This picture was taken around 12:45 EDT on Sunday March 11th.
There are eight 501L buses parked on Lake Shore Boulevard, just east of Long Branch loop. (It was hard to get a camera angle and zoom to get them all in the picture!)
The TTC’s own document shows that there are ten buses assigned to 501L on a Sunday afternoon. If you were waiting at a stop anywhere along the route, wondering “Where is my bus? Why isn’t it coming??“, well the answer is, they were all hiding at Long Branch loop!
The author of this post has personal experience of waiting at Roncesvalles in the late evening, wanting to get home, but no shuttle buses show up. Around 10:30 PM, Saturday evening, March 10th, nine 501 streetcars showed up, and dropped off their passengers, before a 501L bus showed up. It was a gap of about 25 minutes, while the TTC claims that a 501L will come every nine minutes, late Saturday evening. Obviously the buses are not running to any kind of schedule, and the TTC’s remote monitoring (called “CIS”) is not doing anything to make them run properly.
There is a solution!
The TTC needs to post inspectors on the ground, at Roncesvalles and at Long Branch loop. The job of the inspectors is to make sure the buses are running on schedule, instead of hiding out at the end of the line. There were inspectors posted to manage the 501L during various times in 2017. However, once they went home at 6 PM sharp, the service quickly turned awful. Therefore, the TTC needs to put out inspectors in shifts, from 5 AM to 1 AM. The 501L is used for people heading out to work in the early hours, as well as people trying to get home in the evenings. They deserve proper service. There are plenty of buses assigned to 501L, but they are not doing their job of picking up passengers. It seem the only way is to put inspectors out to actually manage the service.
Councillor Grimes has already sent an note to the CEO of the TTC about the poor service on the 501L. You can add your voice to the request several ways:
- Send a complaint to the TTC when you experience bad service. You may think they’re ignoring you, and maybe if only one person complains, they might. But if we all complain….
- Support Councillor Grimes. You can contact the Councillor’s office several ways.
- Add your experiences and comments to this article!