TTC offers biggest boost to bus service since 1974

In the last two days the Toronto Transit Commission has put more buses more buses on the road and prolonged hours of operation in the biggest boost to service in three decades.

Bus service on most routes has been extended to coincide with subway operating hours, from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. each day. Meanwhile 93 new buses have been added to some 80 existing routes during peak hours to ease congestion and provide more elbow room, said councillor Adam Giambrone (Davenport), chair of the TTC.

“This is the largest single add since 1974 of bus service,” he said, noting that at that time, the TTC was expanding into new developments in Scarborough, North York and Etobicoke which had no transit routes.

The TTC will also discuss the possibility of increasing express and premium express service at its meeting Wednesday. A report on the feasibility will be out in tomorrow.

Mr. Giambrone said the changes coincide with the announcment of higher than anticipated ridership this year of 467 million passengers instead of 464 million for 2008 as earlier projected.

But he said the improvements have actually been in the works for some time.

“The reason it’s happening today as opposed to say four months ago is that when we enacted the fare increase last year, you’ll remember we said we would be plowing more money into service. Well this is part of that service enhancement,” he said. “We had to go out and get more buses, 93 more buses, obviously. We also had to hire about 450 new people to provide the service. All these things take time and that’s why you see it going in to effect yesterday and today with the opening of the new bus garage at Mount Dennis.”

While most routes will see one new bus added during peak hours, Mr. Giambrone said two or three could be added on high-demand routes like Dufferin St. or Finch Ave.

“It’s not just that it’s one bus, one trip. During rush hour they might make two or three trips… so you literally could be talking about that carrying 1,000 extra people with people getting on and off at each point,” he said. “This is fairly dramatic.”

The TTC is constrained from putting on new streetcars, however, until it awards a $1.25-billion contract for new trams that will operate on existing tracks as well as eight new dedicated light rail lines on the Transit City plan.