For many, many years, there has been talk of expansion of the streetcar system into the eastern waterfront. The “Waterfront East LRT” would branch off of the Bay Street tunnel at Queens Quay and running east initially to Villiers Island and eventually link with a southern extension of Broadview via the new GO/Ontario Line station at East Harbour.
Anyone waiting for this service will age considerably before it opens at the now tentative date of 2036. This was supposed to be a “Transit First” neighbourhood, but the history mocks all the fine talk of “Transit Oriented Communities” we hear today. Meanwhile, any attempt to actually use transit to reach this area is, putting it mildly, challenging. A collection of overlapping bus routes with infrequent and irregular service fight their way through chronic traffic congestion.
The route structure changed on May 12, 2024 as shown in the TTC maps below from 2023 and June 2024.
- 19 Bay
- 2023: From the central business district south on Bay and east on Queens Quay to loop at George Brown College near Sherbourne Street.
- May 2024: Route shortened to loop via east on King, south on Yonge, west on Front and north on Bay.
- 72 Pape
- 2023:
- 72A service from Pape Station to Eastern.
- 72B service to Union Station from Pape via Commissioners, Cherry, Lake Shore, Queens Quay and Bay. The route changed from time to time as the area was rebuilt to create Villiers Island.
- 72C service from Pape Station to Commissioners Street peak periods only.
- May 2024:
- 72A service to Eastern peak periods only.
- 72B replaced by 114 Queens Quay East.
- 72C extended west from Pape to Saulter Street and operated as the all day route.
- 2023:
- 114 Queens Quay East
- May 2024: New route from Union Station to Carlaw replacing the south end of 19 Bay and the west end of 72 Pape.
Two routes were not changed:
- 65 Parliament:
- From Castle Frank Station south via Parliament and west on Queens Quay to George Brown College.
- 75 Sherbourne:
- From Sherbourne Station south via Sherbourne and west on Queens Quay to Jarvis returning north via Jarvis and The Esplanade.
There is also the seasonal 202 Cherry from Union Station to Cherry Beach. Like the 72 Pape bus, its route has changed from time to time due to construction in the Villiers Island area.
Service Levels
Of the routes serving the eastern waterfront, the best scheduled service is on routes that do not connect to the core area: 75 Sherbourne and 65 Parliament. Service on these routes is driven by demand to George Brown College.
The 114 Queens Quay East bus runs considerably more often than 19 Bay, although it too is affected by demand to GBC. In theory, the combination of the south end of 19 Bay with the west end of 72 Pape allows the buses to be scheduled on a regular headway rather than whatever pattern the two separate schedules would provide. These two routes were notoriously unreliable operating separately. However, the combined service has many problems.
19 Bay is a shadow of a route that was once so frequent that Bay Street has a diamond priority lane, although this is observed by absolutely nobody. It is hard to believe that the headway south from Bloor Street was once 1’40” in the AM peak (36 buses/hour). It is now less than 10% of the level three decades ago.
19 Bay
65 Parliament
72 Pape
75 Sherbourne
114 Queens Quay East
202 Cherry Beach
Service Quality on 114 Queens Quay East
Service reliability is poor on weekdays particularly in the afternoon and PM peak when congestion makes impossible for buses to keep to schedule. Here are the weekday statics for headways southbound from Bay and Front, westbound from Logan and Commissioners, and westbound at Queens Quay and Yonge.
- The dark blue line (Week 4) is higher than the others because of the seasonal service reduction effective June 24.
- The average headways (solid lines) lie generally at the scheduled values except during the PM peak. This indicates that trips were lost in that period as buses could not complete their assigned runs.
- Standard deviations (dotted lines) are very high in the PM peak indication that much of the service is bunched with a wide range of narrow and wide headways.
- Even outside of the peak, the SD values show that headways, particularly in the evening, commonly range from 4-6 minutes either side of the scheduled values.
Although averages and standard deviations can show the general character of the data, the range of values can be seen in quartile charts. The blue and green boxes hold 50% of the data points with the median value at the boundary between colours. The purple and red tails hold the upper and lower quartiles respectively.
The top row shows the data for Week 3 for the same locations at the statistics above. The middle and bottom rows show Saturday and Sunday data for comparison.
- Values that run off the chart (over 30 minutes) are common on weekday afternoons, PM peak and early evening, as are values close to zero which come from bunching.
- Weekend values are more tightly clustered for the second and third quartiles (25th to 75th percentile), but the outlying values still reach well outside of reliability from a rider’s point of view.
The charts below show the operation of buses on 114 Queen Quay East for three Wednesdays: June 5, 19 and 26. They are arranged with the same time period for each day in rows, and all data for individual days in columns. This shows both the similarity, or not, between comparable days as well as the evolution of the route from 7am to 1am.
In these charts, the east end of the route is at the top (Carlaw) and the west end is at the bottom (Yonge & Wellington). Westbound trips read down, eastbound trips up.
Items of note:
- Even when congestion (visible from lines that become more horizontal than vertical) is not a problem, particularly in the evening, bunching of buses and erratic headways are common.
- Layovers are generally taken at the east end of the route, and outside of the PM peak period, buses appear to have enough time for a short break on each trip.
- The afternoon peak sees severe congestion westbound on Queens Quay and northbound on Bay, westbound on Wellington from Yonge to Bay, and on Bay southbound to Queens Quay.
- Very wide gaps are common in the afternoon and PM peak periods.
- Short turns are quite rare.
For comparison here are the charts for Saturday and Sunday, June 15 & 16.
- Congestion does occur on weekends, although not to the same extent and at different times than on weekdays.
- Bunching is less common than on weekdays, but still more prevalent in the evenings.
- Most trips have time for a layover at Carlaw, except when congestion extends travel times.
Service on 19 Bay
The charts below show averages and standard deviations of headways on 19 Bay northbound from King Street and southbound from Davenport east of Bedford. There is a clear difference between the SD values for the period before and after route was shortened in Week 4 of May, although the SD values are still high. This shows that the already wide scheduled headways on 19 Bay are even more exaggerated by buses running well off their scheduled headways even without the effects of congestion south of Front Street.
Service, if we can call it that, will be used only by those who happen to catch a passing bus, or by those for whom using the subway is not an option. Personally, this used to be my standard route between Bay Station and City Hall, but I can no longer depend on the Bay bus. This is a classic example of the vicious circle of service cuts and ridership loss, compounded by the changing travel patterns post-pandemic.
Service on 65 Parliament
The 65 Parliament bus, like other waterfront routes, can be affected by congestion, but not to the same degree as it only runs west to George Brown College / Corus Loop near Sherbourne. The standard deviations of headways from both ends of the route rise to close to 10 minutes (indicating a range of 20 minutes around the schedule for most trips) during the PM peak. This affects not just riders at Queens Quay but over the entire route.
Week 2 is omitted because of missing data and construction diversions.
Service on 72 Pape
For comparison, charts are shown here for May and June 2024. The route was shortened from Union Station to Villiers Street in mid-May, and the service was improved from the previous arrangement of uncoordinated Eastern and Union branches.
At Queen, the standard deviation values are higher for the first two weeks of May reflecting the difficulty of keeping the route’s branches on a regular spacing even when this was scheduled. From mid-May onward, the SD values are better behaved. Southbound values are higher than northbound reflecting that Queen is almost the end of the route which originates in Thorncliffe Park, and the evenness of bus spacing tends to deteriorate along the length of a route.
Service on Commissioners changed quite substantially with the new schedule in mid-May. The former 72B Union Station service was often mired in traffic and very unreliable.
Note that the peak period headway is wider than off-peak because some peak service turns back at Eastern Avenue while all off-peak service runs through to Villiers.
Service on 75 Sherbourne
Route 75 Sherbourne is routinely snarled in traffic backed up for the Gardiner Expressway on ramp at Jarvis Street westbound. This affects PM peak service reliability northbound as seem in the rising standard deviation values. Service southbound from Bloor Street is not as bad, but as on 65 Parliament, this is a route that suffers because of unpredictable conditions at the south end.
That said, this route can be unpredictable even when there is no congestion, a problem compounded by infrequent service. That is a subject for another article about badly-behaved short routes.
