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Toronto Transit Commission bus system

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Toronto Transit Commission bus system

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) uses buses and other vehicles for public transportation. In 2018, the TTC bus system had 159 bus routes carrying over 264 million riders over 6,686 kilometres (4,154 mi) of routes with buses travelling 143 million kilometres (89 million mi) in the year. As of 2021, the TTC has 192 bus routes in operation, including 28 night bus routes. In 2024, the system had a ridership of 389,129,000, or about 1,198,300 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2025.

Bus routes extend throughout the city and are integrated with the subway system and the streetcar system, with free transfers among the three systems. Many subway stations are equipped with bus terminals, and a few with streetcar terminals, located within a fare paid area.

As of 2021, the bus system has about 2,100 buses. Bus propulsion includes diesel, diesel-electric hybrid, battery-electric and gasoline. Four bus lengths are used: regular buses 12 metres (40 ft) long, articulated buses 18 metres (60 ft) long and minibuses either 8 metres (26 ft) or 6 metres (20 ft) long. All buses are fully accessible with low floors and, except for minibuses, all are equipped with bicycle racks.

Bus service in Toronto began in 1849, when the first public transport system in Toronto, the Williams Omnibus Bus Line, was launched. The service began with a fleet of six horse-drawn stagecoaches. After ten years, the use of streetcars were introduced in the city as the Toronto Street Railway (TSR) was established in 1861. After a year of competition between the two companies, the TSR had surpassed Williams Omnibus Line in ridership.

Until 1921, several private and publicly owned transport systems were established and ended up being merged into one another or abandoned. Electric streetcars were widely used in Toronto and surrounding settlements during the new century. After the establishment of the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) (predecessor of the Toronto Transit Commission (also having the acronym of TTC) until 1954), streetcar routes were taken over from predecessors in 1921. It ran bus routes by using motor buses for the first time in the city. The TTC also experimented the use of trolley buses from 1922 to 1925, operating a line on Merton Avenue [sic] and Mount Pleasant Road. Gray Coach, an intercity bus line by the TTC, began operation in 1927. As the coach service increased in ridership, the TTC built the Toronto Coach Terminal. By 1933, the TTC introduced the local bus and streetcar stop design, a white pole with a red band on the top and bottom. Between 1930 and 1948, the city replaced various TTC-operated radial railway routes extending to surrounding municipalities with bus routes.

On 1 January 1954, the TTC became the sole public transit operator in the newly formed Metropolitan Toronto. Thus, the TTC took over some private bus operations that existed within the Metro area. These included:

Between 1947 and 1993, the TTC operated a trolley bus system on medium ridership routes. In 1947, the TTC created four trolley bus routes (Lansdowne, Ossington, Annette, and Weston Road) in the west end that replaced streetcar routes. These routes were based at the Lansdowne garage. About 1954, a separate trolley bus division was created at the old Eglinton garage (adjacent to Eglinton station) to serve routes on Yonge Street, Avenue Road and Mount Pleasant Road north of Eglinton Avenue. When the Yonge–University subway was extended to York Mills station, the Yonge trolley bus line was closed and its buses were reassigned to serve Bay Street. In the early 1970s, the trolley bus fleet was rebuilt. The TTC leased some trolley buses from Edmonton, which was phasing out its fleet. The last trolley buses ran in 1993 on the Bay and Annette routes. Rather than replacing the aging trolley bus infrastructure, the TTC decided to use CNG buses to replace the trolley bus fleet.

In January 1960, the General Motors "New Look" buses, informally called "fishbowls", went into service. As earlier New Looks were retired they in turn would be replaced by newer versions of the New look model, with the result that the model would serve Toronto for over 50 years.

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