5 Avenue Rd

 The first route we are going to look at is route 5 Avenue Rd! This route operates with two branches:

• 5A Avenue Rd: Eglinton Stn to Queens' Park
• 5B Avenue Rd: Eglinton Stn to Gerrard

I don't have particularly strong feelings about this route, but it feels like it's one of the routes that's just kind of there, as a halfway between Yonge and Bathurst. While it passes through areas far from transit service, the ridership isn't particularly high.

The Route

Buses leave Eglinton Stn via Duplex, and travel west on Eglinton and south on Oriole. This area is higher-income, and has large single-family homes. Oriole for this stretch is low speed, with a number of stop signs. The Avenue Rd corridor traffic rejoins at Oxton, where the route passes the Upper Canada College grounds.

The bus travels west on Lonsdale and south on Avenue. Here, there are a number of apartment blocks, particularly near Heath Street. Avenue Road has a bit of higher-density housing and commercial uses south of St Clair, but immediately behind this is the built form seen north of Lonsdale. South of Dupont, we travel through the expensive Yorkville neighbourhood, crossing south of Bloor onto Queens' Park. Here we pass a number of attractions: including the Royal Ontario Museum. 5A buses loop counter-clockwise via Queens' Park Crescent, ending their trips just north of College Street with a connection to Queens' Park Station. 5B trips continue south on University, and loop via Elm, Elizabeth and Gerrard, returning north.

One thing to note is how wide Avenue Rd is. It has become a highway of sorts: cars speed here, and the sidewalks are so narrow it's easy to see that pedestrians were an afterthought. Some community groups have been fighting with the city to widen the sidewalks and drop the speed limit. We shall see how that goes!

Sights to See

• Upper Canada College
• Gardiner Museum
• Royal Ontario Museum
• University of Toronto
• Queens' Park/Ontario Legislative Assembly
• MaRS Tower
• Hospital Row

Subway Connections

• Eglinton
• Museum
• Queens' Park

Frequency and Ridership

Buses run every 17'30 during the morning peak, every 30' during the midday (the only time the 5B runs), every 30' during the afternoon peak, and every 22' during the early evening. Saturday service operates between every 20' and every 22', and Sunday service is every 20'. This is partly by virtue of a roundtrip being forty minutes, and so two buses are required.

On weekdays, the 5 carries 2000 customers a day. 1100 take the route on Saturdays, and 590 do on Sundays. The route is definitely one of the lower-ridership routes. This is a consequence of many single-family homes, but odd due to the connection downtown. In addition, being bounded by the UCC grounds for a bit means no ridership draws.

Thoughts

I rarely use the 5. It's convenient, but not frequent enough to be useful; unless you know that it's coming, it may not be worth getting off a connecting bus. Weekend service tends to be more frequent than weekdays; that's due to less traffic yet still requiring two buses. This route does not operate after 10pm, and this has been since 2018. It was always low-ridership, but by not having the service it makes the route less useful. Some areas, particularly between Dupont and St Clair are a significant distance from another transit service.

The route is truly peculiar, and I'm confident many of these peculiarities stem from the fact that transit on Avenue Rd predates TTC's gridded network. We will work from the top down. Firstly, unlike the bulk of Avenue Rd traffic, the route does not divert via Oxton back to Avenue, instead staying on Oriole. While Oxton and Avenue have more traffic, Oriole's stop signs slow the route down. The ridership here isn't high anyways, so the buses have to stop at stop signs yet not pick up passengers.

This is the only route that crosses Bloor but does not connect to a Line 2 subway station. Passengers from Line 2 who wish to reach this route either must switch at St George and take Line 1 one station to Museum, or exit at Bay and find the exit that brings you out towards Avenue (read: long walk). It's quite odd that this has never existed. I guess detouring passengers to a station is a pain, but that also brings me to my next point.

Why does the 5 go south of Bloor? Ridership around Queens Park is never high, and the 94 Wellesley does it more frequently anyways. While the connection to Queens' Park is nice, and does not force a transfer for passengers heading to College, it never did make much sense. Even less sensible is the 5B to Gerrard. Having taking it, everyone gets off at Gerrard: one stop south of College. The loop around Sick Kids is slow. With the 5 on a tight schedule anyways, this almost forces the route to be late. If they must maintain service to Queens Park, the 5B should be eliminated. I still personally think they should ditch service south of Bloor in favour of routing the route through the St George Station bus terminal, but it probably won't happen. (Mind you, if this was to happen, the 5 could probably run the route in 30 minutes with one bus on a tight schedule. If this is how they bring back late evening service, by all means).

The Future

One of the big transit projects in the city right now is Line 5 Crosstown. The 5 won't benefit from this line though, as the new station is at Avenue and Eglinton, and not Oriole and Eglinton. If the route is diverted via Oxton, it could service the station directly. Otherwise, passengers must travel east to Eglinton Station and back west, or transfer to the 34/61 for a stop. Inconvenient. I also don't think combining the 5 with the 61 Avenue Rd North is smart: the route will be crazy unreliable and demand north of Eglinton is far higher than south of it.

With the highest density pockets being situated around St Clair (Heath is one set of lights north) and its frequent transit service and quick trip to the subway, I'm not sure this route will every have high ridership. While it serves neighbourhoods that are otherwise transit-starved, they are higher-income and are probably unlikely to use the bus. Obviously, TTC does not want to provide an extra bus on this route if the ridership is low, so they should probably rethink the routing as a whole to provide better service overall.

Edit (Nov. 9/20): I noticed on the map that the Toronto Coach Terminal is marked near Elm and Elizabeth. Not only is this for only the 5B and its limited hours, but the location of the stops in the loop make this a difficult transfer. I probably could count the number of people who have ever done this transfer on one hand.