The Way We Were: the slow build of the Toronto public transit system

TorontoSun.com
Oct. 28, 2017
Mike Filey

Seems as if every second news release out of City Hall has to do with more notifications and updates on how local officials are trying to improve traffic congestion in and around the city by implementing such things as streetcar priorities on the downtown section of King St. and more strict enforcing of “No Stopping” restrictions on main streets during rush hours.

In addition, after years of inaction, both the city and Metrolinx are trying their best to implement improvements to public transit (SmartTrack, an extension of Line 2 into Scarborough ) while the TTC will open the six station 8.6 km extension of its Line 1 (Yonge-University-Spadina) into the City of Vaughan on Dec. 17.

Historically, ongoing improvements to public transit in this city have not always been easy.

Perhaps I should say never been easy, except perhaps for a period of time during and after the end of the Second World War when a rapid transit line (subway) under Yonge St. was deemed by the weary travelling public and city officials alike as an absolute necessity. Suggested in the early 1900s, construction got underway in Sept. 1949 with the Union Station to Eglinton stretch of the Yonge subway opening five years later.

In fact, it was as a result of ongoing difficulties faced by the city to improve a less-than-acceptable transportation system, one that had for a total of 30 years been under the control of the privately-owned Toronto Railway Company (TRC), that a municipally controlled system to be known as the Toronto Transportation (after 1954 Transit) Commission was finally legislated into being by the province.

The new TTC took over the planning and operation of the public transit system in Toronto effective Sept. 1, 1921.

An example of how the city was impeded in its attempts to improve ways for its citizens to get around town was a decision made early in the 20th century by the highest courts in far away England. That decision upheld demands by officials of the privately-owned TRC that the company did not have to extend its streetcar service outside the boundaries of the city as those limits existed in 1891, the year the TRC charter was granted.

Without convenient and affordable ways to get to and from work, and the amenities offered by the city, this verdict was to seriously affect the growth of the city.

There was only one thing the city could do in order provide the necessary transportation into these suburban areas and that was to start its own streetcar system. Known as the Toronto Civic Railways, this municipally controlled entity created five separate lines, Gerrard, St. Clair, Danforth, Bloor West and Lansdowne — each of which had a two-cent fare and served different outer reaches of the city.

In 1921, these lines were folded into the newly created and municipally controlled TTC.