The TTC will implement several service changes on August 4, 2019. Normally this is a quiet time of the year for schedule work, but TTC Service Planning is working through “reliability enhancements” for many routes with a batch in the August schedules and more to come in future months.

Unfortunately, the changes almost always involve running the same number of vehicles on wider headways so that there is more driving time, but most importantly, more recovery time at terminals. However, nothing has changed in the TTC’s standard that “on time” has a range of +1 to -5 minutes, and there is no indication that service reliability will actually improve without active management of headways.

The following routes have reliability enhancements that result in less frequent service:

11 Bayview

61 Avenue Road North

62 Mortimer

63 Ossington

83 Jones

88 South Leaside

506 Carlton headways will widen at many times. Late Sunday evenings, Carlton will go to a 10’30” headway thereby removing this route, technically speaking, from the 10 Minute Network. This condition will be corrected in the fall when Carlton gets a new schedule for low floor car operation.

512 St. Clair (weekends)

The TTC has not published crowding stats since March 2019, and so there is no indication of the effect of the wider scheduled headways on crowding levels. The real test will come in September when demand rises with the end of the vacation period.

One construction project, at Royal York Station, is now complete and the route structure here will be restored to its normal arrangement.

The 15 Evans and 48 Rathburn routes will no longer interline during weekday daytime periods.

The 73 Royal York and 76 Royal York South routes will no longer interline.

The 315 Evans night bus will no longer divert to Islington Station as its northern terminus.

Additional running time which had been added to 33 Forest Hill to compensate for construction on the Crosstown will be removed, and the route will revert to a 30′ headway at all times.

Even more running time will be added to 505 Dundas to compensate for the effects of watermain construction downtown, and scheduled headways will be wider during most periods. Whether the TTC will do anything about the tendency of buses on this route to operate in herds of two or more vehicles remains to be seen. The change is expected to be in place until the October schedules.

Planned improvements include:

One additional “gap” train will be added on 2 Bloor-Danforth in both the AM and PM peak periods.

Late evening service on 39 Finch will be extended to Old Finch & Morningview.

Early evening service on 64 Main will be improved from every 20′ to every 12′.

The 176 Mimico GO shuttle will be changed to loop via Marine Parade rather than at Park Lawn Loop to improve its reach in the Humber Bay Shores area. The afternoon schedule will be adjusted to match the observed (usually late) operation of the GO service at Mimico.

Details of these and other changes are in the spreadsheet linked below.

2019.08.04_Service_Changes