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TTCridersÌýlooked at all 179 surface routesÌýbetween Sept. 1 and Nov. 16 of last year, using data obtained through a freedom-of-information request and TTC vehicle location data collected by another organization, TransSee.

The group’s study found that bus and streetcar riders waited more than four minutes longer than scheduled on 41 bus and streetcar routes out of 179 in the city due to bunching — and 10 of those routes had riders waiting an average of four and a half minutes longer than scheduled.Ìý

“From a rider’s perspective, what this boils down to is not being able to trust that the TTC is going to show up when it says it’s going to show up,” said Shelagh Pizey-Allen, the executive director of TTCriders.Ìý

Widespread bunching and opaque performance metrics obscure the picture of how the TTC is really serving commuters, according to the report, which comes as Mayor Olivia Chow has promised better service on the city’s transportation system.

Bunching is a problem that TTCriders says is prevalent throughout the city.ÌýFor example, Spadina Avenue was the site of rows of bunched replacement buses when the streetcar route was shut down in June 2024 for repair. It was only after the city installed priority bus lanes that travel times improved.

It also isn’t a new problem, and it’s one the TTC said it is already trying to tackle. As part of its 2025 budget, the transit agency announced a pilot to help solve the bunching problem on 11 of its most “problematic (streetcar and bus) routes” with “enhanced on-street presence.”

That means placing TTC staff on the street along the routes throughout the day to make sure vehicles are evenly spaced, according to spokesperson Stuart Green.

Green said that, while the TTC can’t “corroborate” the findings of the TTCriders report, the agency understands “there are periods and days where service reliability is challenged across the network.”

Bunching also plays a part in what TTCriders says is a muddying of performance data. The TTC measures a bus’s performance by when it leaves the starting point of its route and how long it takes to get to its end point. The problem, advocates say, is that measure doesn’t account for the time in between, from stop to stop, meaning it doesn’t capture the experience of many transit users who may get delayed mid-route because of bunching.

The TTC CEO’s report in January gave bus on-time performances as 83 per cent, measured using the time vehicles departed from their end terminals, a metric advocates say doesn’t really reflect the changing demand for buses throughout the day, or the wide variety of routes across the city.

For example, a bus that is delayed and causes bunching with two others might arrive at its terminal stop late. But the other two buses may be counted as on-time, or even early. That can skew data, advocates say, which is made worse when the TTC flattens its on-time performance metrics as an average. On-time performance data is presented across routes and across different times of day.

Some routes can be “appallingly bad” on weekends, particularly in the evenings, transit advocate Steve Munro, who did some analysis for the TTCriders report, said. For the 54 Lawrence East Bus, for example, on-time performance can be as low as 50 per cent on Sunday early mornings, meaning half of the buses were either early by more than a minute or late by more than five minutes.

“There’s a complete disconnect between the information that’s being publicly reported in the CEO’s report and to the board about how good our service is, versus what riders actually experience,” said Munro.

The TTC’s Green said that “many agencies around the world” use end points for performance measurement, but the TTC is piloting mid-route measurements.

The TTC is still trying to get its services back to pre-pandemic levels, and advocates say there needs to be more transparency from the city’s transit organization to better communicate with frustrated and disengaged commuters.

Part of the problem is congestion and construction, which have increased the demand for reliable transit and crowded the roads for buses. But Pizey-Allen wants the TTC to build more trust with riders by being honest about on-time performance.

“It’s uncomfortable to be honest about how bad things are (with bunching),” Pizey-Allen said. “But that’s what’s needed for the TTC to really make the changes and be honest about what it would take to get back to the frequency we once had.”