Item - 2025.TTC10.5

The TTC Board:

1. Received the preliminary outcomes of the TTC’s Bunching and Gapping Pilot.

2. Requested that TTC staff report back to the TTC’s Strategic Planning Committee as a part of consideration for 2026 budget priorities on the resource requirements, staffing, and operational needs to sustain a full-year Bunching and Gapping Pilot in 2026 as well as the feasibility of expanding the pilot to additional key routes across the City to improve service and reliability.

Fortunato Monaco, Interim Chief Operating Officer, and Professor Mehdi Nourinejad, York University, delivered a presentation on this item.

The purpose of this report is to present the preliminary outcomes of the TTC’s Bunching and Gapping Pilot, launched in March 2025, targeting service reliability on 11 high-priority routes.

The pilot targets 11 high-priority routes selected based on performance and operational impact. The routes included in the pilot are as follows:

Bus Routes: 7 Bathurst, 24 Victoria Park, 924 Victoria Park Express, 25 Don Mills, 925 Don Mills Express, 29 Dufferin, 929 Dufferin Express, 100 Flemington Park, 165 Weston Road North.

Streetcar Routes: 506 Carlton, 512 St Clair.

The pilot initially launched across all 11 routes; however, early results showed that a broad application of partial resources did not yield significant performance improvements. In June 2025, targeted efforts were introduced on five key routes: 7 Bathurst, 24 Victoria Park, 924 Victoria Park Express, 506 Carlton, and 512 St Clair, with increased supervision, focused Operator management, and enhanced co-ordination with our City of Toronto partners. Under this model, one Transit Control Route Supervisor was assigned to each route, thereby ensuring that service could be managed more proactively and providing operational learnings to inform future system-wide reliability improvements.

On September 7, 2025, two additional routes, 100 Flemingdon Park and 165 Weston Road North, were incorporated into the focused supervision model, expanding this dedicated oversight to these corridors and further supporting service reliability improvements.

As of October 2025, the pilot has been further refined to focus performance specifically on weekday morning and afternoon peak periods, enabling more accurate identification and resolution of service reliability challenges.

The remaining four pilot routes remain under regular monitoring within the broader service management, with preliminary data helping to determine whether targeted interventions may be needed in the future.

The Board will receive these outcomes when available, and a decision on extending the pilot into 2026 will be made at year-end.