What’s going on subway surfers, we’re back on the surface today taking a look around some
of Toronto’s abandoned busways. While Toronto has relatively few dedicated transit roadways
compared to other major Canadian cities, we were able to find three that no longer see service.
We visited each of these roadways, and today, we’ll explore their history
and what they look like today. I’m Zach with Vanishing Underground, and let’s take a look.
The first bus roadway on our list is located at the northeast corner of Dufferin Street and
Finch Avenue West, in North York. This short 80 metre busway originally opened around 1989,
and connected to the existing high-occupancy vehicle lanes along Dufferin Street.
This turning lane allowed buses to bypass left turn queues from Dufferin onto Finch,
allowing buses to remain in the HOV lanes through the intersection.
Originally, this busway was serviced by buses on the 106A York University Express
and 118 Finch via Allen, which serviced the busway after leaving Wilson Station.
Around the opening of the subway extension to the present day Sheppard West Station in 1996,
the 118 was eliminated, and the 106A was renumbered to the 106E.
The 106E was rebranded three years later in 1999 as the new 196 York University Express,
which continued to service the busway on northbound trips to York University,
transitioning to the York University Rocket in 2001.
This service continued until September 2004, when the 196 routing was revised to travel
along Sheppard and Keele instead, bypassing the bus roadway at Dufferin and Finch.
The busway remained in place and usable until 2009, when the sidewalks on both Dufferin and
Finch were extended over the busway, making way for a new bus stop closer to the intersection.
At that time, service on the 196 was once again revised to service the stops at Dufferin and Finch,
before continuing west onto the newly opened York University busway. Today,
although the busway is no longer usable by buses, parts of the roadway remain intact.
The second bus roadway on our list is the western York University busway, located west of Keele
Street in North York. Running almost 950 metres between Murray Ross Parkway and York Blvd on
the eastern edge of the York University campus, this busway originally opened in September 2009.
The 50 kilometre per hour roadway is separated from vehicle traffic,
with only a single at-grade roadway crossing controlled by transit signals.
Transit signals also existed at the south end of the busway, allowing buses priority at the Murray
Ross intersection. The busway was originally serviced only by the 196 York University Rocket,
which ran northbound along the busway before noon, and southbound after noon, with a new stop at the
southern end on Murray Ross. One month later in October 2009, the new route 41E Keele Express also
began running along the busway, servicing limited stops between York University and Keele Station
during rush hours. Service along the roadway continued until December 2017, when the opening of
the parallel Spadina Subway Extension rendered the busway redundant, with stations within 250
metres of both ends of the roadway. Today, the north end of the busway has been repurposed as
a general vehicle roadway, running between York Blvd and Fine Arts Road. South of this however,
the roadway remains abandoned, with transit signals still remaining in place.
The final roadway on our list is the Pioneer Village Busway, located east of Jane Street
in Vaughan. This roadway runs 400 metres in the eastbound direction only, starting 250 metres east
of Jane Street, and running into the York Region Transit terminal at Pioneer Village Station.
The roadway opened in December 2017 along with the rest of the Pioneer Village Station,
and serviced YRT buses on the 20 Jane route. This allowed buses to bypass the left turn at
Jane and Steeles, and saved almost three minutes on trips into the subway station
as a result. This roadway only saw service for two months however, as customer complaints about
the removal of the Jane and Steeles stop forced YRT to return service in March 2018.
Today, this roadway remains unused by buses, however as it remains in place,
future service on this roadway could be offered to help speed up bus travel times in the area.
Thanks for watching! We hope you enjoyed this video, and learned about some of Toronto’s
abandoned bus roadways. If you know of any other transit roadways that are no longer serviced,
feel free to leave them in the comments below, and we’ll be sure to check them out for a part 2
of this video. As always, feel free to leave a like and a comment if you want to see more,
and as for us here, we’ll be Vanishing Underground, until the next one.