Toronto, ON (October 1, 2025) –

On September 30th, a TTC work train caught fire inside Bloor-Yonge Station, along the Line 2 platform. While the fire’s exact causes are investigated, the cost to transit riders and the City of Toronto’s economy and productivity can be rapidly calculated.

CodeRedTO researchers have calculated the impact to worker pay and productivity as–at a minimum–over 20,000 hours and over $496,000 from this single two-hour incident.

The TTC’s busiest interchange station and three other stations were closed for half the morning peak, and over 35 other stations were impacted to various degrees due to the subway network’s lack of alternative routes. It is likely that over 41,000 TTC customers were delayed by this outage, plus thousands more in surface vehicles impacted by increased congestion.

Our detailed calculations deliberately take conservative assumptions at each stage, and it is highly likely the impact is greater. As similar disruptions occur far too often, the annual cost may be measured in the multiple millions of dollars, and that is before we put a price on the lives of those injured and killed in traffic collisions.

Choices by City Council and the Province of Ontario over multiple years have led to considerable backlogs in maintenance work for State of Good Repair, and to a lack of resiliency in the subway network through preferring line extensions to building alternate routes for riders. This means that any disruption leaves limited options within the subway network, pushing riders away from transit both during the disruption and in their future travel choices.

Calculations are rarely made for the cost of transit congestion and delays. Regular shut-downs and slow-downs of normal service, the continued absence of bus priority lanes on some of the busiest routes in the city, the resistance to the RapidTO proposals to improve mobility on Dufferin and Bathurst – these all cost GTA residents millions of dollars in lost productivity and lost opportunities. Every TTC rider that shifts to travelling by automobile costs the city in increased traffic, increased pollution, increased risk of injury and death, and the loss of more productive land use.

The TTC carries nearly half of Toronto’s morning commuters, yet each year at budget time, it must fight for support to maintain its network and infrastructure, and similarly the City of Toronto must continually fight for support to add more resilience to our transit map. It must be noted that at no point has anyone needed to fight for money to maintain costly car infrastructure, including for example the Gardiner Expressway East, which carries less than 5% of commuters during the same time periods.

It is not enough to say we don’t have the money, when the decline in TTC service has such high costs. We recommend that the TTC document the lost opportunity of items in the repair backlog, and the risks inherent in delaying those repairs, and that the City prioritize State of Good Repair spending by number of residents and riders affected, instead of the current approach of accelerating car infrastructure repairs. We also recommend the publishing of clear metrics such as impacted riders and station-minutes, as used in our research, to increase public understanding of the severity of each disruption.

Details on all calculations can be found here.

Toronto, ON (May 5, 2025) –

CodeRedTO calls on City of Toronto Transportation Services, the Toronto Transit Commission, and City Council to implement emergency streetcar route protections within the downtown core, to protect the over 100,000 streetcar riders in this area who will face unreliable, delayed, and confusing streetcar movement beginning next week and lasting through the summer.

This week it was reported in the Toronto Star that required water main and track replacement along King Street will divert the 503 Kingston Road, 504 King and the 508 Lake Shore streetcars onto Queen Street from Spadina to Broadview, joining the busy 501 Queen streetcar for 4.4 kilometres.

At peak, a streetcar should arrive every 100-150 seconds, but this diversion will have little to no transit signal priority or advance turn signals, creating streetcar bunching, bottlenecks, blocked intersections, and frustrated commuters.

It is imperative that the over 100,000 transit riders on these routes receive priority movement through intersections and along the diversion.

CodeRedTO recommends the following be implemented immediately:

1. No left turns:

• Add no-left signage and enforcement on Queen Street eastbound at Soho, Beverley, McCaul, Simcoe, Dalhousie, Mutual, and all laneways.
• Add no-left signage and enforcement on Queen Street westbound at Berkeley, Ontario, George, Duncan, John, Peter, and all laneways.

2. Transit turn priority: Advance turn signal for transit added to the intersection of King and Spadina, operating 24/7.

3. Traffic Wardens: Station minimum ten traffic wardens all day at the most-challenged intersections, to be re-evaluated and re-assigned weekly, to prevent “blocking the box” and ensure free movement of streetcars at all times. Recommended intersections for week one:

• Queen at University, York, Jarvis, Sherbourne, and Parliament
• York at Richmond and Adelaide
• Church at Richmond, Adelaide, and Queen

4. Antique track switching: Add dedicated staff for manual switch operation as required along the full diversion path, to prevent delays from streetcar operators exiting vehicles to make a diversion turn.

5. Headway-based line management: Add TTC supervisors along the full diversion path, with schedule and rider volume re-assessed weekly to reduce vehicle bunching.

6. Enforcement on King Street: Repaint the King Street Transit Priority Corridor lane markings at each intersection, and enforce all no-through-traffic signage, to protect the movements of replacement buses along this corridor during repairs.

Implementation and most importantly enforcement of these changes will help reduce the damage to surface transit operations through this area. This will create the best chance of route reliability to protect ridership for future.

It is important to note that this level of diversion cannot be fully mitigated, and CodeRedTO further recommends a report to City Council on the full cost of delayed maintenance items in this area, with all traffic warden, signage, enforcement, and replacement bus costs broken out. This will enable clearer assessment of costs when considering delayed maintenance in future.

Every effort should be made to expedite the work and to return to regular service at the earliest possible opportunity. More commuters get downtown by TTC than by driving on every other road and highway combined. It is vital that reliable and frequent public transit be protected and prioritized to help Toronto sustainably grow, and to help all Torontonians reliably reach jobs, schools, daycares, nightlife, and more.