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 early winter 2025-26.
Updated December 14, 2025 at 10:00am
Current diversions:
Until late December 2025:
506 Carlton cars divert both ways between Bay and Spadina via Dundas.
Until Spring 2026:
501 Queen cars divert both ways via Broadview, Dundas and Parliament.
503 Kingston Road buses divert both ways from River via Queen and Parliament.
504 King cars terminate at Distillery Loop.
504D King buses operate from Broadview Station to King & Parliament
Ongoing:
501 Queen cars divert both ways via Church, Richmond/Adelaide and York.
Pending diversions:
Dec. 15 to Dec 18 (11pm to 4am): 510/310 Spadina streetcars will divert to Bathurst Station due to infrastructure work on the north end of the line. Shuttle buses will run from Spadina Station at street level to College Street.
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.
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 has announced its services for the CNE for 2025 to operate from Friday, August 15 to Monday, September 1.
CNE Express buses will operate non-stop between Bathurst Station and Exhibition Loop, and between Dufferin Station and Dufferin Loop.
Extra service will operate on the 29 Dufferin and 929 Dufferin Express bus routes, and on the 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst streetcar routes.
Other routes will change to accommodate the CNE services and traffic conditions.
63 Ossington buses normally loop at King via Strachan, East Liberty, Liberty and Atlantic. This will change so that buses loop via Fraser, Liberty and Atlantic.
503 Kingston Road streetcars will be extended west from Dufferin to Sunnyside Loop between 2pm-1am weekdays and 9am-1am on weekends.
510 Spadina streetcars will terminate at Queens Quay Loop until 7:30pm daily, and will run to Union Station afterward.
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.
Effective Monday, June 23 at 7am until Thursday, June 26 at 7am, all streetcar service on Queen Street East will divert both ways via Coxwell, Gerrard and Broadview for emergency water main repairs at Vancouver St. just west of Russell Carhouse.
Notice of this change has not yet been posted on the TTC’s site.
Source: Councillor Paula Fletcher
Also effective June 23 at 11pm until Tuesday, July 8 at 4am, buses will replace streetcars on the Queen and Long Branch routes west of Humber Loop for track work.
Updated June 24, 2025: The TTC has now standardized the 504 King and 503 Kingston Road diversions so that both routes (and associated night services) operate via Queen and Shaw Streets
The diversions for track reconstruction on King Street will change again on Sunday, June 22. The TTC has posted conflicting information both on its website and in its weekly update memo regarding construction and special events. I have asked TTC for clarification and will update this page if and when they reply.
In an email on June 19, the TTC announced:
From 6 a.m. on Sun., June 22, until 4 a.m. on Sat., Jul. 12, the 503/303 Kingston Road streetcars will divert to accommodate streetcar track work on King St. between Shaw St. and Spadina Ave. 503/303 Kingston Road streetcars will run along Queen St. between Shaw St. and Dufferin St. 504D King replacement buses will be extended to run from King St. and Bathurst St. to Dufferin Gate Loop.
Affected routes:
503/303 Kingston Road cars which now operate via Queen, Spadina and King to Dufferin Loop will change to run via Queen Street to Dufferin and then south to Dufferin Loop. This changed on June 24. See below.
504D shuttle buses (Broadview/Bathurst) will be extended west from Bathurst via Queen and Dufferin to Dufferin Loop. In fact the buses ran west via King, not Queen.
Here are the original TTC maps.
Source: TTC 503 and 504D Diversion Notices (No longer online)
It appears that whoever designed this change notice is unaware that the 503 does not now operate via Queen and Shaw, but in fact runs on King from Spadina westward.
Updated Monday, June 23 at 10:45pm: The erroneous map of the 504D diversion has been replaced on the TTC’s site. Here is the corrected map.
Updated Tuesday, June 24 at 5:00pm: The diversion of 503/303 and 504/304 services has now been standardized via Queen and Shaw Streets, and the notice/map also include the 504D bus extension west from King and Bathurst to Dufferin Loop.
511 Bathurst cars resume service to Exhibition Loop and will not operate east on King from Bathurst to Charlotte Loop at Spadina.
508 Lake Shore service is discontinued for the summer.
There is no reference to the existing 504 streetcar route which operates via Queen and Shaw to King, nor is there any explanation of why the 503 and 504D services cannot use the same route. (Corrected effective June 24.)
Here is the construction plan included in the June 22, 2025 service change memo clearly showing where the 503 car runs today, but this will not, in fact, be how the routes operate starting June 22.
Taking the TTC notices at face value, this means that service on parts of King will be affected in different ways:
From Spadina to Bathurst, only the 504C/D shuttle buses will operate and will, presumably, dodge around construction as they have been doing in recent weeks during track margin repairs along King Street.
From Bathurst to Shaw, there will be no transit service. This affects stops at Tecumseth, Niagara and Strachan. Updated: The 504D buses are supposed to run west on King from Bathurst to Dufferin, but few of them actually get beyond Bathurst.
From Shaw to Dufferin depends on the continued operation of 504 King cars. As of June 24, 503 Kingston Road cars were also running via Queen, Shaw and King.
This is a repetition of the classic TTC communications cock-ups of past years where diversions are poorly or inaccurately explained. They are supposed to be “doing diversions differently” this year, but this is not a sterling example.
Updated 4:50 pm June 20: There are separate pages on the TTC website describing the 503/504 diversions which make no mention at all of the change effective June 22. They refer to the summer suspension of the 508 Lake Shore, but assure riders there are no other changes:
Starting Monday, June 23, 508 Lake Shore streetcar service will be suspended until early September for seasonal service adjustments. There will be no changes to 503/303 Kingston Rd, 504/304 King streetcars or to 504/304 King replacement bus routing. [Source: TTC Streetcar service changes.]
As of Tuesday, June 24, the separate streetcar diversion pages for the King and Kingston Road services still make no mention of the changes west of Bathurst Street.
Updated May 16, 2025 at 3:50pm: The TTC has now published a map of the revised diversion routes.
In response to congestion problems for streetcars turning on and off of King and Queen Streets at Spadina, the TTC has modified the route of 504 King.
Instead of running west via Queen, Spadina and King, the 504 will now divert via Queen, Shaw and King. The 503 Kingston Road car will continue to operate via Spadina and King to Dufferin Loop.
The TTC has not yet updated the information on its King-Church diversion page as of 1:30pm May 16, but plans to do so. On-street signage will also be changed. The diversion map and information appear on several different pages, and it will be interesting to see if the TTC changes all of them.
Updated 3:50pm with revised diversion map for routes 504/304, 503/303 and 508. Not shown are routes 501 Queen and 511 Bathurst.
This reduces the peak streetcars/hour attempting to turn east-to-north at King and Spadina from 23 to 17, and west-to-south at Queen and Spadina from 13.5 to 7.5 (plus occasional 508 Lake Shore cars). Off-peak service is almost the same as peak service and so these numbers do not change much during those hours.
Numbers eastbound at King will be further reduced in late June when the 511 Bathurst cars, 6.5/hour, resume their normal route to Exhibition Loop, and 508 Lake Shore cars, 3/hour at peak, are suspended for the summer.
Updated: Now that the map has been published, it is clear that the 504C/D buses will continue to loop at Bathurst, and service on King from Bathurst to Shaw will only be provided by the 503 car.
Problems remain further east on the diversion with all of the 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 504 King and 508 Lake Shore cars making turns to and from Church, Richmond, Adelaide and York, a total of about 23 per hour. There is also severe traffic congestion on Adelaide, but it is not clear how much of this is caused by queuing streetcars, and how much due to traffic volume and road capacity.
The option of using Victoria Street for the link between Queen and Richmond/Adelaide is not available because of Ontario Line construction, even though this would have separated the streetcar diversion from the busier Church Street.
Today was the first weekday of the King/Church construction diversions. I watch things evolve via NextBus through the morning peak, and then visited King/Spadina during the PM peak. A caveat: Mondays are light traffic days. There was no Gardiner backlog at all on Spadina. Later in the week will likely be more challenging.
During the AM peak, the service on 504 King and 503 Kingston Road did not load properly, and many vehicles were clumped together. This took quite a while to unscramble, and there were big service gaps. The 504 buses also ran in packs and huddled together at Wolseley Loop, at one point six of them representing about 20 minutes worth of service at the scheduled headway. The peak period did not encounter queueing frequently at points where streetcars turn because of many wide service gaps. When a bunch of cars arrived, they queued one by one awaiting their turn, but then the intersections would open up again even though in theory there should always have been transit service waiting.
In the PM peak at King/Spadina, the major sources of traffic were pedestrians, cyclists and transit in that order. I observed that the traffic signal cycle time was 110 seconds (1’50”). This means that there are 32.7 opportunities (3600/110) per hour for a turn to/from Spadina. The nature of the intersection is that only one streetcar can make the turn per cycle.
The combined scheduled service trying to make the EtoN turn per hour at King & Spadina in the PM peak is 23 streetcars.
Route
Headway
Cars/Hour
503 Kingston Road
8′
7.5
504 King Car
10′
6.0
508 Lake Shore
20′
3.0
511 Bathurst Car
9′
6.5
Total
23
Stir in 12 510 Spadinas straight through northbound on a 5′ headway. When there is a 510 (or any other car) serving the farside NB stop it blocks any car waiting to turn off of King. In a 45 minute visit, I saw this happen four times, and one car missed two turning opportunities because of closely-spaced Spadina cars blocking the stop.
Depending on arrival times and bunching, more vehicles can queue up here than there are cycles to accommodate them. This was under probably the best general traffic conditions we will see.
There were traffic wardens, but they left just before 5pm. The biggest problem was pedestrians blocking turning streetcars which do not have a protected turn phase EB on King. There is a WB advanced green because autos are forced to turn off King here, but there is no advanced green for eastbound streetcars.
The large volume of riders transferring from eastbound streetcars to buses adds to the already substantial pedestrian volumes at this intersection.
The Traffic Wardens did not reliably ensure that streetcars got “first dibs” on turning, and after they left, pedestrian interference became worse.
I boarded a 504 King eastbound at about 5:10. There was congested traffic over the route across to Church especially on Adelaide and it took over 15 minutes to get from York to Church. Some people complain about space “wasted” by bike lanes, but it was the left turn lane that was almost always empty. Some traffic used it to scoot around stopped streetcars!
The severe congestion can be seen in the TransSee maps of service for 504 King and 503 Kingston Road below. The tracking lines for the diversion area are almost horizontal for an extended period. Note that the problem is mainly eastbound (lines reading bottom to top).
Tracking data for routes 503 and 504, May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca.
I rode a King car east from Spadina and it took a very long time to emerge from the diversion. The car went from 6 minutes early at King on Spadina to 11 minutes late at Queen and Church. Note the length of time spent approaching King and Spadina inching along the street about one carlength at a time. Other locations where the car crept along are also clear in the tracking data.
Tracking data for car 4634. Source TransSee.ca.
Among the problems enroute were:
Congestion on Queen thanks to stopped vehicles and construction in the curb lanes.
Autos infilling Adelaide Street eastbound leaving no room for a streetcar to merge from York Street onto Adelaide. We were eventually rescued by a Traffic Warden.
Extremely slow progress across Adelaide thanks to a traffic backlog from Church Street.
Extremely slow progress on Church Street thanks to a traffic backlog from Queen Street. My car actually fouled the Church/Adelaide intersection as it was unable to complete the EtoN turn in more than one traffic signal cycle.
Ridership on the car was very light and most people got off when the car turned off King onto Spadina. They transferred to the King shuttle buses which were running irregularly and often bunched. These buses were also trapped in the traffic queue eastbound to Spadina of streetcars waiting to turn. (In the chart below, the size of the dot represents the degree of crowding on the vehicle.
Tracking data for 504C and 504D shuttle buses May 12, 2025, 4pm to 7pm. From TransSee.ca.
For those who want to watch the wandering streetcars and buses on NextBus, here is a link. This will open a combined display of routes 501, 503, 504, 510 and 511. The map can be scaled to zoom in to the area of interest. Displays of operating charts on transsee.ca are free for TTC streetcar routes.
Over coming days I will keep an eye on service performance over the diversion, and once a few weeks’ data have accumulated will delve into the details.
Steve Munro 