From May until early Fall, the TTC and City of Toronto will rebuild an aging water main and track at the intersection of King & Church Streets. A report before Toronto & East York Community Council on February 20, 2025, details plans for service diversions and transit priority measures.
There are two general plans for this project: the first is for phases when the intersection remains open for east-west traffic, and the second for the period when it will be closed. Note that the planned diversions are not the same as in the recent Annual Service Plan. Significant changes are the provision of service to the Distillery District replacing the 504A streetcar with the 504C bus, and the extension of 503 Kingston Road west to Dufferin Loop as opposed to the originally planned McCaul Loop.
Service along Queen Street between River and Spadina will substantially increase with the routes normally on King diverted to the north. Buses will operate as a streetcar replacement.
Traffic restrictions such as parking and turning permissions will change to provide more capacity for transit. Although the report cites the use of traffic wardens and changes to signal timings, it is silent on provisions for the much increased volume of streetcar turns at intersections where no priority signals exist today. (I await feedback from the City on exactly what they propose.)
The entire stretch of Queen Street as well as the Richmond/Adelaide diversion will not be used for CaféTO installations to conserve road space.
As part of this plan, a reserved lane will be created for streetcars eastbound approaching Broadview on Queen, and left turns by other traffic will be banned there.
Restrictions will be in effect from May 11 to October 14, 2025, although the City project is planned to run until August. Streetcar service could return in September, but this will depend on TTC plans for overhead reconstruction on King Street East and on the Sumach/Cherry branch to the Distillery District.
Details of routes and planned changes to traffic regulations follow in the full version of this article.
This is a long article with increasing levels of detail toward the end. Feel free to bail out, or come back later.
Although problems with severe congestion delaying transit downtown were somewhat reduced by the addition of Traffic Wardens by the City of Toronto in 2024, reliability issues continue to affect service along the King route. The situation illustrates a few of the service design and management challenges for this type of route, and shows how simply reducing congestion will not necessarily provide regular service.
504 King is unusual in having four terminals: Dundas West Station and Dufferin Loop in the west, Broadview Station and Distillery Loop in the east. The TTC only measures service reliability at terminals, but the overlapping 504A and 504B services must blend together to provide the advertised quality.
The 504 shares with other streetcar routes a much wider headway than existed before the pandemic. This is due primarily to the change in vehicle size, and only partly to riding levels. With less frequent service, regular spacing is more important because scheduled gaps between vehicles are already wide, and can get much wider. This is compounded by overlapping services on the 504A (Distillery to Dundas West) and 504B (Broadview to Dufferin). Nothing in the service design or line management ensures that these blend evenly, and the design provides very frequent service only on paper.
The table below compares headways on routes that operated with the shorter CLRV streetcars in January 2019 versus the new Flexitys in January 2025.
Route and Period
January 2019
January 2025
501 Queen to Humber
AM Peak
4’15”
10’00”
Midday
4’45”
9’00”
PM Peak
4’50”
8’30”
Early Evening
4’30”
10’00”
506 Carlton
AM Peak
5’10”
10’00”
Midday
5’20”
10’00”
PM Peak
5’40”
10’00”
Early Evening
7’10”
10’00”
The next table compares headways on routes that were already running Flexitys in 2019. (The Distillery District was originally served by 514 Cherry which ran from Distillery Loop to Dufferin Loop. In October 2018, the service design changed to the 504A/B configuration we have today.) 504 King service is less frequent than in 2019, and even less frequent than in November 2017 when the transit mall was implemented and the line was running with the smaller CLRVs.
512 St. Clair saw a substantial drop in service in May 2023 when headways increased from roughly 6 to 8 minutes. Not long after, the route then went through a long, painful period of bus operation during multiple, overlapping TTC and City projects. TTC plans to restore 6 minute or better service in late 2025. (Yes, you are reading that table correctly: peak service now is about half what it was in 2019.
Route and Period
January 2019
January 2025
504 King
AM Peak
5’15” on each branch
8’00” on each branch
Midday
7’00” on each branch
10’00” on each branch
PM Peak
6’00” on each branch
10’00” on each branch
Early Evening
6’30” on each branch
10’00” on each branch
512 St. Clair
AM Peak
3’45”
8’00”
Midday
4’45”
8’00”
PM Peak
4’10”
8’00”
Early Evening
6’45”
8’00”
Other routes were operating with buses in 2019 or 2025, and they are omitted here although their streetcar service is also less frequent now than it once was.
Although the service capacity in the case of 501 Queen and 506 Carlton is roughly the same allowing for the difference in vehicle size, the situation on 504 King and 512 St. Clair shows a marked reduction of capacity. This is an example of how the TTC is most definitely not back to 100% of pre-covid service, no matter how many media events make that claim.
With a wider scheduled headway, gaps will be wider too if either a vehicle is missing (e.g. a short turn) or vehicles are bunched together. When the scheduled service was frequent, some bunching was inevitable because vehicles were already close together. A management style that worked tolerably for frequent service does not work when fewer, more widely-spaced cars serve a route.
In this article, I will review performance of the 504 King route in January 2025, and show comparative data from earlier periods.
Updated February 7, 2025 at 8:00pm: It occurred to me that although charts here are produced with maximum Y-values of an hour, or even 90 minutes, that this shows the peak times while compressing the visual range of the area where averages change over time. I have added a second set of charts for 2016-2025 with the maximum Y of 30 minutes to give the area where averages move between 15 and 25 minutes more “elbow room” and to make the evolution of values easier for readers to see. These have been added at the end of the “Implementing the Transit Mall” section.
In previous articles, I have posted charts showing the changes in travel times on the central portion of the 504 King route between Jarvis to Bathurst. This is the area covered by the supposed transit mall, although the degree to which streetcars actually have priority has varied over time for various reasons.
This article will review how travel times have evolved in recent years, as well as looking back to pre-pandemic and pre-transit mall eras. Full chart sets are available via links to PDFs for those who are interested.
Beyond that central section lies the conventional “streetcar” portion of the route west through Bathurst/Niagara, Liberty Village and Parkdale. To the east is the northern reaches of the St. Lawrence and Distillery districts. Do these deserve the same level of priority treatment? What would be the benefit if any? I will turn to those areas later in the article.
For those familiar with similar analyses on this site, I have retained the format of charting the 50th percentile (median) and 85th percentile values. These show both the general trend over time as well as the degree by which trips can vary from the median affecting reliability both in the priority area and on the broader route.
Significant events include the implementation of transit priority in November 2016, the covid lockdown in March 2020, and the effect of enforcement (or lack of it) on the ability of streetcars to move briskly through the priority area. Also important to note is that the effects differ by time and direction, and that congestion interferes with transit not just during the classic peak periods.
The important history lesson on King Street is that transit priority can improve travel times, but more importantly can improve reliability leading to more predictable trips and vehicle spacing over a route even beyond the bounds of the priority scheme’s area. Moreover, the benefits are easily lost through lack of enforcement and external events that significantly change demand on the road network.
In the monthly CEO’s Report, one of the KPIs (Key Performance Indices) is a measure of the number of short-turned streetcars. This used to be reported as an absolute count, but is now expressed as a percentage of all trips.
Here is the most recent version:
This chart is a fiction born of the Rick Leary era when, in theory, all short turns were banned and the stats were made to fit the objective. Like many KPIs, this suffers from a combination of system-wide consolidation across all routes and time periods, as well as under-reporting of what is really happening.
An easy way to get the true count is to look at tracking data and compare two points on either side of a short-turn location. For example, Woodbine Loop at Queen and Kingston Rd. is a favourite spot for 501 Queen and some 503 Kingston Road cars to turn back. Counting the number of vehicles crossing Coxwell (west of the loop) with the number at Woodbine Avenue (east of the loop) shows how many cars did not travel east of Kingston Road and, therefore, were short-turned.
The TTC claims that they better their 1% target for trips short turned, but it is clear that they rarely achieve this. In some cases, the value rises above 20% indicating that although much service does get to the terminal, there is a good chance that a rider will encounter a short turn. This is separate from frustrations caused by gaps and bunching.
Short turns happen for many reasons including traffic congestion, too-tight schedules, service blockages for collisions, medical problems, parades … it’s a long list. Riders really don’t care. The basic point is that service they expected to receive is not there, and usually with no advance warning.
The table below summarizes the statistics from the vehicle tracking records in November 2024 for the period from 6am to midnight. It is clear that even on an aggregated level, the proportion of short turns is much higher on these routes that the TTC KPIs indicate.
Updated Dec. 6/24 at 1:30pm: Short turn counts for 504 King eastbound, 507 Long Branch and 508 Lake Shore westbound trips added.
Note: The legends on the original charts in this post were misleading. They have been changed to better reflect what the columns and lines on the charts represent..
Route
Location
Total Trips
Short Turns
% Short Turns
501 Queen
Woodbine Loop EB
3547
198
5.6%
Roncesvalles WB
3537
247
7.0%
503 Kingston Rd
Woodbine Loop EB
3252
136
4.2%
504 King
Spadina WB
6453
256
4.0%
Roncesvalles WB
3275
364
11.1%
Church EB
6319
126
2.0%
Parliament EB
6198
204
3.3%
Dundas EB
2943
71
2.4%
505 Dundas
Parliament EB
3040
212
7.0%
Lansdowne WB
3062
397
13.0%
506 Carlton
Coxwell EB
3031
293
9.7%
Lansdowne WB
3256
572
17.6%
507 Long Branch
Kipling WB
2074
88
3.0%
508 Lake Shore
Kipling WB
193
19
9.8%
512 St. Clair (*)
Lansdowne WB
2068
249
12.0%
Oakwood WB
2113
122
5.8%
(*) For 512 St. Clair, only data from November 14 onwards when streetcar service was restored are included.
The TTC has announced several service changes to accommodate crowds expected at the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts at the Rogers Centre on November 14-16 and 21-23. For full details, see their site.
On concert nights, subway service will be improved between 5-8pm and 11pm-1:30am with Line 1 trains operating about every 3 minutes, and Line 2 trains every 4 minutes.
509 Harbourfront service will be restored between Union Station and Exhibition Loop from November 1-24 with at least 11 cars, up from the usual 7 on the line, on concert days .
511 Bathurst cars will operate from Bathurst Station to Union on November 14-16, and starting on November 17 on a scheduled basis.
19 Bay, a normally infrequent service, will have 10 extra buses. Post-show they will operate express northbound stopping only at King, Queen, Dundas and College enroute to Bay Station.
510D Spadina bus will similarly provide an express service stopping at the same intermediate destinations as 19 Bay enroute to Spadina Station.
The express services will be styled as “Swiftbus”. Extra service on 504 King will be styled as “Swiftcar”.
Access at Union Station will be monitored and controlled to prevent the overcrowding that occurred on past occasions with large events.
Earlier this year, the TTC conducted the first round of consultations on its 2025 Annual Service Plan. My comments on it include several maps and tables including an update on previously proposed changes that had not yet been implemented.
The following changes are in the second round of consultations:
The proposed removal of 87 Cosburn service to East York Acres has been withdrawn for further review.
The review of Community Bus routes now includes proposed extensions and restructuring, although the scope is limited by a lack of budget headroom. There is no discussion of where more routes might be added to the system but for a lack of resources to run them.
Proposals have been added for alternate service during some, but not all, major construction projects planned for 2025.
A proposal to review and consolidate mid-block bus stops has been added.
Except for the 87 Cosburn, all proposals from round one appear unchanged in round two.
The TTC’s survey is available here and will be open for feedback until November 11, 2024. If you have suggestions, please be sure to respond to the survey. Some TTC planning staff do read this site regularly, but feedback on the plan should go to them directly to be part of the record.
I participated in a recent stakeholder session on the plan, and was disappointed by its lack of ambition. There is no sense of a “Ridership Growth Strategy”, an aspirational statement of “here is what we could do”, as opposed to living within the existing budget. It’s almost as if John Tory and Rick Leary never left.
On an informational basis, the plan does not recap pending changes for the eventual opening of Lines 5 Eglinton-Crosstown and 6 Finch West, nor does it discuss past proposals that have not yet been implemented (see my article on round one for a list of these). This leaves riders to search through available background materials to get an overall sense of what will happen in 2025. There is no concrete discussion of general service improvements to attract ridership.
The remainder of this article details the proposals added in the round two consultation.
Updated October 21, 2024 at 11:30am: The end date for the 501 Queen diversion via Church, King and Spadina has been changed to “mid-November”.
Updated October 18, 2024 at 11:00am: Information on diversions that have finished has been moved to the end of the article to avoid confusion. A planned diversion on Queen west late evening and overnight service from October 21-24 has been added.
Effective October 13: (Don Bridge reopens two days earlier than the planned Oct. 15)
501 Queen:
West end: Regular service.
Downtown: Streetcar Diversion via Church, King and Spadina both ways.
East end: Regular service restored at the Don Bridge.
Shuttle bus from Broadview & Gerrard to Queen & Bathurst:
Westbound via Church, Richmond and Bay
Eastbound via Bay, King and Church until 10pm daily
Eastbound via University, King and Church from 10pm to 5am daily
503 Kingston Road: Regular service from Bingham Loop to King & York looping downtown via Church and Wellington Streets.
504 King: Regular 504B routing restored between Broadview Station and Dufferin Loop. 504A has already been on its regular routing and does not change.
508 Lake Shore: Regular route to Broadview Station via Queen and Broadview restored.
Effective October 21-24 Only
501/301 Queen
October 21-24 only from 11pm to 4am: Streetcars divert between Shaw and Roncesvalles via King for trackwork at Queen & Brock. Shuttle buses to Neville Loop
The City/TTC project to rebuild utilities, track and the roadway on King Street between Dufferin and Shaw Streets has completed earlier than originally planned. The roadway is now open, and TTC will be restoring power to allow testing of its new tracks and overhead.
Streetcar service between Shaw and Roncesvalles on King will resume with the October schedule change on October 6. Affected routes will resume their normal destinations:
501 Queen will operate to Humber Loop.
504B King will operate to Dufferin Loop.
63 Ossington will resume its Liberty Village loop via Atlantic Avenue and King Street. (Although there was a proposal to change this route to use Dufferin Loop as a western terminus in the Service Plan, this is not being implemented.)
This project originally included the reconstruction of the King/Dufferin intersection, but this was deferred to 2025 as part of a planned water main and track replacement project from Dufferin Street west to Close Avenue.
According to the TOInview map of planned construction work, other water main and track projects affecting King Street in 2025 include:
The Church Street intersection
Shaw to Bathurst
Updated September 18, 2024 at 3:40 pm:
The 63 Ossington bus will revert to using Atlantic Avenue, and then King west to Roncesvalles on Monday, September 16 until October 5. From October 6 onward, the Ossington bus will loop east on King to Shaw, its original pre-construction route and streetcars will serve King Street.
Once again the Toronto International Film Festival will disrupt streetcar service downtown. This year, the effect is more severe because of already existing diversions and construction projects.
The TTC’s announcement of diversions is on their News page and on their Updates page in separate postings. The information differs between the two. There is also an announcement in their Service Advisories.
Updated September 5 at 1:20pm:
A map of the 504B service from Distillery to Woodbine Loop has been added to the Service Advisory. This advisory has been updated, but is still incomplete.
The table comparing the three notices has been modified to reflect recent revisions.
Updated September 5 at 7:50am:
The correct layout of King east diversions appears to be on the map in the Updates page which is included below. There are two services operating:
504A between Broadview Station and King & York via Church and Wellington.
504B between Woodbine Loop and Distillery Loop.
Updated September 4 at 10:00pm:
The three announcements are inconsistent, and the “Update” page for 504 King service in the east end does not make sense.
The TTC is setting a new record here for inconsistent public information. Here is a comparison of the claimed services.
Route
News Item
Update
Service Advisory
East of University
503 Kingston Rd
Turns back from York.
Turns back from York.
Turns back from York.
504A King
Turns back from York. No mention of Distillery District service.
See below. Original version was correct, but this was updated to a nonsensical routing.
Turns back from York. Broadview Station reroute not mentioned.
504B King
Broadview Stn to Distillery
Broadview Stn to Distillery
Turn back from York. No special routing mentioned originally, but a map showing the Distillery to Woodbine Loop service has been added.
303 Kingston Road
Not mentioned.
Turns back from York.
Not mentioned originally. Updated to show turnback from York.
304 King
Turns back from York.
Streetcar not mentioned, only shuttle bus.
Turns back from York.
508 Lake Shore
Turns back from York. (Nonsensical)
No service.
Not mentioned.
West of University
504A King/Dundas West
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina
504B King/Humber
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
304 King
Turns back from Spadina.
Streetcar not mentioned, only shuttle bus.
Turns back from Spadina.
303 Kingston Road
Not mentioned.
Not mentioned.
Not mentioned originally. Update implies there is no service west of York.
508 Lake Shore
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Turns back from Spadina.
Diversion periods
Sept 5-8 Sept 9-10 (3:30-9:30pm)
Sept 5-8
Sept 5-8 Sept 9-10 (3:30-9:30pm)
Map
Downtown area only.
Full map but 504 east services do not match text.
Downtown area only.
“Update” notice for 504 east end services:
Original (retrieved from archive.org):
504A King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and King and Church streets. Streetcars will then turn south on Church Street, west on Wellington Street, and north on York Street and east on King Street towards Broadview Station.
504B King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Distillery Loop.
Revised version (from ttc.ca):
504A King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Kingston Road and Queen Street East (Woodbine Loop). Streetcars will then turn south on Church Street, west on Wellington Street, and north on York Street and east on King Street towards Broadview Station.
504B King streetcars in the east end of the city will operate between Broadview Station and Distillery Loop.
This is different from the map which showed the 504A running from Broadview Station while the the 504B runs between Woodbine Loop and Distillery Loop. This turned out to be the service actually operated.
From 5am Thursday, September 5 to 5am Monday, September 9:
Service will be broken at University Avenue into east and west halves of routes.
The map below was added to the Service Advisory on the morning of September 5.
The descriptions below have been updated to reflect actual operations on the morning of September 5.
In the east:
503 Kingston Road cars will operate from Bingham Loop to York via Church and Wellington, a cutback from their current terminal at Spadina (Charlotte Loop).
504A King cars will operate from Broadview Station to York via Church and Wellington.
504B King cars will operate from Woodbine Loop to Distillery Loop.
508 Lake Shore cars will not operate east of Spadina.
304 King and 303 Kingston Road night cars will turn back from the east at York.
In the west:
504A King cars will operate between Dundas West Station and Spadina (Charlotte Loop).
504B King cars will operate between Humber loop and Spadina.
508 Lake Shore cars will operate between Long Branch and Spadina.
304 King night cars will operate between Dundas West Station and Spadina.
There is no mention of any 303 service west of York Street.
Shuttle buses:
Replacement bus service will operate between Jarvis and Portland bypassing the TIFF area via University, Richmond (WB) / Adelaide (EB) and Spadina.
303 Kingston Road Night Car
There was no mention in the announcement of the 303 Kingston Road night car in the original TTC notices. It appears that the 303 is running only between Bingham Loop and York Street similar to the 503 daytime service.
I have asked the TTC for clarifications, but they remain silent on the topic.
Monday and Tuesday September 9-10
“Red carpet events” on King Street will require diversions between 3:30 and 9:30pm.
Wednesday to Saturday September 11-24
“Red carpet events” will occur, but are not expected to require diversions. Some service delays are likely.
What About Adelaide/Richmond?
Thanks to the glacial pace of construction on the Ontario Line diversion, an alternate route for streetcar service eastbound via Adelaide around TIFF is not available. Next year we are likely to see Richmond/Adelaide diversions rather than split routes.
Transit Signal Non-Priority
There is no mention in the announcement of signal adjustments, notably eastbound at King & Spadina and westbound at King & Church to support the greatly increased volume of streetcar left turns the 2024 diversions will require. Similarly, there has never been any transit priority for left turns westbound at King & Sumach to support a Broadview Station / Distillery Loop service. A major problem with past TIFF diversions has been queues at turning locations on diversion routes.
This is an example of how the City compounds the traffic issues caused by events such as TIFF with an absence of pro-transit signalling. We have millions to study red lanes and paint streets, but well-known routine diversions must fend for themselves.
The TTC will be making repairs to the track at Church & King, a location that has needed serious tender loving care for some years. This project will run from 11pm Friday July 12 to 4am Wednesday July 17.
This event and the confusion it will add for downtown travellers is a direct result of delays in complete replacement of the intersection, compounded by the Queen Street closure for the Ontario Line and the still-incomplete work on the Richmond/Adelaide diversion around Queen and Yonge that limps along with a vague “fall” completion date.
501/301 Queen:
Streetcars in the east end will operate only to Parliament Street and will loop back via Dundas and Broadview.
The 501B shuttle buses will operate westbound via Richmond and eastbound via King between Church and University.
Night service will be provided via streetcars diverting onto Dundas as shown in the map below, and night service on the 301 bus covering the central part of the route on the same path as the 501B daytime service.
503 Kingston Road:
503 Kingston Road cars will operate as far west as King & Sumach, and then turn south to Distillery Loop.
504 King:
504A King Dundas West to Distillery: Cars will divert both ways via Spadina, Queen, McCaul, Dundas, Broadview, Queen, King and Sumach/Cherry to Distillery Loop.
504B King Humber to Broadview Station: Cars will divert on the same route as 504A to Broadview, then run north to Broadview Station.
504 buses will operate from Broadview Station to Bathurst over the regular King route.
508 Lake Shore:
508 Lake Shore cars will divert via the same route as the 504B King cars.
How well any of these services will operate remains to be seen especially the 504A route that will be much longer than normal.
