Highland Creek Bus

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Service Reliability on the Scarborough RT Corridor (Part 1)

When the Scarborough RT closed, it was replaced by a bus shuttle, 903 Kennedy-Scarborough Express, running frequent service over streets paralleling the former SRT route. In previous articles, I reviewed actual travel times to determine how much traffic interference and transit priority contributed to speedy travel. See:

Since mid-November 2023, service between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station has been provided by many routes with the intention of eliminating transfer delays at STC. The following routes were extended south to Kennedy Station following the same route as the 903 Express. At the same time, service on the 903 was reduced as buses were redeployed to the other routes.

  • 38 Highland Creek
  • 129 McCowan North
  • 131 Nugget
  • 133 Neilson
  • 938 Highland Creek Express
  • 939A/B Finch Express
  • 954 Lawrence East Express
  • 985A Sheppard East Express

Debate over the planned busway in the former SRT corridor focuses on travel time savings using a private road from Eglinton to Ellesmere, but an important aspect for any rider is the wait time for their bus. The benefit of a faster ride can be undone by an unpredictable wait. This series of articles reviews service reliability on the extended routes as well as the remaining 903 Express operation between mid-November 2023 and the end of February 2024.

With all the focus on the shared route between Scarborough Town Centre and Kennedy Station, there remains the much longer portion of routes that have been extended. While the red lanes, and later the BRT roadway, should minimize further sources of irregularity, this does not change the fact that some of these routes have service issues east and north of STC.

This is part of a more general issue across the bus network that improvements are needed that will not come quickly or easily simply with a few transit priority projects. Moreover, riders need to see improvements now, not in the indefinite future after studies, priority lists and endless debates about who “deserves” better transit.

Included in Part 1 are routes 38, 938, 129, 131 and 133. The remaining express routes are in Part 2.

Updated Mar. 16, 2024: Route map added.

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Service Analysis of 38 Highland Creek for August 2022

Back on August 20, when I was part of a Twitter thread about lousy service on 7 Bathurst, the day of the TTC’s birthday party at Hillcrest, one person said “I have the same problem on Highland Creek”. When I looked at the tracking data, the result was stunning, and not in a way anyone would like to see.

This article reviews 38 Highland Creek for the month of August 2022. The short version is that on weekdays, the route is somewhat unreliable and suffers at time from missing buses, but on weekends, the problems are worse than anything I have seen in my travels through operating stats.

The route originates at Rouge Hill GO Station, and travels west to Scarbourough Town Centre. There is a bit of a meander via Lawrence, Port Union and Lawson to get across the 401 to Kingston Road, thence via Military Trail and Ellesmere to STC.

Map credit: TTC

There is a 38B/938 split operation to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, but that is not currently running. Only the 38A to Rouge Hill GO is part of the scheduled service in August 2022.

The Short Read

Service on 38 Highland Creek can operate on fairly reliable headways, but is often disrupted, especially on weekends. The primary issues are:

  • Missing buses create service gaps that are not filled by re-spacing other vehicles.
  • Travel times on Saturday afternoons appear to be inadequate leaving no margin for recovery at terminals.
  • Bunching on weekends, and particularly on Saturdays, is chronic to the point that four or more buses operate in packs for extended periods with little apparent effort by line management to space out the service.
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