This is a preliminary version based on GTFS data (the standard format for transit schedules used by online services) and some Service Advisories on the TTC site. I expect to receive the full list of September service changes early in the week of August 28 and will update this article accordingly including the usual detailed comparison of service levels.
Updated August 26 at 9:15 pm: 512 St. Clair updated to reflect complete bus replacement for work at various locations on the line.
Updated August 27 at 4:30 pm: At 10:30 am on August 28, the Mayor, TTC Chair and CEO will hold a press conference at STC Station to “outline how the TTC will increase service beginning September and into the fall.”
Updated August 29 at 5:30 pm: Due to changes in the Metrolinx schedule for work on the Lake Shore East Queen Street bridge, there has been a further revision of planned service. Please see this post for details.
At the TTC Board meeting on July 12, 2023, there was a brief discussion of the problem of short turns on streetcar lines. The information provided by management was, shall we say, less than a full accounting of what is actually going on.
This issue flared up many years ago particularly with short turns of service in The Beach among other areas, and in general a problem with erratic, gap-filled service on the outer ends of routes. TTC management committed to reducing or eliminating this problem, and to that end there was a “no short turns” policy that everybody seemed to know about at the operational level, but which was officially denied.
The stats did go down, but looking under the covers showed that not all was well:
Short turns are a bona fide service management tactic for dealing with delays to restore even spacing of service. There is nothing wrong with a short turn of some cars in a parade because this will restore service sooner than if every car trundles to the terminal and they return in a pack.
The official count of short turns fell to almost zero. However, this was due in part to selective reporting that was clear to (a) anyone actually riding the system and (b) anyone looking at vehicle tracking data.
Rick Leary got the equivalent of a gold star from the Board who frankly did not know any better, but occasionally wondered why claims of improved service did not align with complaints from constituents. The standard excuses for occasional upsets due to congestion and construction were regularly trotted out even though service could be erratic at times and locations when these were clearly impossible.
The charts below from the July 2023 CEO’s Report show the official count of short turns on the streetcar and bus network. An important factor in comparing the two is that the buses overall have many routes where congestion and construction do not affect most, if any, trips. The figures are not broken out by route to flag the “bad actors”. Moreover, the values are presented as a percentage of all trips so that time-of-day effects are hidden.
The “no short turns” policy implementation is quite clear in the data from Fall 2018 through Spring 2019. In reviewing actual short turn counts from tracking data, I have found that the values are consistently under-reported, and they do not represent actual conditions. For example, the proportion of service outbound on 501 Queen from downtown (as counted at Woodbine vs Greenwood) reaching Neville Park ranges from 100% to below 50% in January to June 2023.
Updated July 15, 2023: In June 2023, the TTC changed its reporting of short turns from an absolute number to a percentage. The scale of these charts does not make sense because the streetcar chart claims it is per 1000 departures, but cites a percentage (per 100). For comparison, the May 2023 charts are below.
I have written many times on this site about service quality and there are many factors at play including:
Unreasonably short or long scheduled travel times. This may sound like an odd pairing, but both can produce erratic service.
Too short times lead to short turns to keep operators on time especially for crew changes.
Too long times lead to extended layovers at terminals.
Lack of headway discipline at terminals and along routes.
Lack of headway management for vehicles re-entering service from a short turn to “split” a gap rather than simply running behind a through vehicle and carrying few passengers.
There are, of course, ad hoc situations where accidents, short-term construction or special events produce conditions that are not “standard”. These are normal and have to be managed to the degree possible. One side effect of the overall reduction in service on streetcar lines to a 10 minute level on many routes is that there is no spare capacity when delays occur, and wider headways make the effect on riders of any missing vehicle (either not in service or short-turned) greater.
This is not the first time the system encountered that problem, and tuning out surplus capacity has been a generic issue across the network any time budget “efficiency” takes precedence over service. The phrase “adjusting service to meet demand” goes back over four decades.
Service standards that allow for some empty space on vehicles are important because they guarantee some flexibility to absorb small problems without service collapsing. An analogy for motorists is that a highway totally jammed with cars does not move traffic at all well, and some empty space is necessary to ensure the road is usable. On transit, empty space is viewed as waste while on our roads no congestion is a holy grail.
The remainder of this article reviews the short-turning situation on most streetcar routes and the underlying causes.
When I receive the detailed plans for coming schedule periods, I will post the usual omnibus articles.
Updated July 13, 2023: The eastern terminus of the 506C bus has been corrected to Victoria Park Station.
Updated July 14, 2023: The 506 Carlton street service will resume on Gerrard East to Coxwell on Monday, July 17.
Updated July 15, 2023: The map of the revised 506 Carlton routing has been posted by the TTC.
Week of July 17 (Updated)
With the completion of water main and track work at Coxwell & Lower Gerrard, the 506 Carlton cars will be extended east from Broadview via Coxwell to Woodbine Loop on July 17. Service to Victoria Park Station will continue to be provided by the 506C Carlton bus.
Through bus service on Coxwell from Danforth to Queen will be restored on July 30 when 22 Coxwell return.
July 30
Several changes will occur on Sunday, July 30 including adjustments in response to demand levels, scheduling improvements and construction work.
The 31 Greenwood bus route which has been operating temporarily via an expanded south end loop will be permanently extended to Queen & Eastern Avenue.
The 506 Carlton route will be shifted to Dundas West Station as its western terminus to permit water main construction on Howard Park Avenue.
September 3
Streetcar service will return to Long Branch with 501 Queen cars running to Humber Loop, and 507 Long Branch cars from Humber to Long Branch. The peak period 508 Lake Shore (via King) will also return.
Streetcar service will return to Upper Gerrard and Main Street Station with completion of construction work there.
Streetcars will be replaced on Queen East and on St. Clair for construction.
On 501 Queen, the Ontario Line work at Degrassi (east of Broadview) will require bus service in place of streetcars. As previously announced, the temporary 505 Dundas service to Woodbine Loop will be routed via Gerrard and Coxwell due to the Metrolinx work on Queen.
On St. Clair, reconstruction of St. Clair West Station Loop will require buses over the entire 512 route. This will also affect 33 Forest Hill and 126 Christie (which will interline rather than looping at St. Clair West), and 90 Vaughan which will be extended south to Bathurst Station.
Reconstruction of Dufferin Loop will alter the south end loop arrangements for the 29/929 Dufferin services, and the 504B King to Dufferin service will be extended to Roncesvalles.
The duration of these new construction projects has not been announced.
Oh the irony! The TTC’s Annual Service Plan consultations are all about how to handle a few (but not all) of the construction projects coming in 2024, but the elephant in the room remains bad communications and changes on the fly.
The new routes implemented in May and June 2023 were in cases impractical thanks to a combination of unduly optimistic running times in schedules, less than adequate transit priority and line management whose priority was not the provision of well-spaced, reliable service. Several changes will take effect on July 4 and 5 to correct some of these problems, but the information is scattered through the TTC’s website, if you can find it at all.
First, a summary of the changes:
The 501/504 shuttle bus (an ad hoc service implemented to cover for the absence of the 503 Kingston Road car to King Street downtown) will be rebranded as “503” and will serve Kingston Road to Bingham Loop until 8pm every day. This will become a scheduled bus service at the end of July, and will revert to 503 streetcars likely in October.
The 505 Dundas car will only operate east on Queen from Broadview to Woodbine Loop, except after 8pm when service to Bingham will be provided by streetcars.
The 506 Carlton car will only operate to Queen and Broadview and will return west to route via Queen and Parliament Streets without running east to Woodbine Loop.
The 512 St. Clair car will be restored, temporarily, west of Lansdowne to Gunns Loop. While it lasts, this will correct for the erratic service now provided there by the 47 Lansdowne extension.
The challenge is to find out that this is happening to your route. The TTC website is very poorly organized with information in many places that is inconsistently placed and linked (or not) to the main route pages affected. Some items are out of date, but remain in place to confuse riders. Some items describe major changes but are hard to find if you don’t know the site in detail.
These are the hallmarks of a site maintained by many groups each with its own (probably jealously guarded) responsibility for providing information. Nobody appears to care about overall site consistency and ease of navigation, or if they do, are in any position to change what is a clearly broken process. Some information is just plain wrong indicating that whoever created or updated the page was either sloppy, or does no know what is actually happening.
Updated July 4, 2023 at 7:10am: Changes to the TTC website since this article was posted are noted in various places below.
Updated July 5, 2023 at 4:30pm: Changes to the TTC website since the July 4 update are noted throughout the article.
The TTC is part way through production of its 2024 Service Plan as well as a 5-Year Service Plan and Customer Experience Action Plan. In Round Two, consultation will focus on plans for service changes triggered by major construction projects. Five pop-up sessions are planned at Flemingdon Park, Union Station, Liberty Village, Finch Terminal, and Pape Station between June 29 and July 12, 2023. Details are available here.
Also available on that page is a link to a survey seeking feedback on various proposals. Please note that my site is not an official TTC conduit for feedback, although it is no secret that many at the TTC do read articles and comments here. Any specific feedback for the TTC should be submitted through their own survey.
Round Three in August-September will present draft concepts for the 5-Year Plan and Customer Experience Action Plan, and these will be refined into final drafts for Round Four in October-November.
The remainder of this article presents an overview of the survey and proposals for construction-related service changes.
There are no proposals for new routes nor of overall service levels in this round. The election of Olivia Chow as Mayor will no doubt bring a review of existing services, but that is not in the scope of this round.
An important issue left over from the 2023 Budget process and the recent service cuts is the question of Service Standards. These are described as “Board Approved”, but in fact the 2023 changes were implemented by management as part of the budget with only retroactive consent from the Board. Moreover, the actual effect of the changes was withheld from the Board and Council until well after the budget was approved.
Transparency in budgets and service planning will be an important change looking ahead to 2024. With a new Mayor I hope to see a much improved process.
This article describes the transit services affected by various construction project in the east end and the changes that will take effect on Sunday, June 18, 2023. This is a follow-on to my original article, and some of the information there is out of date due to changes in the TTC’s plans.
Updated June 14, 2023: Information about the 304 King Night Bus added.
Construction projects affecting streetcar service are summarized in the map below. Some of this work is underway or completed already.
TTC overhead upgrades for Flexity streetcar operation with pantographs on King and Kingston Road was completed in the Spring. All routes in the system now operate with pans, although there are selected areas that have not been modified yet and operators must switch to trolley poles if cars run there.
Repairs to the Queen Street Don Bridge were completed a few weeks ago, and streetcars are now operating over the bridge, albeit only for carhouse moves and short turns.
Repairs at Main Station are underway and will continue through the summer.
The sewer work at Coxwell & Gerrard has completed, and work will now shift to track replacement.
Sewer work on Broadview is underway.
Changes Effective June 18, 2023
Here is a map showing the route configuration from June 18 to July 29, 2023.
The major service change is that there will be no north-south service on Broadview from Danforth to Gerrard due to track and road reconstruction. Work in this area includes:
Reconstruction and expansion of Broadview Station streetcar loop to accommodate two streetcars at a time on both the 504 King and 505 Dundas platforms. The first phase of this (June 18 to early July) will require Broadview to be closed to traffic from Erindale to Danforth for track replacement. Work will shift into the loop in a second phase to allow streets to re-open. The planned expansion of the loop has been deferred.
Track reconstruction between Gerrard and Danforth. The first phase (July 4 to early August) will run from Victor to Sparkhall with track storage between Gerrard and Victor. (See maps in the original article linked above.)
The affected routes are:
504/505 Broadview/Parliament shuttle bus: This route will not operate and there will be no bus service on Broadview between Danforth and Gerrard and beyond to King & Parliament. This will be replaced by:
72A Pape: This branch of the Pape bus now operates to Pape and Eastern Avenue, but it will be redirected and extended effective June 18 to operate west from Pape on Queen and King to loop as Parliament the way the 504/505 has been doing.
The 304 King Night Bus will operate to Pape Station via Queen, Carlaw, Riverdale and Pape.
Not shown on the map but also effective on June 18:
100 Flemingdon Park: This route now operates to Broadview Station, but it will shift east to Pape Station effective June 18.
8 Broadview, 62 Mortimer and 87 Cosburn will remain at Broadview Station, but looping arrangements have not been announced for the various stages of construction.
In the previous article, based on maps in a March 2023 presentation regarding Main Station, there was a new route “519” that would split off the west end of the 72B Pape to Union Station service. This proposal is not part of the June 18 package, and the 72B will continue to serve Union Station.
The 501B Queen shuttle bus will be modified to improve its westbound connection with the 501 Queen streetcars. Before June 18, the 501B loops north on Broadview to Gerrard, west to River and south to Queen. This loop will be changed so that buses run south on River only to Dundas, and then return east to Broadview and south to Queen. This will provide an overlap between the 501B and 501 services at Broadview in both directions.
The 501 and 505 streetcars will continue on the same diversions and schedules:
501 Queen cars will operate via McCaul, Dundas and Broadview to bypass Ontario Line construction, and thence east to Neville Loop.
505 Dundas cars will operate via Broadview, Queen and Kingston Road to Bingham Loop at Victoria Park.
The 506 streetcar diversion will be changed westbound:
506 Carlton cars will operate eastbound from Gerrard and Broadview via Broadview and Queen to Woodbine Loop at Kingston Road.
Westbound 506 cars will change their route. Until June 17 it is (officially) via Queen, Broadview, Dundas and Parliament to the regular route at Gerrard. This will change on June 18 to run via Queen and Parliament to Gerrard. Many cars do this already.
The schedule for 506 Carlton has not been updated and is still short of running time. Many cars will likely continue to short turn at Broadview and return west rather than going east to Woodbine Loop.
The pseudo-503 Kingston Road service will continue to be provided by 504/501 buses running from Kingston Road & Queen to York & King. These buses are now scheduled as part of the 501 service and should appear on tracking apps. Current plans call for the 503 service from Bingham Loop to King & York to return as a bus at the end of July, and as a streetcar in the Fall.
Track reconstruction at Coxwell & Lower Gerrard will cause changes in three routes:
22 Coxwell, which has been operating between Danforth and Queen with diversions enroute, will be suspended.
31 Greenwood will operate from Coxwell Station (its current terminus during reconstruction of its home station for accessibility) to Woodbine Loop via Danforth, Greenwood and Queen. The routing at the south end via Eastern Avenue is not known as I write this.
506C Carlton bus service will continue to run between Castle Frank and Victoria Park Stations, but it will divert via Greenwood, Danforth and Coxwell to Upper Gerrard in both directions. 506C buses will make on street stops at Coxwell & Danforth. They will not enter Coxwell Station.
There will be no service on Coxwell between Upper Gerrard and Queen. The normal 22, 31 and 506C routes will resume on July 30.
Reconstruction of Main Station continues through the summer. All of the bus changes with route interlines and extensions to Victoria Park Station will remain in effect.
The TTC has three key messages about the pending changes.
In a previous article, I presented a proposed way to display service frequency on a route in a manner that, I hoped, would convey the pervasiveness of irregular service, be clear to casual readers, and in a consistent format. Several readers commented on this either on Twitter or via email, and I thank all for their contributions.
One immediate change, which I included in an addendum to the article, was to replace the vehicles/hour counts (which indicated how many buses or streetcars passed a point each hour) with an average wait time for a would-be rider. That time was calculated on a weighted basis to penalize long gaps in service.
The average wait time stat has other uses which I will explore later in this article.
My intent in developing this new type of chart is to add to the repertoire of charts I publish when reviewing a route’s performance and to show how, or if, changes the TTC makes to schedules affect service riders actually encounter.
For those interested in the details, read on. Again, comments are welcome. I would like to nail down the format before launching into a series of route reviews.
Updated May 26, 2023 at 5pm: In response to a reader’s suggestion, I have added a sample chart that includes average wait times for would-be riders in place of the count of vehicles. To jump directly to this update, click here.
In the many articles I have published trying to review service quality on the TTC, one topic has eluded presentation: how to chart service quality over a long period while preserving the hour-by-hour, day-by-day character of the data? That question has several dimensions because a quality metric is not simply a matter of pooling stats and saying that overall things are not too bad, or even worse that service meets some sort of standard on average.
In the past I have published charts showing headways, and others showing how organized (or not) service on a particular day might be, but it has been more difficult to condense months of data for multiple times and locations.
The TTC standard for surface routes is:
On-time performance measures vehicle departures from end terminals. Vehicles are considered on time if they depart within 59 seconds earlier or five minutes later than their scheduled departure time. (-1 to +5)
The intent is to hit this target 90% of the time, but the TTC does not achieve this with values typically falling in the 70-to-85 per cent range. At an individual route level results can be considerably worse. Streetcar routes fared worse with a 50-to-85 per cent range, and the higher end was achieved during the pandemic era when traffic and demand were light. The numbers have fallen since then.
The TTC’s metrics have big credibility problems because they bear little relation to what riders actually experience.
There are three major reasons:
Quality is measured on an all day basis, or worse on longer periods such as months. Variation by day and time is completely obscured by this approach. Reliable service at 10 pm is cold comfort to a rider whose bus has not shown up for 15 minutes in the peak period.
Quality is measured only at terminals, not along routes where various factors can degrade service that might begin well, but quickly deteriorates with bunching and gaps.
Service is measured relative to schedule on the assumption that “on time” performance will automatically be reliable. However, there is considerable leeway in that standard allowing irregular service to be considered “on time”, and the TTC does not even hit their target levels in many cases.
The CEO’s Report tries to work around the limitations of the metric by noting that some routes do farly well while others encounter a variety of problems. With respect to the bus network, the report notes:
Network performance was negatively impacted by the inclement weather the weeks of February 20 to March 10, where over 60 centimetres of snow fell on the city during this time. Weekday On-time performance was 88% for Weeks 7, 11 and 12. During weekends for the period, OTP was 82%. During February, 32 of 159 weekday routes were impacted by construction for at least three weeks of the period. Overall weekday OTP was 88% for the 127 routes not affected by construction:
48 routes were “On-Time” (90% OTP or better).
53 routes were “On the Cusp” (85-90%).
26 routes were “Not On-time” with OTP less than 85%. In summary, 80% of the routes not affected by construction scored 85% or better.
This still does not address reliability issues at the level riders experience. Moreover, for frequent service, riders do not care if a bus is “on time”, only that service is reliable. TTC assumes that on time service will, by definition, produce reliable service, but they don’t actually operate on schedule and fail to measure service as riders see it.
Irregular service also affects crowding because passenger loads are not evenly distributed. If most riders are on full buses, the following half empty vehicles are not part of their experience (except possibly their frustration with a long wait for the advertised “frequent” service). Average crowding stats do not reveal typical riding conditions. (Analysis of crowding is complicated by the limited availability of automatic passenger counter data outside the TTC. I have tried for a few years to obtain this without success.)
The charts show that bunching (headways of two minutes or less) and large gaps (20 minutes or more) are common, and that they exist across the four months of data here. They are not occasional effects, but a basic feature of TTC service. The stats at terminals, where the TTC takes its on time performance measurements, are less than ideal, but the service degrades as buses and streetcars move along their routes. Most riders do not board at terminals.
This article presents a proposed method of charting service quality on routes to provide both the detail of day-by-day, hour-by-hour conditions and a broader overview. The charts are an experiment in condensing a lot of data into a manageable size, but I am not wedded to the format. Comments are welcome. Regular readers will recognize the format from a previous attempt, but I hope this is an improvement.
The goal is to produce something that can track the quality of service over time so that the decline or recovery of TTC routes is clearly visible along with the effectiveness (or not) of any changes to schedules, transit priority or route management.
There are a lot of charts in this article, and it is a long read for those who are interested. Feedback on this method of presentation is most welcome.
Among various problems that became evident with the many route changes on May 7 was the deep mismatch between advertised and delivered service.
Both the 501 to Neville and the 505 to Bingham Loop were often missing in action short turning usually at Woodbine Loop (Kingston Road & Queen, named after the former racetrack).
Aside from the scenic tour the 501 Queen car takes via McCaul, Dundas and Broadview, plus the usual congestion on Dundas Street, another congested location was Broadview northbound between Queen and Dundas.
In that segment, three services, 501 Queen, 505 Dundas and 506 Carlton, were all queuing for the left turn at Dundas, compounded by 504/505 buses attempting to serve the northbound stop while blocking both lanes of traffic.
Under these conditions, it was impossible for any of these services to stay on time. The situation has been partly remedied by using traffic wardens to manage the intersection, but even that depends on ensuring that streetcars get priority all of the time despite the signal setup there.
As the week of May 7 wore on, I noticed that a lot of 506 Carlton cars were not getting east of Broadview. Riders complained about cars going out of service, and I received a tip from a reader about scheduled travel time changes.
This sent me into the electronic versions of TTC schedules which are published for use by trip planning apps and which also are the source for info on their own website. These files give a stop-by-stop schedule for each vehicle on a route and allow very fine-grained examination of the schedule design. What I found was quite surprising.
Over the portion of 506 Carlton common to the March 2023 schedules when all streetcars ran through to Main Station and the May 2023 versions with service diverting to Queen Street East, the running times were substantially shorter in May than in March. The schedule as designed could not be operated, and it has become common practice to turn most of the service back westward from Broadview. Here are charts comparing the scheduled travel times.
The eastbound comparison on the left covers the route from High Park to Broadview where streetcars turn off of their usual route. The westbound comparison covers the route from Parliament, where cars rejoin the route, to High Park. Each dot is one scheduled trip plotted with the departure time on the X-axis (horizontal) and the trip length on the Y-axis (vertical). Values move up and down over the day based on expected conditions on the route.
In almost every case the March travel time is longer than the May time. It is no surprise that streetcars have to be short-turned when the schedules work against them. How the schedules came to be designed this way is a mystery, but it creates big problems for riders.
This sort of thing cannot be corrected overnight, but in the meantime the TTC should formalize the route change and post notices everywhere so that riders know how the route will actually operate. New schedules will come in late July when Metrolinx closes Queen at Degrassi for preparatory work for GO corridor expansion and the Ontario Line, and all of the streetcar routes will shift north to Gerrard. With luck, they will reflect actual travel time requirements.
Shifting the westbound Carlton cars off of Broadview at Dundas reduces the number of turns that the intersection must handle per hour. A related issue will be the degree to which traffic wardens intervene to move transit vehicles through this choke point in the network. Both of these changes improve travel times for 501 Queen and 505 Dundas cars and could contribute to more reliable service east of Queen and Kingston Road to the two terminals. I will be monitoring this over coming weeks.
Footnote:
For the benefit of readers who don’t know the whole context, the 506 Carlton car normally operates to Main Station via Gerrard. During construction at Coxwell, it has been diverted via Broadview and Queen eastbound to Woodbine Loop. The westbound diversion runs via Queen, Broadview, Dundas and Parliament including a north-to-west left turn at Dundas because there is no track for a left turn northbound at Gerrard. (The TTC was planning to add one, but the message was lost somewhere in planning when the intersection was rebuilt.)
Darwin O’Connor has left a comment noting that you can get comparisons of scheduled and actual running times from his site TransSee.ca. Here is a chart comparing the situation for eastbound travel from High Park to Broadview in March (green) and May 2023 (red). The dots show actual travel times while the lines show the scheduled values.
Note that the green dots (March) are almost all below the green line, while the red dots (May) are almost all above the red line showing that with the new schedule cars would always be late, sometimes by a wide margin.
O’Connor notes that this type of analysis chart is available on his site free for the Toronto streetcar routes.
With the shutdown of Queen Street for Ontario Line construction between Victoria and Bay, we will not see streetcars there for many years. The last cars will run just before midnight on April 30, 2023.
Until early 2024, the absence will be over a longer stretch from Broadview to McCaul until new diversion track via York and Adelaide is finished. In turn, that depends on relocating nine utility vaults under the new Adelaide trackage.
It is possible that the TTC will revise the diversion pattern once the Don Bridge reopens to streetcars later in 2023 (it will close for maintenance on May 7), but nothing has been decided yet.
Here are photos of various generations of streetcars on the central section of Queen as a memento while we await their return.
Note that this is a large gallery, and it will take a while to load after you first click on a photo.
Steve Munro 