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Tunnels And Track But No Trains

At the TTC Board meeting on June 12, 2023, key reports presented the current and future challenges our transit system faces:

This article reviews the Major Projects Update and more generally the TTC’s Capital Program and funding shortfall. In future articles, I will turn to the Operating Budget, subsidies and the changing environment for transit in 2024 and beyond.

A related report from a past meeting presents the entire Capital Plan, not just the “major projects”, and I have consolidated information from it to provide a complete view.

TTC Capital Plans are presented with three separate timelines:

  • The current year,
  • A ten year window, and
  • Fifteen years and beyond.

The fifteen year view is comparatively recent, but it was a vital addition to the transit outlook. Until this version was introduced, a growing list of needed projects simply did not exist in the published TTC plans nor, more importantly, in the minds of Councillors and financial planners at all three levels of government. Magically, the ten year view always managed to fit within money the City had available from its own revenues or provincial and federal commitments.

That fifteen year view was a huge shock to the City, but it was no secret to anyone who looked through the budget and found gaping holes. This situation was a financial convenience to make future City capital needs appear smaller than they actually were. Funding problems were “fixed” year after year by failing to acknowledge key projects, or by pushing them beyond the City’s ten year capital planning window.

Doug Ford arrived on the scene with his subway plans and billions in provincial spending, but much of this was for projects that were not already part of the City’s plans, or at least not at the scale the City contemplated. The province gave the impression of taking a load off of Toronto, but much of the planned provincial spending was never in Toronto’s plans to start with.

Then came the pandemic and severe doubts about the sustainability of the City’s spending.

For his part, former Mayor Tory’s SmartTrack brand was still on the books, even if it was a shadow of its original plan. Despite going over budget, it lives on as five new GO stations thanks to an infusion of $226 million by the provincial government.

At the TTC, CEO Rick Leary was initially distrustful of Automatic Train Control and the new Line 2 fleet it would require. For a time, the projects to resignal the Bloor-Danforth line, buy a new fleet and build a carhouse at Kipling were put on hold. The TTC would make do through another decade with “life extended” trains which would be at least 40 years old by their retirement. Leary has since changed his tune, but this brought the cost of ATC, new trains and, possibly, the carhouse back onto the table.

The situation is complicated by the Scarborough Subway Extension which would require more trains to provide full peak service to Sheppard than the existing fleet. Half of the peak service would short turn at Kennedy to fit the service within the existing Line 2 fleet.

The already-expensive extension does not include ATC signalling because Metrolinx does not know whether the TTC will have an ATC-capable fleet by the opening date. Only the construction delays due to Ford’s intervention in the project give the TTC enough time, and then only barely, to bring Line 2 up to modern standards.

Another related issue is the emerging demand for Platform Edge Doors (PEDs) for which ATC is a pre-requisite. Without new trains and signals, there will be no PEDs on Line 2.

Toronto is in the unhappy position that we are building miles of tunnels, but may not have trains to run in them when they are finished. The self-contained Ontario Line has a fleet, and the Crosstown has its LRVs, but the subway extensions and planned service improvements are another matter. Moreover, if the Line 2 fleet’s life is pushed out to 40 years, there is no guarantee it will provide reliable service.

Award of the contract for new subway cars has already been delayed into 2024 and costs rise thanks to inflation while we await a funding decision. The Major Projects Report notes that:

  • Delays in securing the required funding for the procurement of new trains will result in declining reliability, longer wait times between trains, increased crowding, and higher maintenance costs. The TTC is actively engaged with its Federal and Provincial partners.
  • The operation of new trains is interdependent with the planned resignalling on Line 2 (ATC). All T1 trains on Line 2 need to be replaced with new subway trains to operationalize ATC on Line 2. As a result, any delay in the funding decision for the procurement of the new trains will have an impact on the ATC requirements as well as the cost and schedule for both projects.
  • Recent increases in escalation will potentially result in an increase in overall cost. The TTC will continue to monitor producer’s price indices, update escalation projections and identify potential offsets to the greatest extent possible.
  • Award Contract in 2024, subject to partner funding. Should the partner funding be delayed or not available, the TTC will commence planning for the T1 Life Extension Overhaul (LEO) program to ensure service continuity.

Meanwhile, on Line 1 Yonge-University, the fleet is in its youth, but more trains are needed to increase service and to provide for the Richmond Hill extension. A new maintenance facility will be required to hold the larger fleet, and it will most likely be built north of the new extension. There has been no word on whether York Region will contribute to any of the cost their subway extension will add to the TTC’s budget woes.

The Major Projects Report notes:

This program includes the accommodation of train storage and maintenance requirements, and other infrastructure enhancements, to expand capacity and improve circulation on Line 1, reduce overcrowding, increase the frequency of trains and reduce travel times, which will result in improved customer service.

[…]

Train Maintenance and Storage Facility (TMSF), which includes:

  • Storage for 34 trains, including a test track, and access track to the site;
  • Carhouse with five Bays for Preventative and Corrective Maintenance to support daily service;
  • Operations and Infrastructure (O&I) facility to support maintenance activities (small shop building, outdoor and indoor storage tracks for work cars, material storage, and staging area);
  • Ancillary facilities (Traction Power Substation (TPSS), Hostler platform).

More service adds to the electrical draw and in turn that will trigger upgrades to the subway’s power distribution system.

Without going into the many details, this illustrates how subway planning is not simply a question of drawing lines on a map and cutting ribbons when the tunnel boring machines arrive.

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TTC Service Changes Effective June 18, 2023

Several changes will affect TTC routes on June 18. Notable among these is the formal restoration of more frequent weekend subway service, the Broadview construction project, various adjustments to improve route operations, and seasonal changes.

A consolidated table showing current and new service designs is in the spreadsheet linked below.

2023.06.18 Service Changes V2.2

Updated June 15, 2023 at 1:00pm:

  • Route numbers for 104 Faywood, 121 Esplanade-River and 165 Weston Road North corrected.
  • Route of Broadview/Gerrard loop for 121 added.
  • Route of 100 Flemingdon Park on Pape clarified.
  • Route of 203 High Park South clarified.

Updated June 15, 2023 at 10:30pm:

  • Change to partly articulated bus operation on 36A Finch West corrected to refer to the portion of the route between Yonge and Finch W Stn.

Updated June 16, 2023 at 2:00pm:

  • Route maps for streetcar service changes added.
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Broadview Station Loop Expansion Deferred

The planned expansion of Broadview Station Loop to allow two streetcars to occupy the 505 Dundas loading bay at a time has been deferred to an unspecified later date.

At the TTC Board meeting on June 12, CEO Rick Leary said that there would be a new operating procedure at the loop where streetcars would not lay over, although just how this will be achieved is difficult to understand. A common requirement at terminals is for operators to have a short “nature break”, and this is really not something that can be eliminated by managerial fiat.

A related problem is that schedules generally have excessive running time to avoid the need for short turns. If cars do not take layovers at terminals they will make even slower trips across their routes than they do today. On King and Dundas, they have the option of putting all of the layover time at their western terminals.

The TTC has an astounding ability to make streetcar service slower and less reliable, and this has become so ingrained it is hard to see any improvement in the near future.

Operational details of the change have yet to be announced, and in any event we will not see the effect until 2024 when streetcars finally return to Broadview Station.

Track work at the station planned for June 2023 will now address the on-street track on Broadview and Erindale while the loop will wait for another day when and if it is expanded.

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Construction on Broadview, Gerrard/Coxwell, Main Station and Queen East (June 2023 Update)

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.

Information and maps in this article are taken from a presentation to the TTC Board meeting of June 12, 2023.

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.

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Evolution of Bus Route Travel Times, 2020-2023, Part II

This article is the second half of a review of the change in travel times for a selection of major bus routes, many of which are part of the RapidTO “red lane” proposal, from 2020 to May 2023.

See also: Evolution of Bus Route Travel Times, 2020-2023, Part I

My purpose is to show the drop in travel times in March 2020 co-incident with the pandemic lockdown, and the gradual recovery over the past three years. The minimum times seen in 2020 establish what we would see in the absence of road traffic, not to mention a lower passenger demand, and probably show the best case for improvement with transit priority.

Depending on when I began to track various routes, there are cases when I have some pre-pandemic data from 2018 or 2019.

The situation varies from route to route and by time of day. In many cases, travel times have returned to pre-pandemic levels or higher, and some uptick is particularly notable in 2023. An important characteristic of these routes is that they do not serve the core area, but run in Toronto’s suburbs where bus ridership is strong and work-from-home had considerably less effect on demand than it does downtown.

Routes in this article include 86 Scarborough, 116 Morningside and 905 Eglinton East Express which already run on the Eglinton-Kingston-Morningside red lanes, as well as 39/939 Finch East, 54/954 Lawrence East and 25/925 Don Mills.

Note that the charts here track travel times, not service reliability. I will turn to that issue in future articles.

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Evolution of Bus Route Travel Times, 2020-2023, Part I

This post reviews travel times on bus routes, primarily those that either have or are planned to get RapidTO red lanes for all-day transit priority. This continues from earlier examinations of the effects of changing traffic conditions on travel times over the course of the pandemic.

These articles will be the last in which I will present data for multiple routes to track post-pandemic recovery of traffic levels. I will continue to collect data, but will publish updates only if a specific route is actively under discussion for RapidTO treatment.

This article deals with routes west of Yonge Street: Dufferin, Keele, Jane, Steeles West and Lawrence West. In Part II I will turn to routes east of Yonge.

Note that an analysis of 35/935 Jane is in a separate, more extensive pair of articles in light of the current review of that corridor for RapidTO red lanes.

The format of charts used here is different from previous articles which summarized data on a weekly or monthly basis, subdivided by hour of the day. As the number of data points grew, these charts were no longer workable. Here I have adopted the style used in, among other things, my tracking of travel times on King Street which include day-by-day data, but only for a single hour of the day on each chart.

The values shown are the 50th and 85th percentiles. The 50th is the median value within a set of points where half of the trips took longer, and half of them a shorter time. The 85th is a value which captures the higher values but discards outliers that might only represent one trip within a group.

For the most part, these charts cover the period from March 2020 to May 2023, with some additional data from earlier months where I have it. My purpose in collecting the data was to monitor travel time changes with reduced traffic congestion and stop service times of the pandemic era.

Although there is no way to definitively prove this without actual implementation of red lanes, my premise is that conditions during the worst months of the pandemic show the most that is likely to be achieved by getting traffic out of the way. Additional changes such as traffic signal priority or selective elimination of stops is not specifically a red lane gain, but might be implemented concurrently. Those are beyond the scope of comparisons here.

As a general note, the onset of the pandemic travel restrictions in mid-March 2020 is quite clear in the data, as are other events such as changes in lockdown severity. Also quite clear is the effect of the mid-January 2022 and February 2023 snow storms, and on some routes, a lengthy return to then-normal travel times probably due to inadequate snow clearing.

Each set of charts is presented with data for the same period but opposite directions side by side. These charts can be quite different reflecting both geographic differences and loading patterns by direction. Charts are shown for the hours beginning at 8am (am peak), 1pm (midday), 5pm (pm peak), 8pm (early evening) and 10pm (late evening).

Where local and express routes operate together, the stats for the two services are shown separately, and a comparative set of charts shows the median values for each service.

In all cases, the Y-axis starts at 20 minutes, not zero, because data values are higher than 20 and this tactic gives charts more “elbow room”. In some cases the values drop to zero because there are no data for a specific date. This was particularly noticeable in November 2021 after the cyber attack on TTC systems.

Conclusions

  • Based on the drop in travel time in March 2020 and other subsequent covid-related changes in road traffic and transit demand, the potential for reduced travel times through transit priority varies considerably from route to route, by time and by direction. The amount of improvement through red lanes will not be uniform over each route.
  • Many trip times recovered to pre-pandemic levels or higher well before the city as a whole was “open”, and some times are now higher than they were three years ago. This accentuates the need for transit priority because longer trip times affect:
    • the cost of providing service (more buses to provide the same service),
    • frequency of service (the same buses running further apart), and
    • rider wait and travel times.
  • Express services, when they operate, offer a relatively small change in travel time versus the corresponding local services based on median travel times.
  • By analogy to the King Street pilot, the reduction in variability of travel times is at least as important in improving service reliability as any absolute reduction in the time required for trips.
  • Any proposal for transit priority should take these factors into account both for selective versus blanket implementation, and to ensure that the potential benefits are not oversold.

For those who want the details (and a lot of charts), read on.

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Promises, Promises: 2023 Edition

The Toronto Mayoral By-Election is just under a month away, and candidates pump out announcements daily, often with a transit spin. In this article I will look at the transit-related issues they are trying to address (or in some cases avoid).

All of this takes place in a strange world where the availability of money to pay for anything is suspect. Is a promise is even credible let alone affordable? Many of the platforms overlap, and so I will take related issues in groups rather than enumerating and critiquing each candidate’s platform.

A month ago, I wrote about what a transit platform should look like:

That sets out my philosophy of what I seek in a candidate, and the short version appears below. If you want the long version, click on the link above.

  • Service is key. Run as much as possible, everywhere, and run it well.
  • Build budgets based on what you want to see, not on what you think you can afford. Just getting by is not a recipe for recovery and growth. If the money doesn’t come, then look to “Plan B” but aim for “Plan A”.
  • Fares are a central part of our transit system, but the question is who should pay and how much. Strive for simplicity. Give discounts where they are truly needed. Make the transit system worth riding so that small, regular increases are acceptable.
  • Focus on ease of use among transit systems in the GTA, but do not equate “integration” with amalgamated governance.
  • Transit property: parking or housing?
  • Foster a culture of advocacy in management and on the TTC Board.
  • Beware of lines on maps. A “my map vs your map” debate focuses all effort on a handful of corridors while the rest of the network rots.
  • Plan for achievements in your current term and make sure they actually happen. Longer term is important, but the transit ship is sinking. You are running for office in 2023. Vague promises for the 2030s are cold comfort to voters who have heard it all before.

Full disclosure: I have always maintained an “open door” to anyone who wants to talk transit, and in this round I have been approached by both the Matlow and Chow campaigns for information and advice, as well as some media outlets. This I provided pro bono and without any “leakage” of who asked me what. No other candidates asked. How much of my input shows up in platforms is quite another matter. We shall see as the campaign unfolds.

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The Ever-Fading SmartTrack

John Tory might be gone as Mayor, but SmartTrack clings on like grim death even in his absence. A report before an upcoming meeting of Toronto’s Executive Committee shows that the total cost of the five remaining stations is estimated by Metrolinx at $1.697 billion, yes that’s with a “b”, or $234 million higher than the City’s $1.463 billion budget for this work.

Federal funding of $585 million has already been committed, but the remaining $1.112 billion is on the City’s dime. The City’s share will come from “development charges, tax increment financing and the City Building Fund” [CBF] according to the report. The CBF is an extra levy on the City Property Tax (recently extended to compensate for increased borrowing costs) that will help to pay for one of John Tory’s legacies.

Metrolinx seeks full reimbursement for this amount, but the City in March directed “the City Manager to negotiate with the Province of Ontario for the Province to commit to paying all amounts above the original Program Budget”. Negotiations are ongoing and a supplementary report will follow at an unspecified date.

The station locations are shown below, and they include a key station a East Harbour that will be the interchange between GO Transit, the Ontario Line and a possible future Broadview Avenue streetcar extension into the Port Lands. Why the City is paying for a major regional interchange is something of a mystery, but even worse is the fact that we now face a per-station cost of about $340 million for surface rail stations. The exact numbers are shrouded in the usual Metrolinx secrecy.

This is a sad story where too much political capital has been expended for anyone to ask just why we are building these stations, and especially why the SmartTrack moniker survives. With all of the hand-wringing over City budgets, the survival of at least some of these stations as City-funded projects should be reconsidered.

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Charting Service Frequency (2)

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.

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Charting Service Frequency: A Request for Comment (Updated)

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)

CEO’s Report, May 2023, p. 18

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.

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