Saturday, September 1 is the last day that GO Transit buses operate along the 69 Sutton / Newmarket route.
Starting Sunday, September 2, York Region Transit increases service and extends the route for its 50 Queensway service, so that buses operate between Pefferlaw and Newmarket.
GO Transit will continue to serve passengers traveling further east than Pefferlaw by introducing its new 80 Beaverton / Pefferlaw route, also starting Sunday, September 2. The schedule of the new route will allow passengers to readily transfer between YRT and GO buses at Pefferlaw.
To replace the express portion the former 69 Sutton / Newmarket service, GO is also introducing another new route to serve Keswick residents. Starting Tuesday, September 4, buses operating along the new 67 Keswick / North York route will carry passengers along Woodbine Avenue, Green Lane, Highways 404 and 401 and Yonge Street. The buses link the Glenwoods “Park ‘n’ Ride” commuter lot at Glenwoods and Woodbine Avenues in Keswick with Finch GO Bus Terminal.
GO will post detailed service information about service to Keswick, Pefferlaw and Beaverton on-line this Wednesday, August 15.
Meanwhile, YRT is increasing service along the 50 Queensway route, — a route it just introduced in July — with buses operating seven days a week. Most buses serve the complete route between Sutton and the Newmarket GO Bus Terminal, seven days a week, but several continue to Pefferlaw Mondays to Fridays and two proceed to Pefferlaw Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
Most buses, except those operating early Monday-to-Friday mornings, also serve the Glenwoods Park ‘n’ Ride in Keswick. YRT passengers from Keswick, Jackson’s Point, Sutton and other communities east and north of Keswick can also transfer to buses operating along GO’s new 67 Keswick / North York route at the carpool lot.
Sundays and holidays, starting Sunday, September 2, buses serving the 50 Queensway route drop off or pick up passengers at stops along the route every 85 minutes.
Mondays to Fridays, starting Tuesday, September 4, buses serve the stops every 30 minutes during rush hours, every 57 minutes from about 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. and every 90 minutes after 7 p.m.
Saturdays, starting Saturday, September 7, buses serve the stops every 57 minutes.
You can view the route navigator — a schedule and map — for YRT’s 50 Queensway route here. (.pdf)
For transit history buffs, bus service between Sutton and Newmarket recalls one of the earliest interurban commuter services in the Toronto area.
The entrepreneurial owners of the Metropolitan Railway operated radial cars from just north of the Toronto City limits at Farnham Avenue (near today’s Summerhill Station) to Sutton as early as 1909. The cars — basically regular streetcars converted to inter-city service — operated on tracks along the eastern side of Yonge Street as far north as Armitage (near today’s Mulock Drive), then headed cross-country to eventually run north and south along Newmarket’s Main Street. Beyond Newmarket, the line again headed across the countryside to Keswick, then skirted the shores of Lake Simcoe to Jackson’s Point, before heading south to the village of Sutton.
Today’s Metro Road, stretching between Keswick and Jackson’s Point marks the former radial car line.
Eventually, the TTC operated the service from a terminal off Glen Echo Road — on Yonge Street across from Yonge Boulevard, but in 1930, cut service back to Richmond Hill. The TTC’s subsidiary, Gray Coach Lines eventually took over bus service between Sutton, Newmarket and Toronto, while TTC buses eventually replaced the cars to Richmond Hill, starting October 10, 1948.
GO Transit eventually inherited much of Gray Coach’s Toronto-area services, when it started operating buses in the 1970s, so the end of GO service to Sutton marks the end of a local transit era, indeed.
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