Somewhat buried in Toronto’s endless transit angst over subways in Scarborough and the King St. pilot project is the replacement of the 505 Dundas and 506 Carlton streetcars with buses.

Buried, that is, for everyone except those who use the 505 or 506 or who travel the streets they run on.

The change took effect in February, a result of “fleet constraints” caused by Bombardier’s failure to deliver new streetcars on time. The buses have changed the natures of both routes. Streetcars brought a certain kind of elegant order to the route while the buses bring a bit of chaos.

Streetcar haters, and there many of them, tend to extoll the virtues of buses. I’m certain many of them don’t actually ride a bus, but like that they can drive around them easier or that buses can simply get out of the way and disappear.

Buses are loud, diesel-belching beasts. They are cramped and constantly lurch back and forth throughout the rough rides. Ride a bus everyday and your body takes the punishment. Bus Rapid Transit lines that have dedicated, bus-only rights of way, like those that use the Mississauga Transitway, improve bus comfort and reliability, but they still can’t compare to riding on rails.

A streetcar ride is smooth and clean, and there’s no need to brace for the bumps: they sail through Toronto like graceful street ships. Riding one makes you feel like you matter, and the rails are permanent, immovable.

Cyclists use both routes heavily, and are feeling the difference too. With buses pulling to the curb to pick up passengers at each stop, cyclists now have to contend with them, swapping spots in a sometimes-dangerous weave. With streetcars, cyclists stay in their lane and stop when the streetcar doors open, just as motor vehicles do.

Many bus drivers are, like most TTC operators, professional and courteous, giving cyclists space. But while cycling both routes over the last few months, I’ve experienced aggression from some bus drivers that I haven’t seen much of in 18 years of cycling through Toronto on other dedicated bus routes. Perhaps it’s that there are so many more buses fighting for space on the crowded streets than there were streetcars.

Indeed, as one streetcar can carry more passengers than a bus, the TTC has had to run more of them to make up for it. This is, however, something positive that riders I’ve talked to have noticed: there are simply more public transit vehicles on the routes that make it seem like the old days, when transit came more frequently.

With the 506 in particular, the TTC has been cutting service on the lines since the 1970s when streetcars came every two minutes at peak, versus every four minutes and 20 seconds at the beginning of this year, before the switch to buses.

There’s a myth streetcar-haters like float, that the TTC can manage buses better than streetcars as they’re more versatile. But buses can bunch together as much as streetcars do, resulting in big gaps in service. Last Saturday night, a calm summer evening, I walked from Yonge St. to Spadina Ave. on Dundas without being passed by a bus. Every stop had many people waiting; when a bus finally did come, it was predictably jammed, and another didn’t come for a while. Resident or visitor, this is the kind of service that will turn you off of public transit, and perhaps the city, too.

Steve Munro, an independent transit expert, and one of the Toronto activists who helped save the streetcar system in Toronto during the 1970s when it was being dismantled, has done a detailed analysis of both the 505 Dundas and 506 Carlton routes, comparing bus and streetcar travel times. He tells me that in locations and at times where demand is heavy and traffic is not free flowing, there is no difference to speak of between the two modes.

“Any speed or acceleration advantage the buses may have between stops is overcome both by general traffic speed and longer stop service times,” he said, summing up his highly technical and exhaustive analysis. “A related note is that where buses have a chance to drive fast, they do, contrary to streetcar practice where operators are required to dawdle and not run early.”

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Even though travel times will likely remain the same if service levels don’t change, if streetcars return, as scheduled, later this year, it will be a welcome return to a noble form of travel for the thousands of people who rely on both lines every day, and the cyclists negotiating those shared streets.

Perhaps then we can start working on some King St.-style solutions for these routes too, to let the street ships sail through the city as they are meant to.