The planned expansion of Broadview Station Loop to allow two streetcars to occupy the 505 Dundas loading bay at a time has been deferred to an unspecified later date.
At the TTC Board meeting on June 12, CEO Rick Leary said that there would be a new operating procedure at the loop where streetcars would not lay over, although just how this will be achieved is difficult to understand. A common requirement at terminals is for operators to have a short “nature break”, and this is really not something that can be eliminated by managerial fiat.
A related problem is that schedules generally have excessive running time to avoid the need for short turns. If cars do not take layovers at terminals they will make even slower trips across their routes than they do today. On King and Dundas, they have the option of putting all of the layover time at their western terminals.
The TTC has an astounding ability to make streetcar service slower and less reliable, and this has become so ingrained it is hard to see any improvement in the near future.
Operational details of the change have yet to be announced, and in any event we will not see the effect until 2024 when streetcars finally return to Broadview Station.
Track work at the station planned for June 2023 will now address the on-street track on Broadview and Erindale while the loop will wait for another day when and if it is expanded.
This article describes the transit services affected by various construction project in the east end and the changes that will take effect on Sunday, June 18, 2023. This is a follow-on to my original article, and some of the information there is out of date due to changes in the TTC’s plans.
Updated June 14, 2023: Information about the 304 King Night Bus added.
Construction projects affecting streetcar service are summarized in the map below. Some of this work is underway or completed already.
TTC overhead upgrades for Flexity streetcar operation with pantographs on King and Kingston Road was completed in the Spring. All routes in the system now operate with pans, although there are selected areas that have not been modified yet and operators must switch to trolley poles if cars run there.
Repairs to the Queen Street Don Bridge were completed a few weeks ago, and streetcars are now operating over the bridge, albeit only for carhouse moves and short turns.
Repairs at Main Station are underway and will continue through the summer.
The sewer work at Coxwell & Gerrard has completed, and work will now shift to track replacement.
Sewer work on Broadview is underway.
Changes Effective June 18, 2023
Here is a map showing the route configuration from June 18 to July 29, 2023.
The major service change is that there will be no north-south service on Broadview from Danforth to Gerrard due to track and road reconstruction. Work in this area includes:
Reconstruction and expansion of Broadview Station streetcar loop to accommodate two streetcars at a time on both the 504 King and 505 Dundas platforms. The first phase of this (June 18 to early July) will require Broadview to be closed to traffic from Erindale to Danforth for track replacement. Work will shift into the loop in a second phase to allow streets to re-open. The planned expansion of the loop has been deferred.
Track reconstruction between Gerrard and Danforth. The first phase (July 4 to early August) will run from Victor to Sparkhall with track storage between Gerrard and Victor. (See maps in the original article linked above.)
The affected routes are:
504/505 Broadview/Parliament shuttle bus: This route will not operate and there will be no bus service on Broadview between Danforth and Gerrard and beyond to King & Parliament. This will be replaced by:
72A Pape: This branch of the Pape bus now operates to Pape and Eastern Avenue, but it will be redirected and extended effective June 18 to operate west from Pape on Queen and King to loop as Parliament the way the 504/505 has been doing.
The 304 King Night Bus will operate to Pape Station via Queen, Carlaw, Riverdale and Pape.
Not shown on the map but also effective on June 18:
100 Flemingdon Park: This route now operates to Broadview Station, but it will shift east to Pape Station effective June 18.
8 Broadview, 62 Mortimer and 87 Cosburn will remain at Broadview Station, but looping arrangements have not been announced for the various stages of construction.
In the previous article, based on maps in a March 2023 presentation regarding Main Station, there was a new route “519” that would split off the west end of the 72B Pape to Union Station service. This proposal is not part of the June 18 package, and the 72B will continue to serve Union Station.
The 501B Queen shuttle bus will be modified to improve its westbound connection with the 501 Queen streetcars. Before June 18, the 501B loops north on Broadview to Gerrard, west to River and south to Queen. This loop will be changed so that buses run south on River only to Dundas, and then return east to Broadview and south to Queen. This will provide an overlap between the 501B and 501 services at Broadview in both directions.
The 501 and 505 streetcars will continue on the same diversions and schedules:
501 Queen cars will operate via McCaul, Dundas and Broadview to bypass Ontario Line construction, and thence east to Neville Loop.
505 Dundas cars will operate via Broadview, Queen and Kingston Road to Bingham Loop at Victoria Park.
The 506 streetcar diversion will be changed westbound:
506 Carlton cars will operate eastbound from Gerrard and Broadview via Broadview and Queen to Woodbine Loop at Kingston Road.
Westbound 506 cars will change their route. Until June 17 it is (officially) via Queen, Broadview, Dundas and Parliament to the regular route at Gerrard. This will change on June 18 to run via Queen and Parliament to Gerrard. Many cars do this already.
The schedule for 506 Carlton has not been updated and is still short of running time. Many cars will likely continue to short turn at Broadview and return west rather than going east to Woodbine Loop.
The pseudo-503 Kingston Road service will continue to be provided by 504/501 buses running from Kingston Road & Queen to York & King. These buses are now scheduled as part of the 501 service and should appear on tracking apps. Current plans call for the 503 service from Bingham Loop to King & York to return as a bus at the end of July, and as a streetcar in the Fall.
Track reconstruction at Coxwell & Lower Gerrard will cause changes in three routes:
22 Coxwell, which has been operating between Danforth and Queen with diversions enroute, will be suspended.
31 Greenwood will operate from Coxwell Station (its current terminus during reconstruction of its home station for accessibility) to Woodbine Loop via Danforth, Greenwood and Queen. The routing at the south end via Eastern Avenue is not known as I write this.
506C Carlton bus service will continue to run between Castle Frank and Victoria Park Stations, but it will divert via Greenwood, Danforth and Coxwell to Upper Gerrard in both directions. 506C buses will make on street stops at Coxwell & Danforth. They will not enter Coxwell Station.
There will be no service on Coxwell between Upper Gerrard and Queen. The normal 22, 31 and 506C routes will resume on July 30.
Reconstruction of Main Station continues through the summer. All of the bus changes with route interlines and extensions to Victoria Park Station will remain in effect.
The TTC has three key messages about the pending changes.
Updated May 26, 2023 at 5pm: In response to a reader’s suggestion, I have added a sample chart that includes average wait times for would-be riders in place of the count of vehicles. To jump directly to this update, click here.
In the many articles I have published trying to review service quality on the TTC, one topic has eluded presentation: how to chart service quality over a long period while preserving the hour-by-hour, day-by-day character of the data? That question has several dimensions because a quality metric is not simply a matter of pooling stats and saying that overall things are not too bad, or even worse that service meets some sort of standard on average.
In the past I have published charts showing headways, and others showing how organized (or not) service on a particular day might be, but it has been more difficult to condense months of data for multiple times and locations.
The TTC standard for surface routes is:
On-time performance measures vehicle departures from end terminals. Vehicles are considered on time if they depart within 59 seconds earlier or five minutes later than their scheduled departure time. (-1 to +5)
The intent is to hit this target 90% of the time, but the TTC does not achieve this with values typically falling in the 70-to-85 per cent range. At an individual route level results can be considerably worse. Streetcar routes fared worse with a 50-to-85 per cent range, and the higher end was achieved during the pandemic era when traffic and demand were light. The numbers have fallen since then.
The TTC’s metrics have big credibility problems because they bear little relation to what riders actually experience.
There are three major reasons:
Quality is measured on an all day basis, or worse on longer periods such as months. Variation by day and time is completely obscured by this approach. Reliable service at 10 pm is cold comfort to a rider whose bus has not shown up for 15 minutes in the peak period.
Quality is measured only at terminals, not along routes where various factors can degrade service that might begin well, but quickly deteriorates with bunching and gaps.
Service is measured relative to schedule on the assumption that “on time” performance will automatically be reliable. However, there is considerable leeway in that standard allowing irregular service to be considered “on time”, and the TTC does not even hit their target levels in many cases.
The CEO’s Report tries to work around the limitations of the metric by noting that some routes do farly well while others encounter a variety of problems. With respect to the bus network, the report notes:
Network performance was negatively impacted by the inclement weather the weeks of February 20 to March 10, where over 60 centimetres of snow fell on the city during this time. Weekday On-time performance was 88% for Weeks 7, 11 and 12. During weekends for the period, OTP was 82%. During February, 32 of 159 weekday routes were impacted by construction for at least three weeks of the period. Overall weekday OTP was 88% for the 127 routes not affected by construction:
48 routes were “On-Time” (90% OTP or better).
53 routes were “On the Cusp” (85-90%).
26 routes were “Not On-time” with OTP less than 85%. In summary, 80% of the routes not affected by construction scored 85% or better.
This still does not address reliability issues at the level riders experience. Moreover, for frequent service, riders do not care if a bus is “on time”, only that service is reliable. TTC assumes that on time service will, by definition, produce reliable service, but they don’t actually operate on schedule and fail to measure service as riders see it.
Irregular service also affects crowding because passenger loads are not evenly distributed. If most riders are on full buses, the following half empty vehicles are not part of their experience (except possibly their frustration with a long wait for the advertised “frequent” service). Average crowding stats do not reveal typical riding conditions. (Analysis of crowding is complicated by the limited availability of automatic passenger counter data outside the TTC. I have tried for a few years to obtain this without success.)
The charts show that bunching (headways of two minutes or less) and large gaps (20 minutes or more) are common, and that they exist across the four months of data here. They are not occasional effects, but a basic feature of TTC service. The stats at terminals, where the TTC takes its on time performance measurements, are less than ideal, but the service degrades as buses and streetcars move along their routes. Most riders do not board at terminals.
This article presents a proposed method of charting service quality on routes to provide both the detail of day-by-day, hour-by-hour conditions and a broader overview. The charts are an experiment in condensing a lot of data into a manageable size, but I am not wedded to the format. Comments are welcome. Regular readers will recognize the format from a previous attempt, but I hope this is an improvement.
The goal is to produce something that can track the quality of service over time so that the decline or recovery of TTC routes is clearly visible along with the effectiveness (or not) of any changes to schedules, transit priority or route management.
There are a lot of charts in this article, and it is a long read for those who are interested. Feedback on this method of presentation is most welcome.
Among various problems that became evident with the many route changes on May 7 was the deep mismatch between advertised and delivered service.
Both the 501 to Neville and the 505 to Bingham Loop were often missing in action short turning usually at Woodbine Loop (Kingston Road & Queen, named after the former racetrack).
Aside from the scenic tour the 501 Queen car takes via McCaul, Dundas and Broadview, plus the usual congestion on Dundas Street, another congested location was Broadview northbound between Queen and Dundas.
In that segment, three services, 501 Queen, 505 Dundas and 506 Carlton, were all queuing for the left turn at Dundas, compounded by 504/505 buses attempting to serve the northbound stop while blocking both lanes of traffic.
Under these conditions, it was impossible for any of these services to stay on time. The situation has been partly remedied by using traffic wardens to manage the intersection, but even that depends on ensuring that streetcars get priority all of the time despite the signal setup there.
As the week of May 7 wore on, I noticed that a lot of 506 Carlton cars were not getting east of Broadview. Riders complained about cars going out of service, and I received a tip from a reader about scheduled travel time changes.
This sent me into the electronic versions of TTC schedules which are published for use by trip planning apps and which also are the source for info on their own website. These files give a stop-by-stop schedule for each vehicle on a route and allow very fine-grained examination of the schedule design. What I found was quite surprising.
Over the portion of 506 Carlton common to the March 2023 schedules when all streetcars ran through to Main Station and the May 2023 versions with service diverting to Queen Street East, the running times were substantially shorter in May than in March. The schedule as designed could not be operated, and it has become common practice to turn most of the service back westward from Broadview. Here are charts comparing the scheduled travel times.
The eastbound comparison on the left covers the route from High Park to Broadview where streetcars turn off of their usual route. The westbound comparison covers the route from Parliament, where cars rejoin the route, to High Park. Each dot is one scheduled trip plotted with the departure time on the X-axis (horizontal) and the trip length on the Y-axis (vertical). Values move up and down over the day based on expected conditions on the route.
In almost every case the March travel time is longer than the May time. It is no surprise that streetcars have to be short-turned when the schedules work against them. How the schedules came to be designed this way is a mystery, but it creates big problems for riders.
This sort of thing cannot be corrected overnight, but in the meantime the TTC should formalize the route change and post notices everywhere so that riders know how the route will actually operate. New schedules will come in late July when Metrolinx closes Queen at Degrassi for preparatory work for GO corridor expansion and the Ontario Line, and all of the streetcar routes will shift north to Gerrard. With luck, they will reflect actual travel time requirements.
Shifting the westbound Carlton cars off of Broadview at Dundas reduces the number of turns that the intersection must handle per hour. A related issue will be the degree to which traffic wardens intervene to move transit vehicles through this choke point in the network. Both of these changes improve travel times for 501 Queen and 505 Dundas cars and could contribute to more reliable service east of Queen and Kingston Road to the two terminals. I will be monitoring this over coming weeks.
Footnote:
For the benefit of readers who don’t know the whole context, the 506 Carlton car normally operates to Main Station via Gerrard. During construction at Coxwell, it has been diverted via Broadview and Queen eastbound to Woodbine Loop. The westbound diversion runs via Queen, Broadview, Dundas and Parliament including a north-to-west left turn at Dundas because there is no track for a left turn northbound at Gerrard. (The TTC was planning to add one, but the message was lost somewhere in planning when the intersection was rebuilt.)
Darwin O’Connor has left a comment noting that you can get comparisons of scheduled and actual running times from his site TransSee.ca. Here is a chart comparing the situation for eastbound travel from High Park to Broadview in March (green) and May 2023 (red). The dots show actual travel times while the lines show the scheduled values.
Note that the green dots (March) are almost all below the green line, while the red dots (May) are almost all above the red line showing that with the new schedule cars would always be late, sometimes by a wide margin.
O’Connor notes that this type of analysis chart is available on his site free for the Toronto streetcar routes.
Updated June 13, 2023 at 2:50pm: The proposed expansion of Broadview Station Loop has been deferred to an unspecified date. Street trackage at the loop will be replaced this year as planned. The planned removal of most bus service from Broadview Station will not occur. Routes 8 Broadview and 62 Mortimer will continue to serve the station. Route 100 Flemingdon Park will be rerouted to Pape Station where it will interline with 72A Pape to King and Parliament.
Other changes have been made in future plans and this article should be used only for historical reference to the original plans. See also:
The TTC and City of Toronto have announced that Roncesvalles Avenue will reopen to traffic including the 504C King bus with the beginning of service on Tuesday, March 14.
Work is still in progress to adapt the passenger islands on Roncesvalles for the Flexity ramps, but traffic will swerve around work as it proceeds. Why this wasn’t done sometime in past months is one of those mysteries of construction staging.
Streetcar service on the 504 to Dundas West Station will resume in May, although an exact date has not been announced.
Meanwhile, the 504A Distillery and 504B Broadview Station services will turn back at Bathurst using Exhibition and Wolseley Loops respectively, although many cars in fact only get as far as Spadina and loop back via Charlotte Street. The 504C King bus loops via Church, Wellington and York.
Coming in May will be the removal of streetcar service on Broadview north of Gerrard for track construction, and for the redesign of Broadview Station Loop so that both the King and Dundas platforms will be able to hold two cars at once. Currently there is room for only one car on the Dundas platform.
Streetcar service on the west end of the Queen route beyond Sunnyside Loop is expected to resume in the summer, but again there is no specific date announced for this.
Updated December 23, 2022: The City has issued an update stating that the work on Roncesvalles will not be finished until at least the end of February, and The Queensway will not be complete until Spring 2023.
Stage 3 work on Roncesvalles will be completed by the end of February 2023.
Work will continue after this period with the installation of TTC streetcar track platforms and overhead wiring, with only lane restrictions as necessary.
The final major piece of trackwork installation is underway. Once new paving is in place, the overhead can be restored and, at least in theory, streetcars can return to Roncesvalles Avenue. This is likely to be confined initially to carhouse moves to and from Howard Park until TTC schedules catch up. A service restoration date for 504 streetcars has not yet been announced, but the mid-February schedule change would be the first opportunity. (As I write this, the January changes have not yet been announced.)
With the revised completion dates announced by the City, the first schedule change that could restore streetcars to Roncesvalles would come at the end of March or early April. It is possible that bus service on Roncesvalles could be restored as work north of Queen reaches a point where some lanes can be opened.
Meanwhile, although road construction continues on The Queensway between Sunnyside and Parkside, only the span wires and hangers are up at Sunnyside Loop, but no contact wire. There is still no track between Glendale (St. Joseph’s Hospital stop) and Parkside (the first stop on the Queensway right-of-way). Paving of the new curb lane eastbound from Parkside to Roncesvalles was underway on December 22, and the new eastbound Glendale stop platform is now in place.
Dates for restoration of streetcar service to Sunnyside and to Long Branch have not been announced.
The City’s update puts completion of the road work in Spring 2023. Whether this will include restoration of track and overhead remains to be seen.
As part of work being completed on The Queensway (Parkside Drive to Roncesvalles Avenue), the contractor has uncovered conflicts with underground utilities that require modifications to the designs.
The Stage 2 work is now expected to be complete in Spring 2023. Upon completion, all travel lanes on The Queensway will be restored and northbound access to Sunnyside Avenue from The Queensway will be reinstated.
Looking north on Roncesvalles from QueenLooking west across Roncesvalles at North Gate of carhouseWelding track on Roncesvalles north of QueenThermite welding jigs and cauldron
Dundas Sinkhole
A major sinkhole on Dundas near Brock caused a service diversion of route 505 Dundas via College and Ossington. This ended in the early evening of December 19. The photo below, provided by reader Raymond Lee, shows the track restoration in progress on December 10.
Reinstalling track over Dundas sinkhole. Photo by Raymond Lee.
King & Shaw
Service was restored to King Street west of Bathurst on December 9, 2022. 504A Distillery cars run to Dufferin Loop. 504B Broadview Station cars run to Bathurst Street.
Looking east on King at ShawLooking west on King at Sudbury
Adelaide Street
Work is expected to be complete to Charlotte Street by year-end. Work east from York Street to Victoria, and on York Street itself will be done as a separate project in 2023.
College Street
Most work on College Street is complete although 506 Carlton streetcar service remains on diversion. The TTC should be restoring the normal route soon, but has not announced a date yet. As of December 19, the 506C bus shuttle operates along College and Carlton streets rather than diverting along Harbord, Hoskin, Queen’s Park, University and Gerrard.
In spring 2023, the City’s contractor will return to complete work on the elevated cycle tracks between Manning Avenue and Spadina Avenue and upgrades to the existing bike lanes between Spadina Avenue and Bay Street.
Wellington Street
Updated: This original text has been removed because it proved to be out of date.
The current status is that undocumented underground conflicts still dog this project, which also was delayed to accommodate local festivals. Work on the north side of Wellington is expected to be largely completed in 2022, but the south side will be finished next Spring.
There is no word on when TTC will reinstall overhead so that 503 cars can return to the Church-Wellington-York loop.
Here is a brief update on various construction projects in progress.
King/Queen/Queensway/Roncesvalles
Excavation continues on Roncesvalles at the north gate of the carhouse while the track panels for the new junction remain on trailers on King Street (see previous update).
Track installation has started south from Harvard Street toward the north gate.
Looking across Queen from King to RoncesvallesLooking north on Roncesvalles from QueenLooking south on Roncesvalles to QueenLooking west to the north gate of the carhouseNew track installation south from Harvard Ave.
The TTC has not yet announced a date for resumption of through service on Roncesvalles between Howard Park and The Queensway on route 504 King, nor for through streetcar service from downtown to Dundas West Station.
On The Queensway, the eastbound stop at Glendale has finally been taken out of service. Passengers are now directed to use westbound buses to access St. Joseph’s Hospital transferring at Roncesvalles or at Colborne Lodge Drive as appropriate.
The map below was tweeted by @ttchelps. As I write this, neither this map nor the diversion notice for the 504 bus service are linked to the route’s schedule page.
Construction continues on the new eastbound curb lane and the eastbound streetcar stop at Glendale. Work is also in progress on the track between Glendale and Parkside.
Overhead is still not in place at Sunnyside Loop although many span wires and hangers have appeared. The 501 Queen service cannot be extended from Dufferin to Sunnyside until this loop is available.
King & Shaw
According to a City of Toronto construction notice, this intersection will reopen on Friday, December 16. This would allow the 504 King and 63 Ossington services to resume normal operations here.
When the TTC announced their November service changes, this included a temporary option, once King & Shaw reopened, with half of the 504 service turning back at Exhibition Loop (the 504B Broadview cars) and half running through to Dufferin (the 504A Distillery cars). The 504C buses which loop at York Street would shift to a Bathurst turnback.
The TTC has not yet confirmed whether these arrangements will actually happen.
Adelaide Street
Construction has moved swiftly west on Adelaide and is now in the final stretch between Widmer and Charlotte Streets. The section east from York to Victoria will be rebuilt in 2023.
Looking east on Adelaide from Peter to WidmerLooking west on Adelaide across Peter
Wellington Street
New overhead has not yet been installed on Wellington Street. The 503 Kingston Road bus is looping via York, Richmond and University from King. Streetcar service should return in the Spring when pantograph-friendly overhead on the downtown loop and on Kingston Road has been installed.
Dundas at Brock Street
A large sinkhole appeared under the streetcar tracks on Dundas at Brock due to a burst 120-year old sewer. The City expects the street to be restored by the end of December, but the TTC will then have to restore the track and overhead. Until that work is finished, tentatively by the end of January 2023, the 505 Dundas service is diverting both ways east of Lansdowne via College and Ossington.
Media coverage is available from CBC and CITY, among other sources.
College Street
The diversion of 506 Carlton streetcars around the College Street reconstruction project is expected to finish by the end of 2022. Streetcars continue to operate both ways via Bay, Dundas and Ossington.
The spreadsheet detailing all of the changes has been added at the end of this post.
The number of the Mimico GO shuttle has been corrected to 176.
Transfer arrangements at Queen & Dufferin for the 501 bus and streetcar services have been clarified.
Transfer arrangements at Queen & Roncesvalles for the 501 and 504 bus services have been added.
Updated September 5, 2022:
The spreadsheet listing all of the changes has been corrected for route 504 King. The original version included a description of the route carried over from the August version. This has been changed to reflect the September arrangements.
The TTC will make many changes to its scheduled service on September 4, 2022 with restorations of previous service levels on many routes. This will not get the system back to 100% of pre-pandemic levels.
An important distinction is between three values:
The amount of service scheduled before Spring 2020
The amount of service budgeted for 2022
The amount of service scheduled for 2022
The TTC plans to be back to 97% of budgeted service for bus, 84% for streetcar and 92% for subway. The overall numbers are compared below.
Hours/Week
Regular
Construction
Total
January 2020 Scheduled
185,825
7,068
192,893
September 2022 Budgeted
186,379
6,398
192,777
September 2022 Scheduled
177,930
4,965
182,895
In the original 2022 service budget, the TTC planned to be back to roughly the same level of service as in January 2020 by September 2022. However, slower ridership recovery coupled with staffing constraints produced a lower scheduled service expressed as hours/week.
There are further caveats:
The distribution of hours by time of day might not be the same in 2022 as in 2020 because of changing demand patterns.
Changes in running times to deal with congestion or service reliability can mean that the same service hours are stretched over wider headways. Not all vehicle hours are created equal.
All that said, there are many changes in service levels, and with the bus network being back to 97%, the schedules for September 2022 are often based on old versions before service cuts were implemented. Another change for this month is the reintroduction of school trips on many routes.
Updated August 14, 2022: Charts of travel times on King between Strachan and Dufferin have been added to show that although there were congestion problems, they existed only on specific days due to special events, not pervasively through the month of July.
According to the TTC CEO’s Report, short turns (a situation where a vehicle does not reach its scheduled destination but instead turns back at an earlier point) were all but eliminated in May 2019.
This is not to say that short turns should not exist. They are an inevitable part of transit operations where delays can occur, and are essential to restoration of regular service. Back in 2019, the TTC’s problem was that they were used very frequently either as a lazy way to manage service or in response to unrealistic schedules. Now they occur but are not reported.
Meanwhile, other problems with service such as bunching, gaps and missing vehicles are not reported or tracked (at least publicly) at all.
There is no way to avoid saying this: the reported level of short turns is a total misrepresentation of what actually happens on the street as any regular rider knows. Management gets to claim they have eliminated a problem, but in fact it persists.
From TTC vehicle tracking data, it is possible to count the number of streetcars passing any point on the line. In order to determine how many short turns occur at a specific location, counts on either side of a turnback will reveal the answer.
For example, if the screenlines for counts on Queen are defined as Coxwell Avenue and Woodbine Avenue, then the difference in counts shows how many cars short-turned at Woodbine Loop.
For these analyses, the counts are grouped by hour and by day through a month. Next, all weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays are consolidated to show the difference between types of day. The weekday counts are broken out by week to catch short-lived effects.
Friday, July 1, Canada Day, is counted as a Sunday. Note that this means that there are six “Sundays” and only five “Saturdays” included in the totals. That is the reason the count of trips within the month is higher for Sundays than for Saturdays.
An important distinction in any analysis is between overall averages and a detailed view of operations. TTC has a bad habit of reporting stats, when they do so at all, on a monthly average basis. This blends together periods when service is good with periods when it is very bad giving the impression that things are going fairly well. Riders, of course, encounter and are angered by the bad times which happen too often and fairly predictably.
The raw data are at a minute-by-minute, vehicle-by-vehicle level. In the charts here, I have tried to strike a balance between “information overload” with too much detail, and high level views that obscure what is happening on the street.
Steve Munro 