The TTC will make several changes to its services on November 24, 2019. These fall into three main groups:

Rerouting of Downtown Premium Express routes downtown (See Downtown Premium Express Routes Move To King Street for details)

End of construction projects in several locations

Schedule changes to improve route reliability

Construction Projects Ending

The end of work on many bus route will trigger removal of extra running time, some headway adjustments and a return to normal routings:

On Midland between Danforth Road and Lawrence: Routes 20 Cliffside and 57 Midland

On Brimley between Progress and Huntingwood: Route 21 Brimley

On Danforth Road between St. Clair and Danforth Avenue: Route 113 Danforth

On Huntingwood: Route 169 Huntingwood

On Pape north of Danforth: Routes 25 Don Mills, 81 Thorncliffe Park, 925 Don Mills Express

At Jane Station: Routes 26 Dupont, 35 Jane, 55 Warren Park, 935 Jane Express

At Queen & Kingston Road: Routes 501 Queen, 503 Kingston Road, 22 Coxwell, 322 Coxwell Night

On Coxwell north of Gerrard: Routes 22 Coxwell, 322 Coxwell Night, 324 Victoria Park Night

The consolidation of 502 Downtowner and 503 Kingston Road will continue on a trial basis.

Service Reliability

Service reliability improvements continue to be implemented across the network. Typically these changes involve making running and recovery times longer and stretching headways without adding vehicles. The result is that service worsens for riders, especially considering the TTC’s lacklustre headway management across its bus network. Affected routes with this round of changes are:

22 Coxwell

25 Don Mills and 925 Don Mills Express

56 Leaside

60 Steeles West

68 Warden

121 Fort York-Esplanade

125 Drewry

121 Fort York-Esplanade is particularly hard hit in the afternoon peak when its headway changes from 15 to 26 minute and round trip times, including recovery provisions, rise from 75 to 130 minutes with no additional vehicles. Low ridership in this route is used to justify wider headways, but changes on this scale will only accelerate the problem.

Seasonal Changes

Extra service will be provided in the early evening to serve the Distillery District Christmas Market:

Service on 65 Parliament will be doubled (4 buses instead of 2)

Two extra cars on 504 King will operate between Spadina and Distillery Loop

One extra bus on 121 Fort York-Esplanade will operate between Union Station and the Distillery District

A shuttle service will operate between Meadowvale Loop and the Zoo on Thursday through Sunday evenings to serve events at the Zoo. This will continue to April 2020.

CLRV Retirement (Dates corrected)



To celebrate the retirement of the CLRV fleet, six extras will operate on weekend afternoons on 501 Queen between Sunnyside Loop and Woodbine Loop between Sunday, November 24 and Saturday, December 21. Special CLRV service is planned for Sunday, December 29, but the details have not been released yet.

CLRV peak period trippers have been removed from 506 Carlton as the proportion of new cars on the route grows.

511 Bathurst remains officially a CLRV route, but new cars will appear there as available.

Planned Overcrowding

The TTC continues to add periods of service on routes when loads will exceed the Service Standards. This is not a question of a shortage of buses (the TTC has a spare ratio of better than 20%), but of budget constraints that are also at the root of “reliability” changes that involve widening headways.

Toronto talks a good line about the importance of transit, but strangles its ability to serve more riders through limits to operating subsidies.

A table showing the cumulative effect of overcrowding is included with the list of service changes linked below.

The Details

The file linked below contains the detailed changes for November including a few miscellaneous updates not listed above.

2019.11.24_Service_Changes