TTC Challenge: Riding every single bus route in one day.

I was riding the bus on my way to a party when I turned to Sara and exclaimed: “Wouldn’t it be cool to ride every single TTC bus route in one day?”.

So I took it upon my self to start planning just such a route.

Some ground rules.

1. The trip must be continuous and if possible with no backtracking.
2. The following routes will be excluded:
1. 4xx Series Routes (Community Routes)
2. 14x Series Routes (Downtown Express)
3. 3xx Series Routes (All Night/Blue Line Routes)
4. The 1S Yonge Subway Shuttle
5. Additional services on the route (route numbers ending in a letter, like “A”,’B”, etc..) are treated the same as its parent route (route number with no letter suffix).
3. Entire trip must be completed in 24 hours starting at 00:00 Saturday morning to 23:59 the same day.
4. Utilization of streetcar and subway to transfer to another bus route is optional.

There are approx. 181 routes, which includes the three subway lines and 11 streetcar lines. Doing this challenge on a Saturday brings the total down to 167. The following routes will not be operating on Saturday:

• 117 – ALNESS
• 139 – FINCH – DON MILLS
• 141 – DOWNTOWN/MT PLEASANT EXPRESS
• 142 – DOWNTOWN/AVENUE RD EXPRESS
• 143 – DOWNTOWN/BEACH EXPRESS
• 144 – DOWNTOWN/DON VALLEY EXPRESS
• 145 – DOWNTOWN/HUMBER BAY EXPRESS
• 162 – LAWRENCE-DONWAY
• 1S – YONGE SUBWAY SHUTTLE
• 224 – VICTORIA PARK NORTH
• 33 – FOREST HILL
• 502 – DOWNTOWNER
• 503 – KINGSTON RD
• 508 – LAKE SHORE RD

So I’m really only going to be missing out on 5 routes by doing this challenge on a Saturday (117,139,162,224,33) as the remainder of the routes are already excluded by my rules.

Green: Saturday routes. Red: Additional weekday routes

So I currently have two problems to solve. First: how can I prove that I have travelled on all the routes? Second: Coming up with a route and schedule to follow will be difficult considering all the routing engines out there are meant to find the most optimal route.

Figuring out the solution to my second problem is easy: Just write the worlds most inefficient routing engine to ensure that I get from point “a” to point “b” using all possible bus routes. I’ll save that for Part Two of my post.

If anyone has any options for my first problem, I’m all ears. Leave a comment below with your suggestions.