Vehicles

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How Can We Increase TTC Service?

Much discussion in the current election campaign targets TTC fares and proposed changes in 2027. Depending on which candidate you trust, they might go up, selectively, be frozen, or even go down with the effect of future changes to fare capping rules.

Many surveys, including a recent one from Liaison Strategies, show that the key factor in retaining and attracting riders to transit is not fares, but service reliability, frequency, and comfort. This includes many factors, and the “fixes” do not lend themselves to simple campaign slogans.

Drawing lines on maps is a favourite pass-time for politicians and the consultants who feed off their desire for a credible plan. We went through that with John Tory’s ever-vanishing SmartTrack scheme, then later with Doug Ford’s subway plan. They share one thing: nothing needs to be done today, and come tomorrow the plan might shrink thanks to technical challenges and limited financing. The Ford plan survives because of spending (and borrowing) at a level that would never occur without a generous infusion of political ego. Planned spending on the provincial subway plan is on a par with the TTC’s entire state of good repair backlog.

Fare schemes, be they new concession rates, discounts or regional amalgamations, can be quickly implemented at comparatively modest cost, but they do little beyond, possibly, generating added ridership which might, or might not, be translated to added service and capacity. With fare revenue covering only 40% of the operating budget and none of the capital, it is impossible for fare cuts to generate enough new riding and income to pay for service increases.

Toronto has a long-term plan, TransformTO, that seeks “net zero” transportation emissions through complete electrification of transit by 2040. That is comparatively easy to achieve because it is the path the TTC is on already. However, a more ambitious plan originally aimed at a major shift away from autos to transit by 2050, but now has a 2040 target. There is no sense of how Toronto will achieve this.

A technical backgrounder to the 2050 plan proposed, among other things, that Toronto:

  • Convert one lane of traffic to exclusive bus lanes on all arterials.
  • Increase service frequency on all transit routes:
    • bus by 70%, streetcar by 50%, subway off-peak service increased to every 3 mins.
  • Tolls of $0.66/km on all arterial roads.
  • Free transit. No transit fares.

In the current political climate, it is easy to guess the fate of exclusive bus lanes and road tolls. Free transit would cost over $1-billion annually before accounting for the cost of the additional service.

The TTC Capital Plan includes a long-range, unfunded provision for TransformTO:

  • Vehicles (added buses and streetcars): $3.51-billion
  • Infrastructure (2 additional garages, upgrades to existing garages and carhouses, expanded terminals to handle higher service levels): $3.82-billion

There is no mention of operating costs for the larger fleets and all of the added service nor is there even an outline of a plan to get from the transit system of 2026 to the hoped-for 2040.

Somewhere in between the aggressive goals of TransformTO and current service levels is likely what riders will actually see. The TTC has not published a detailed analysis of options, and the Board, in spite of having a “Strategic Planning Committee”, has not asked for one.

Any plan to improve transit service must look at the network as a whole, at how routes in many parts of the city can provide better service. This will require decisions about the size of the transit system, growth of the surface bus and streetcar services, and tradeoffs needed in the use of road space.

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Reviewing TTC Surface Delay Data 2025-2026

This article is a followup to a review of subway delay data published here in early June.

Four sets of data are summarized here:

  • Bus data January 2025 through April 2026
  • Streetcar data January 2025 through May 2026
  • Line 6 Finch data December 2025 through May 2026
  • Line 5 Eglinton data February through May 2026

There is no bus data for May 2026 because the TTC’s June 22, 2026 update on the City’s Open Data site did not include it.

The Open Data files include a key translating delay codes to text. However, many codes used in the logs do not appear in the key, and in those cases I have used “?” in the tables. I have asked TTC for an updated code list, but they have not replied.

Among the information shown in these delay logs:

  • “No Operator Available” is a serious problem related to TTC staffing levels.
  • Diversions account for a large number of delays, notably on the bus network, not just streetcars.
  • Collisions involving buses and streetcars are common.
  • Weather related delays including autos blocking tracks peak in winter months for buses and streetcars.
  • Streetcar delays related to switches are reported under various codes, but there is no code for derailment thereby masking the number of the most serious track-related events.
  • The number and length of delays on 6 Finch have fallen by over 50% since the opening months.
  • A common source of delay on 5 Eglinton relates to guideway intrusion.
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TTC Board Meeting: June 3, 2026

The TTC Board will meet on June 3 with several items on the agenda.

The morning portion of the meeting will deal with various confidential items, and the meeting will move into public session in the afternoon, time to be announced.

Some items are forwarded from the Audit, Finance and Risk Management Committee meeting of May 26 How much debate they will get in the full Board’s public session remains to be seen.

Items of interest include:

  • CEO’s Report
  • Advancing Safety on the TTC: 2026 Focus Areas
  • Bloor-Yonge Capacity Improvements Project – Platform Edge Doors and Net Zero
  • Financial and Major Projects Update for the Period Ended April 26, 2026
  • Toronto Transit Commission – 2026 Follow-up – Status of Previous Auditor General’s Recommendations
  • Draft Consolidated Financial Statements of Toronto Transit Commission for the Year Ended December 31, 2025

Four items are administrative inquiries, or member motions including one forwarded from the recent Council meeting:

  • An inquiry about the usage and cost of Community Bus Routes from Chair Jamaal Myers
  • [From Council]: Safer Subways: Making Public Safety a Priority and Restoring Confidence to Toronto Transit Commission Riders Across Toronto
  • Review of Subway Capacity Constraints and Infrastructure Readiness for Protected/Major Transit Station Areas Compliance and Provincial Densification Mandates – by Commissioner Liane Kim, seconded by Commissioner Josh Matlow
  • Requesting a 7 Bathurst Express Bus – by Commissioner Josh Matlow, seconded by Commissioner Dianne Saxe

In this article I have grouped related items together.

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TTC To Relax Streetcar Speed Restrictions

According to a bulletin from the TTC’s Safety and Environment Department, effective May 24, 2026 some speed restrictions that hobble streetcar operations will be dropped.

  • At crosswalks and signalized intersections, streetcars are now restricted to entering at 25 km/h. This will change so that cars can operate at up to the posted speed limit.
  • The 10 km/h speed restriction at intersections on The Queensway will be removed, and cars can operate up to the posted speed limit.
  • Intersections with special work, or with other explicit restrictions, continue to be subject to slow orders.
  • Notwithstanding these changes, Operators are expected to drive defensively and adapt to road and weather conditions.

This is a first step in attempting to speed up streetcar routes, but the limits at special work (switches, crossings) remain in place. This will not change, if at all, without a thorough review of factors contributing to that long-standing policy including:

  • Reliability of electric switch controllers,
  • Benefits of double-blade switches for Flexity streetcar movement through turns, and
  • Signaling to provide a positive indication for operators that switches are set and locked to the desired route.

That study is underway, but we are unlikely to see major changes quickly especially if replacement of existing track and controllers is needed. Related issues include:

  • The number of manually operated switches at locations where streetcars regularly turn for diversions and short turns, and
  • The degree, if any, of aggressive transit signal priority provided at existing and future switch locations.
  • Removal of speed restrictions related to trolley pole operation notably at low underpasses.

It is not clear why there is a delay of over three weeks for this change to take effect, but it will be in place before the World Cup games.

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TTC Major Capital Projects: 2025 Year-End Update

The TTC Board agenda for its April 16 meeting includes a pair of reports giving the year-end status for the Operating and Capital budgets, as well as a detailed update on major capital projects.

In this article, I will review the status of major projects to summarize info for readers. In a separate article, I will turn to the 2025 operating results. Those wishing more detail should refer to the full reports.

An important factor with many projects is that they are multi-year efforts, and some of them are not fully funded. This has different implications for various types of projects such as:

  • A project might still not have full funding, but a portion can proceed with the hope of additional moneys appearing along the way.
  • A project might have stages, but only be funded for some of them. A new vehicle purchases might have money for part of an order, but not for a sustained rollout.
  • Projects could be interrelated in that full exploitation of benefits cannot be achieved without completion of both. For example, a new Automatic Train Control cannot work without a fleet that can “talk” to the new signal system. Larger fleets cannot be accommodated without new storage and maintenance facilities.

Although these are large and in some cases quite expensive projects, this is not an exhaustive list. Some parts of TTC State Of Good Repair budget involve areas with many smaller projects (for example, building and structures maintenance) that are quite large in the aggregate. Vehicle overhaul is an ongoing cost, but it is not listed as a “major project” because it is routine work. These items do not appear in the Major Projects report although they comprise a large portion of the capital budget.

The projects discussed here are:

  • Subway Work Car Fleet and Maintenance
  • Station Easier Access, Second Exits and Fire Ventilation
  • New Subway Cars for Lines 1 and 2
  • ATC Signals for Line 2
  • Rogers 5G Rollout
  • Capacity Enhancements for Lines 1 and 2
  • Bloor-Yonge Capacity
  • Scarborough Busway Project
  • New Buses for Conventional and Wheel-Trans Service
  • eBus Charging Systems
  • Facilities for the Expanded Streetcar Fleet
  • New TTC Operations Centre
  • VISION (Vehicle Tracking System) Implementation
  • SAP Enterprise IT System Implementation
  • PRESTO System Upgrade
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Faster Streetcars, Someday, Maybe

At its meeting of April 16, the TTC Board will consider a report on various ways in which streetcars and “LRT” lines can be sped up.

Updated April 13 at 10pm: Comments added about line management practices.

Various tactics are proposed including priority measures and a review of operating practices that can hobble streetcar service. A problem with some of the analysis is a poor or forgotten history of how current arrangements evolved. In some cases, there is a confusion of cause and effect, of equating co-incidence with causality. Some potential solutions have extremely long lead times that will doom riders to slow operation for years if not decades.

A thread running through some issues is slow operation at junctions where streetcar tracks diverge and cross. TTC has a lot of these thanks to its network descending from a dense grid of streetcar lines over a century old. Recently, operating practices from this “legacy” system were exported to the new LRT lines 5 Eglinton and 6 Finch giving these routes, and the technology generally, a black eye. The bad reputation is so severe that new “LRT” proposals face stiff criticism and outright “we told you so” hostility.

The blame for this rests squarely with TTC, Toronto Transportation Services, and Metrolinx who collectively accepted a much-diluted version of “priority” compared to what was promised during project development. This has been partly remedied, but should never have been allowed in the first place. Imagine if a new subway line opened with permanent slow orders. This would have been laughable and unacceptable, but for a “streetcar line”, it’s just fine.

Six areas are proposed for review on the timelines shown below. The troubling part of the chart is the section labelled “2027+” which reaches into the indefinite future.

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TTC Audit Committee: March 11, 2026

The TTC’s Audit & Risk Management Committee will meet in the Boardroom at TTC Headquarters, 1900 Yonge Street, on Wednesday, March 11 at 9:30am. Two items on the agenda are of considerable interest:

The review of customer performance, metrics and real-time information covers at length the many problems with passenger information from the TTC including its website and various outlets for notices including social media and apps. This is an unusually candid review and long overdue.

Also included are charts showing the status of various recommendations from TTC and City audits, as well as from outside reviews. However, these are only summaries and there is no link back to source documents to cross-reference specific items, their severity and status.

Two confidential attachments address “The Subway Tunnel Maintenance and Rehabilitation Audit” as well as some findings from the UITP review.

Updated March 11 at 12:45pm:

Much of the meeting was conducted in camera. In the public session, a few concerns arose from the Committee:

  • There is a large and growing list of outstanding recommendations from both TTC Internal Audit and the City Auditor General, and the Committee was concerned about how, especially, high priority issues are tracked especially when they fall behind previously-promised due dates.
  • Although there was brief discussion of the issues of public facing information and performance metrics, the primary comments had the sense that finally problems are recognized, but without debate on specifics.
  • With respect to overtime, the Auditor will concentrate on exceptional cases where payments exceed expectations. Future reports will break down overtime by cause for clarity, e.g. planned work, weather related, special events, etc.

The presentation deck on Work Car Hydraulic Spills was posted, but there was no public presentation nor debate.

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TTC Board Meeting: February 3, 2026

The TTC Board will meet on Tuesday, February 3, 2026 at 9:30am in North York Council Chamber. The agenda is rather thin, and there are several confidential issues that will trigger an in camera session. There is no formal item regarding Line 5 Eglinton, although one never knows what might come up in debate.

Of interest are the following items:

Updated February 2 at 10:10am: Slide decks for the invited presentations have been posted on the TTC site. Links to them are added below.

  • CEO’s Report
  • Invited presentations from:
    • Narayan Donaldson on “Opportunities to improve Transit Signal Priority in Toronto”. According to the covering report “This presentation will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Transit Signal Priority (TSP) system used on Toronto’s streetcar, bus and LRT systems, compare it to a TSP system commonly used in the Netherlands, and suggest areas of improvement.”
    • Jonathan English on “Developing a Surface Transit Revitalization Plan” According to the covering report “This presentation will discuss steps that can be taken to improve speed and reliability of the streetcar network, as well as new LRT lines.”

After the meeting, I will write up the presentations in an update to this article.

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More Money For CanCon, Not For More Trains

Today, Ontario announced that it would raise the Canadian content in 55 new Line 2 trains from roughly 25 to 50 percent. The provincial capital subsidy for this purchase will rise from $758-million to $950-million, and the increase will be matched by the federal government who are also funding this purchase. There is no change in the Toronto share.

It is not clear whether the federal contribution is net new money, or merely a reallocation within Toronto’s share of the ten-year transit funding program.

Updated January 16, 2026: According to the federal government announcement, the funding will come from an existing allocation stream and is not net new money.

This project is part of the previously announced 10-year funding commitment under the Baseline stream of the Canada Public Transit Fund (CPTF). Beginning in April 2026, the Toronto Transit Commission will receive up to $1.2 billion in CPTF funding over 10 years from 2026 to 2036. 

A related question is which government(s) will be on the hook for the extra CanCon in future transit vehicles including those for the Scarborough and Richmond Hill extensions, and for added capacity to deal with expected growth. Collectively these account for a potential 57 more trains, doubling the size of the eventual order.

What the announcement did not address is a list of questions about the Toronto subway fleet overall:

  • When will the cars be delivered, and how much work is needed to keep the old Line 2 trains operating in the interim?
  • When will Metrolinx place the add-on orders to provide trains for the Line 2 Scarborough and Line 1 Richmond Hill extensions?
  • How will delivery of the add-on trains affect opening dates for the extensions?
  • Will complete replacement of Line 2 trains be delayed because new trains are needed to provide service on these extensions?
  • Will the extensions have enough trains to provide full service to the new terminals, or will some trains have to short-turn in peak periods?
  • How soon does the TTC project it will require more trains to improve capacity on Lines 1 and 2, and how will these be funded?
  • What is the status of funding and timing for new maintenance facilities on Lines 1 and 2 to hold and service the additional trains?
  • Will the Automatic Train Control (ATC) technology for Line 2 be the same as the existing system on Line 1, or will the two lines (and their fleets) be limited to use only their “own” trains?

The TTC produces a quarterly report on all its major capital projects with the intent of showing all planned work, but it does not produce a unified chart or timetable showing how everything fits together and where critical links might be in the overall plan. The TTC has a “Strategic Planning Committee”, and this is a complex piece of strategy that badly needs detailed, public review.

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