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.
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.
With the constant changes in route diversions for various construction projects, water and sewer repairs and overhead reconstruction, the previous Fall 2025 edition was getting cluttered and unwieldy. This version consolidates the current and planned work for late fall and winter 2025-26.
Updated April 30 at 2:45pm
Current and pending diversions:
Effective May 3 to May 8:
Although regular operation of 506/306 cars through Bay & College resumes on May 3, the diversion via McCaul, Dundas and Parliament will continue between 11pm and 4am to allow completion of overhead maintenance.
Effective April 30 to May 3:
504/304 King streetcars will divert between Spadina and Church Streets for track work between 10pm and 4am. Eastbound cars will run via Spadina, Adelaide and Church. Westbound cars will run via Church, Richmond, York, Queen and Spadina.
Effective April 27:
Normal service along Queen Street between Broadview and Parliament will resume on 501 Queen, and 503 Kingston Road buses will return to King Street from the Don Bridge westward.
The split operation of 504 King with streetcars running to Distillery Loop, and a 504D shuttle bus from Parliament to Broadview Station will continue until the schedule change on Sunday, May 3 when streetcars will return to the full route.
April 26 to May 3, 2026, 10pm to 4am:
511 Bathurst streetcars will divert north of College to Spadina Station for red lane painting on Bathurst. Buses will run on Bathurst from Bathurst Station to Exhibition Loop.
Ongoing:
501 Queen cars divert both ways via Church, Richmond/Adelaide and York.
Beginning June:
Long Branch Loop will be rebuilt. Streetcar service will be partly or completely replaced by buses from June 7 to October 31. Dates are tentative.
At the TTC Board meeting on November 3, management presented statistics on streetcar delays broken down by type of incident. TTC is quite fond of portraying external incidents, especially those related to congestion, as the root of (almost) all evil. The following page is from the CEO’s Report.
Note that external delays (turquoise) occupy the majority of the chart. During discussion of the problem of autos fouling rails, a passing remark by the Interim Chief Operating Officer piqued my curiosity when he said that there were many delays due to the winter storm.
This sent me to the TTC’s delay statistics which are available on the City’s Open Data site. There are codes for many types of delay including “MTAFR”, short for “Auto Fouling Rails”.
According to the “In Focus” box above there has been a 400% year-over-year increase in these delays, although they are styled as “fowling” implying a flock of chickens might be responsible for service issues.
Sorting the data by code and summarizing by date produces interesting results.
Between January 1 and September 30, 2025, there were 843 MTAFR events logged.
Of these, 586 fall between February 14 and 26 hitting a daily high of 65 on February 17.
These blockages were not caused by the typical traffic congestion, but by the City’s utter failure to clear snow on key streets.
105 were on 501 Queen
42 were on 503 Kingston Rd.
84 were on 504 King
93 were on 505 Dundas
186 were on 506 Carlton
3 were on 507 Long Branch
1 was on 508 Lake Shore
2 were on 509 Harbourfront
None were on 510 Spadina or 511 Bathurst
6 were on 512 St. Clair
A few dozen were on various night cars
The pattern here is quite clear: routes on wide roads or rights-of-way were not seriously affected, but routes on regular 4-lane streets were hammered. (How 511 Bathurst was spared is a mystery. At the time it was running with streetcars from Bathurst Station to King & Spadina, and with buses on the south end of the route.)
To claim that the 400% increase from 2024 is some indication of worsening traffic problems is gross misrepresentation of what actually happened. Although this is the CEO’s report and he almost certainly did not assemble the information himself, he wears this issue for having reported misleading data to the Board and public.
Direct comparison with published 2024 data is difficult because until 2025 the TTC used a much coarser set of delay codes that lumped many types of events under generic headings. There was a category “Held by” in which there were 625 incidents from January to September in 2024. The 843 MTAFR codes in 2025 are quite clearly not a 400% increase over 2024.
Whenever there is a discussion of unreliable service, we hear endlessly about traffic congestion. This definitely is a problem, but not the only one, and certainly not in the way presented by the CEO.
A question arose during the debate about the problem that performance stats are consolidated across all routes. Route-by-route service quality is presented in detail in the second part of this article for all streetcar routes. This shows that problems are widespread in the system, even on routes with reserved lanes.
As for the delay stats cited by the CEO, it is clear that we are not comparing September 2025 to one year earlier as the text implies, but using events from the entire year to date including a major snowstorm that had no equivalent a year earlier. The so-called 400% jump in delays from blocked tracks is due to snow and poor road clearance by the City.
TTC management owes the Board and the public an apology for blatant misrepresentation of the delay statistics.
The City of Toronto has announced that work at King & Dufferin is finished and the intersection will reopen to traffic on Wednesday, October 29 after 7pm.
Regular service will be restored on 29/929/329 Dufferin, and the 503 Kingston Road bus will be extended west from Joe Shuster Way (east of Dufferin) to Roncesvalles at 5am on Thursday, October 30.
TTC will test the new track and overhead during the week of November 3 and will restore 504 King and 508 Lake Shore services from their current Shaw/Queen diversion when the intersection is cleared for streetcar operation.
Meanwhile, the TTC CEO’s Report notes that six minute or better service will come to 505 Dundas and 511 Bathurst from 7am-7pm 7 days/week starting November 16.
There are many diversions coming up in the Fall for streetcar routes. Information on these appears in various places on the TTC site, mainly but not exclusively under Service Advisories. As an aid to riders, this article consolidates the available information in one place.
Updated November 28, 2025
***** This article is only for archival purposes. It has been replaced by a new one picking up from mid-November 2025. *****
Major events pending and in progress include:
Construction on Queen between Davies (just east of the Don Bridge) and Broadview.
Reconstruction of the intersection of College and McCaul, and of overhead in the vicinity.
Reconstruction of track and overhead at and near Parliament and Carlton.
Other short term diversions will last only overnight or for a weekend.
Many of these are complicated by the ongoing Ontario Line work at Queen & Yonge forcing some diversions to be more complex than they might be otherwise.
This article will be updated when changes are announced.
November 21: The 501 diversion via Broadview, Dundas and Parliament around water main and track work west of Broadview will begin on November 22.
November 20: Equipment and material mobilization is underway on Queen west of Broadview.
November 17: The 506 diversion has been changed today to avoid the intersection of Church & Dundas where construction blocks the northeast corner. Maps have been added from the TTC’s site.
Effective November 16: The 503 Kingston Road bus will be cut back from Dufferin, and will now loop at York Street via Richmond and University.
November 15: Diversions announced for two projects on 506 Carlton at Parliament & Carlton, and on Gerrard east of Broadview.
November 9: King & Dufferin reopened for streetcar service. 503, 504, 508 will operate via their normal routes.
October 30: King & Dufferin reopens for general traffic and buses. Streetcars to return following track testing.
October 20: Water main reconstruction on Queen west of Broadview has been delayed until early November. 501 Queen streetcars will continue to operate on Queen Street until further notice.
October 13: 504 King is operating with streetcars today over its full route except for the King/Dufferin diversion.
October 9: Maps for 504 King and 506 Carlton diversions added.
October 8: Construction at Queen & Broadview will not start on October 12, and so some diversions will not be required immediately. Information for 501 Queen and 503 Kingston Road has been updated.
October 5: Nuit Blanch & Run For the Cure info moved to the archive section.
October 1: Diversions of 505/305 Dundas and 506/306 Carlton for Nuit Blance and for the Run For The Cure added for October 3/4/5.
September 23: The King/Dufferin start date has been changed to Sunday, September 28.
September 12: King/Dufferin start date pushed back to September 29 or later. The project will now extend to mid-November.
September 9: College/McCaul and Queen East details added.
August 26: King/Dufferin Project
The start date for this project has been changed to mid-September with the exact date to be confirmed. Although new schedules will be in place providing for diversions, service will continue to operate through on King Street until construction actually begins. This likely means that the project will extend further into October than the originally planned Thanksgiving weekend end date. The delay also means that the Tiff diversions will end before the King/Dufferin diversions begin.
Branch lettering for 504 King A/B corrected.
August 25: King/Dufferin Project
Information about Kingston Road night service added.
304 King and 329 Dufferin confirmed to be diverted on the same routes as the 504A and 29 daytime services.
The TTC is into the second round of its consultation for service changes and construction projects in 2026. There is a general page on the 2026 Network Plan and a Survey for feedback.
If you comment here, be sure to also complete the survey so that your feedback goes into the official record.
Updated August 14, 2025 at 1:20pm: This article was written based on information in the customer survey as it existed about 4:00 pm on August 13 when the link to it went live on the TTC site. This included a reference to a minimum 5 minute time saving for express buses which did not match the TTC’s own service standard. The survey now contains the correct information. Text in this article has been updated accordingly.
Updated August 22, 2025 at 2:40pm: The City of Toronto has confirmed that widening of the St. Clair underpass east of Keele Street will not be part of the Metrolinx/TTC project planned for 2026.
Public Pop-Ups
August 13: Pioneer Village Station near express route bus bays 7:30-9:30 a.m.
August 14: Kipling Station near express route bus bays 7:30-9:30 a.m.
August 18: Kennedy Station near express route bus bays (Platform A and B) 7:30-9:30 a.m.
August 19: Don Mills Station near express route bus bays 4-6 p.m.
August 20: Yonge and College 506 Carlton, Eastbound stop 4-6 p.m.
Note that almost all of these relate to the review of express bus services, and only one of the construction proposals (College/Carlton) is covered. More consultation in affected neighbourhoods is definitely required.
Starting after Labour Day in September, the TTC will rebuild the track at the King-Dufferin intersection. This work is expected to take about six weeks.
The project is left over from work on King West in 2024 when it could not be completed as planned due to supply problems. It was erroneously reported that the 2024 project finished “early” when in fact this was due to the scope change.
Transit services will be significantly changed in this area.
Source: City of Toronto Report at p. 5
Note that the diversions for King-Church construction are expected to end before King-Dufferin work begins, and transit services on the eastern part of King will be back to normal.
Route changes at King-Dufferin:
Routes diverting east of Roncesvalles via Queen and Shaw to King:
504A King streetcars from Distillery Loop to Dundas West Station
304 King night cars from Broadview Station to Dundas West Station
508 Lake Shore streetcars from Long Branch to Broadview Station
No service on King between Mowat and Roncesvalles
504B King streetcars will operate from Broadview Station diverting from King via Bathurst to Wolseley Loop (at Queen).
Kingston Road services:
503 Kingston Road converted to bus operation and cut back from Dufferin to loop via Mowat and Fraser.
303 Kingston Road night service suspended (it is not yet clear what will replace the 303 on Kingston Road)
Dufferin bus services:
29 Dufferin buses will divert via Queen, Shaw and King looping via Mowat and Fraser.
929 Dufferin Express buses will terminate at Queen looping via Queen, Gladstone and Peel.
No service on Dufferin south Queen nor through Exhibition Place to Princes’ Gate.
Parking and stopping provisions will change on Queen from Roncesvalles to Shaw, and on Shaw between Queen and King. Stopping will be prohibited on both sides of these streets seven days/week from 7:00 to 11:00am and 2:00 to 7:00pm.
Left turns will be banned from Shaw northbound at Queen and southbound at King. Left turns are now banned from King eastbound onto Shaw weekdays from 7:00 to 10:00am, and from 3:00 to 7:00pm. This will be extended to a ban from 7:00am to 7:00pm on all days.
Some existing parking spaces will be removed to make room for transit vehicles on Dufferin north of Queen, Peel, Mowat, Liberty, Fraser, and King. Details are in the report.
These changes will only last for the duration of the construction project.
The TTC plans to “conduct comprehensive targeted engagement to inform and educate customers, residents, local businesses, and other partners of the pending changes.” However, major changes are unlikely as this project is only two months away and temporary transit routes are already decided. The TTC does not yet have a page on its own site for this project.
This issue will be at Toronto & East York Community Council on July 8, 2025.
Two proposals before City Council attempt to deal with congestion issues downtown brought on by the King/Church water main and track reconstruction.
MM31.17 – Speeding Up Streetcars: Traffic Amendments on Adelaide Street, King Street and York Street – by Mayor Olivia Chow, seconded by Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik
This motion proposes the relocation of parking and loading zones from Adelaide Street to nearby streets to free up capacity on Adelaide.
Currently, the Financial District Business Improvement Area and their stakeholders use loading zones on the south side of Adelaide Street West, from Yonge Street to York Street, between 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. Based on the travel time data, streetcar operations are negatively impacted when the loading operations are in effect.
In consultation with the Toronto Transit Commission, Transportation Services and the Financial District have agreed that temporary loading zones will be established on the west side of York Street, between King Street West and Wellington Street, and on the north side of King Street West, between Yonge Street and York Street.
Delivery drivers will queue in the new loading zones, where Traffic Control Persons will marshal the delivery drivers into the loading bay only when it is clear. With the temporary loading zones in place, stopping will be prohibited on Adelaide Street West from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday to Sunday.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment to her own motion authorizing payment “to deploy additional paid duty officers at seven locations near the King and Church worksite to manage traffic flow”.
MM31.18 – Re-Opening King Street for Business: Keeping Toronto’s Downtown Core and Canada’s Financial District Moving – by Councillor Brad Bradford, seconded by Councillor Stephen Holyday
This motion proposes the reopening of through traffic on King Street where streetcars are not operating during the construction diversion.
City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, to make any necessary changes to reopen the portion of King Street between Spadina Avenue and Church Street to vehicular traffic for the duration of the King Street East and Church Street intersection closure, where streetcars are not currently in service.
Mayor Chow proposed an amendment limiting the reopened area to portions where “streetcars and buses” are not operating. This effectively neuters the motion because the only portion of King with no transit service now is east of Yonge Street.
The debate was mired by a combination of political rivalries, lack of familiarity with the affected area and transit services, and disinformation either through ignorance or misrepresentation.
The Mayor’s motion MM31.17 and amendment carried on a show of hands.
The Mayor’s proposed amendment to MM31.18 carried by 16-5. The motion as amended carried on a show of hands.
The debate was hampered by the absence of basic information such as a map and detailed information on items such as existing transit services, traffic pinch points and loading zone locations.
In support of his claim that King Street could be reopened, Councillor Bradford showed a photo looking west on King from Simcoe with the street completely devoid of traffic. The photo was taken at 6:30pm on Monday.
Monday is a very light day for office-bound traffic due to work-from-home patterns. This is also reflected in day-of-the-week travel time differences shown later in this article.
The theatre district (Roy Thomson Hall, Royal Alexandra and Princess of Wales Theatres, TIFF) are dark on Mondays, and there is little tourist traffic. There was no major event at the Rogers Centre.
Although an empty road can be found at times, the photo is deeply misleading, and Bradford should know better.
Among the most striking pieces of disinformation was the claim that replacement bus service carries far fewer riders than the streetcars did along the King Street corridor. When asked, staff gave riding figures of 24,000 on the King Street replacement bus, and 60,000 per day for the streetcars. These are all day values for the entire route, not for riding on the King Street transit corridor itself. At no point was there any discussion of the frequency (and hence capacity) of service. These numbers were cited by various Councillors to claim that transit priority was not needed on King because so many fewer people were riding there.
City staff should be chastised for failing to correct this point and for giving an answer that did not properly illuminate the comparison between service levels.
For the record, the scheduled service on the central portion of King Street with streetcars and buses is shown below. Note that there is substantially less scheduled capacity with the replacement bus service. Buses on King are quite crowded, and service is bunched and erratic.
It is quite likely that there are fewer riders on the buses than on the streetcars, although a major contributing factor will be the level of service provided by the TTC. From a capacity viewpoint, a service of 18 buses/hour with 50/bus (greater than the Service Standard level) would be 900 riders per hour past a point. The streetcar service would have a capacity more than double that level.
PM Peak Service
Streetcar Service (Apr/25)
Bus Service (June/25)
504A Distillery-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
504B Broadview-Dundas West
10′ (6 cars/hour)
503 Kingston Road (EB from York)
10′ (6 cars/hour)
508 Lake Shore
20′ (3 cars/hour)
504D Broadview-Bathurst
5′ (12 buses/hour)
504C Distillery-Bathurst
10′ (6 buses/hour)
In the course of the debate, Mayor Chow noted that work at King & Church is progressing well and should be finished by August 8. This may allow the road to reopen, but resumption of streetcar service depends on the TTC finishing their work including reconstruction of streetcar overhead at that intersection and along King Street East.
The remainder of this article updates previously-published charts about streetcar travel times on Richmond and Adelaide Streets.
Steve Munro 