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The Lost Promise of Better Streetcar Service

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 PeakFull Streetcar ServicePossible Service
Peak Requirement163178220
Spares at 20%333644
Total Requirement196214264
Fleet264264264
Surplus68500

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.

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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.

This article will be updated as additional material is posted, and after the committee meeting.

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Line 6 Finch West Delays: January 2026 Update

This post updates a table of TTC delay stats for 6 Finch West published here about a month ago. The breakdown of delays by cause was recently refreshed by the TTC to include January 2026. I have included the December stats for comparison.

Bearing in mind that January included a full month’s operation, the number of delays declined proportionately, but the length of delays did not change much compared to December.

  • January had 386 delays compared to 350 in December with a big jump (11 to 35) in weather-related incidents.
  • The total delay minutes in January rose by about one third compared to December, again due to weather (40 minutes delay versus 1069).

Equipment problems of various kinds continue with a disconcerting preponderance of “other”.

Of concern is a doubling of the delays due to “no equipment available” indicating that Mosaic is not able to reliably field 15 of the 18 cars in the fleet for service. This has implications for future service growth other than whatever can be achieved with faster operation and, hence, shorter headways.

Operator overspeed incidents are down by half implying a growing familiarity with the line and, possibly, improvement in the speed profile enforced by the control system.

Changes to signal timings began on Finch recently, but as the TTC does not have any tracking data for the new lines 5 and 6, it will be difficult to review the ongoing benefits, and the chance for a “before” snapshot has passed.

The full table of delay counts and times for December 7, 2025 to January 31, 2026, follows the “more” break.

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Tracking Metrolinx Project Costs

Tracking the costs of Metrolinx projects with publicly available data is not an easy task. They are a secretive organization, and present ongoing costs in a way that hides the eventual total cost of construction and operations. When anyone talks about “on budget”, there is no way to verify the claim because no overall budget figure is given for any project.

Instead, what we see are the cumulative value of contracts that have been awarded as well as spending to date. The rest, assuming that there even is a “budget”, is hidden on the grounds that telling would-be bidders how much money might be on the table will only encourage them to bid to that level. This is nonsense because, except for a few huge P3s, most projects are broken into many smaller contracts and knowing that there are billions available across a project’s allocation gives no hint of how much is earmarked for each component.

The situation is even more opaque in the case of contracts that mix design and construction (a finite capital cost) with operations and maintenance (an ongoing operating cost) over an extended period. Comparison with projects elsewhere is difficult because the components are not segregated.

With the Eglinton and Finch projects now shifting from construction to operation, there is a chance to see what the split would be with the building largely complete. There will be some ongoing capital costs for project cleanup, but costs to date should largely represent the amount spent on the construction phase.

Many other projects are also in flight and there is no way to know if all of their components have been awarded and the values included in the “baseline” cost shown in financial reports.

This article consolidates the reported budgets, later renamed as “baselines”, as well as actual spending in the quarterly Metrolinx Capital Projects reports.

Some projects actually had projected in-service dates, at least in the early years, but these vanished long ago. Metrolinx promised big things once upon a time, but has been much slower to deliver, and at much greater cost than anticipated.

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34 Eglinton East Bus: Travel Times East of Don Mills

With Line 5 Eglinton entering its second week of operation, comparison of LRT and bus speeds on the surface portion of the route is inevitable, especially among those who would prefer subways everywhere.

This article reviews the actual travel times in December 2025 and January 2026 for the bus service that was replaced by Line 5. This gives a variety of operating conditions including holidays and winter storms, and reflects stopping patterns and dwell times for the level of demand before Line 5 opened for business.

Actual bus travel times only bettered the scheduled LRT from mid-evening onward on weekdays, and were considerably longer in the PM peak. For trips to/from Kennedy Station, the LRT has an advantage of a more direct path into the station avoiding both the traffic signal at Kennedy Road and the roundabout bus route within the terminal.

The section of Eglinton where the LRT runs at the surface is uncongested during much of the day compared to other routes in the city. Some spots have slower bus travel times, but these do not persist. This is a challenge to “better” performance by the LRT unless it has some advantage over buses notably in faster speed during all operating periods, good priority at traffic signals and reliable travel times when the adjacent road is congested.

The potential for faster LRT trips through transit signal priority lies in the 2-4 minute range, an improvement of 10-20%, depending on how aggressively this is implemented. There are 14 traffic signals over the route between Ionview and the DVP, and a variety of locations with nearside, farside or no stops at these points. The Transit Signal Priority strategy should be tuned to the characteristics of each crossing.

This analysis does not include additional access time to LRT vs bus stops. This affects the surface section of Line 5 less than the underground section where both station spacing and vertical access times add to LRT journeys.

Detailed tracking data for Lines 5 and 6 are not available from the TTC although “next train” predictions are in their public data feed. This hampers analysis of the reliability and travel times of the new LRT lines.

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Metrolinx Board Meeting: February 12, 2026

The Metrolinx Board met on February 12 with an extensive agenda, but as usual almost none of it was discussed in public. Of particular interest was an explanation of the derailment at Union Station that snarled GO Transit operations for much of the past week. Although a detailed review continues and a full report is promised, Metrolinx was unusually forthcoming with a description of the event.

The public portion of the meeting began with a “safety moment” that focused on problems with pedestrian, cyclist and auto intrusions into the Eglinton and Finch rights-of-way. This was discussed in a tone reminiscent of GO mainline rail corridors which the new LRT lines definitely are not. In the case of Finch, the right-of-way has less physical protection than on Eglinton, and no areas of open track or grass to signal that this is not part of the overall roadway.

The very nature of a surface route, regardless of technology, is that people and vehicles will cross the tracks. They have been doing it for over a century on the streetcar system, and it is odd that Metrolinx finds this an unusual behaviour. It is not clear, other than the presence of two separate P3s on these projects, why the Eglinton and Finch designs are so different. This also contributed to the switching problems on Finch because of inadequate heaters and drainage.

Reviewing the operation of Finch, Metrolinx CEO Michael Lindsay made no mention of equipment reliability, a major problem on that line compared to Eglinton. As revealed in TTC delay logs, at times there were not enough working cars to operate the scheduled service. Delays due to “mechanical problems” continue to appear in Line 6 service alerts. The logs in the City’s Open Data website do not yet include January 2026, but when they do, I will publish a review.

Speaking of Finch, Lindsay spoke of recent improvements. At Metrolinx’ urging, the P3 partner, Mosaic, took steps to improve infrastructure maintenance. The line is now into a stage of “perfection” of operations and maintenance protocols as opposed to building issues. The issue is the readiness of private sector partners to deal with climate effects, and more generally to bring their supposed expertise from other systems to Toronto. Only recently has Mosaic hired someone with expertise in cold weather operations.

Lindsay reported that all 55 switch heaters on Finch have been checked, and drainage at 40 sites is improving. Performance stats are better since the record snowstorm of January 25 with 95% availability, and TTC on time performance is 70-80% over past couple of weeks. This may sound impressive, but any stats are bound to look better as weather improved. As for OTP, TTC standards allow for erratic service as discussed here many times.

In all the celebration of Eglinton’s recent opening, Lindsay made no mention of accessibility issues with several elevators out of service including at key interchanges like Don Valley, Eglinton and Mount Dennis. Further problems include long walks to transfer between routes and less than adequate signage. Metrolinx is supposed to have design standards, but if these lines are any indication, they desperately need review. In many ways, this was the usual Metrolinx “good news” presentation which skated around problems, or presented them as past events no longer of concern.

On the subject of “lessons learned”, Lindsay claimed that private sector partners underestimated complexity, risk, and challenge of the projects, but gave no indication that Metrolinx or Infrastructure Ontario bore responsibility for assuming more expertise within the P3s than might actually have existed. There was a hint that things might have gone better. Lindsay noted that Metrolinx has changed processes, a reference to the shift to an “alliance” model where the P3 are treated as collaborators.

Lindsay hinted at problems with the Metrolinx regime and its confrontational nature saying that all parties need to remain focused on project completion, not commercial claims. They must do the right things for the good of a project even if this compromises legal or commercial strategies. Design review and acceptance must be much more efficient and less bureaucratic in all hands. When unexpected issues such as cavities in the original 1950s Eglinton Station box are encountered, a quick regulatory process to respond is needed.

Lindsay noted that there must be an early and insistent focus on systems integration — bricks and mortar are only one milestone. More important are testing, commissioning and interoperability. This should be no surprise to anyone with transit experience. Construction is a large and impressive part of a project, but without well integrated, reliable systems and vehicles, billions of dollars worth of tunnels are useless.

He remarked on another aspect of P3s that is rarely discussed: procurement must ensure that joint ventures have a collaborative relationship without their own contentious internal issues.

Better public communications on construction, cost estimates and timelines are needed.

These remarks, for those reading between the lines, are not a ringing endorsement of how Metrolinx operated on two major projects. They might have learned lessons from the experience, but the proof will show in how work now underway actually proceeds.

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Elevators at Museum and Greenwood Stations

In the Toronto Star of February 10, columnist Jack Lakey wrote about the long-delayed completion of renovations at Museum Station including the installation of an elevator. The original target date for this work was mid-2025, but this has been pushed to Q3 2026 which could be as late as September 30.

The problem as described by the TTC is quoted in Lakey’s piece:

“In addition to installing elevators at Museum Station, the project involves rebuilding and expanding the concourse level, as well as relocating existing stairs and escalators.

“Throughout this work, the TTC must maintain the structural integrity of the original subway building while completing full-depth excavation directly adjacent to it.

“Work is done in stages so that stations remain open to the public. TTC elevator installation is also typically bundled in with other necessary work, in this case, significant repairs and adding waterproofing to Museum Station’s roof.”

What the TTC neglects to mention is that the delay arose from two other factors:

  • Underestimation of the complexity of the project.
  • The need to replace the elevator subcontractor for non-performance.

The same subcontractor was responsible for the delayed completion of elevators at Greenwood Station, and had to be replaced. Moreover, their work damaged a nearby house. Greenwood Station has just resumed normal operation including its new elevators.

The evolving situation at Museum is described in various TTC reports. It is a shame that TTC spokespeople don’t appear to have read them.

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TTC Service Changes Effective February 8, 2026

Updated February 10 at 9:50am: This article was updated in stages. All pending updates are now in place with the most recent being at the end.

Changes:

  • Maps with more detail have been substituted for added clarity.
  • Maps showing bus bay allocations at stations have been added.
  • Changes to routes not affected by Line 5 opening have been added.
  • The list of current construction projects affecting routes has been added.
  • Notes about transfer connections between buses on Don Mills and Don Valley Station.
  • A detailed before-and-after spreadsheet showing operating plans, vehicle and garage assignments, etc.
  • A list of updated destination signs.
  • Construction project list.
  • Vehicle allocation tables.
  • Service budget information.

In addition to Line 5 related changes, there are also updates to:

  • 6 Finch West
  • 7/307 Bathurst
  • 21 Brimley
  • 30 High Park North
  • 31 Greenwood
  • 39 Finch East
  • 80 Queensway
  • 84 Sheppard West
  • 384 Sheppard West Night Bus
  • 101 Downsview Park
  • 106 Sentinel
  • 111 East Mall
  • 116 Morningside
  • 133 Neilson
  • 149 Etobicoke-Bloor
  • 189 Stockyards
  • 927 Highway 27 Express
  • 935 Jane Express
  • 830 Henry Kelsey–Middlefield (new school service)
  • Other routes with school trips.
  • 301/501 Queen
  • 506 Carlton
  • 507 Long Branch

These are described at the end of the article.

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How Fast Will Line 5 Be Compared to the 32/34 Bus?

With the imminent opening of Line 5 Eglinton LRT on February 8, the TTC has repeatedly been asked “will it be faster than the bus”. They have said, yes, but with few details.

On February 3, the online schedules (GTFS format) came out for the next period including stop-by-stop travel times for Line 5. This article compares these times with the existing schedules for the 32 Eglinton West and 34 Eglinton East buses. The LRT is almost always faster except late in the evening, and then on only part of the route.

Later in the article are charts of scheduled speeds and stop spacing for the bus and LRT operations.

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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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