David Bellerive

Toronto’s Streetcars Are Great. We Just Do Not Treat Them Like It.

August 8, 2025 · 4 min read

There is no shame in it: I love the TTC streetcars.

I spent a few days in Toronto recently and, for the first time in many trips, I used the streetcar network more than the subway. Not as a novelty. Not for the aesthetics. To get around the city. Actual transit, with destinations.

And I get it.

The TTC’s Flexity Outlooks, in that classic red and white livery, are iconic. They glide through downtown, anchoring neighbourhoods and communities in constant evolution. There is a sense of permanence and public presence in a city that keeps changing. To an outsider, it looks like a city committed to visible, connective transit. In a country where street-running rail is rare, Toronto’s network stands out. It is extensive. It reaches into dense, walkable areas. It exists.

But it is also flawed. And frustratingly so.

Outside of a few stretches, most of the system runs in mixed traffic. Streetcars wait at red lights, stuck behind turning vehicles or delivery trucks. Unlike a bus, they cannot go around the obstacle. They just wait. The lack of signal priority, combined with long cross-city routes, leads to cascading delays. A well-spaced schedule becomes a clump of three streetcars followed by nothing. Opening the Transit app may tell you when the next one is coming, but too often the schedule is aspirational.

The contrast is obvious on the 509 along Queen’s Quay or the 510 Spadina, where there is at least some dedicated right of way. It is not perfect, but it is smooth, predictable, and feels timely. Then you hop on the 505 or 506 crosstown routes, crawling through traffic on Dundas or College, and you start to wonder: why did we stop here? Unlike the north–south corridor served by Line 1, the east–west surface network has far fewer options for structured transit. It shows.

Because none of this is technically hard. It is what we have chosen not to do.

We have seen what happens when the city chooses differently.

On King Street, the 2017 pilot limiting car traffic became a permanent measure, and it still delivers. Even after years of construction disruptions from the Ontario Line and nearby street closures, transit travel times and reliability have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, according to the City’s July 2024 update. Motor vehicle volumes are down 19%, and intersection violations, which had spiked during the Queen Street closure, are now 30% lower than in May 2023.

No other city in Canada has a network like this. Toronto’s downtown may be the most connected surface-transit area in the country, even if the broader rapid transit system has not kept pace in decades. There is a lot happening now, but until the Ontario Line, momentum was mostly talk. Relief Line. SmartTrack. We have heard it all before. The ingredients for a world-class surface network are already here.

This is not only a Toronto problem. Seattle brought back modern streetcars, but without dedicated lanes or priority they became symbols more than systems. Ridership stagnated and average speeds hovered near walking pace. Québec City proposed a modern tram with full right of way and signal priority, until it met the never-ending dance of provincial politics.

Toronto is different: streetcars matter right now. They are not a throwback or branding exercise. TTC streetcars alone carry more passengers than Edmonton and Ottawa’s entire light rail systems combined on an average weekday. People feel it when the network slows down or grinds to a halt. It is not just a delay. It is a failure of delivery.

Changing a street, taking away a lane, and giving transit real priority means taking space from something else. Sometimes it means slowing cars. Or removing parking. Or rerouting left turns. It can annoy drivers, frustrate businesses, and generate pushback. Not because people are anti-transit, but because we keep treating roads as if they are for cars first.

So we compromise. We water it down.

Toronto’s streetcars are not broken. They are underpowered and under-prioritized.

What if we let them be great instead?