Queens Quay East

by

TTC Headway Reliability on Small Routes (Part II)

This post continues from Part I, and is broken off from it simply in the interest of keeping each article a reasonable size. For introductory comments please see Part I.

Routes included here are:

65 Parliament
70 O’Connor
72 Pape
75 Sherbourne
83 Jones
87 Cosburn
88 South Leaside

91 Woodbine
92 Woodbine South
111 East Mall
112 West Mall
114 Queens Quay East
154 Curran Hall
168 Symington

Problems seen on many routes in Part I show up here as well including:

  • Less reliable service on evenings and weekends
  • Missed trips due to missing buses without an attempt to rebalance headways to eliminate wide gaps

Most readers are only interested in some of the routes here, and that is why I have only published a few charts per route with links to details in PDF sets. Only the truly keen (some might say obsessed) and, of course, those whose job it is to know these details will look at just about everything.

Apologies if I’ve missed your route. I plan to look at others once the Line 5 and 6 changes fully cut in to see how new service designs work.

To those who ask why I publish so many of these route analyses, the answer is, sadly, that it takes a lot of data to make the point that erratic service is not found on only a few routes, nor only on major city-spanning bus and streetcar routes. “Traffic congestion” is too simplistic an explanation too often raised by the TTC, and it simply does not apply in some times and locations where these routes have poor service. TTC has no metric to report on this problem, and therefore no tracking mechanism to flag issues or the result of corrective strategies, if any.

Continue reading →
by

114 Queens Quay East and Its Red Lanes

On June 4, 2025, new reserved bus lanes were installed on Queens Quay westbound from Sherbourne to Bay, and eastbound from Jarvis to Sherbourne. The TTC projected travel time savings of up to 5 minutes, and more reliable service for riders using routes on this roadway including 114 Queens Quay East, 75 Sherbourne, 65 Parliament and 202 Cherry Beach.

Now that the June 2025 tracking data are available, this article reviews the actual change, if any, in travel times and headway consistency. For historic context, the data presented here go back to May 2024 when the 114 Queens Quay East route was split off from the south end of 19 Bay.

Here is a map showing the affected routes and location of the new red lanes.

Source: TTC

Over the period before red lane implementation, the 114 Queens Quay East service suffered from schedule problems with an unrealistic high scheduled speed. This was reduced in October 2024, and then raised again recently in anticipation of red lane benefits. The current scheduled speed is not as high as the original design in May 2024. Service frequency has also been changed from time to time mainly in response to seasonal fluctuation, but in some cases to “stretch” buses over a longer running time. (Details later in the article.)

The original eastern terminus was an around-the-block loop via Logan, Lake Shore and Carlaw to Commissioners. This was changed to Lake Shore Garage (the Wheel-Trans garage on Commissioners west of Leslie) to provide a better, off-street location.

Service until the October 2024 schedule change was extremely erratic, especially in the PM peak, as buses could not maintain the original running times. Since October, there has been little change at most times of the day including in June 2025 after red lane implementation.

There is a very strong day-of-the-week effect in the PM peak for westbound travel times on Queens Quay with midweek days being the worst. In June, the worst of the peaks are down from April levels, but that month was unusually bad. There is not yet enough accumulated data to establish whether there will be a permanent “shaving” of peak travel times through the red lane area.

There is an analogy here to the King Street project where the travel times under normal circumstances changed little, but the peaks on days when there was a disruption or special event were shaved off improving overall reliability.

Any analysis of the benefits of the red lanes must be careful not to cherry pick “good” and “bad” days for comparisons.

The data here provides mainly a “before” view of service on 114 Queens Quay East. I will update these charts in the Fall when full traffic conditions have resumed.

Continue reading →
by

Bus Service to the Eastern Waterfront

For many, many years, there has been talk of expansion of the streetcar system into the eastern waterfront. The “Waterfront East LRT” would branch off of the Bay Street tunnel at Queens Quay and running east initially to Villiers Island and eventually link with a southern extension of Broadview via the new GO/Ontario Line station at East Harbour.

Anyone waiting for this service will age considerably before it opens at the now tentative date of 2036. This was supposed to be a “Transit First” neighbourhood, but the history mocks all the fine talk of “Transit Oriented Communities” we hear today. Meanwhile, any attempt to actually use transit to reach this area is, putting it mildly, challenging. A collection of overlapping bus routes with infrequent and irregular service fight their way through chronic traffic congestion.

The route structure changed on May 12, 2024 as shown in the TTC maps below from 2023 and June 2024.

2023
June 2024
  • 19 Bay
    • 2023: From the central business district south on Bay and east on Queens Quay to loop at George Brown College near Sherbourne Street.
    • May 2024: Route shortened to loop via east on King, south on Yonge, west on Front and north on Bay.
  • 72 Pape
    • 2023:
      • 72A service from Pape Station to Eastern.
      • 72B service to Union Station from Pape via Commissioners, Cherry, Lake Shore, Queens Quay and Bay. The route changed from time to time as the area was rebuilt to create Villiers Island.
      • 72C service from Pape Station to Commissioners Street peak periods only.
    • May 2024:
      • 72A service to Eastern peak periods only.
      • 72B replaced by 114 Queens Quay East.
      • 72C extended west from Pape to Saulter Street and operated as the all day route.
  • 114 Queens Quay East
    • May 2024: New route from Union Station to Carlaw replacing the south end of 19 Bay and the west end of 72 Pape.

Two routes were not changed:

  • 65 Parliament:
    • From Castle Frank Station south via Parliament and west on Queens Quay to George Brown College.
  • 75 Sherbourne:
    • From Sherbourne Station south via Sherbourne and west on Queens Quay to Jarvis returning north via Jarvis and The Esplanade.

There is also the seasonal 202 Cherry from Union Station to Cherry Beach. Like the 72 Pape bus, its route has changed from time to time due to construction in the Villiers Island area.

Continue reading →