News   Feb 23, 2026
News Roundup for February 23, 2026
 306     0 
News   Feb 23, 2026
Young Canyon
 471     1 
News   Feb 20, 2026
Amica Retirement Community Nears Topping Off at Dundas and Burnhamthorpe
 1.1K     0 

Parliament Streetcar

nfitz said:
On the low Parliament bus ridership, they have now increased the frequency, with the extension to Queens Quay. It would be interesting to see where ridership lands.
Click to expand...
It's just so slow. Every stop is a slog of people getting on and off very slowly (so many granny-carts being wheeled on and off). It hits every red light; whether nearside or farside stop it will get the red light. The traffic is terrible. It even gets stuck behind diverting streetcars a lot too.

On the rare occasion I am coming from the east on the subway toward downtown, I actually prefer not to get off at Castle Frank to go south to home at Parliamentish and Queenish, but instead I ride on to Yonge, then take the subway south to King or Queen, and then backtrack east to Parliament. 50/50 it's faster that way. You can't even rely on nextbus, as you will see "2 minutes to arrival at Castle Frank" and decide to take the chance and get off the subway there, but then surprise, while the bus shows up as expected the driver immediately gets out and doesn't return for 10 minutes. By the time the bus would leave Castle Frank, I'm already at College on the subway.
 
Last edited:
Jonny5 said:
It hits every red light; whether nearside or farside stop it will get the red light. The traffic is terrible. It even gets stuck behind diverting streetcars a lot too.
Click to expand...
Northbound Parliament from Lakeshore to my turnoff at Winchester is a red light disaster. There are ten traffic lights from top to bottom and all seem designed to prevent any through traffic.

Mill St.
Front St.
King St.
Adelaide St.
Richmond St.
Queen St.
Shuter St.
Dundas St.
Gerrard St.
Carlton St.

It must be even more maddening to be on a bus stuck in these ten stages of hell. I avoid northbound Parliament almost entirely and instead go through Regent Park.
 
Jonny5 said:
You can't even rely on nextbus, as you will see "2 minutes to arrival at Castle Frank" and decide to take the chance and get off the subway there, but then surprise, while the bus shows up as expected the driver immediately gets out and doesn't return for 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
In my experience, I have found the most reliable results to be at the first stop past the terminus. Half of the time, when you choose the first stop from the list, it detects the arrival time for the vehicle rather than its departure time. I have very rarely had issues if I make sure to choose a stop out on the route.
 
Admiral Beez said:
Northbound Parliament from Lakeshore to my turnoff at Winchester is a red light disaster. There are ten traffic lights from top to bottom and all seem designed to prevent any through traffic.

Mill St.
Front St.
King St.
Adelaide St.
Richmond St.
Queen St.
Shuter St.
Dundas St.
Gerrard St.
Carlton St.

It must be even more maddening to be on a bus stuck in these ten stages of hell. I avoid northbound Parliament almost entirely and instead go through Regent Park.
Click to expand...
No different than Jarvis, Sherburne or Yonge
 
Jonny5 said:
It's just so slow. Every stop is a slog of people getting on and off very slowly (so many granny-carts being wheeled on and off). It hits every red light; whether nearside or farside stop it will get the red light. The traffic is terrible. It even gets stuck behind diverting streetcars a lot too.

On the rare occasion I am coming from the east on the subway toward downtown, I actually prefer not to get off at Castle Frank to go south to home at Parliamentish and Queenish, but instead I ride on to Yonge, then take the subway south to King or Queen, and then backtrack east to Parliament. 50/50 it's faster that way. You can't even rely on nextbus, as you will see "2 minutes to arrival at Castle Frank" and decide to take the chance and get off the subway there, but then surprise, while the bus shows up as expected the driver immediately gets out and doesn't return for 10 minutes. By the time the bus would leave Castle Frank, I'm already at College on the subway.
Click to expand...
I'm a bit surprised, though I haven't really tried it southbound from Castle Frank. But when I'm doing something like that, I've found the 75 Sherbourne faster than staying on the subway - perhaps a bit more predictable, as the route starts further north, and only briefly stops at the station.

Oddly though, the 75 Sherbourne seems very unpredictable leaving Queens Quay, but 65 Parliament much more so (at least before it moved to Queens Quay).

T3G said:
In my experience, I have found the most reliable results to be at the first stop past the terminus. Half of the time, when you choose the first stop from the list, it detects the arrival time for the vehicle rather than its departure time. I have very rarely had issues if I make sure to choose a stop out on the route.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I always do too. That way, if there is a scheduled 10-minute break at the station (or the bus was running early), I don't get tricked!
 
Admiral Beez said:
Northbound Parliament from Lakeshore to my turnoff at Winchester is a red light disaster. There are ten traffic lights from top to bottom and all seem designed to prevent any through traffic.

Mill St.
Front St.
King St.
Adelaide St.
Richmond St.
Queen St.
Shuter St.
Dundas St.
Gerrard St.
Carlton St.

It must be even more maddening to be on a bus stuck in these ten stages of hell. I avoid northbound Parliament almost entirely and instead go through Regent Park.
Click to expand...
Don't forget the crosswalk at Regent Street! There's always somebody crossing at the exact moment you try to drive past there.
 
drum118 said:
No different than Jarvis, Sherburne or Yonge
Click to expand...
I've been in a few taxis where the driver insists Church is the fastest way to/from King/Bloor on the east side of Yonge, which is counter-intuitive given all the activity along the street compared to Jarvis, but when I let them try it sometimes it does go faster. I have no recorded travel time evidence, though perhaps people generally avoid Church because they think it will be so bad and it isn't. It definitely moves faster than Parliament. I guess the Carlton/Gerrard jog causes a lot of the problems on Parliament, and Church doesn't have that.
 
Last edited:
(from streetcar thread)

Jonny5 said:
Sauga89 said:
There actually is an existing UT thread for this.

To summarize, there were a lot of complaints that a Castle Frank loop was impractical. @reaperexpress presented his excellent plan in that thread as well, but I think most people overlooked his post and/or didn't know about the lower deck on the Rosedale bridge. Other discussion revolved around the ridership on the 65 Parliament bus (which some locals argued suffered from being infrequent) and the number of stop lights on Parliament (hopefully a future streetcar would have a dedicated right of way and signal priority).
Click to expand...
I recall at some point Steve Munro also pointed out there were concerns about the weight of streetcars on the deck (you must account for the possibility, however remote of multiple crush loaded streetcars in the loop at the station, plus any other vehicles parked in there), and that it wasn't structurally designed to absorb that much weight. I have no backup for this as he mentioned it years ago, but it is an engineering problem which likely could be solved, but it would be a very long term capital project, or one of those where perhaps it could be rebuilt faster if they only let trains pass right through without stopping, or frequently closed the whole line there on weekends for a few months.
Click to expand...
Weight issues could be dealt with by loop clockwise north of subway tunnel and then building a connection tunnel to the station similar to (but longer than) Broadview. The tracks could enter back onto Bloor at Castle Frank Road. Probably too tight to use the existing loop, and I expect using the parkland to the north is a showstopper.
 
nfitz said:
(from streetcar thread)

Weight issues could be dealt with by loop clockwise north of subway tunnel and then building a connection tunnel to the station similar to (but longer than) Broadview. The tracks could enter back onto Bloor at Castle Frank Road. Probably too tight to use the existing loop, and I expect using the parkland to the north is a showstopper.
Click to expand...
Why do you want to build an at-grade loop? Why not build an underground station so streetcars never get stopped at red lights, and so there's more room on the road surface for buffer between the bike lane and the car lanes?

The bus loop driveway is only 125m west of the signal at Castle Frank Road, so according to Toronto signal policy the two lights would need to be synchronized.
 
"Just" buying or retrofitting a second type of streetcar implies a significant maintenance and administrative load. This would be difficult to justify for the sake of a single route.
 
Jonny5 said:
I recall at some point Steve Munro also pointed out there were concerns about the weight of streetcars on the deck (you must account for the possibility, however remote of multiple crush loaded streetcars in the loop at the station, plus any other vehicles parked in there), and that it wasn't structurally designed to absorb that much weight. I have no backup for this as he mentioned it years ago, but it is an engineering problem which likely could be solved, but it would be a very long term capital project, or one of those where perhaps it could be rebuilt faster if they only let trains pass right through without stopping, or frequently closed the whole line there on weekends for a few months.
Click to expand...
No, not the bus loop. The deck we're talking about is the lower level of the road bridge over Rosedale Valley. It was built in 1918 with a lower deck for future streetcar or subway use.

The bridge location:
Screenshot 2026-02-17 at 2.15.49 PM.png


As for platforms, what @reaperexpress is suggesting is that rather than use the existing bus loop, you could build platforms underground beneath Bloor St.

The potential platform location:

Screenshot 2026-02-17 at 2.29.39 PM.png
 
McGillicuddy said:
"Just" buying or retrofitting a second type of streetcar implies a significant maintenance and administrative load. This would be difficult to justify for the sake of a single route.
Click to expand...
If the streetcars have a min turning radius of ~11m, a turn-loop would fit under the junction of Bloor St E && Castle Frank Rd
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top