Toronto’s Trams: In need of some TLC
- Apr 13, 2025
- 12 min read
Updated: Apr 21
The longer I’ve worked on transit projects, the more I’ve come to think of them like gardens. To bring out the best in transit requires the right inputs, careful upkeep, and above all, commitment to excellence. Like gardens, transit systems reflect the style and priorities of their creators. Surface-level flash or understated beauty? Ordered precision or functional chaos?
Toronto’s streetcar system, unfortunately, feels a bit like a garden that’s been forgotten about for a few decades. While it’s got some of the fundamentals in place, in its current form, it reflects Toronto’s lacklustre commitment to actually solving its own problems. As Toronto’s congestion crisis worsens every year, it’s time Toronto faced up to its neglect of its tram network.
The Good, The Bad, and maybe the Better?
The Good
Toronto’s trams do some things quite well. For starters, they exist. Most North American cities can’t say the same about their tram networks, having ripped them out in the 1950s. LA is the poster child for tram removal, but you can find stories of it everywhere from small towns to big cities across the US, Canada, and Europe - even in superstar cities like Copenhagen.
Not only do Toronto’s trams exist, they actually serve lots of people. Toronto’s trams carry about 220,000 people per day, the third-most of any North American light rail system, trailing Calgary and Guadalajara. This ridership is driven by the fact that Toronto’s streetcars serve relatively dense, walkable neighbourhoods and take people places they actually want to go, in contrast to many North American light-rail systems which have been built in highway medians or old rail rights-of-way away from places people live and work.
Toronto’s trams are also part of a true network. The city’s 12 tram lines all connect to the city’s subway and rail lines, former a piece of a larger transit puzzle that caries around 2.7 million people per day across the region.
Finally, there’s the rider experience. There’s a lot that could be better, but the city has substantially improved the experience of taking trams over the past 10 years by replacing outdated vehicles and implementing contactless payment and all-door boarding. These are baby-steps by global standards, but good steps nonetheless.
The Bad
Now for the problems, and there are many.
Trams are really slow
Toronto’s trams are among the slowest in the world, averaging a glacial 10.8 kilometres-per-hour. This is only twice as fast as the average person walks and in Toronto, you really can out-walk a tram fairly often. Most people in the city recognise this issue of slow speeds and attribute it to the fact that Toronto’s trams operate in mixed-traffic. Even in other cities where trams share the road with cars though, like Melbourne or Adelaide, trams are at least 50% faster. Toronto’s tram troubles run deeper.
Why are Toronto’s trams so slow? Well…
It’s partially the cars’ fault
A colleague of mine quipped that Toronto’s tram system is actually just a heritage trolley in a modern city. In no way is the system’s old-fashioned nature more visible than in watching trams trundle down the middle of Toronto’s streets surrounded by pick-up trucks and BMWs. The majority of the network’s 85 route-kilometres operate in the middle of the street, just as they have for over 160 years. 160 years ago though, there were no cars competing for street space. Today, trams get stuck behind cars driving, cars turning left, badly parked cars, car collisions, and even occasionally protests.
On top of taking up space and slowing trams down, I’ve observed over and over again how tram operators are forced to move more slowly and cautiously on streets full of erratic drivers. In all these ways, cars slow down trams and make them unreliable but unlike cars, trams are stuck where they run, without the ability to detour around blockages.
While car congestion is undoubtedly a drag, it’s overly simplistic to attribute Toronto’s tram troubles entirely to automobiles
There are too many damn stops
Toronto’s tram network has too many stops. Way too many. There are about 340 stops on an 83 kilometre network, for an average of 4 stops per kilometre. That’s one stop every 250 metres, which takes the average person about 3 minutes to walk. Even if we assume that stops are spaced somewhat more widely depending on the location, if you can walk between three to four stops in ten minutes, something is seriously wrong with stop spacing.
It’s best practice in transit planning to place rapid transit stops, like those of a metro, about a 10 to 15-minute walk apart (1000 to 1500 metres), and local transit stops, like those of a tram or bus, about a 5-minute walk apart (300 to 400 metres). You want to avoid creating duplicate coverage zones between stops, but you also don’t want to force people to walk far beyond their comfort zone. Even the TTC’s own standards recommend that stops be 300 to 400 metres apart in dense walkable environments – even further in areas with limited destinations.
Toronto’s current streetcar network clearly violates these basic principles. If Toronto were to adhere to the more conventional 500 metres spacing target, it could remove perhaps 30% of the network’s stops without really impacting coverage. The TTC has been trying for years to remove closely-spaced stops, and since 2014, has succeeded in removing dozens. Many other removals have been inhibited by local councillors and transit advocates who argue that the longer walking distances would be inconvenient for people with disabilities.
A friend with far more influence has already written and commented extensively on the issue of stop spacing but it bares repeating because stop spacing is easily within the City’s control. Removing stops does require political capital to overcome the oppositional forces mentioned here, but it doesn’t require a lot of money or time. Compared to more expensive or difficult improvements, like creating dedicated tram-lanes, stop consolidation ought to be an easy way to speed up service.
Old switches, slow speed limits
Few outside of the transit community are aware that Toronto’s trams actually have speed limits that are often slower than the road speed limit. Toronto’s trams are particularly hobbled by speed limits where there are track switches, almost all of which are old-fashioned single-point switches.
Single-point switches are an antiquated switch-type with one moveable switch-rail instead of the usual two. In the image below, you'll see the moveable switch-rail on the right. The diverging rails on the left are immobile. Single-point switches can be easier to maintain, especially in an icy climate, because they have fewer moving parts, but they’re so uncommon these days that the TTC has to custom order them for Toronto. More importantly, they’re also much more prone to derailing trams because they can only ‘catch’ one wheel out of two as an axle passes over. At higher speeds the risk of derailment increases, so the TTC limits its trams to crawling speed of around 10 kilometres per hour over most of the network’s intersections. The end result of this speed limit policy is that trams accelerate between intersections and then slow down to a crawl moving through them, further lowering their overall speed.
TTC’s operating policy also includes various other speed restrictions, such as a blanket limit of 25 kilometres per hour through all signalised intersections, and a variety of speed restrictions that were installed as knee-jerk reactions to individual collisions.
Red lights everywhere
A final challenge standing in the way of faster trams is the sheer number of traffic lights in Toronto. Toronto is a gridiron city like New York or Chicago with thousands of signalised intersections. This means that even when traffic is low, a tram stands a good chance of hitting a red light a few hundred metres. One way of mitigating the impact of red lights is to install signal priority systems - something Toronto has already done.
Toronto’s signal priority system essentially holds lights green for up to 30 seconds longer if a tram is approaching the signal. This is a long signal hold by global standards but since most signals have stops immediately before them it’s hard for the signal priority system to correctly guess whether or not the streetcar will enter the intersection in the next 30 seconds or stop. If the tram stops, it could still be sitting at the stop at the end of the 30 second extension, in which case the next green light would actually be up to 30 seconds later than it normally would have been. In this way, the ‘priority’ system can actually increase delay rather than reducing it. At intersections with dedicated turning phases for trams, such as those along St. Clair, the City usually prohibits the system from adding additional transit phases into the cycle that would enable streetcars to proceed ahead of left turning cars. The result is that Toronto’s few dedicated streetcar lanes generally fail to provide the faster service that the public was promised with their construction.
This is all fixable
Part of the reason I wanted to write this post is that all of these problems are so solvable. Building new rail networks is hard and takes years - my day job hammers that home - but fixing Toronto’s trams could be a relatively easy project for a city that has good ideas and real political will, but takes far too long to build the grand transit visions it has set for itself.
To dig its tram system out of this rut, Toronto needs both a performative and programmatic obsession with speed and reliability. Its politicians and leaders need to make faster trams a public priority, and the TTC and City need to make increasing speeds their primary goal for the tram network through a targeted speed-up program, like Boston’s Better Bus Program or Toronto’s own King-Street Transit Priority Program. As part of a program like this, I’d love to see the City set target travel times for each tram route and use those as benchmarks for success.
To do this, the City needs to better measure and report on the speed and reliability of the tram network. Vancouver’s Translink does a great job of this and publishes and annual Bus Speed and Reliability Report. If you search for similar information for Toronto, you’ll find that most of what little data is available is gathered by transit fans, not the government. Tracking speed and reliability may sound boring, but annual reports like Vancouver’s help keep the issue in the public and political eye and provide valuable information on long-term trends.
Focus on easy improvements first
As a first step to actually speeding up trams, Toronto should focus on the low hanging fruit: solutions that require minimal investment and pose minimal political risk. Toronto can implement these solutions without having to turn to the Provincial or Federal governments for money and without wading too deep into politically fraught territory.
1. Consolidating stops
Consolidating stops that are within 300 metres should be a much higher priority. Without having done a tonne of research, I can’t say the City should remove a certain number or percentage of stops, but the City should allow the TTC to double down on its stop consolidation efforts that have thus far been held back. City government should publicly highlight the goal of having stops spaced every 300 to 500 metres as a speed enhancement to counteract the narrative that fewer stops is a bad thing.
2. Prohibiting vehicle left turns
It’s not uncommon to see trams forced to wait an entire light cycle for a handful of cars in front of them to turn left through opposing traffic. Inefficient left turns are an inherent feature of any grid-city and there’s really no way to optimise for them without inconveniencing others. Longer left turn signals at traffic lights mean less time for other signal phases. Short of installing more roundabouts like this one in Basel, Toronto should aim to simply prohibit left turns at major intersections, as it already does along King Street.
This would keep traffic flowing and would ensure that the centre lane, where trams travel, is never held up by left-turning cars. Toronto already prohibits left turns on streets without trams and while people grumble, the strategy seems to work well enough that it ought to be replicated where it really counts.
At intersections where prohibiting left turns would severely undermine the car network, such as southbound on Bathurst at Adelaide, track reconstruction projects should spread the tracks to create a left turn lane. And in the meantime, any intersection with permitted left turns needs a stronger signal priority setup that activates a left turn phase ahead of the streetcar.
3. Enhancing the existing signal priority system
Toronto’s existing transit signal priority system could be made to work much better. It would be particularly beneficial if more tram stops were moved to the far side of intersections rather than the near side, as this would avoid the issue of trams confusing the signal priority system on approach. Shifting stops to the far side would ensure that the every time a tram approaches a traffic light, it actually uses the priority signal given to it rather than stopping to pick up passengers. Other adjustments to signal priority policy, such mandating that streetcars never need to wait more than one light cycle for a green would further enhance operations and minimise the impact of signalised intersections.
Make the heavy lifts over the longer-term
More serious efforts to speed up streetcars are required, but they will take years, money, and political capital to implement.
1. Replace single-point switches
The City needs to adopt new standards for track switch design that would enable it to replace single-point switches with dual point switches as it renews its roads. Road renewal cycles can be up to 30 years, so replacing all single-point switches could take the rest of my lifetime, but overtime, making this change would allow trams to move more quickly through intersections.
2. Prohibiting on-street parking
Toronto’s on-street parking is somewhat insane, even for drivers. Four lane streets generally allow on-street parking at random intervals, meaning that drivers are constantly swerving in and out of the outer lane to avoid parked cars. Removing on-street parking, particularly on the busiest sections of Queen Street, Dundas Street, and College Street would improve tram operations by reducing the likelihood of parked cars obstructing their path, but mainly by improving the overall flow of cars. As long as trams travel in mixed traffic, faster roads mean faster trams.
Whether or not removing street parking is an easy solution might be up for debate, but it certainly could be done quickly and affordable if the political will was there - and there are early signs that removing parking is on the table as part of Ontario and Toronto’s asinine fight over bike lanes.
3. Dedicated Tram Lanes
Dedicated lanes can be a great way to improve speed and reliability of any transit system, but I’m hesitant to suggest that these would be a panacea in Toronto. For starters, there already are two routes with fully dedicated rights-of-way and they’re no faster than routes operating in mixed traffic, highlighting the impact of excess stops and intersections. Moreover, I’m not sure dedicated lanes will ever be feasible on many Toronto streets. Most of the streets that trams operate on are four-lane roads with trams in the centre lanes. Dedicating these to trams-only would be tantamount to a big reduction in city-wide vehicle capacity and would incur a serious political backlash in a city that is obsessed with traffic congestion. It would also likely rule out ever installing bike lanes on many of these streets because the outer lane would become sole lane for cars.
4. Rethink downtown streets
The problems plaguing the tram network in Toronto are part of a larger problem of inefficient streets in general. Every major road in the city centre is congested, dangerous, and in many ways unpleasant because streets are trying to do everything for everyone. Cars, trams, bikes, and people all compete for narrow amounts of space such that everyone moves slowly and there’s almost no dedicated space for any particular type of road user. This competition and inefficiency drives a lot of the congestion outrage that poisons Toronto politics.
Other cities have overcome this by rethinking what streets are for and how they operate. I’ve heard this approach described as complete networks, rather than complete streets - the idea being that a city should create networks that work for each type of transportation rather than trying to make every street work for every mode.
I’d love to see Toronto move in this direction by trying to rebalance traffic and transit flows between certain streets. This could involve optimising already car-dominated streets like Richmond and Adelaide for vehicular traffic while optimising streets like Queen and Dundas for tram traffic. I’d also love to see Toronto get more serious about creating at least one east-west car-free street for trams and bikes King Street is almost there, but Queen seems to offer the most promise as a longer east-west street. Finally, I hope that in the longer term, Toronto gets more serious about discouraging driving into the city centre overall through measures like congestion pricing, low emissions zones, or even by closing connections from the Gardiner Express into downtown.
Toronto should aspire to excellence
Toronto’s trams are held back by the apathy that I think is simultaneously Canada’s greatest strength and weakness. In so many areas Toronto, and Canada at large, tolerates things that drive other societies crazy. It welcomes large numbers of immigrants without having a meltdown about its national identity, tolerates a tough climate, and embraces change in a way I’ve seen in few western nations. But Canada and Toronto are also far too slow to adapt global best practices in urbanism, transportation, and economics because ‘things are mostly fine’.
Zooming back in on Toronto’s trams, almost everyone acknowledges that they’re not working well but because things aren’t truly terrible, few in Toronto’s power structures seem interested in pushing for something better. I’m hopeful though that as Toronto grows into a bigger, more global city more people will push for excellence, for the tram network and beyond.
