Finding PDFs of Toronto streetcar schedules

[Steve4031]

Greetings,

I am trying to get PDFs of the streetcar schedules in Toronto. The online trip planner is difficult to use. And iPhone apps are useless.

 

[DET63]

It looks like you can find schedules for specific stops, but not for the system, or even for a given service, as a whole.

I'm sure somebody at TTC considers this more user-friendly.

 

[Guest]

The schedules section of the TTC website is interactive, as opposed to a listing of listing of traditional format timetables in PDF files.

Streetcar lines operate on a frequent service basis. Headways are generally less than 15 minutes throughout the day, and 5 minutes at rush hours.

Some of the dozen streetcar routes operate in rush hours only (“trippers’ in the traditional TTC lexicon). These are identified in the route description, e.g. route 502. They duplicate part of the service covered by a regular route.

For each route you will find tabs listing all stops in both directions showing the next three scheduled cars, a tab with a detailed map and a trip planning function. For example, if you enter the end points of the 501 Queen St route (Neville Park Loop to Humber Loop) you will find that the trip takes 1 hour 15 minutes end to end to cover the 15 miles. At this moment cars leave Neville Park every 6 minutes, with service increasing to every 5 minutes as the morning rush hour progresses.

 

[Steve4031]

Thanks. So the 501 runs all day for the entire route? What about the 508? My app, transit times, was confusing to use in that it seemed to indicate that you could ride to the west end if the 501, but not get back. This showed up a couple of other places too.

I was trying to create a detailed schedule for two days of riding. I think I need to simplify this. Which numbers are rush hour only?

 

[Guest]

The 501 Queen runs throughout the day in both directions. Some cars short-turn at Humber Loop, while the others go through to Long Branch. Service is on 5 to 10 minute headways from about 6 AM through 1 AM. There is also a blue night line service in the wee hours.

The 508 is a “tripper”, which supplements the 501 from the west end of the route to downtown in the rush hours, i.e. eastbound in the morning and westbound in the late afternoon. The AM and PM routing are slightly different only because of how the cars turn in the downtown core at the end (AM) or beginning (PM) of the runs.

(To expand on my previous post, the term “tripper” goes back to the earliest days of the TTC, if not to its pre- 1921 antecedents, though it is rarely used today. The term refers to a single trip extra run during the rush hours.) Until about 25 years ago car lines were known by their route name and destination, not by a route number, e.g. “Neville Queen” or “Kingston Road Tripper”

To understand the full range of service look at the Route Description tab for each route in conjunction with the Map tab.