In a previous article, I examined headway reliability on several routes that had been flagged for improved management by the TTC.
The 512 St. Clair car received improved service in September 2025, and this article updates the charts with headway stats to September 30 showing the combined effect of more service and route management.
Weekday service over the 2024-25 period has had three main levels: bus operation during a long-running construction project in 2024, followed by streetcar service with headways improving only in the last month.
| Effective | AM Peak | Midday | PM Peak | Early Eve | Late Eve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5-Sep-23 (Bus) | 3′ | 5′ | 3’30” | 6′ | 10′ |
| 24-June-24 (*) | 8′ | 8′ | 8′ | 8′ | 10′ |
| 2-Sept-25 | 6′ | 6′ | 6′ | 8′ | 10′ |
(*) For a period in Oct-Nov 2024, the route was split with streetcars operating from Gunn’s Loop (Keele) to Bathurst Station, and buses from Oakwood Loop to St. Clair Station. This was not shown in the published service summary, but does show up in the observed data for the portion of the route operated with buses.
Generally speaking, the range of headways at various points on St. Clair did drop in September 2025, although the effect is more pronounced early in the month than later. Whether this indicates a trend away from tighter headway management as the month wore on will not be clear until more data have accumulated.
During the period of bus operation, the median headway (50th percentile) did not move around much, but this is not the case with the streetcar periods. A reason for this is that with wider scheduled headways, it is more likely that within one hour the scheduled number of vehicles will be higher or lower by a more substantial amount than with the more frequent bus service. Conversely, with the shorter scheduled bus headways, it is much more likely that vehicles will run in pairs because it is much easier to catch up to the bus only a few minutes in front.
A long-standing problem on streetcar routes with larger and larger vehicles (PCC/CLRV, ALRV, Flexity) is that scheduled headways to provide comparable capacity widen, but the laissez-faire attitude to line management results in much worse swings in vehicle spacing. This is compounded by Service Standards that accept a wider range of headways for less frequent service. The issue of meaningful Standards is to be reviewed in coming months by the TTC, and this is an area where Standards should not be compromised just to preserve “good” performance stats for management.
As shown in many analyses published here, there is a general problem with headways becoming more erratic as vehicles move along the route. St. Clair is entirely on its own right-of-way, except for a short stretch at the western end. It also has a mid-point opportunity for headway regulation at St. Clair West Station. Data for departures from that point suggest that little or no headway management occurs there.
TTC Service Standards for terminal departures specify a range of 1 minute early to 5 minutes late, although recently the service metrics were change to eliminate early departures. In any event, a 5 minute window for being “on time” combined with a 6 minute scheduled service means that service can be badly bunched and still “on time” for reporting purposes.
Along the route, the Standards prescribe headway variations of ±50% so that for a 6 minute headway, an actual range of 3-to-9 minutes is permitted. For an 8 minute headway, the permitted range is 4-to-12 minutes. To compound credibility problems, this only has to be achieved on 60% of trips. [See TTC Service Standards at pp 15-16.]
Needless to say, when the TTC says that service meets their standards, the quality can vary quite widely from what riders might expect as “reliable” operation.
Following the “more” break, the first section looks at the evolution of headways along the route west from Yonge and east from Keele during various periods over the day. AM Peak values tend to be slightly more reliable, but even they worsen the further from the terminal one goes.
The second section presents the detailed headway data from September 2025 to show the actual scatter of headway values by day and week, and including weekend data.
There is some indication that the TTC has attempted better headway management on 512 St. Clair, but the results are uneven and there are clear signs of locations and time periods where service is not regulated at all. In turn, this shows what “normal” operations are like without active dispatching and spacing of cars along the route.
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Steve Munro 