normal east end destination.

304 King night service will operate between Broadview and Dundas West Stations diverting via Shaw and Queen. [Updated Feb. 12 at 11:40am] The TTC media release confirms that the night service will operate with streetcars.

507 Long Branch service is not affected.

508 Lake Shore cars will divert via Shaw and Queen, but will otherwise operate on their normal route.

Effective Late June 2024

Note: The work at King & Dufferin has been postponed to 2025.

The intersection of King & Dufferin will close for complete reconstruction of the track. This will require changes in the 501 Queen and 63 Ossington diversions, as well as a revised south end for the 29/929 Dufferin services, but details have not yet been announced.

Effective August 2024

With the completion of work at King & Dufferin, routes should revert to the February configuration, but nothing is definite about TTC plans as riders know well. Stay tuned.

The work is supposed to continue until “early December” according to the TTC site, but until “November” according to the City site. Normally, the schedule change would occur in late November, and so it is not clear just what date they are aiming at. The usual December change is for the two-week holiday schedules just before Christmas.