I hoped to get through the system fairly quickly with a separate detailed article for each route. After a few of these it was obvious that there was too much detail and not enough overall analysis. Readers quickly let me know that something else was needed.
Hence a pause during which little has happened on this site beyond editing of comments. Behind the scenes I have pulled together the route-level articles, for which this intro provides an overview and general comments. Readers interested in specific routes can refer to the articles below:
505 Dundas is a special case because it was not operating with Flexitys prior to the retirement of the CLRV fleet, but ran with buses thanks to a shortage of working streetcars. In place of a 2026 vs 2020 comparison, the Dundas article looks at 2026 vs 2023 before transit priority changes were implemented in 2024 and 2025.
Through all of the route analyses there are several consistent observations:
Travel speeds in many locations and time periods are slower in 2026 than they were in 2019/20 with the same vehicles (new Flexity streetcars) operating on the system.
Slower operation occurs not just at intersections but along routes. Any program to speed up streetcars has to include the “in between” areas.
Transit signal priority is absent or ineffective at many locations including streets where there is no transit stop, but streetcars can be held anyway.
Farside stops often entail extra delay with streetcars held nearside before they can cross to and serve the stop.
This article includes a section on the methodology behind the charts, a brief review of proposals to improve streetcar operations published by Fast-Track.to, and comments on TTC special track maintenance (junctions) and technology.
The operation of Toronto’s streetcars is under considerable fire for what is portrayed as the slowest cars in the world. Ironically, the very slowest of Toronto’s routes operates on a private right-of-way: 510 Spadina. The usual excuses about mixed traffic operation do not apply here.
Recently, I published charts showing the speed of each streetcar line over various segments and by time of day. 510 Spadina did not show well, although the actual speeds vary from one place to another. This article looks more deeply at the data including a comparison with September 2019 before the pandemic. but after service was operating with the new Flexity cars.
There are three sets of charts in this article:
Travel times by segment comparing June 2026 to September 2019 values. The 2026 numbers are the same as those in the previous article, but the 2019 numbers show how in almost every case travel times are longer today than seven years ago.
Travel speeds over the route showing the relationship to stop locations and intersections, and contrasting 2019 values with 2026. This shows the areas with the greatest change in travel speeds.
Locations of long dwell times by streetcars. Some of these are at stops, but many are at traffic signals. Some dwell times have grown since 2019 (not shown) in spite of recent transit priority changes at some locations.
The charts in this article are fairly dense, and readers should click on them to view details, preferably on a device larger than a phone.
I do not offer a “magic bullet” to deal with slow operation, but note that it occurs at many locations along the route. Some are at traffic signals, and some but definitely not all are at junctions.
This is the first of a series of articles that will review each route’s performance.
Updated Aug. 16 at 11:10pm: Dwell time charts and commentary have been added for off-peak periods.
In all the debates about streetcar operation and lack of speed, there is little by way of an overview of where the problem locations and times really are. There are discussions of track switching technology, signal priority (or the lack of it), whether stops are too close together, and operating practices such as standing slow orders at various locations. Much less so a line-by-line review to see where the worst problems lie, and where the greatest opportunities for improvement might be found.
Some advocates claim that an improvement of as much as 40% might be achieved in streetcar speeds, although this has too often been misinterpreted as an absolute number, not a best case target. It is worth noting that some routes, segments and times of day already achieve much higher average speeds. The question then is what prevents this from being standard operation across the system.
This post uses vehicle tracking data to plot average vehicle speed, by hour, over segments of each streetcar route for June 1-5, 2026. This interval was chosen because it was just before the onset of special services and conditions related to the World Cup, but during the moratorium of works and diversions that could have distorted the data.
In Part II, I will take a deeper dive into specific problem areas on some lines, and look at comparative data from pre-covid times.
As I began to write this on June 6 at 5:00pm, the TTC had not yet published the detailed memo of service changes for June 7. There is a web page listing World Cup related service changes, but no details about service frequencies. On an interim basis, I have used the electronic version of the June 7 schedules (GTFS data) as a source for info on scheduled service. On game days, there will be additional service as needed.
Updated: The TTC issued the detailed service memo in the early hours of June 7. Thanks to those burning the midnight oil to get this out. This article has been updated to consolidate info from the memo. Note that June service changes for subway, LRT and bus routes will not occur until June 21, and these will be covered in a separate post.
307 and 311 Bathurst night services: Stopping arrangements at Bathurst and St. Clair West Stations clarified.
Streetcar route maps added at the end of the article.
301L route clarified to include extension to Dufferin Loop.
Streetcar vehicle allocation tables added.
Spreadsheet of detailed changes added. Revised to include 929 Dufferin Express.
List of destination sign changes added.
Bathurst Corridor
Night service on 307 Bathurst bus will be shortened to end at Bathurst Station. Service south to Exhibition will be provided by a 311 Bathurst night car running from St. Clair to Exhibition Loop.
Service on 511 Bathurst will be improved (see table later in this article).
Updates:
307 buses will loop through Bathurst Station, but will lay over and serve a new stop northbound on Bathurst at London (opposite the station).
311 streetcars will run out of service through St. Clair West Station.
Spadina Corridor
Service on the 510 Spadina streetcar will be shortened to turn at Queens Quay Loop. Service to Union Station will be provided by 509/309 Harbourfront and by 310 Spadina. (Corrected)
Waterfront
Service on 509 Harbourfront will be improved (see table later in this article), and a new 309 Harbourfront night car will operate.
Dufferin Corridor
Service on 929 Dufferin express will be added on Sunday evenings on Game Days running every 8 minutes.
King Corridor
Service will be improved on 504 King. On Game Days, the 504B from Broadview Station will turn back via a loop of King, Queen and Shaw without serving Dufferin Loop. See detailed map and schedule in the schedule section later in this article.
Queen / Lake Shore Boulevard West
507/501/301 Long Branch service will be replaced by buses due to construction at Long Branch Loop.
Two branches of the replacement bus service will operate:
507 from Humber Loop to Long Branch Loop via Park Lawn.
507M from Humber Loop to the Humber Bay Shores area looping via Marine Parade Drive.
This configuration will run until Labour Day weekend. In September, 507 streetcars will return as far as Kipling Loop, and the 110 Islington South will be extended west to Long Branch Loop.
508 Lake Shore streetcar service will be suspended for the summer season returning after Labour Day.
Updated: 301L night buses will operate from Long Branch Loop to Dufferin Loop via Queen and Dufferin providing an overlap with the 301 Queen night car.
See map in the schedule details later in this post.
TTC Plans for service to the six World Cup games to be played in Toronto, as well as to the nearby Fan Fest area, were covered in a presentation deck in a recent TTC Board agenda. Because the Board had been rather chatty on previous items, this one was not presented although there was a media scrum afterward.
The plan for transportation to the venues depends on a combination of routes. However, the description of the service varies between the presentation deck and info on the TTC’s World Cup web page.
On the left, the presentation clearly shows the 63 Ossington bus as a World Cup route, but it is missing on the web page.
According to the web page, there will be “expanded service” on subway lines 1 and 2, and “enhanced sevice” on 29/929 Dufferin. Service on 504 King, 509 Harbourfront and 511 Bathurst will run every 5 minutes all day on game days.
Because the 509 and 511 streetcars merge at Bathurst and Fleet, this will mean a 2’30” combined service to Exhibition Loop. That is substantial by current TTC streetcar standards, but it will only provide 24 cars per hour with a capacity of 3,600 riders, generously allowing for 150 per car. The stress on service will be stronger after games when many fans want to leave in a short period. Whether the combined streetcar, bus and GO train service will be able to handle this remains to be seen.
Note the planned access routes to the queuing area on Fleet Street includes fare payment points. This will allow the loading to occur from a fare paid zone without the delay of on board taps, and without the need for fare enforcement in a congested area. This is also shown for access to a contingency bus area at Fort York and Lake Shore, and it is reasonable to assume the same approach will be used at Dufferin Loop.
Aggressive transit priority measures will be needed to keep streets clear. Toronto does not have a good history in restricting motorists to leave the streets for transit service, and the affected areas are not just the downtown business district but residential streets.
Both Bathurst and Dufferin Streets will, by the time of the matches, have RapidTO red lanes south from Bloor. Early plans for Bathurst called for express streetcars and local bus service, but that scheme has been dropped.
I asked Josh Colle, TTC’s Chief Strategy and Customer Experience Officer, about this, and here is his reply:
Earlier iterations of our conceptual service plan envisioned removing intermediate stops along 511 Bathurst to increase the speed of travel along the corridor during the World Cup. Bus service would be provided to serve all existing stops.
With the expected travel time improvements from RapidTO, the implementation of 6-minute or better service, and further service increases during the World Cup period, the express streetcar concept was abandoned. There were also concerns about buses operating in the dedicated lanes and needing to merge in and out of potentially congested curb lanes to serve curbside stops.
This was originally seen as an opportunity to pilot a stop removal program for streetcar while operating a local bus service. However, given the recent priority to improving streetcar operations through other initiatives, our focus remains providing the best service for all customers during the World Cup period.
The TTC intends to provide Blue Night service as shown on the map below beyond the usual level.
Things do go wrong, inevitably, and here are the TTC’s preparations:
Service delivery and performance:
Supplementary supervisors in stations, on-street, and at key locations
Additional standby and change-off vehicles on all modes
Enhanced station staff, customer service and ambassadors
Real-time system oversight and coordinated decision making
Infrastructure readiness:
Streetcar switch duty operators at critical points
Extra janitorial and vehicle cleaning crews
Additional line mechanics, elevator, overhead, subway, signal, and track crews
Standby streetcar support and service trucks
Emergency safety:
Added security personnel on match days
Toronto Police paid duty officers EMS at key locations
Coordinated approach with Station staff, Transit Control and Special Constables
Continued access to social supports and resources through partnerships
This is substantially more than we see for day-to-day operations, and there may be some lessons to be learned about the level of supervisory and support services needed to handle major events and their demand.
(The reference to switch duty operators is a tad embarrassing considering that the planned streetcar routes do not involve any manual switches, and this does not show great confidence in their existing technology.)
There will be “testing exercises” although the exact scale of these is not yet known.
Finally there are plans for enhanced and visible safety and security with the use of Special Constables, Fare Inspectors (Provincial Offenses Officers) and contract security staff. Ideally, as many riders as possible will pass through fare controls at some point in their journey and extensive fare checks on board will not be needed. More important will be visibility of staff who can intervene, if only to report issues and act as a visible deterrent.
Management will bring an updated plan to the June 3 Board meeting.
In response to the “Toronto has the world’s slowest streetcars” meme floating around on line and among some transit advocates, various proposals were floated to speed up our system.
One of these is the idea that there are too many streetcar stops, and if only cars didn’t pause so often for passengers, we could have faster streetcar service. The TTC’s euphemism for this is “stop balancing”.
A chart accompanying the TTC report shows the speed and stop spacing values for several transit systems. Toronto is down in the left bottom corner with the closes stops and the slowest speed. However, Melbourne’s trams are in the same range as Toronto for stop spacing, but they operate faster. Nowhere does the TTC examine what differences might apply to Melbourne lines, nor for the other systems that are both faster and with wider stop spacing.
Although there are some outliers, the bulk of the data points are in the 400-500m range, but this does not examine route characteristics. The original study of slow Melbourne streetcars by Dr. Jan Scheurer commented about Toronto that “CBD-typical speeds seem to extend across the entire city” [p. 8]. Riders who sit in traffic jams on King or Queen Street West, or on Queen Street in the Beach are quite familiar with this problem. Toronto streetcars do not emerge from the core to fly into nearby suburbs.
There is also the issue that Toronto streetcars used to move faster both with the CLRV fleet and the PCCs that preceded them. Something beyond stop spacing is at work even on routes with dedicates rights-of-way. It is easy to go after stops as a source of delay because this would not require an examination of TTC operating practices and the City’s lack of aggressive transit signal priority. Indeed, during the last round of major works on St. Clair, it was discovered that TSP was not actually working in many locations.
Source: TTC
For the sake of argument, assume that the delays to TTC streetcars come from closely spaced stops. Any rider knows that there are other factors including slow operation through junctions, traffic signals that do not give streetcars priority and congestion both in the core and the outer parts of many routes.
The premise is that fewer stops will speed service benefiting those already on streetcars at the expense of those who have to walk further to a stop. This is a bogus argument regardless of stop spacing. There will almost always be more riders passing any individual stop who would “benefit” from its elimination than riders who use the stop. The same argument could be made for some subway stations.
Here are the TTC’s Board-approved stop spacing standards. The target range of 300-400m for local surface routes implies an average stop spacing of 350m giving some leeway to adjust to conditions.
(To give readers a sense of distance, a subway station platform is about 150m long, and so a 300m walk is from one end of a station platform to the other and return.)
Streetcar route averages lie roughly in the 250m-325m range below the standard’s midpoint of 350m. Some stop trimming has already occurred to eliminate very closely spaced stops.
Note that 508 Lake Shore shows the same average as 507 Long Branch even though the 508 travels into the core. The reason is that the stop spacing between Humber Loop and Roncesvalles is quite wide, and this offsets the closer spacing on King Street in the average.
Route
Termini
Stop Spacing (m)
501 Queen
Neville-Roncesvalles (*)
241
Roncesvalles-Humber
448
503 Kingston Road
Victoria Park-York
284
504 King
Dundas West Stn-Distillery (*)
283
Dufferin Loop-Broadview Stn (*)
280
505 Dundas
Dundas West Stn-Broadview Stn (*)
278
506 Carlton
High Park-Main Station (*)
260
507 Long Branch
Long Branch Loop-Humber Loop
312
508 Lake Shore
Long Branch Loop-Distillery
306
509 Harbourfront
Exhibition-Union Station
373
510 Spadina
Spadina Station-Queens Quay
293
511 Bathurst
Bathurst Station-Exhibition Loop
328
512 St. Clair
Gunns Loop-St. Clair Station
270
Source: Calculated from TTC GTFS Schedule Data
Notes:
501 Queen stop data are taken from the pre-Ontario Line construction with service running directly across Queen from Church to York.
Stops near Dundas West and Broadview Stations that are used primarily by overnight services have not been included in the stop counts for 504 King and 505 Dundas.
506 Carlton stop data are taken from the through route before construction diversion around Bay & College.
Some Basic Math
If one wants to achieve a major saving from stop time, many stops have to be cut on a route. One or two will annoy their regular users, but the change in travel time, if any, will be quite small and disappear into the background noise of other variations.
The basic calculation is simple: if a route now has an average spacing of 300m, and you want to raise this to 400m, then one quarter of the stops must vanish. The bigger the change in stop spacing, the more stops must be eliminated.
The numbers of stops for various spacings per 1km are shown below:
250m: 4.0
300m: 3.3
350m: 2.9
400m: 2.5
450m: 2.2
500m: 2.0
With the TTC standard of 300-400m, 350m falls half way along, or 2.9 stops/km. Just to bring routes now at a 250m spacing (4.0/km) to that level would require a reduction of about 1.1 stop/km, or about 12 stops each way on a route the length of 505 Dundas (11km).
If the goal is to move to a 400-500m standard, this means the new target average would be 450m. A route whose average is now 250m would lose almost half its stops. This would be extremely difficult as routes do not have that many “unimportant” closely-space stops to begin with.
The effect would not be on a few riders at a few minor stops, but on many riders all along the routes. They would face extra walking distance lengthening overall travel times, not to mention accessibility issues for those with mobility challenges.
A simple, but important, number is not the space between adjacent stops, but the space that would result if any stop were removed. (In other words, the space between stop N and stop N±2.) In some cases, the existing TTC standard would still be met, but in many the gap between stops would be well outside the standard. For example, if three stops are each 300m apart, getting rid of the middle one creates a 600m gap, well above the standard.
Stops cannot simply be re-spaced to maintain uniformity or iron out problems with stop elimination. For pedestrian safety, stops are almost always at signaled intersections or at least at pedestrian crosswalks so that riders can cross safely to/from stops on the opposite side of the street. The existing street layout, signal patterns and major destinations such as transfer points determine where stops might go. Toronto, unlike Manhattan, does not have a repeating grid as a base for designing standards.
In the sections that follow, I will turn to a few sample routes. There are occasional closely-spaced stops, some with good reason, but not many are ripe for plucking without adopting a considerable increase in the standard and substantial cut to the number of stops. This should be a conscious policy debate, not a change buried in a wider review of Service Standards without a clear indication of the effects on routes across the city.
This post continues a series of articles reviewing travel times for streetcar and bus operations on 510 Spadina. Recent events include winter storms, temporary bus substitution for one week in February 2026 due to power supply issues, and implementation of better transit priority at three intersections.
This article includes data from January 2024 through March 2026 showing travel times on Spadina. Also included are comparisons of speeds and dwell times along the route from October 2025 and March 2026.
For an extended period in 2024-25, the 510 route operated with buses and was, for a time, diverted to St. George Station. Comparisons between streetcar and bus travel times varied through this period depending on the location, time of day, traffic conditions and the degree of priority given to buses, if any.
In February 2026, signals at College, Queen Dundas and King were modified to give streetcars a clear signal before allowing left turns. In the data to March 31, the effect of this change is small. At the level of an individual intersection, this is hard to measure because the change in wait time for a signal is comparable to the frequency with which streetcars report their location. This problem is discussed in more detail at the end of the article. [Corrected at 5:45pm, April 6]
Although signals may clear for streetcars more quickly, there is no change in TTC operating practices that force vehicles to crawl through intersections. The results were not as good as I had hoped, and there are areas on 510 Spadina that need priority far more than the three intersections modified so far.
At this point, confirmation of the benefit of signal changes awaits more data as well as possible expansion of the program.
More generally, the three modified intersections are only part of a larger route, and not necessarily the primary source of delay. Any attempt to improve 510 Spadina travel times must look at the whole route, and at the many locations where streetcars can be delayed.
One point of interest is that streetcar travel times rose slightly after the period of bus operation compared to before (Spring 2025 vs Spring 2024). The change is small but noticeable. What made the difference?
The City and TTC must address why it is possible for buses in mixed traffic to outrun streetcars on reserved lanes during periods when traffic is not congested. A mixture of signalling, stop location and TTC operating practices make this possible.
My apologies to readers who say “oh no, not more charts” and move on to something else. I have deliberately included a lot of them here so that those who are interested can see how the data behave. Any suggestions for changes in presentation or analysis are welcome.
Readers with long memories might recall the early days of plans for a new streetcar order including discussions about how large a vehicle should be purchased. A major concern at the time was the possibility that the TTC would change schedules and run less frequent service with the larger cars just as they had when the articulated version of the CLRV (the previous generation of cars) arrived in the late 1980s.
That concern was softened by a TTC claim that service would actually improve. Peak periods would see slightly less frequent service, but a net increase in capacity, while off-peak periods would see little change in frequency effectively doubling the capacity of service. At the time, crowding was a big issue and this persisted right up to the pandemic in 2020, by which time all of the old cars had been retired. The management proposal was approved in July 2013.
As the CLRV/ALRV fleet aged, there were problems with reliability of older cars and the need to operate buses on some lines thanks to a shortage of working vehicles. Some repairs were done at considerable cost, but these were more cosmetic than a true life extension.
Moving forward to 2026, there has been a lot of talk of restoring pre-pandemic service levels. TTC fudges the numbers on this in many cases citing vehicle hours operated, not actual service frequencies which have been degraded by longer travel times.
(For example, if a round trip, including terminal layovers, takes two hours or 120 minutes, then 20 cars will provide a 6-minute service. If the round trip gets longer but no cars are added, the service is less frequent, but the number of vehicle hours stays the same. From a rider’s point of view, service is worse, but from a budget outlook, there is no change. This is at the heart of the discrepancy between TTC service claims and rider experience.)
After years of changing service levels and demand, the TTC’s Five Year Plan foresees a return to six minute headways, at most, as a new standard for daytime service. This has been rolled out on some routes over the past year, but not all.
Already at 6 minutes or better: 504 King, 510 Spadina
Improved to 6 minutes: 512 St. Clair (Sept/25), 511 Bathurst (Nov/25), 505 Dundas (Nov/25)
Pending, but with no committed date: 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 506 Carlton, 507 Long Branch.
The Five Year Plan (at p. 4) includes provision for extra spending in 2027 and 2028, but this is not tied to specific routes. There is nothing in the Plan for 2026.
A related issue is the size of the streetcar fleet. Leading up to 2020, the issue was how many cars were actually available, and some service cuts flowed directly from this. With the recent delivery of 60 additional cars, fleet availability should not be an issue although service can still be limited by a lack of operators. The TTC currently schedules 163 cars at peak out of a fleet of 264. If services now operating with buses due to construction were also using streetcars (503 Kingston Road and the Broadview branch of 504 King), the peak requirement would rise to 178. Allowing for maintenance spares this would drive the total requirement to 214 leaving 42 surplus for service improvements (allowing for 8 spares).
February 2026 Schedule PM Peak
Full Streetcar Service
Possible Service
Peak Requirement
163
178
220
Spares at 20%
33
36
44
Total Requirement
196
214
264
Fleet
264
264
264
Surplus
68
50
0
The problem, of course, is that the TTC barely has budget headroom to operate existing services let alone increases.
In theory, some of the surplus cars will eventually operate the Waterfront East LRT extension, but that service is at least 8 years away even assuming Toronto finds the money to build it. In any event this will not require anywhere near all of the current surplus fleet. Another issue is that the “streetcar network” has not operated with 100% streetcar service for a few decades thanks to various construction projects and vehicle shortages.
There are parallel issues with the bus network, but they are complicated by issues of vehicle reliability and the need for a spare pool to cover the unreliable LRT service primarily on Line 6 Finch West. I will turn to the bus fleet in a separate article.
Back in 2013, the TTC proposed how it would operate with the new streetcar fleet. During peak periods, headways would widen particularly where existing service was very frequent. Notably on 501 Queen, there would only be a slight widening of the time between cars in the AM peak and no change in the PM peak. This reflected the fact that Queen was already running with the 75-foot long ALRVs and needed more capacity.
In the off peak, most routes would see no change in service level except for 510 Spadina due to its already frequent service of 50-foot CLRVs that could not be sustained at terminals with the larger new cars.
The overall fleet plan showed a buildup to a peak requirement of 168 cars plus 20% spares.
This plan gave a bright future for streetcar service and capacity growth, but things did not work out that way. Service today is generally lower than originally projected for the new fleet, and part of this reduction is due to slower operating speeds and greater provision for terminal recovery time even on routes with reserved lanes.
A related question is the effect that less frequent service has had on ridership. There is a post-pandemic slump on the streetcar system in part due to work-from-home for office jobs and remote learning for post-secondary students. However, even allowing for the pandemic era drop, the problem remains in attracting riders back to transit when streetcars are less frequent and slower, compounded by chronic problems with service reliability. Charts tracking streetcar ridership from 1976 to 2024, the last year published by TTC, are at the end of the article.
These routes are in the part of Toronto where transit riders should be easy to win, but a long decline in service frequency discourages those who have the option to use another mode including private autos, ride hailing or cycling. Service cuts during economic downturns do not magically get reversed as times improve, and ridership that might be wooed back to transit instead faces less reliable service and a political attitude that favours big spending on subway projects, not surface transit.
The remainder of this article looks at each route in detail to see how the actual service changed from the 2014 plan through the 2020s to today comparing:
The 2014 headways for AM Peak, Midday and PM Peak in the management proposal.
The proposed headways after routes converted to Flexity streetcars.
The actual scheduled service in January 2014, January 2020 (just before the pandemic) and February 2026. Driving times are shown separate from terminal recovery times to illustrate how each component has evolved.
Quite notable on many routes is the growth in both scheduled driving and terminal times. Although it is common in the mid-2020s to regard extended travel times and traffic delays as a recent, post-pandemic phenomenon, this pattern started earlier and is evident in 2014:2020 comparisons. Surplus time, it was argued, would prevent short turns, a claim that is demonstrably false as most riders know on a daily basis, but it slows service, wastes resources and forces wider headways.
This article reviews the change in travel times and speed profiles on 510 Spadina, 511 Bathurst and 512 St. Clair between October 2019 and October 2025 (pre- and post-pandemic). In almost every case, streetcars are slower today than they were six years ago even though two of the three routes have reserved lanes.
511 Bathurst will soon have red lanes from Fleet to Bloor (except for a section north of Dundas), and I will publish updated charts for that route when the lane changes are in place.
By October 2019, streetcar service was almost completely operated with the new Flexity cars, and so the change over time is not explained with a comparison between the sprightlier CLRVs and the newer cars. (For 512 St. Clair, I have also included a comparison with the CLRV era to show the effect of the vehicle change separate from the pre/post pandemic change in traffic conditions.)
TTC is overly fond of laying blame for transit vehicle speeds on “traffic congestion”, but that is too simplistic an analysis especially for routes with reserved lanes. They also have a bad habit of presenting data without the granularity needed to identify patterns and problems by time of day and location. There are many charts in the main part of this article, but they are intended to show each route in detail.
One important point is that it is impossible to know how much change in speed comes from a more cautious operating philosophy as opposed to traffic conditions. There is, of course, the slow operation through junctions, but that does not explain slower travel on straight track with no special work. Traffic signal effects also show up, particularly in time spent holding nearside at intersections and then again at farside stops. Some areas are inherently slower than others such as Spadina from Queen south with many close-spaced intersections and signals that generally favour east-west traffic. The situation is particularly bad between Front and Queens Quay where the primary job of signals is to handle traffic to/from the Gardiner Expressway.
Any move to speed up operations on streetcar routes requires more than quick fixes like stop eliminations, and detailed block-by-block reviews are needed. In some cases there will be trade-offs between transit and other road users. Arguments for better priority will fare better if and when the TTC improves service so that there are actually transit vehicles to prioritize.
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.
