Bridging Gaps in More Ways than One
When the Scarborough Town Centre was opened in 1973, what was then the Borough of Scarborough hoped that the centre would become the core of its new downtown. However, with Metro Council only just voting that the eastern terminus of the Bloor-Danforth subway be extended to Kennedy and Eglinton Avenues, there was still a gap of miles between the end of mass transit and the beginning of Scarborough's downtown dreams. Scarborough officials wanted a further extension of the subway, but the TTC looked at the costs involved and decided that a cheaper project was needed.
At the time, new subway construction was starting to come out of vogue. The 1.6 mile extension from Warden to Kennedy was going to cost at least $41 million. Planners cautioned that most of the areas in Metropolitan Toronto dense enough to service a subway was already being served. However, including the Scarborough Town Centre, there were large areas of Metro which could use rapid transit service -- just not service which had the capacity and the cost of a subway. With the lowest economically feasible passenger load by a subway line being 20000 passengers per peak hour, and the highest feasible passenger load of a streetcar being roughly 5000 passengers per peak hour, what vehicle could address the intermediate capacities that the new areas of the city required from possible rapid transit lines?
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The cover of these two pamphlets illustrate the technology change which took place while the line was under construction. |
The TTC had a good idea of what that vehicle was: a streetcar operating on private right-of-way. The Commission set to work on a proposal to link the Scarborough Town Centre to the end of the subway using an LRT line. The initial line would follow much of the same route as today's Scarborough RT operates, however there were plans for mid-block stations between Lawrence and Eglinton, between Ellesmere and Lawrence, and possibly over Brimley Road as well. There were possible alternative alignments down the centre of Ellesmere Road and along Progress Avenue. The line could easily be extended to serve the community of Malvern, and perhaps even Pickering. the first phase of the 8.2 mile line would cost just $85 million -- roughly 40% of the cost of a full-fledged subway at the time.
The Province Goes High-Tech
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| Visitors to St. Clair Carhouse in 1983 were treated to a look of a mock-up of an ICTS vehicle. Photo by Alan Gryfe. |
The Province of Ontario, however, was looking for something far more high-tech. Back on November 22, 1972, the provincial government announced the development of its own Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS) concept. On May 1, 1973, it awarded a contract to Krauss Maffei A.G. of West Germany to design and build a demonstration system of magnetically levitated trains around the Canadian National Exhibition by 1975. The GO URBAN project went as far as building columns to support an elevated track, and there were plans for a connection to Union Station by 1977. However, the West German government withdrew its support and Krauss-Maffei could not continue with the proposal. The beginnings of the 2.5 mile demonstrator line were scrapped.
While the TTC continued to plan and build its streetcar-based Scarborough LRT line (it was planned that out of the initial order of 196 CLRVs, 22 would be used on the Scarborough line, either individually, or coupled together into MU trains), the Province went it alone in designing the ICTS vehicle. Finally, it came up with a design that offered the following:
- "Steerable-axle trucks for quiet, smooth rides and reduced maintenance
- "Linear induction motors for improved, all-weather-performance without pollution;
- "Computerized train operation for safety, reliability and efficiency."
Source: UTDC promotional literature
The trains no longer levitated over their tracks, but the 'linear induction' motors meant that the trains were pulled along using electromagnets inside the trucks. The province had its vehicle, now where could it be demonstrated? After a while, their eyes fell upon the Scarborough RT. Using their powers of "persuasion", the Province of Ontario in June 1981 convinced the borough of Scarborough and the TTC to change the design of the line, away from streetcars on private right-of-way, and more to the mini-subway that the ICTS technology represented. The province promised that, in changing the design midway through construction, the province would pay for all cost overruns associated with the line. As a result, the Scarborough RT opened two years late. Set to cost only $103 million in 1981, the price rose to $196 million in 1985. The City of Hamilton was also offered the technology, and their line would have opened first, but that city rejected the proposal on December 15, 1981.
The TTC agreed to purchase 24 ICTS vehicles on November 5, 1981 (contract signed May 10, 1982). By this time, the system had been successfully marketed to Vancouver (contract on May 29, 1981) and Detroit (approved August 5, 1981). With three systems under their belt, UTDC commissioned a full-scale mock-up of the car, to be constructed by Disney Display of Toronto. This was installed on a section of guideway track on tracks 7 and 8 of the TTC's St. Clair Carhouse. Other promotional events included a naming contest for the vehicle, announced in October 1981, resulting in the name "RT" being adopted for the Scarborough line.
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ICTS vehicles 3000 and 3001 as seen on the cover of UTDC promotional literature, running down the test track at the Thunder Bay facility. |
'The Most Advanced Urban Transit Technology in the World.'
UTDC rolled out TTC's car 3000 at its Millhaven plant on October 31, 1983. It and car 3001 were operated as a two-car train on UTDC's test track on December 20, 1983. After further tests, cars 3002 and 3003 arrived at the site of Ellesmere station on April 16, 1984. They were officially unloaded onto the rails at 11:30 a.m. after much ceremony, and made a short run under their own power the next day. Further tests were made on the system as more cars arrived to the Ellesmere station site. Finally, on September 28, vehicle deliveries were made to the SRT McCowan carhouse instead of the temporary unloading facilities at Ellesmere station. The last pair of cars to be delivered were 3000 and 3001 themselves, arriving on December 21, 1984.
A further four vehicles were purchased in January 1984 (3024-3027). These were delivered on June 23 and 25, 1986 and placed into service the following month.
Promotion of the Scarborough RT and the ICTS cars continued. Car 3014 was delivered directly by UTDC to the Canadian National Exhibition on August 9, 1983, for public viewing. It was returned to UTDC on September 5 for further testing. Free rides were offered on the northbound track of the operational test section between Kennedy and Lawrence East stations during the months of July and August 1984. A special run for officials occurred on July 5, followed by public rides from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends, from July 8 to August 12, 1984 (on July 7, rides were given for TTC employees and their families). The Scarborough RT opened to considerable fanfare on March 22, 1985. Over 30000 people mobbed the line for free rides. But although the line attracted more people than buses could comfortably serve, it soon ran into some criticism and controversy.
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| The SRT Control Centre at Hillcrest. Shot supplied by Aaron Adel. |
Problems Develop
Some of the problems which cropped up were due to the design changes that occurred halfway through construction. Others were due to teething pains with the equipment. Still more were due to poor design, plain and simple. In September 1986, the TTC went to the Province, asking for $27 million to repair these problems. These included:
- "Between $6 million and $15 million to rebuild the turning loop at Kennedy station, which has been blamed for one 'minor derailment in normal operation' and for extensive wear and tear on wheel and rails.
- "$1.5 million to buy a machine to re-grind worn wheels. So-called 'flat wheels' have been blamed for much of the noise caused by the RT.
- "$500,000 to eliminate wear on the rails that supply power to the RT cars.
- "$840,000 to heat the rails so ice won't form on them during the winter, shutting down the cars.
- "$450,000 to put covers on the power rails, again to prevent icing.
- "$1 million to solve a flaw in the computer system that guides the trains. Trains travelling too slowly or stopped in certain spots on the line lose contact with the computer unless complicated 'reentry' procedures are started.
- "Another $1.5 million to repair other communication problems between the cars and the central computer.
- "$5.9 million for land costs."
Source: Toronto Star - September 24, 1986
By this time, the Scarborough RT was facing mounting criticism from local residents who complained of noise. Much of this was caused by dime-sized flat spots on the wheels created through 'over-efficient braking'. However, it was the turning loop at Kennedy Station which was the greatest concern for the TTC. Originally designed for streetcars, the tight curves of the loop proved too hard for the ICTS vehicles to handle. Within a year of operation, four-car trains had been replaced by two-car trains and 10 km/h speeds replaced by 5 km/h speeds, but the problems continued.
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Kennedy Station before (above) and after (below) renovations. Photos by Brad O'Brien. |
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The problems were only ever solved when the TTC rebuilt Kennedy Station, adding a switch and thus eliminating the need for the turning loop altogether. To effect these changes (which, to their credit, the province did pay for), the Scarborough RT had to be shut down for three months during the summer of 1988. The TTC was also not using the full benefits of the ICTS vehicles, particularly the automatic controls. For safety reasons, drivers remain on these vehicles, increasing the cost to operate the line.
By the end of 1986, the TTC had concluded that the line was too costly to extend to Malvern. Most planners and politicians had now backed away from the ICTS technology and had returned to the 'tried-and-true' subways as the vehicles of choice for new rapid transit construction. This caused some to call for the replacement of the Scarborough RT by streetcar or subway, calling the line a 'white elephant' and a 'transit orphan'. The TTC responded, however, that the costs for converting the line to either technology was excessive. The city was stuck with it, for now. Some politicians suggested that the TTC's reluctance to part with the line was also due to the Province relying on the line as a showcase for future sales of the technology to Bangkok, Ankara and other cities worldwide.
Stable Operation and Expansion Proposals
After the initial teething problems, the line settled down to relatively smooth operation. Although drivers man each train, each train's on-board computer constantly communicates with a central computer at Kennedy Station and a terminal set up at Transit Control at Hillcrest (Davenport and Bathurst). All this ensures a safe following distance in relation to the vehicle ahead. Six stations currently operate on the line, which is mostly above ground or on an elevated guideway.
In the early 1990s, proposals to extend the line into the Malvern community resurfaced. Among the NDP Government's new proposals, the line was to be taken east to Centennial College and north to Sheppard Avenue. The proposal to extend the line along an abandoned railway to Finch and Morningside never resurfaced, as the right-of-way would take the trains too close to residential houses and the TTC planners did not want a repeat of the problems they had with residents at the southern end of the line. As it stood, though, the extension offered improved transit for the Malvern community and the students of Centennial College. However, the proposal was dogged with 'white elephant' criticisms, and problems raising funding for other lines.
In the end, Metropolitan Toronto and the Province of Ontario could only agree to fund two of the four expansion proposals: the Sheppard and Eglinton West Subways. The York University subway extension and the Scarborough RT extension would have to wait for more funding. Then the Conservatives were elected and they shut down construction on the Eglinton West line. Until those funding cuts are reversed, we are unlikely to see any progress on the Scarborough RT extension.
There are a few question marks on the future of the Scarborough RT. It remains an orphan on the TTC system -- an annoying extra transfer for passengers travelling, and the smallest fleet of its type of vehicle on the system. With those vehicles due to reach the end of their natural lifespan in 2008, there has been renewed discussion of possibly scrapping the line. No action has been taken, and it will probably be years before a decision is reached.
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Four car train at McCowan. Photo by George Davidson |
The Future?
In this author's opinion, the Scarborough RT line should have been a high-speed streetcar line from the start. It would have proved to Torontonians that streetcars are a viable alternative to subways on moderate capacity routes, and it could well have started our current phase of rapid-transit development much sooner, instead of having Toronto and the Province argue over which technology to use for what lines.
But that's the past. Should the Scarborough RT be torn down? It probably not prove to be a wise idea. Not only would this cost us money, I think it would be a considerable embarrassment to go back on what we built. And the Scarborough RT is carrying more passengers than most bus routes can handle, even bus routes on private right-of-way.
True, the line is costly, and is going to get more costly once the ICTS cars reach the end of their lifespans. Here might be a suggestion: purchase streetcars, or take the surplus CLRV streetcars, convert them to be usable on the Scarborough line, and run these. By converting the vehicles instead of the track, the TTC saves on the need to tear up the third rail and the linear motor rail, as well as lowering the platform levels and installing overhead wire.
Other Scarborough RT Images
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If the Scarborough RT had been a streetcar line, the Scarborough Centre station would have looked very different. The bus platform would have been on the same level as the LRT platform. |
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Aaron Adel supplied this shot of the interior of an ICTS cab. |
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A four-car train including ICTS vehicles 3002, 3015 and 3014 arrive at Scarborough Centre station. Photo by Calum Tsang. |
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Another train rushes into Scarborough Centre station. Photo by Calum Tsang. |
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A four-car train heads away from Kennedy station, turning down the sharp decline to the at-grade run to Lawrence East. Photo by E. Victor C. | |
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By 1966, the City of Toronto had achieved the goals it had established for itself twenty years earlier when residents approved subway construction. With the opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway from Keele to Woodbine, Toronto had two subways running along two of its major thoroughfares, forming a cross in the centre of the city. As these goals were being realized, however, the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto entered a particularly raucous time in terms of politics, and the Toronto Transit Commission was one of the battlegrounds.
In the 1960s, the Toronto Transit Commission had fallen on hard times. Just ten years earlier, the TTC was paying for its operating costs and capital expenses (including the original Yonge subway) entirely from farebox revenues. However, the costs of serving the rapid low-density growth throughout Metropolitan Toronto and the loss of the TTC's passenger base to the automobile was putting the commission further and further into deficit. The TTC required provincial and municipal subsidy in order to open the Bloor-Danforth subway in 1966.
As the Metro's subsidy to the TTC increased, so too did Metro Council's controls over the TTC's priorities, and in the 1960s, that council was divided on what the TTC's next priorities should be. The City of Toronto councillors favoured the construction of a subway under Queen Street, while the suburbs wanted improved bus services and the elimination of the zone fare system that required suburban residents to pay a higher fare when travelling downtown. The debates in council were particularly loud, and the boroughs of North York and Etobicoke once went so far as to seek a court injunction to have Metro's subsidy of the TTC dropped when Metro Council voted against the two boroughs' preferences.
In order to "maintain an uninterrupted program of subway construction", Metro Chairman Frederick Gardiner discovered that it was politically easier to extend the established subway lines into the suburbs than it was to get Metro Council to agree over the construction of a new line. Extending the established lines was cheaper than building from scratch, and it fulfilled some of the suburban municipalities' demands for improved transit service. For this reason, approval was granted in the early 1960s to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway west to Islington in Etobicoke and east to Warden in Scarborough. As these extensions were being built, attention turned to the northern suburbs.
Although it was politically expedient to extend the Yonge subway into North York, the idea itself had considerable merit. Traffic on Yonge Street north of Eglinton was heavy. Directly to the north of the terminal, the old town of North Toronto surrounded Yonge Street with densities approximating that which surrounded the Yonge line south of Eglinton. And although densities dropped off sharply north of Yonge Boulevard (near the City of Toronto/Borough of North York boundary and old Glen Echo loop), the Borough of North York was growing rapidly, and had hopes of developing its own downtown core near the Yonge/Sheppard intersection.
The first appearance of the North Yonge extension was in the draft Metropolitan Official Plan in 1959 which suggested an extension from Eglinton to Sheppard. The proposal actually took a back seat to plans for a rapid transit line built in conjunction with the Spadina Expressway, but was reenergized by a $20,000 study requested by North York and authorized by Metro Council on March 7, 1961. In 1964, Metro council commissioned a further study by the TTC and the first serious designs started appearing in 1965. On September 16, 1965, the Metro Planning Report recommended that the Yonge extension replace Spadina as the next priority for subway construction. With considerable uncertainty over the alignment of the Spadina Expressway, it would have proven difficult to establish a final route for the corresponding subway early, and keep subway construction going without interruption. Metro Council approved the extension of the Yonge line from Eglinton to Sheppard Avenue on January 25, 1967.
Alignment Proposals
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The platform level of York Mills station. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
The first serious study of the North Yonge extension proposal, published in June 1961, looked at taking the line from Eglinton Avenue all the way to Steeles. That study recommended an alignment east of Yonge Street and crossing the west branch of the Don River in Hogg's Hollow via a low-level bridge. It was recommended that construction take place in two phases, first to Sheppard Avenue in 1970 (by which time it was expected that the Spadina Expressway and its associated subway would be operating) with the Sheppard-Steeles section to be started in 1980. The cost estimate for the 6.42 mile line was set at $100,600,000 in 1961 dollars and suggested stations at Glencairn, Lawrence, Yonge Boulevard (Glen Echo), York Mills, Sheppard, Empress, Finch, Cummer and Steeles.
The TTC study, conducted in 1964, bears closer resemblance to what was actually built. Here, the TTC suggested that money could be saved by eliminating the 'mid-block' stations at Glencairn, Yonge Boulevard and Empress,and paralleling the subway with a bus service for local travel. The report placed the initial terminus at Sheppard Avenue and suggested an alignment paralleling Yonge Street to the west, with a half-mile long, high-level bridge over the Don Valley west branch at Hogg's Hollow, including an elevated York Mills station, a "significant and architectural and engineering achievement". The report did not endorse an extension of the subway to Steeles Avenue, as the sewer and water systems in Markham and Vaughan Townships were inadequate for the development that the subway would stimulate.
At this time, the North Yonge project ran into some controversy. Local ratepayers objected to the loss of as many as 275 homes and to the potential noise disturbance along the route. The proposal for a high level bridge was also attacked by a small group of local residents, fearing damage to their property values (despite the fact that Highway 401 was close by, with multiple bridges over the valley apparently not affecting their property values). As a result of these concerns, a tunnel alignment was chosen directly beneath Yonge Street (with a few exceptions). Although this saved $1.6 million in estimated property acquisition costs, this savings was negated by the challenges of tunnelling under the Don River.
As this was happening, the TTC's financial problems continued. In 1967, Metro council agreed to abolish municipal taxes on rapid transit property, which saved the TTC an additional $1.7 million per year. This money was applied towards the cost of construction. The final plan was approved by the Ontario Municipal Board in 1967 and construction began on October 3, 1968. The cost of the 4.02-mile route was assessed at $79.6 million, with an opening date tentatively set as sometime in 1972.
On October 17, 1969, Metro Council agreed to a further extension of the Yonge subway, from Sheppard to Finch Avenue. The extension was sparked by the presence of the Ontario Hydro right-of-way lands two blocks to the north of Finch Avenue, and the potential placement of large commuter parking lots on these lands. The Ontario Municipal Board approved this extension in 1970 and construction began in 1971, adding $37.5 million to the project. This extension to the North Yonge extension would feature one station at Finch Avenue, despite lobbying from North York that a second station be constructed at Park Home Avenue (the Empress station referred to before, and the site of the proposed North York Civic Centre). Although a level section was designed into the line at this point, where a station could be added, the TTC would refuse the request to build this station until the mid 1980s, when construction began on North York Centre station. Finch station was set to open in 1973. Of the $140,000,000 cost of the extension, $11,000,000 was paid for by the TTC out of its farebox revenues.
Design
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Construction of the Yonge subway immediately north of Eglinton station. Note the trolley bus on Yonge Street. Photo courtesy of the TTC |
The North Yonge extension began at Eglinton station, where cut-and-cover construction was used immediately north of Eglinton station. Here, crossovers lead into a stub-ended tail track installed between the two service tracks for use as train storage and turn-back operation. The tail track itself, and the two running tracks on either side of it, are in tunnels and the tail track is only the second one on the TTC to be dead ended (the other one being immediately south of Osgoode station). The line angles slightly east until it gets beneath Yonge Street and from here, tunnelling was used. Cut-and-cover was used from Limpstone Avenue to Ranleigh to handle the construction of Lawrence station and a scissors crossover to the south of the station.
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The underground Lawrence station bus terminal. Photo by Ted Wickson |
Lawrence station became the first station in Toronto's subway network to feature an underground bus transfer facility. The entrances to this bus tunnel were built to the west of Yonge Street, with one of the entrances replacing a side street's exit onto Lawrence Avenue. Twin tunnels allowed buses to enter both ways at both entrances, eliminating all left turns off Lawrence Avenue. The buses drive on the left in the tunnels, allowing a single central platform to serve all routes. An effective ventilation system prevents the build-up of exhaust fumes and a snow-melting cable prevents icing on the sloped driveways. The entrance to Lawrence Avenue as well as the bus transfer facility are located off the southern end of the subway platform. The northern end of the platform is connected with an unmanned secondary entrance from Bedford Park Avenue.
North of Lawrence station, the line continues in tunnel for almost 4000 feet to Mill Street, at the southern edge of Hogg's Hollow. Hogg's Hollow and the presence of the Don River west branch near the Yonge/Wilson/York Mills intersection provided a number of challenges for the subway designers to overcome. Construction proceeded after TTC engineers temporarily redirected the Don River through a 'box-flume' and drained the surrounding land. Construction here was through the cut-and-cover technique (after the line has angled east of Yonge Street). The walls of the structure had to be made 1.2 metres thick (four feet) while the floors were made 2.4 metres thick (7.2 feet). By comparison, the standard underground station structure's walls are 0.5 metres thick while the floors are 0.6 metres thick. The TTC describes York Mills station as "a concrete island that 'floats' below the Don River West Branch." (Specifically, it is actually the exit off the southern end of the platform that extends beneath the river)
In addition to the main entrance off York Mills Road and Wilson Avenue, located off the north end of the platform, a secondary entrance to Old York Mills Road was installed, connected to the southern end of the subway platform. South of the station, a long siding allows trains to cross from the northbound and southbound tracks, and vice versa, instead of a double crossover. North of York Mills, the line proceeds through 5162 feet of twin tunnel to Johnston Avenue, after which 1249 feet of cut-and-cover take in Sheppard station and a double crossover located to the south of the station. Sheppard has a main exit onto Sheppard Avenue, with a secondary entrance onto Poyntz Avenue.
Tunnel construction from Sheppard to Finch was handled in the traditional cut-and-cover technique to save money. The TTC briefly gave consideration to a double-deck structure (one track over the other) but decided instead to go with the conventional structure of tracks side by side. Over 7000 feet of cut-and-cover construction took the subway north from Harlandale Avenue and included Finch station, a double crossover to the south of the station, and a triple tail track located to the north of the station.
Lawrence was the only one of the North Yonge extension's original four stations to feature a direct transfer between buses and the subway. This was because Lawrence station was the only station of the four to be built within Zone 1 of Metropolitan Toronto's two-zone fare system. With all of the subway considered to be within Zone 1, passengers transferring from buses at York Mills, Sheppard and Finch would have to pay an additional fare in order to continue their ride on the subway or show a Zone 1 transfer, if they had paid with a combination ticket. The zonal fare system may have been abolished by the time the extension opened, but the influence remained.
Both Finch and Sheppard stations had long corridors connecting the subway platforms to the bus terminals and, in the case of Sheppard, secondary exits to the street ran off both sides of these corridors. While Finch station's corridor was opened as a fare-paid zone without much difficulty, Sheppard station's entrances would have to have fare barriers installed should the paid fare area be expanded to cover the bus terminal. So, Sheppard was forced to use paper transfers and kept on doing so until June 16, 2002. Until then, to improve loading times at the busy Sheppard station, temporary fare booths were placed at the entrance to the bus terminal, where passengers could show their transfers and, if necessary, pay their fares, before boarding the connecting buses.
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The long fare control concourse at Finch station, looking south. |
York Mills also required paper transfers to connect between bus and subway until the mid 1990s, when the bus terminal (located at the northeast corner of the Yonge/York Mills intersection) was rebuilt beneath an office tower complex set up on the site. York Mills station also became the site of a GO Transit/Gray Coach bus terminal, serving bus routes running east and west via the 401 as well as an express bus to Pearson Airport. Gray Coach would eventually become Greyhound, and its service to York Mills station evaporated (with the Airport Express disappearing in the year 2000, with the company upset at the TTC's competition with the service).
At Finch station, a new regional terminal was built, providing a connection between the subway and transit agencies operating north on Yonge Street. The station also became the site of a huge commuter parking lot, built onto the Hydro right-of-way, which intercepts thousands of car drivers heading into Toronto, moving them onto the subway and the promise of a 28-minute ride to Union station.
The tile patterns for the station departed from the two-tone trim that had been used on most of the previous subway stations. What became the interim and permanent terminal stations (York Mills and Finch respectively) were covered in a green-blue and grey motif, respectively. Green-blue or grey tiles displaying the station names were mixed with patches of larger blue or grey tiles. The intermediate stations of Lawrence and Sheppard were predominantly yellow, and were accented with red and dark blue ceramic tiles respectively.
Strikes Delay Opening.
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A long way down at Lawrence and a long way up at York Mills. The North Yonge stations featured almost as many escalators as the original Yonge subway. (Above photo by David Cavlovic; photo below by Ted Wickson) |
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The North Yonge extension project was plagued with problems, including lengthy labor strikes, quicksand at Teddington Park Avenue and wet soil conditions in Hogg's Hollow. With the extension months behind schedule, the decision was made to open the line as far as York Mills on March 31, 1973, instead of to Sheppard as had been originally proposed. The remainder of the line would open on March 30, 1974 (the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the original Yonge subway). Even with this measure taken, York Mills and Lawrence had to open with eight planned escalators uninstalled between them, mostly at the proposed secondary entrances. As these stations were the deepest in Toronto's subway system, the TTC decided not to open these secondary entrances until the escalators were installed, which was as late as June.
The public was invited to opening ceremonies at Lawrence and York Mills station on Friday, March 30, 1973 to celebrate the extension of the subway to York Mills. Elaborate ceremonies had marked the subway's entry into Scarborough and Etobicoke in 1968 and it would not do, politically, for North York to receive anything less at this opening. Almost 400 invited guests and officials gathered at Eglinton station around 2:00 p.m. to board a train of 6 H-2 cars (5540-45) with a sign saying "Official Opening - Yonge subway Extension" placed on front. Toronto Mayor David Crombie guided the special train through a banner draped across the tracks at Eglinton station reading "Get Ready - North York, Here Comes the subway". The train proceeded to Lawrence station where it was met by a throng of people, including North York Mayor Mel Lastman, who together with Mayor Crombie activated a symbolic signal to send the train on to York Mills.
Mel Lastman took over the controls at this point and operated the train to York Mills, where speeches were given to another large crowd of people. Among the speakers were Ontario Premier William Davis and the Minister of Transportation and Communications, Gordon Canton. The train departed York Mills with its VIPs at 3:30 p.m. but Lawrence and York Mills stations remained open to the public for the afternoon. The subway opened to normal service at 6:00 a.m. the next day.
Changes Resulting from the Opening
The opening of the Yonge subway to York Mills resulted in the abandonment of trolley coaches on Yonge Street. The 97 Yonge trolley bus line, installed one month before the Yonge subway opened to Eglinton in 1954, had been operating ever since that time, providing local service on Yonge Street from Eglinton to Glen Echo loop. The 59 North Yonge bus, which had replaced the North Yonge Railways interurban line to Richmond Hill in 1948, had run express south of Glen Echo Loop, but now terminated at York Mills. The new Yonge bus route, which maintained the same number as the trolley coach route, was extended north to end at Sheppard Avenue, while a branch opened along Yonge Boulevard, terminating at York Mills station. This replaced the Wilson bus route's operations on Yonge Boulevard. Until 1973, Wilson buses had used Yonge Boulevard to access the terminal facilities at Glen Echo, but now they ran to York Mills Station.
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Glen Echo loop in its heyday, when it was referred to as North Toronto Terminal. Photo courtesy of the TTC. |
With the opening of the subway to York Mills, Glen Echo Loop was declared surplus and abandoned. This loop, on the boundary between the City of Toronto and the Borough of North York, had a long history with the TTC, opening in the early 1920s as the northern terminal of the Yonge streetcar line and the southern terminal of interurbans arriving from the communities north of the city. From 1954 until 1973, it acted as the terminal for the 97 Yonge trolley bus route and a number of other suburban routes. With these suburban routes now using the terminals at York Mills station, there was no reason to maintain the loop. Gray Coach used the facility as its North Toronto terminal until the opening of the subway to Finch. When these buses moved out, the facilities were abandoned, demolished, and the land redeveloped.
When the Yonge subway was extended to Finch Avenue, one year later, the 97 Yonge bus was extended to Steeles Avenue, and the North Yonge bus was cut back to Finch station. It would not be long before the North Yonge operations were taken over by GO Transit and operated out of the new regional terminal constructed at Finch station.
Initially, service on the North Yonge extension was lighter than on the remainder of the Yonge line. During rush hours, every second train turned back at Eglinton station, likely through the use of the tail track at the north end of that station. When the Spadina subway opened in 1978, rush hour operation of the Yonge-University-Spadina line was handled as though there were two separate but overlapping subway lines, with one leg operating from Eglinton to Wilson and the other operating from Finch to St. Clair West station. The Eglinton short turn service officially ended in the early 1980s, but in practice, trains were often turned back at Eglinton Avenue in order to maintain service levels. It was only after the retirement of the Gloucesters that service on the North Yonge extension regularly matched that of the original Yonge line.
Changes Since the Opening
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A GM rebuild inside the new York Mills bus terminal (above - photo by David Cavlovic). Below, the original bus terminal is shown for comparison (photo by Ted Wickson) |
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As was previously mentioned, when the TTC eliminated its two-zone fare structure, efforts were made to create direct transfers between buses and the subway. This was done quickly at Finch station, but it required the construction of a new office complex to spur changes at York Mills station. In 1986, a mid-block station opened between Finch and Sheppard at the site of the long proposed Empress or Park Home station mentioned before, serving the North York Civic Centre and appropriately named North York Centre.
But by far the biggest change to the North Yonge extension is being brought about through construction of the Sheppard subway. Sheppard station is being heavily renovated, with a direct transfer between buses and the subway established, and signage consistent with the Sheppard line installed. Stairwells connecting the Yonge platform with the two side platforms of the Sheppard line station are also being built, along with new exits to serve additional development in the area.
There is no doubting the North Yonge extension's usefulness to Toronto's subway network. For as long as anyone can remember, Yonge Street has been a major street not just for Toronto, but to the communities to the north of the city. The Metropolitan interurban took passengers from North Toronto all the way to the shores of Lake Simcoe, and the North Yonge Railways were a major operation serving the townships of North York, Vaughan, Markham and the town of Richmond Hill until 1948. It was only a matter of time before the Yonge subway pushed into this territory. Today, Finch station is the entry point for thousands of commuters daily, driving or riding in from homes in southern York Region. Plans are on the books to extend the line to Steeles Avenue, either as a prelude to a connection with the Spadina subway at York University, or as a prelude to further extensions up Yonge Street, into York Region itself. Recently, Markham and Richmond Hill have put forward a proposal for a $660 million extension to Highway 407.
The subway extension also gave a significant boost to North York's dreams of building its own downtown core near the Yonge/Sheppard intersection. This allowed a sleepy borough to transform itself into a major urban centre in its own right - a fact the TTC recognized when it agreed to build North York Centre station between Sheppard and Finch, and further enhanced with the opening of the Sheppard subway.
The opening of the Yonge subway from Union station to Eglinton in 1954 was a defining moment for public transportation in the City of Toronto. The extension of the Yonge line to Finch not only doubled the length of the subway up Yonge Street, but reconfirmed the line's importance in Toronto's transportation network.
Other North Yonge Images
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Concourse level of Eglinton station, looking north. The old exit to Yonge St before the opening of the extension to York Mills was located to the right and slightly north of the escalator in the right foreground. |
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The Lawrence station's main entrance. |
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This is a picture of the mezzanine at the north end of York Mills station. The fare collection zone has been renovated to include a new tunnel to a new bus terminal. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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The new bus terminal at York Mills, inside an office tower. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Sheppard station. Mezzanine fare control zone looking towards the stairs and escalators to the subway level. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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A southbound T-1 enters Sheppard Station. Note the new signboard being built above the platform lip. This design is in common with the stations on the Sheppard line. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Sheppard station was designed to handle 30000 passengers daily, and the Sheppard subway connection is designed to improve that. In the meantime, construction hampers the station. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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An out-of-service H5 pulls into the northbound track at Finch from the middle tail track north of the station. |
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The Finch station bus terminal. |
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The walkway between TTC buses and trains at Finch. Notice the token-and-metropass-only entrance t |
Getting Started (See also Early History)
Since the Town of York was founded in 1793, the east-west "Main Street" of what became the City of Toronto has shifted north as the city has grown out from its original boundaries. The main north-south thoroughfare, however, quickly became Yonge Street and has remained Yonge Street ever since. This former dirt highway running from Lake Ontario to Holland Marsh, named after a friend of Governor Simcoe, eventually connected a string of towns and villages to the provincial capital. Pressed against Lake Ontario to the south, the City of Toronto has grown north along this axis since its founding.
It is no surprise that, when the City of Toronto started to come of age, the first subway proposals suggested running trains beneath or near this main thoroughfare. A number of proposals emerged between 1909 and 1912, but the public rejected subways in a plebiscite in 1912, forcing the issue into dormancy for another thirty years.
Toronto continued to grow through the 20s and the 30s, and so did society's love affair with the automobile. Then the Second World War arrived. Although the onset of hostilities put car buying on hold and brought passengers back to the streetcars, the flow of commuters from home to work strained Toronto's road and transit network. The end of hostilities and the repatriated soldiers would mean that development, suppressed after fifteen years of depression and war, would suddenly revive and explode. This prospect convinced many, the TTC among them, that bold action had to be taken to prevent the city from choking on its own traffic.
The TTC formed a Rapid Transit Department and worked on a proposal between 1942 and 1946. Finally, the TTC proposed a "rapid transit subway" beneath Yonge Street running from Eglinton Avenue south to Front Street and then west along Front to Union Station. A Queen streetcar subway would operate to the north of Queen Street from Trinity Park to McCaul, beneath Queen Street from McCaul to Mutual, and then north of Queen Street in an open cut from Mutual to St. Paul. The matter was put to voters on a January 1, 1946, plebiscite and overwhelmingly approved. Toronto City Council approved construction four months later.
The 1946 referendum approved construction on the condition that the federal government could subsidize the project by 20%. The proposed federal funding never materialized. Although the federal Minister of Reconstruction, C.D. Howe, sent a letter on October 3, 1945, promising the TTC financial assistance, the deal fell through when the federal Government and the Province of Ontario failed to agree on a postwar employment program that would support the project. The city proceeded with the subway anyway, scaling down the proposal. The Queen streetcar subway was temporarily forgotten, and what had begun as a two-subway project costing $42.3 million was reduced to a single line costing an estimated $28.9 million plus $3.5 million for rolling stock.
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Curt Frey donated this photograph (possibly by P. Lambert) of the subway construction north of Ellis Portal and Davenport Road. Rosedale station is under construction in the distance. |
Construction began on September 8, 1949 (two years late due to post-war shortages) with the City of Toronto launching work with a ceremony emceed by Monty Hall. Ontario's Lieutenant-Governor Ray Lawson climbed inside a pile driver and pulled the first lever to pound the first "soldier" beam into place. All the local radio stations carried the entire event live. The official party then moved to the Royal York Hotel while the real workers got down to work.
"Cut-and-cover" technique was chosen as the means to build the underground portions of the 7.4 kilometre (4.6 mile) line. This was chosen because it was far less expensive than using a tunnel bore. A large trench was dug into Yonge Street, utilities relocated, and steel cross members welded into place. These steel cross members were then used to support heavy timbers that provided a deck that allowed traffic to return to the street while work proceeded beneath. A total of 1.7 million cubic yards (1.3 million cubic metres) of material were removed and some 14,000 tons (12,700 metric tons) of reinforcing steel and 1.4 million bags of cement were put into place. The material removed was trucked to Ashbridges Bay and was used to create acres of new land out of Lake Ontario.
As construction headed north from Front Street, crews ran into solid rock, three to eight feet in depth, stretching as far north as Queen Street. This required dynamite charges to remove, and blasts occurred twice daily, at noon and 4:30 pm. Most of the subway construction proceeded without incident. The only serious accident to occur was not fatal, but resulted in the area south of Adelaide Street being seriously flooded, to a depth of 20 feet in places. Following a heavy rain on July 24, 1950, a temporary storm sewer gave way and caused the mess.
The use of temporary decking reduced the inevitable traffic disruption caused by cut-and-cover construction. Traffic was interrupted only during the initial excavation before the cut was deep enough to deck over, and then when the decking was finally removed to allow the street to be rebuilt. But streetcar diversions were still necessary. The TTC went so far as to lay down temporary streetcar tracks on such side streets as Alexander, as opposed to longer diversions along the streets which already had tracks in place. Although the track was temporary in nature, and probably built using spare or surplus materials, the TTC still took the time to set these temporary tracks into the streets, instead of laying them on the surface. A number of railfans snapped shots of Witt trains operating on these single tracks through residential neighbourhoods.
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Artist conceptions of College (above) and Wellesley (below) stations. Wellesley station has changed considerably, with a building built above the original bus terminal. |
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The Yonge line was initially to be cut and cover from Front Street up to north of College (Alexander Street), after which the line would jog approximately 150 feet east of Yonge Street and proceed north in an "open cut". The line would be open to the air, although below the general height of land, passing beneath a number of bridges carrying the cross streets. However, this would have required a large number of houses and buildings to be demolished, and the resulting trench might have reduced the nearby property values, it was feared. As a result, it was decided that cut and cover would be continued as far north as Davenport.
The cut-and-cover technique still required the demolition of many homes, although it left developable land behind once tunnel construction was complete. When the subway passed beneath buildings that weren't to be demolished (including areas around Bloor Street, St. Clair and possibly Summerhill stations), great care was taken to support the buildings while work continued beneath. Concrete underpinning was placed under foundations and cellar floors temporarily removed as the excavation continued down for several feet. Concrete "caissons" were then poured to support one end of a steel girder that would support the buildings above, and prevent the roof of the subway tunnel caving in below. Once the subway structure was built, all excavation was backfilled and the buildings got their cellar floors back.
North of Church Street and Davenport Road, the line emerged from tunnel. This is the only tunnel portal on the TTC to bear a sign naming it: Ellis Portal, named after a street in the area that disappeared as a result of the subway construction. From Ellis Portal, the line proceeded north in an open cut to the Canadian Pacific tracks near the former North Toronto station. Here, the line dove underground again to Shaftesbury Avenue, two blocks north. This section was tunnelled beneath the tracks (without the telltale round bore, suggesting that this short section was mined), as the railway would not have appreciated cut-and-cover construction. Emerging in an open cut again, the line continued north to Woodlawn Avenue, then dove underground for St. Clair station and to cross Yonge Street, emerging just north of Lawton. A large tract of land near the Belt Line railway was cleared to make way for Davisville yard. Alexander Muir Memorial Garden, which occupied the site, was moved north to its present location on Yonge Street and St. Edmund's Drive in Lawrence Park. The relocation cost $100,000 and the relocated park reopened on May 28, 1952.
Proceeding north through open cut, the line dove underground again at Berwick. The complex at Eglinton station was built on the site of TTC's Eglinton carhouse. As construction continued, the carhouse was converted into a bus and trolley bus operation, in anticipation of the removal of streetcars from the Yonge streetcar line.
Initially, it was expected that the Yonge subway would be finished in 1953, but the Korean War intervened. The resulting steel shortage dragged the work on until 1954. The final cost of the Yonge subway was tallied at $67 million.
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A Gloucester train led by car number 5029 heads southbound from Rosedale station towards Ellis Portal. Photo donated by Curt Frey. |
Toronto's First Subway Cars
With the construction of the subway well underway, the TTC set about searching for equipment to operate on it. They turned, first of all, to New York and Chicago, two large cities with well-established or developing subway networks. In particular, they seriously considered Chicago's 6000 series PCC rapid transit cars, built by St. Louis Car Company using components salvaged from 4000 series Chicago PCC streetcars. Early drawings of the Yonge subway show trains comprised of cars about as long as PCCs, and in roughly the same colour scheme.
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A Gloucester train heads northbound along the open cut between Davisville and Eglinton stations. Photo donated by Curt Frey. |
As it had found when it tried to purchase new PCCs in the early 1950s, the price tag for PCC-style subway cars was much too high for the TTC's liking, both from Canadian and United States car builders, and the Commission went further afield. They finally settled upon the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company in Gloucester, England, purchasing technology similar to what was being run on the London Underground. The history of these cars are covered in more detail in their own web page.
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North of the Davisville yard lead, two Gloucesters pass each other beneath an overpass between Yonge Street and Duplex Avenue. Photo donated by Curt Frey. |
The first order for Toronto's first subway cars was placed in November 1951, for a total of 104 units. The original contract price was $7,800,000, including spare parts. The first cars arrived in the Port of Montreal in 1953, loaded on flat cars and taken by rail to Hillcrest shops. Further deliveries of Gloucester cars were made directly to Davisville yard via the CN siding that was all that remained of the Belt Line Railway. Cars 5004 and 5005 were the first to travel under their own power, on September 20, 1953. Further trips were made in October of that year to check tunnel clearance.
Canada's First Subway Opens
Ontario Premier Leslie Frost and Toronto Mayor Allan Lamport officially opened the Yonge subway on March 30, 1954. Metro Chairman Frederick Gardiner and TTC Chairman W.C. McBrien were also in attendance. Crowds of people, including politicians from all three levels of government, TTC employees and print, radio and newsreel journalists (Toronto's first television station did not start broadcasting until August of that year) gathered at Davisville station around 11:00 am. to listen to several self-congratulatory speeches. Chairman McBrien's speech called for the immediate commencement of construction on the Queen Street streetcar subway and several other sweeping measures to reduce downtown congestion, including fringe parking lots, one-way streets and the adoption of staggered working hours. In his words, the Yonge Street subway line was "not the final solution of Toronto's traffic problems. It is only the start of combating this monster. Many other (rapid transit) lines will have to be built in the future." The chairman went on to warn that the TTC could not afford to build more subway lines without government assistance, a statement that would be verified in just five years.
Finally, the premier and the mayor together pushed a lever forward, changing a nearby block signal from amber to green. The subway was officially open.
Over six hundred invited guests boarded a train that departed Davisville station for Eglinton at 11:50 am. At 11:56, the train departed Eglinton for Union, arriving at exactly 12:10 pm. "Eglinton to Union in 12 Minutes" the newspaper headlines cried, although the first trip actually took fourteen minutes. Previously, that trip on the Yonge streetcar took 30 minutes, assuming traffic was favourable. A second train carried the overflow of dignitaries directly from Davisville to Union Station, and the party again moved to the Royal York Hotel. At 1:30 pm. the Yonge subway opened for the public. Those who had taken the streetcar to work took the subway home.
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(Above) The end of an era. Witt #2574 and trailer 2897 prepare to depart Eglinton carhouse for Union Station for the last run, ever, of the Yonge streetcar. Photo donated by Curt Frey. |
The Yonge streetcar line, established in 1861, faded from existence between 1:30 pm and two o'clock that afternoon. Earlier that month, the line had been cut back from Toronto's northern city limits to Eglinton Avenue, looping counterclockwise around the traffic office Eglinton carhouse. Soon thereafter, TTC crews worked on installing trolley bus overhead for a new route to run from Eglinton station to the city limits. Now, the last cars dropped off their passengers at Union Station and filed into Harbour Yard at the base of York Street. The last car left Front and York for Eglinton at 1:54 pm., and the very last train, comprised of Witt 2574 and trailer 2897, departed Eglinton for Front Street at 2:30 pm. Signs proclaiming it to be the last train were so large that most of the invited party of UCRS members rode in the trailer, to be able to see out.
For many of the cars, it would be the last time they would operate. The Yonge subway meant the end of service not only for Toronto's premier streetcar line, but also for the Bay streetcar, as the St. Clair services were realigned into the subway.
Starting at 1:30 pm. Dupont streetcars were extended south on Bay Street to the Ferry Docks. The last Bay car was scheduled to leave Lansdowne Loop for the Ferry Docks at 1:29 pm., and the Ferry Docks for "Wychwood" (St. Clair Carhouse) at 2:07 pm. Earlscourt cars operating from St. Clair and Lansdowne to the Yonge subway replaced Bay cars on Avenue Road and St. Clair. Rogers Road streetcars were also extended east along St. Clair to the subway during rush hours. This change also resulted in the abandonment of the Bathurst tripper service along Front Street. Bathurst cars now ran exclusively from St. Clair Avenue to Adelaide and east on Adelaide to loop via Victoria, Richmond and Church. Other tripper services which fell included the Church Tripper and the downtown version of the Danforth tripper. These were replaced by extra streetcars operating on the Bloor route, and a revised Danforth tripper that ran from Luttrell to Bedford Loop, making connections with the Yonge subway at Bloor station. The Carlton tripper also ceased operation.
The Church streetcar operated for almost two months after the opening, but was bussed on May 16, 1954 to reduce the TTC's electrical demands. The higher than expected electrical demand from the Yonge subway was blamed for a number of "brown-outs" in the area. Tracks were soon taken up or covered over on Front Street from York to Sherbourne.
A large number of Witts were rendered surplus as a result of these changes. The TTC retired every Witt trailer and all remaining two-man Peter Witt cars. Many were taken from Harbour Yard directly to the scrap heap.
A lot of time had to be spent fixing Yonge Street in the aftermath of the subway opening and the streetcar abandonment. The rehabilitation of Toronto's main thoroughfare continued throughout 1954, with tracks either being removed or paved over. A Yonge Street reopening ceremony was scheduled for October 20, 1954, but then Hurricane Hazel intervened. Although technically only a tropical depression by the time it hit Toronto, this disaster still caused over $24 million in property damage and killed more than eighty Torontonians. The reopening ceremony was quickly reorganized into a fund-raising event to assist the storm victims.
The Yonge subway, however, was an overnight success. Riders flocked to try out the line, and commuters continued to use it long after the novelty wore off. Two-car Gloucester trains that were supposed to operate during periods of low ridership became very uncommon. Four-car trains became the minimum, and six-car trains standard in service. Eventually, ridership increased to the point where eight-car Gloucester trains operated from Monday through Saturday from the early morning to the early evening. Likewise, when the longer Montreal Locomotive Works and Hawker Siddeley cars arrived on the subway, Sunday service occasionally saw two-car Hawker trains at first, although four-car trains became the minimum and, after the 1990s, six-car trains became standard during all hours of operation.
The Design of the Yonge Subway.
The initial design of the Yonge subway stations were functional, with the walls covered in Vitrolite tiles in a simple design using a different pair of colours for each station. The eight underground stations with outside platforms (King, Queen, Dundas, College, Wellesley, Bloor, Summerhill and St. Clair) were divided lengthwise by a single line of painted, but otherwise bare, steel girders between the tracks, supporting the roof. Advertising panels were mounted on these girders. When the Vitrolite tiles were replaced, the ad panels were moved to the platform walls, reducing the cost and also allowing them to be seen from the trains.
The two centre-platform stations, Eglinton and Union, each have two lines of roof supports along the platforms (except where stairwell walls serve this purpose). These pillars contain steel girders but were finished in the same style as the walls. The two open-air stations, Rosedale and Davisville, have no overall roof and therefore no supports between the tracks.
Scissors crossovers were installed at the entrance to Union station, just north of King station, just south of College station, just north of Bloor station, just south of St. Clair station and at the entrance of Eglinton station. Because of the sharp curve between King station (under Yonge Street) and Union station (under Front), the two crossover tracks at Union had to be at a gentler angle than normal. Because of this angle, normal frogs would not work at the centre of the diamond, where the corresponding rails of the two tracks cross. Instead, a switch diamond was installed. This avoided the problem by using two pairs of switchpoints, which could be set for one track or the other. It is almost like two ordinary switches placed point-to-point, except that the tracks are aligned to allow only two through routes.
Davisville station was given a three-track design, which is still unique on the system, due to its location adjacent to the Davisville Yard. Approaching the station from either direction, a single crossover leads from the northbound to the southbound track, and then the southbound track splits into two tracks, with the southbound platform between them. The turnouts to the yard are off the west track, which can therefore be conveniently used for trains entering or leaving service, as well as an emergency diversion in case a train fails at this station on either of the other two tracks.
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Artist conceptions of King (above) and Queen (below) stations. Simple to start with, with lots of stuff added later
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By today's standards, the fare booth area and street entrances of most stations were cramped. At Union station, entrances from each side of Front Street led to a single fare-collection area at mezzanine level. King was similar, but its southbound platform also had an unstaffed secondary exit, with one-way flow enforced not by an escalator rather than a turnstile; this exit, leading directly to the corner of Melinda Street is still in use today.
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Queen station today (Main entrance, northbound side), having seen many renovations and even a retiling in the intervening years. Photos by David Cavlovic. |
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The main entrance to Queen station, directly under the intersection of Yonge and Queen, had separate platform-level fare barriers on the northbound and southbound sides, but the two sides were connected within the fare-paid area by a pair of under-track passages. These were located on either side of the roughed-in station area for the Queen streetcar-subway line, and would have become the connecting passages between the two lines had the latter been built. Queen station also had a second staffed entrance serving Albert and Shuter Streets, with fare collection at mezzanine level, and a direct escalator exit from the southbound platform, as at King. The latter exit led directly into the basement level of the old Eaton's store, and was closed when the new store (which later became Sears) in the Eaton Centre replaced it. Underground passages also connected the main entrance not only to Eaton's but also to the Simpson's (now The Bay) and Woolworth's stores, setting a pattern followed by many later stations.
Dundas station was probably placed at a very shallow depth due to the expensive rock blasting mentioned previously; it was, and still remains, the only station with separate fare-paid zones for each platform. The turnstiles were along the edge of the platforms, with stairs leading directly to the street.
College station had a single mezzanine fare-collection area, similar to Union and King.
At Wellesley, unlike the five stations above, the subway was offset from the street. This allowed a small bus terminal to be built over the tracks, giving a convenient layout where passengers could change between bus and subway within the fare-paid zone rather than using a paper transfer. The fare barrier was at street level within the bus terminal building, so no mezzanine level was required.
The most noteworthy feature of Bloor station was its pair of special "transferway" streetcar platforms in the middle of Bloor Street, where it passed over the subway just east of Yonge. Similar in some respects to the streetcar safety islands that exist today on many streetcar routes, the Yonge subway transferway was wider, sheltered, and had stairs leading directly to the subway platforms. Cars were not allowed into the transferway. The platforms were long enough to house two PCC MU trains, and during rush hours separate sections of each platform were used to load and unload passengers. In contrast to this direct connection, passengers not transferring from streetcars had to take a passage leading south from Bloor Street to reach the small mezzanine level with the station's fare barrier. The Bloor transferway continued to be used until 1966, when the first phase of the Bloor-Danforth subway opened; the south curb line of Bloor Street still shows the deviation where the street was widened for traffic to pass by it.
Rosedale station, like Wellesley, had its fare barrier at street-level just inside the entrance; the subway platforms here were in an open cut, so the entrance and the bus terminal were offset to one side, with stairs leading down to the platforms. Summerhill's entrance layout was similar to Wellesley's, but without the bus terminal since no bus routes served the station. At St. Clair, the main entrance featured a street-level fare barrier, but this was connected via a mezzanine level both to the subway platforms and the surface-route terminal; a second staffed entrance at the other end of the mezzanine connected to Pleasant Boulevard. Davisville had a similar layout to Rosedale.
Of all the stations, only Eglinton, where numerous connections with suburban buses were made, offered extensive facilities to handle large crowds. A large mezzanine level within the fare-paid area connected the stairs and escalator from the subway platform with stairs to two street entrances and to nine street-level bus platforms; an additional bus platform with multiple stops was outside the paid area. Eglinton station also boasted a set of washrooms, the only ones on the subway until the Bloor line opened in 1966.
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(above) Two artists renderings show the original Bloor station, its relationship to Bloor Street, and the Bloor streetcar transferway. Note the curve in the southern sidewalk to accommodate the platform in the middle of the street.
(below) This photograph, by P. Lambert, donated by Curt Frey, shows the transferway in action. |
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Initially, paper transfers were required to change between subway and surface vehicles and all stations from College to Union. All other stations (except Summerhill, with no connecting routes) featured bus, trolley bus, or streetcar platforms within the subway's fare-paid zone, allowing riders to transfer without any fare check. Particularly noteworthy was Bloor station, whose streetcar platforms were located in a special "transferway" in the middle of Bloor Street, just east of Yonge. Similar in some respects to the streetcar safety islands that exist today on many streetcar routes, the Yonge subway transferway was wider, sheltered and had stairs leading directly to the subway platforms. The transferway was long enough to house two PCC MU trains and, during rush hours, separate sections of each platform were used to load and unload passengers. The platform continued to be used until 1966, when the first phase of the Bloor subway opened. Evidence of this transferway can still be seen today in the curve in the south side of the street, just east of Yonge Street. The sidewalk narrowed to make room for the platforms and for the lanes of traffic. Cars were not allowed into the transferway.
Changes Since Opening
The oldest segment of Toronto's subway network, the original Yonge subway has seen the most change. As Toronto's downtown grew and redeveloped, use of the line increased. Many mezzanines were expanded, escalators were added, and some stations got additional, completely new entrances (King, Bloor, St. Clair, Davisville and Eglinton). Eglinton station has had multiple changes to its entrances and mezzanine configuration, most recently including a complete replacement of its bus terminal. As Union Station became the hub of a large and growing commuter train network known as GO Transit, the mezzanine level at the TTC's Union station was expanded and reconfigured to handle the additional loads, and even to allow people not taking the TTC to cross through it to the Royal Bank Centre. A skyscraper boom in the sixties created a sprawling complex of shopping concourses beneath the downtown streets known unofficially as the "Underground City" (officially known as PATH since 1990). Built to connect office workers to the subway, PATH has also been responsible for many of the changes seen at Union, King and Queen stations. The construction of the Toronto Eaton Centre at Dundas and Yonge significantly altered that station, with several entrances built into the mall, and an enclosed connection between the platforms (albeit outside the fare-paid zone) finally built.
Redevelopment altered Wellesley and Davisville stations, with office buildings being built over what had previously been open-air bus terminals. In 1958, the TTC opened its new headquarters over top of the Davisville station bus terminal, and a shopping and office complex over top of Eglinton station continues to net the TTC hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent payments each year.
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A train heads northbound towards St. Clair station. Woodlawn Avenue is above the tunnel portal. This open cut was decked over for development in the early 1970s. Photo by R. Hill; donated by Rob Hutch. |
The cut and cover section between Summerhill and St. Clair stations were decked over in sections in the late 1960s and the early 1970s (click here for more information). The new tunnel retains the sloped sides of the original open cut. The original four road overbridges, unevenly spaced, can still be seen inside the newer tunnel between Summerhill and St. Clair stations. These road bridges are located at Summerhill, Woodlawn, Jackes, and Rosehill Avenues. These road bridges, like the rest on the original Yonge line, used to be identified by a black on white sign, and many are still viewable, though in various stages of decay. Several other overbridges between Bloor and Eglinton stations still have clearly visible and legible street signs, but some have completely rusted to illegibility (including Price) while others are missing or in one case half-fallen (Hillsdale, seen from northbound train as of January 2001).
Little-used scissors crossovers at King, College (officially known as Gerrard crossover) and St. Clair (officially known as Rosehill crossover) disappeared in May 1984, June 1985 and March 1986 respectively during track rehabilitation. This change was made to reduce maintenance costs. The King and College sites can still be spotted by the gaps in the centre tunnel wall. St. Clair's crossing was located immediately south of the Pleasant Boulevard portal, and thus had no centre wall in which to leave a gap behind.
In 1959, construction began extending the Yonge subway west and north from Union station, up University Avenue to St. George and Bloor as the first phase of the University-Bloor-Danforth project. As the new terminus at St. George was also approached on a sharp curve, the switch diamond from Union was moved there when the University subway opened in 1963; the scissors at Union was replaced by a single crossover. The University subway proved to be underused, and within a year of the opening of the Bloor-Danforth extensions to Islington and Warden through to the opening of the Spadina subway (January 28, 1978), it was closed after 9:45 pm and all day on Sundays. During these closures, the single crossover meant that all trains had to reverse on a single track at Union, the one normally used for University-bound trains.
The opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway in 1966 brought considerable changes to Bloor station. The abandonment of streetcars on Bloor Street meant the abandonment of the Bloor Street transferway and new stairwells were built between the Bloor station platforms and Yonge station on the Bloor line. Thus, Bloor station became the only station on the system to lose fare-paid transfer facilities between subway and surface routes.
In 1969, construction began on the North Yonge extension, resulting in a further expansion of the Eglinton station concourse. For the first years of operation, Eglinton station remained a short-turn terminal for every second rush-hour train. In 1980, this short-turn was officially terminated, although unscheduled short-turns continued until the slower Gloucester cars were removed from the system.
In the late 1980s, Union Station was renovated again, this time to install a connection between the subway and the terminus of the Harbourfront LRT line. When the new streetcar line opened in 1990, Union Station offered direct transfers with a connecting route for the first time since its opening, 36 years earlier.
As the subway got older, renovations changed the look of the old stations as well. The Vitrolite that had been used for the station tiles had long been unavailable in mass production. Broken tiles had to be replaced by pieces of metal repainted to match. One by one, the stations were retiled, often in new colours and often with the new tiles mounted directly over the originals. Rosedale station lost its green-blue tiling and its black trim to a dark green tiling and yellow lettering (no trim) even though the station had been declared "historic" by the Toronto Historical Society. Of the Yonge subway's twelve original stations, only Eglinton retains many of its original tiles, and thus something like its original look.
Proposals for More Changes
As the subway expanded and ridership increased, so too did the TTC's reliance on the original Yonge subway. By the early 1980s, some parts of the line were handling as many as 40,000 passengers per direction per hour, beyond the design capacity of the subway. The University subway had been built to effectively double the capacity of the Yonge subway south of Bloor, but it too was nearing capacity. At this time, the TTC brought forward a number of plans to try and relieve pressure on the line.
The first plan to emerge in the early 1980s was a proposal to construct a Downtown Relief line from Pape station on the Bloor-Danforth subway to Union Station. Commuters from Scarborough would transfer to this line for a faster trip downtown, thus bypassing the overcrowded Bloor-Yonge interchange. The new line was estimated to cost in the neighbourhood of $500 million. When the Network 2011 proposal was released in 1985, the study predicted that a Downtown Relief Line could be open by 1998. Stalling from Queen's Park delayed the approval of the plan, and support for the Downtown Relief Line, never very strong to begin with, diminished rapidly.
An equally ambitious proposal in the wake of the Downtown Relief Line's failure was a complete redesign of the Bloor-Yonge interchange. A TTC report submitted in the late 1989 suggested widening Bloor station, expanding the platforms, pulling the tracks further apart and installing a centre platform between them. Subway trains entering the station would open both sets of doors, and passengers would enter the train from one of the side platforms and leave by the centre platform. If built, these changes would have allowed the TTC to decrease the intervals between trains on the Yonge subway from two minutes, ten seconds to just ninety seconds.
The proposal was estimated to cost $153 million and would have resulted in Bloor station being closed for up to six months. The plan was controversial, to say the least, and the TTC quickly backed down from it. They did take the opportunity of a major building construction over the site to significantly expand the platforms and add new street entrances to the station complex, however. The work included rebuilding the roof over more than half of the station's length. The rebuilt roof no longer requires centre posts; it is supported by columns set well back on the platforms, on the part that will be retained in place if the middle platform is ever added.
To try and relieve the crush of passengers on the Yonge subway cheaply and immediately, the TTC also installed direct-downtown express buses, looping downtown via Richmond and Adelaide Streets and running to Don Mills and Eglinton, Mount Pleasant and Eglinton, and Avenue Road and Wilson. It was hoped that the prospect of a direct ride downtown would lure some passengers away from the trains. It worked enough for the TTC to keep the services. The decline in ridership experienced in the early 1990s reduced the need for more express buses as well as the calls for even more extreme measures. The downtown express buses would have faded from existence, but the TTC's decision to charge premium fares made them cost-effective enough to be kept.
The Future of the Yonge Subway
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Richard Hooles submitted these plans for the rebuilding of Eglinton station's bus terminal |
As the Yonge subway continues to age, changes will continue to be made. The TTC have now released plans to completely rebuild Eglinton station's bus terminal and concourse. The proposal will increase the efficiency of surface-to-subway connections and will also install a large parking garage beneath the facility.
The TTC also desperately wants to expand the capacity of Union station. The station is already under pressure from increasing development in the area, and the presence of two major sports venues causes significant headaches in the form of spike traffic. A proposal to install a second platform on the south side of the station, as well as significantly expand the mezzanine area of the station, is now in the design phase. The proposal was kickstarted during Toronto's campaign to host 2008 Olympic games. However, even without the games, Union Station is now the fourth busiest station on the network, and a second platform is already vital.
The Greater Toronto Area continues to grow north along the Yonge street axis. GO Transit feeds thousands of passengers into the Yonge subway daily at Union, Finch and York Mills stations. The Sheppard subway is expected to increase demand on the line in 2002. As the downtown core booms, so too will the line's ridership. The Yonge subway as it stands has little extra capacity to offer, and the TTC may have to take extraordinary measures in the future to ensure that the Yonge subway is able to continue to meet the needs of Toronto's commuters.
Next see the University subway.
Other Yonge Subway Images
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An artist's rendering of Crescent station (until 1953, the planned name for today's Rosedale station), showing subway platforms and bus terminal. The layout has not changed significantly from this plan. |
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Curt Frey donated this photograph of a two-car Gloucester train running southbound through Rosedale station in the early days of the Yonge subway. |
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Artist's rendition of a cross-section of St. Clair station, looking west. |
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An artist's rendition of the Pleasant Boulevard entrance to St. Clair station, including the bus terminal platform and roadway. Like Wellesley station, this entrance has been built over, this time with an office building and garage. |
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An artist's rendition of the original entrance to Davisville Station, before the TTC headquarters was built on top of it. |
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This is a shot taken from the old Belt Line railway right-of-way near Lascalles Boulevard. It is looking northeast towards the Yonge-Davisville intersection. Here, you can see the Davisville Yard and the William McBrien headquarters for the TTC. Photo by George Davidson. |
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An artist's rendition of the Eglinton station terminal, showing bus bays. |
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An artist's rendition of a cross-section of Eglinton station, showing platforms, mezzanine level and entrance to the bus bays. |
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The bus bay concourse passenger waiting area of Eglinton station, looking west. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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From the stairs to platform #10 at Eglinton station one also exits to Eglinton, just east of Duplex Avenue. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
Yonge Subway Line(Original)
The University Subway
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the beginning of the tunnelled section of the University Line at Osgoode station. |
Text by James Bow; photos courtesy TTC, except where noted.
After the Yonge Subway opened in 1954, taking passengers from Eglinton to Union in twelve minutes, the attention of City of Toronto and TTC planners turned to the construction of an east-west line. The original plan, approved by city voters in a referendum on January 1, 1946, would have had the TTC build a streetcar-subway along Queen Street. By 1954, the City of Toronto was more interested in a full-fledged subway. The TTC, however, had other plans.
The TTC noticed that traffic on Bloor Street was increasing more rapidly than traffic on Queen Street. Already, Bloor Streetcars were starting to carry more passengers than Queen cars, and the number of automobiles on the road hampered the TTC’s ability to provide reliable service. So, the TTC pushed for the east-west line to go under Bloor Street. They had to work through resistance from City Hall at first. A number of alternate plans were put forward, including a U-shaped midtown route, nicknamed the ‘Flying U’ that served Bloor Street in the suburbs, and then switched to Queen Street as the line came downtown. However, the TTC’s vision won out, and the Bloor-Danforth line became the next priority.
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A diagram of the University line |
The Bloor-Danforth line itself was to be built in two phases. The first section of the subway would be built from St. George Street east along Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue to Greenwood. The second phase would extend the line west to Keele Street, and move the eastern terminus east two stops to Woodbine Avenue. The second phase would open in 1969. Before all this was to be built, however, a connection was to be forged between the Bloor-Danforth Subway and the Yonge line. The first segment of this new construction would extend the Yonge line from Union Station north on University Avenue to join the future Bloor-Danforth line at St. George. In the TTC’s words, “The $45 million University line will give quick and convenient access to the commercial, financial, governmental and institutional organizations in the immediate area. Also, it will relieve rush-hour congestion at Bloor Station on the Yonge Subway by doubling the rapid transit capacity to and from the downtown area”.
At the time, ridership on the Yonge subway was starting to exceed expectations. Eight-car Gloucester trains which had been the exception became the norm. The TTC realized that suburban commuters using the Bloor line would have to transfer trains in order to continue trips downtown, and they realized that the Yonge subway south of Bloor would bear the brunt of that traffic if measures weren’t taken to alleviate it.
Funding from the provincial government enabled the Keele-to-Woodbine portion of the Bloor-Danforth subway to be built in a single phase instead of over two phases, but the University Subway still had to be built first. Construction began in November 16, 1959, when Ontario Prime Minister Leslie Frost officially broke ground for the 2.38 mile line, which opened on February 28, 1963.
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The tunnelled St. Patrick station. Photo by Mike. |
The University line featured six stations (seven, if you include the abandoned Lower Bay station) and some departures from the subway construction methods used on the Yonge line. To minimize the disruption of rumbling trains after construction (not to mention the disruption wrought by cut and cover techniques of subway construction) to the hospitals and to the Ontario legislative buildings, the section between Osgoode and Museum stations was tunnelled.
In addition to the tunneled section, the TTC set up a 162 foot long test section of tunnel, near the Bloor/Avenue Road intersection, using the Icos-Veder method of construction (also known as the “Milan” method). This method involved digging trenches where the walls of a tunnel would go and then fill them with concrete and rebar. The tunnel’s roof would be concrete poured directly on the soil. Once dry, all the workers would have to do is escavate the earth from between the walls under the roof. The result was a tunnel not unlike what was seen using the cut and cover technique (albeit with a rougher look), and it had the added advantage of disturbing the neighbourhood less. The TTC found the method to be more expensive, however, and it was used nowhere else on the system.
The other departure for the University line was the use of significant landmarks (or, in the case of St. Andrew and St. Patrick, possibly former ward names) to name all but one of the local subway stations. The exception was St. George, named after a local street, as had been the case for most of the stations on the Yonge line.
To avoid confusion as to where the stations on the University line were located, the TTC established a convention that “alternative” named stations be accompanied by the actual cross street name as a subtitle. Lower Bay was the reverse of this convention, with the neighbourhood name of “Yorkville” appearing beneath the main station name of “Bay”. After the University line opened, however, the practice has not been followed again.
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This photograph, taken by the TTC before the University Subway opened, shows St. George Station’s upper platform in its original configuration. |
The University line also offered a connection with the Bloor-Danforth line when the new route opened in 1966. At first, the TTC experimented with interlining, where every second Bloor train was routed downtown and on to Eglinton, via a wye with the University subway. To accommodate this wye, St. George and Bay Stations were built with two levels. On one, University trains either went to one of the two termini of the Bloor-Danforth subway, while the other platform took passengers downtown. On the other level, Bloor trains operated to either the eastern or western terminals. For St. George Station, the University platforms were located on the upper level, while Bloor trains passed underneath. For Bay Station, this arrangement was reversed. Six months after the Bloor-Danforth line opened, the interlining was dropped on a six month trial basis. After this trial, the TTC surveyed its passengers as to their preferred arrangement. No clear winner emerged, so the TTC decided to stick with the non-interlined arrangement, and the Lower Bay platforms were closed to the public. The connecting track between Museum Station on the University line and Yonge Station on the Bloor Line remain in place for equipment moves between the two lines, however, as do connection tracks between upper St. George and the Bloor line just east of Spadina Station.
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Just about to enter southbound Museum station. Note the connecting track from lower Bay station. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
The arrangement of the platforms at St. George and Bay Station were not the most efficient in allowing for interlining, suggesting that perhaps the TTC was not serious in its support of the idea. Whereas passengers heading eastbound at St. George, westbound at Bay or downtown at both stations had one platform each dedicated to their destinations, those wishing to go westbound from St. George or eastbound from Bay had two platforms to choose from — on different levels (this was alleviated by the use of automatic arrows pointing passengers to the correct platform for the next train). Other subway systems have arranged their transfer stations more efficiently. Montreal, for instance, twists its tracks on a line so that one is on top of the other. When these tracks enter the station, across the platforms are the two tracks from the other line, twisted the same way. For a number of passengers, this means that they need not go up or down a flight of stairs in order to transfer between lines. If the TTC had gone this route, trains to Keele at St. George and Woodbine at Bay would be on the same level, and passengers wouldn’t have to wait between levels in order to be sure to catch the first train to their destination. The twisted arrangement, however, would not allow trains to terminate easily at St. George station, although with the Spadina line in place, one would have a transfer facility that’s as efficient as Lionel-Groux in Montreal.
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Queen’s Park Station Mezzanine, before opening day. |
Initially, ridership on the University Subway was lighter than expected. Most passengers found the Yonge Subway to be a more direct route, offering downtown stations closer to their destinations. Trains were often short-turned at Union Station, and finally, on June 23, 1969, the TTC discontinued service entirely after 9:45 p.m. on Mondays to Saturdays and all day on Sundays and holidays. The Avenue Road bus operated a 5B branch between Eglinton and Front Street whenever the University Subway did not operate, with side-jaunts to St. George station to capture passengers from the Bloor Subway. This arrangement remained in place until 1978, when the Spadina Subway opened for service.
Of the University Subway’s six (or seven) stations, only one offered a connections to surface transit routes within the fare-paid area, allowing passengers to transfer without use of a paper transfer. St. George operated a modest two-bay terminal that saw buses, trolley buses and streetcars. Located on what used to be Bedford Loop, this terminal was used by Bloor and Danforth Tripper streetcars, giving crosstown riders a direct connection with the subway and bypassing the congested Yonge line. At the same time, the Annette trolley bus was also extended east (replacing a portion of the Dupont streetcar, which ceased operations when the University line opened) to terminate at the station. Streetcar service ended when the Bloor-Danforth subway opened, but trolley bus service continued until 1993. With only one bus route serving the station, one of the two bus bays is usually mothballed and kept off-limits to the public.
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East side exit of Osgoode station. looking from north side to south side. Osgoode and St. Andrew Station have been thoroughly renovated since their opening. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
Most of the stations on the University line have been modified since they opened. Osgoode and St. Andrew Stations’ tiles had to be replaced when they weathered badly just a few years after opening. The glass tiles the TTC had used were not easy to replace, so the TTC opted for a completely different look. The station signs on the walls of Queen’s Park and St. Patrick stations were originally painted on, but the paint also deteriorated, and the TTC replaced these signs with metal signs currently in use (the original painted signs can be seen when the metal signs are temporarily taken down). Queens Park and St. Patrick also had passages connecting the two platforms that did not access a stairway to street level, and the TTC decided to block these off from the public and use them as storage areas. New entrances have also been added to Queens Park and St. Andrew Stations, from the street to the existing mezzanines. The station that has been modified the least appears to be Museum, which saw public space at platform level converted into a storage area through the use of ‘prison bars’ instead of new walls.
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Queen’s Park station platform. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
The University Subway was ahead of its time, in many ways. Conceived as a relief-line to the Yonge Subway, it did not start performing that function until the early 1980s, when congestion on the Yonge Subway started to get severe. Toronto’s downtown also started to grow to the west, and other developments as the Skydome and the new Theatre District on King Street have boosted ridership. University can also be called a ‘forgotten subway’, due to its short length when compared to the Yonge line, and the distinctiveness of the architecture of the Spadina line. However, the University Subway was still an important stepping stone enroute to the opening of the crosstown line.
A History of Subways on Bloor and Queen Streets
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A T-1 barrels into the eastbound platform at Coxwell station. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
Text by James Bow.
See Also: What if the Queen Subway was Built Instead of the Bloor-Danforth.
The Initial Proposals (See also Early History)
As the city of Toronto developed, it took on the shape of an upside-down “T” on the shores of Lake Ontario. Development spread north along Yonge Street and east and west along the Lake. Yonge Street was, almost from the beginning, the city’s north-south axis. The city’s prominent east-west street was less clearly defined throughout Toronto’s history but, by the 1940s, Queen Street arguably held that title.
Although the subway proposals of 1909-1912 mentioned a number of alignments for a possible east-west route, the north-south line was generally given more attention. By the 1940s, however, the city had grown and the country was at war. The number of commuters was straining the capacity of a number of routes, and it became clear that only a subway would provide an effective long-term solution to the problem. Again, the initial proposals focused heaviliy on a north-south line, but the plans for an east-west companion were much more detailed.
In 1942, the TTC submitted a subway plan calling for two streetcar subways, one running beneath Yonge and Bay Streets from St. Clair to Union Station and another operating beneath Queen and Adelaide Streets from Strachan to Logan. The Yonge/Bay streetcar subway would channel streetcars from the northern suburbs downtown, while the Queen/Adelaide subway would take streetcars off King and Queen streets for a ride unobstructed by automobiles. The City was not satisfied with this plan, however, and sent it back to the TTC for reconsideration.
In 1945, the TTC came up with a new plan, this time with a “rapid transit subway” beneath Yonge Street and a more modest streetcar subway along Queen. The Queen streetcar subway would operate to the north of Queen Street from Trinity Park to McCaul, then beneath Queen Street from McCaul to Mutual, and then north of Queen Street in an open cut from Mutual to St. Paul. The line would become elevated from St. Paul to Boulton and would parallel the CN railway tracks to Gerrard and Carlaw. A ramp at Boulton Avenue would branch off the subway and take Queen and Kingston Road cars back to Queen Street.
There would have been 13 stations on the Queen line: Trinity Park, Bathurst, Spadina, Grange, York, City Hall (referring to what is today Old City Hall), Yonge, Church, Sherbourne, Parliament, Don, Broadview, and Logan. Queen cars would use the length of the subway as part of their run from Neville to Humber, while other routes (including Dundas, Kingston Road, Bloor and Danforth trippers) would be diverted into the subway for trips downtown. Two underground loops would turn these cars around, with cars from the west turning at Church Street and cars from the east turning at Simcoe.
This proposal was submitted to Toronto ratepayers for a vote on January 1, 1946 and approved by a wide margin. The proposal was conditional on a 20% subsidy of costs by the federal government, but a subsidy deal fell through when Ottawa and the province of Ontario could not agree on the details for a post-war employment program. Toronto and the TTC responded to this by scaling back the subway project, temporarily shelving the Queen line and focusing on the Yonge line instead. Construction began on the Yonge subway in 1949 with a streetcar-subway station roughed in beneath Queen station on the Yonge line. After the Yonge subway opened in 1954, attention turned to the east-west line, but things had changed since 1946.
For one thing, streetcars had fallen out of favour as a rapid transit medium, and the City of Toronto’s plans for a Queen subway now called for heavy-rail equipment to be used. For another, the TTC was having second thoughts about locating the cross-town line along Queen.
Queen versus Bloor
Politically, the City of Toronto wanted a subway on Queen Street. Queen was the main east-west street running through the downtown, and on that basis the east-west subway had to go there. However, the TTC’s figures showed that ridership on the Bloor streetcar line was increasing rapidly, to almost 9000 passengers per direction per hour. Automobile traffic on Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue was increasing as well, pushing the multiple-unit PCCs to their limits, just as Yonge’s Witt trailer trains had been when the decision had been made to build the first subway beneath them.
Until the 1940s, the city had been developing along major streetcar routes, producing the upside-down “T” pattern of development. When the Second World War ended, this changed. The automobile enabled the growth of low-density developments far from the streetcar lines. The upside-down “T” disappeared (although Toronto’s city limits did not change) as Toronto sprawled east, west and north into the townships of Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough. For Etobicoke residents, both Bloor and Queen Streets (the latter accessed via Lakeshore Boulevard and, after 1958, the Queensway) were major thoroughfares connecting commuters to downtown Toronto. The Gardiner Expressway, opened in 1957, continued this pull of commuters to the south of Bloor Street.
To the east, however, the shoreline of Lake Ontario angled northeast, cutting Queen Street off from any eastward expansion. Kingston Road, paralleling the shoreline, channelled eastern commuters west for most of the century, but Danforth Road soon became a more convenient access route as Scarborough’s suburbs built north. Danforth Road cut through the centre of Scarborough, and channelled commuters southwest onto Danforth Avenue and Bloor Street. By the mid-1950s, several bus routes were connecting with Bloor Streetcars at Luttrell Loop, compared to just one meeting the Kingston Road streetcar at Bingham Loop.
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The ‘Flying-U’ Proposal. |
So, the TTC felt it had no choice but to build the cross-town subway along the Bloor-Danforth corridor. But this change in plan was controversial. The City of Toronto, backed by the towns of Long Branch, New Toronto and Mimico, continued to push for a Queen subway. At one point, the city proposed a ‘flying U’ compromise, running from Keele along Bloor, Grace, Queen, Pape, and Danforth Avenue to Woodbine. Dundas would have had four subway stops in total had this route been built, and the TTC were hard pressed to name them. From west to east, these stations would have been named ‘Vincent’ (now Dundas West), Bellwoods Park, Dundas and Dagmar.
Eventually the TTC proposal won out. Although I have not been able to find out how the TTC convinced the City of Toronto to accept its proposal, I speculate that the fact that the TTC was still financially independent helped. The Yonge subway had been built almost entirely from farebox revenues, and it looked as though the cross-town subway was going to be built from farebox revenues as well. Since the TTC did not require subsidy from Metropolitan Toronto, they may have been shielded from political pressure. This situation did not remain, however, as declining ridership and the cost of serving the low-density suburbs pushed the TTC into deficit, but even as the City was providing subsidy for the construction of the University subway, there was no pressure to move the Bloor line back onto Queen.
Approval, Design and Construction
Metro Council approved the Bloor subway project at its January 1958 meeting. This was followed by approval from the Ontario Municipal Board in September 1958 and a final approval of financing arrangements by Metro council in April 1959. On November 16, 1959, Leslie Frost, the Prime Minister of Ontario, operated a power shovel to signal the start of construction on the University line, the first phase of the project. The total cost of construction, including the University subway, was estimated to be $200 million.
The Bloor-Danforth subway was to be built in three phases. The first, the University line, would extend the Yonge subway north on University Avenue, beneath Queen’s Park, past the Royal Ontario Museum before it curved west to St. George Street. Phase two would open the Bloor-Danforth line from St. George east to Greenwood. Phase three, to be opened in 1969, would move the termini two stations east to Woodbine and eight stations west to Keele.
The Bloor-Danforth subway was to be connected to the University subway through a large double-track wye starting north of Museum station, with tracks branching east and west. The western branch would pass through the upper level of the double-decked St. George station while the eastern branch would pass through the lower deck of Bay station. These tracks would then connect with the Bloor tracks west of St. George and east of Bay.
It is not known, when the plan was to build the Bloor-Danforth subway in three phases, whether the St. George to Greenwood section would have initially operated as a separate line, or interlined with the Yonge and University subways. The province made this question academic in the early 1960s when they advanced the TTC $60 million to complete the Keele to Woodbine section of the Bloor-Danforth subway in one go.
During the early part of construction, maps show certain stations bearing different names than what exist today. Initially, Dundas West station was known as Vincent, Spadina station was referred to as Walmer and the station at Bay Street was listed as Yorkville. In the case of Dundas West, ‘Vincent’ was an attempt to pick a name that didn’t duplicate Dundas station on the Yonge line. The custom of using “alternative” names to avoid duplication of station names was begun with the University subway. Vincent is the name of a short street near the station that hosted Vincent Loop, the western terminus for most King cars. ‘Vincent’ was eventually used, but to name the yard between Dundas West and Keele stations (which people commonly refer to as ‘Keele Yard’).
Yorkville was named after the neighbourhood instead of the street - in the end, “Bay” appeared on the station walls, with “Yorkville” used as a subtitle. There was a convention that “alternative” named stations like Queen’s Park, St. Patrick, Osgoode and St. Andrew on the University subway, be accompanied by the actual cross street name as a subtitle. Yorkville was the reverse of this convention and, after it, the practice has not been done again. The initial naming of Spadina as Walmer suggests that a design change went into the station soon after construction on the line began. When the Bloor subway opened, Spadina station had no exits onto Walmer Road. It finally got one on January 24, 2001, when a new exit opened off of the western end of the Bloor-Danforth platform after two years of construction.
The Bloor subway passes beneath the Yonge line, at the north end of Bloor station, and a new Yonge station was built to connect with it. The transferway between the Bloor streetcar and the Yonge subway was abandoned and demolished. Today, the only evidence that a transferway existed here is the curve in the sidewalk on Bloor Street East. The Bloor-Yonge station complex would prove to be the primary transfer point between the two subway lines, handling as many as a million commuters daily.
Metropolitan Toronto purchased and expropriated more than 800 properties, about 70% of which were residential. The TTC was responsible for clearing the right of way. The Bloor subway was built over eight miles, almost entirely north of Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue. In most places west of Main Street, the line is offset just far enough to run behind the buildings on the north side of Bloor or Danforth; often there is a chain of parking lots over the subway (as there also is over the Yonge subway between College and Bloor stations). To this day, all stations on the line are north of Bloor or Danforth except Kipling and Sherbourne, which are south of Bloor; the only area where the line actually runs under Bloor is the Prince Edward Viaduct.
Cut and cover construction was used throughout the route, with the exception of 2250 feet of tunnel between Yonge and Sherbourne stations, 1842 feet of tunnel between Lansdowne and Dundas West and the surface/elevated construction around Keele. There is also a short section (under 100 feet) of what looks like bored tunnel just west of Ossington station. Here, the two tracks don’t spread apart as normal for twin tubes, so there is a common straight centre wall in the otherwise round tunnels on that short section.
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Above is a TTC photo of the Rosedale Valley bridge under construction. Below, David Cavlovic takes us inside. |
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Bridges on the line include a 532-foot covered concrete bridge spanning the Rosedale Ravine, east of Sherbourne station. The subway also rises onto an embankment (with bridges over cross streets and a long bridge over the TTC parking lot west of Keele Station) to cross a dip in the land past Dundas West station. As a result of this, Keele station became Toronto’s first elevated subway station with the street entrance and transfer facilities built below the subway platforms.
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(Above) Prince Edward Viaduct being modified to accept subways.
(Below) At the east end of the Viaduct, cut-and-cover construction that was used for this short section of tunnel and Broadview station. Photos by the TTC. |
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In terms of crossing the Don Valley, the TTC was fortunate to benefit from the foresight of a designer from the 1910s. Crossing the wide and deep Don Valley would have required an expensive bridge if it weren’t for Edmund Burke (architect) and Thomas Taylor (construction engineer) and their Prince Edward Viaduct. Spurred by the buzz around subway development in 1911, consulting engineers Jacob and Davies recommended to Burke and Thomas that a subway might run along Bloor Street in the future and the viaduct should have a provision for such a line. As a result, Thomas designed into the framework of his Bloor Street Bridge over the Don Valley a lower deck that could be used by subway trains crossing the valley. Underground streetcars were probably envisioned, but fortunately the designers did not stint on clearance. The Viaduct comprises of three parts: two bridges and an embankment. On the west, the Rosedale section is 565 feet long and takes Bloor Street over the Rosedale Ravine. In the middle, the Bloor section travels along an embankment until it reaches the Don Valley, which is spanned by the 1620 foot Don section. The lower deck was available on both the Rosedale section and the Don section.
This proved a godsend to the TTC, as the only major change required (other than laying down reinforced concrete on the deck to house the trackbed) was at the west end of the Viaduct. Bloor Street’s bridge over the Rosedale Ravine, which is also part of the Viaduct, was also built with provision for a lower deck but this was unsuitable for the subway’s alignment. The sharp curve in Bloor Street at Parliament just west of the bridge would have been hard for subway cars to negotiate. As a result, the subway diverged from Bloor at Castle Frank, through Castle Frank station and onto the TTC’s own bridge over the Rosedale Ravine. This paled in comparison to what it would have cost to build a completely new bridge across the Don River for the subway.
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Vincent Yard, between Keele and Dundas West. Photo by George Davidson |
To reduce noise, the TTC sprayed the lower portion of the tunnel walls and the exposed surfaces under the edge of platforms with asbestos fibre - a move they regretted years later when the problems of asbestos became widely known. In total, 9.5 route miles of track were laid, in addition to almost ten track miles within Greenwood and Vincent yards. These two yards were installed on the line to provide additional storage capacity, now that the size of the TTC’s subway fleet had exceeded Davisville’s ability to handle. Greenwood also featured a new maintenance centre that allowed repairs to subway trains to occur on the system itself, instead of requiring special shipments to Hillcrest Shops.
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| Greenwood Yard under construction. Photo by the TTC. |
Scissors crossovers were placed to the east of Keele and to the west of Woodbine, as well as to the east of St. George. The St. George scissors crossover may be a leftover of the plan to open the Bloor-Danforth subway initially from St. George to Greenwood, but no scissors crossover exists at Greenwood. Between Greenwood and Donlands, a grade-separated double track wye was built to connect the line with Greenwood yards. There were also centre tracks placed between Christie and Ossington and between Broadview and Chester.
Additional subway entrances were provided at Keele, Lansdowne, Ossington, Bathurst, Bay and Sherbourne stations. These unattended secondary entrances featured full height automatic turnstiles which allowed access to the subway by adult token only. At the time, similar entrances were in place at Eglinton and St. George stations. Provisions were made for these entrances to be manned at certain times of the day. Initially only Keele and Bathurst’s secondary entrances were manned, the former during rush hours and the latter on afternoons from Monday through Saturday.
The Bloor-Danforth Subway Opens
The opening of the Bloor-Danforth subway doubled the number of stations on the Toronto subway network and resulted in the largest cutback of Toronto’s streetcar network since the Yonge line opened in 1954. The Bloor streetcar was reduced to a Bloor shuttle running from Keele station to Jane Loop and a Danforth shuttle running from Woodbine station to meet Scarborough buses at Luttrell Loop. The Harbord streetcar vanished, with different parts of its route replaced by extensions of existing services (such as the Dundas streetcar and the new Pape bus), or not replaced at all (such as the Dovercourt and Davenport segments). The Coxwell and Parliament streetcars were bussed, and the Bathurst streetcar was merged with Fort with services on Adelaide and on Bathurst north of Bloor abandoned. All of this was part of the TTC’s streetcar abandonment policy, which foresaw the replacement of all streetcar service by subways or buses by 1980.
The Bloor and Danforth streetcar shuttles had to be routed into Keele and Woodbine stations through new tracks installed before the subway opened. At Woodbine, Danforth streetcars turned right at a new T-intersection at Danforth and Cedarvale, turning into the station’s bus platforms at Strathmore Boulevard. The remains of these tracks can still be seen just outside of the Woodbine bus terminal.
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Keele’s unique ‘speed ramp’ connecting the temporary streetcar loop to the eastbound subway platform, now walled up. Photo courtesy of the TTC. |
At Keele, the temporary streetcar loop was separate from the station’s bus loop; a retirement home now occupies the site. Streetcar passengers entered the station just inside the fare barrier of the Indian Grove / Indian Road / car park automatic entrance; from here a moving ramp led to one of the subway platforms. According to the March 1966 UCRS Newsletter, this conveyor belt was 4 feet wide and 100 feet long, rising at a 12-degree angle for 20 feet and capable of carrying 7200 persons per hour at a speed of 90 feet per minute. Woodbine passengers had no such sidewalk, transferring from the temporary streetcar platform to the mezzanine level of the station via a special tunnel.
It is interesting that much was made of this new moving sidewalk, with the TTC promoting it in their flyers, but it was shut down and walled off when the subway was extended to Islington in 1968. You can spot the newer sections of wall, although they use the same tiles as the existing walls, because the curved tiles that had been at the top and sides of the openings remain. On what is now the eastbound platform, look at the wall about 100 feet from its eastern end; down below, by the base of the stairs connecting the platform to the secondary exit, look at the wall beside the base of the stairs. At this latter location, you will also see the locked door that leads to the former rampway. The moving sidewalk mechanism remains inside, untouched since 1968. Similarly, Woodbine’s tunnel was bricked off and is currently used for storage and staff lounge space.
For the first six months of operation, the Bloor-Danforth subway was integrated with trains on the Yonge-University line. Every second train departing from Eglinton ran through to Keele and then to Woodbine, or from Woodbine and then to Keele, before returning to Eglinton via the wye north of Museum station. This meant that passengers could ride downtown or cross-town from any station on the Bloor-Danforth subway without changing trains, and that passengers on the Yonge-University line could ride direct to any station on the Bloor-Danforth subway. To handle this, the TTC installed automatic destination signs at all stations and installed an Identra coil on each train.
An Identra coil is a metal loop about a foot across sticking out of the front right upper corner of the train. It features a small key-operated control with about 10 positions, adjusting the position of a magnet. In the approaches of all stations, black plates almost 2 feet square are set up to detect the coil as it passes. This sends a signal to the destination indicator boxes in the station ahead. The boxes sound a gong roughly ten seconds before the train arrives and the destination of the next train is displayed. The original Solari boxes used flipping-leaf technology (with a big leaf for the whole word, not independent letters) and showed KEELE, WOODBINE, or DOWNTOWN (not EGLINTON) for normal trains. The first boxes were installed at all southbound Yonge platforms, all northbound University platforms from Union to Museum, all eastbound platforms from Keele to Spadina, and all westbound platforms from Woodbine to Yonge. On the southbound Yonge platforms from Eglinton to Dundas, these boxes had the words “VIA DOWNTOWN” beneath the display.
As early as March 1966, however, some were expressing concern about the feasibility of interlining. Indeed, the UCRS Newsletter reported that “under actual service conditions it may result in unavoidable slowdowns at the junction of the two lines; a breakdown or delay on one route will affect the entire system. Further, high operating costs may outweigh the advantages of the direct ride to downtown.”
A further problem existed at Bay and St. George, due to the design of these stations. To accommodate the wye, St. George and Bay stations were built with two levels. On one, outbound University trains went to one of the two termini of the Bloor-Danforth subway, while the other platform hosted inbound University trains taking passengers downtown. On the other level of the stations, Bloor trains operated eastbound and westbound to either the Keele or Woodbine terminals. For St. George station, the University platforms were located on the upper level, while Bloor trains passed underneath. For Bay station, this arrangement was reversed. Passengers heading east from St. George, west from Bay, or downtown from either station had dedicated platforms for their respective destinations.
But westbound passengers at St. George, or eastbound ones at Bay, might find the next train on either of two platforms — on different levels. This inefficient arrangement suggests that the TTC was not wholly behind interlining. Other subway systems, Montreal for instance, have twisted their tunnels to bring one track of a line over the other. When these double-decked tracks enter the transfer station, across the platforms are the double-decked tracks from the other line, reducing the need to go up or down a level in order to transfer to the other line. If the TTC had gone this route, trains to Keele at St. George and Woodbine at Bay would be on the same level, and passengers wouldn’t have to wait between levels in order to be sure to catch the first train to their destination. With St. George as a terminus, however, the twisted arrangement would be the inefficient one: in this case, it would be passengers going downtown who would have to choose between two levels.
After six months, the TTC ran the Bloor-Danforth and Yonge-University subways separately for a trial period, and ran a survey to establish which type of operation was more convenient for passengers. A small number benefitted more from segregated operation than integrated operation, although it was all the same to the overwhelming majority of riders. Deciding that segregated lines were easier to operate, the TTC decided to keep the two lines separate. Yonge-University trains terminated at the upper level of St. George station (until the Spadina subway opened in 1978), and the lower level of Bay was closed.
Thus the Gloucesters were permanently confined to the Yonge-University subway, after operating on the Bloor-Danforth line for its first six months. They would only appear during movements to Greenwood Yard when Davisville was too full to handle them. They were a very rare sight indeed on the Bloor line after Wilson Yard opened in 1978. The removal of the slower Gloucesters from scheduled service on the Bloor-Danforth line allowed the TTC to speed up service (as the newer cars could travel at higher speeds than the Gloucesters) and reduce running times. As a result, the TTC ended up with an extra 58 cars and were able to operate the extensions of the Bloor-Danforth subway without expanding the subway fleet. This speedup ended in 1981 when the TTC ordered all trains operated at “low rate” in order to save money.
Even though integrated operation was dropped, the TTC continued to make use of its destination indicator boxes. These were set to show KEELE, WOODBINE and ST. GEORGE at first but later proved useful for alerting passengers to short turning trains when the Yonge line was extended beyond Eglinton, and the Spadina line was added to the system. Boxes had to be moved to other platforms or new ones added when the services were put into place. Eventually new boxes using flip-dot or LED technology were also added, especially when the Spadina line was built. Recently, however, these boxes have fallen into disuse.
Extending Eastward and Westward
The decision to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway west to Islington and east to Warden was made while work was still going on the first section of the Bloor-Danforth line. Now that the goals set down by the 1946 referendum on subway construction were being largely achieved, Metro Council was deeply divided over what the next steps should be to improve public transit throughout the city. The City of Toronto councillors returned to the proposal for a subway under Queen Street, while the suburban councillors demanded improved bus services to their areas and the elimination of the zone fare system instead.
In order to “maintain an uninterrupted program of subway construction”, Metro Chairman Frederick Gardiner discovered that it was not only sensible, but politically easier to extend the established subway lines into the suburbs than it was to get Metro Council to agree on the location of a new line. Extending the established lines was cheaper than building from scratch, and it fulfilled some of the suburban municipalities’ demands for improved transit service.
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A map from 1963 shows a different plan for the westward extension of the Bloor-Danforth subway. Note the stations at ‘Montgomery’ and ‘Prince Edward’ |
The Province of Ontario assisted with a grant of an additional $10 million to Metro Toronto in 1965. Work on the extensions began on March 1, 1965. Initially, the two westernmost stations were planned to be placed at Prince Edward (five blocks east of Royal York) and Montgomery (two blocks west of Royal York) instead of at Royal York and Islington as is now the case. As work on the Keele-to-Woodbine section continued, the decision was made to move these two stations to their current locations, as Royal York and Islington were far more major suburban thoroughfares than Prince Edward or Montgomery. Prince Edward and Montgomery Road did serve the east and west ends of the Kingsway shopping district, but it is possible that the TTC felt that a single station at Royal York (particularly one with two entrances) could serve this business district just as effectively.
West of Keele, the subway dove underground and surfaced again past High Park, as it dealt with the hilly terrain in old west Toronto. It dove underground again before reaching Runnymede station and continued west to Jane. After Jane, the tunnel was curved to parallel Bloor Street and, after some distance, emerging onto a bridge over the Humber River, passing through the Borough of York and entering the Borough of Etobicoke at Old Mill station. A scissors crossover was installed east of Jane station, to allow for short turns in case anything happened to the Humber River bridge.
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Crossing the Humber River. Photo by Marc Dufour. |
Old Mill station was the first station in the system to be partially above ground and partially below ground. Built immediately to the west of the bridge over the Humber River, it stuck out of the side of the valley. The underground portion was built to the same design as the other stations on the Bloor-Danforth subway, following the same tile patterns. The above-ground sections featured glass walls providing excellent views of the valley.
After going through tunnel again, past Royal York, the line re-emerged onto the surface in order to cross Mimico Creek over a small bridge. The line dove underground again on the approach to Islington, with a centre track between the two service tracks existing half-in and half-out of this final section of tunnel, producing a unique triple portal on the subway. After a scissors crossover, the western extension terminated at Islington station.
To the east, the Danforth extension continued underground past Woodbine station and Main Street station, emerging above ground near Victoria Park and the Taylor Creek ravine. Victoria Park was elevated, with the street exits and bus terminal located below platform level. East of Victoria Park, the line ran at grade through Warden Woods and the Taylor Creek ravine to Warden station, adjacent to the CN Geco subdivision spur and the abandoned right-of-way of the Canadian Northern. Warden station also had street exits and a bus terminal below platform level. To the west of the station was a scissors crossover, and a spur running next to the CN railway tracks. This spur was intended for the delivery of equipment by CN rail, but it was rarely used, with more convenient railway tracks located near Greenwood Yard and Hillcrest shops.
The first subway extensions outside of the City of Toronto proper were celebrated with great ceremony and pomp. The opening ceremonies started first at Warden station in Scarborough and then Islington station in Etobicoke. The mayors of Etobicoke and Scarborough each drove subway trains through paper barriers announcing the subway’s arrival into their boroughs.
When the Bloor-Danforth extensions opened on May 11, 1968, more streetcar cutbacks occurred, though not as extensive as what took place in 1966. The portion of the Dundas streetcar operating north of Dundas West station was replaced by the Junction trolley bus while the Bloor and Danforth shuttle streetcars were also replaced, finishing the last remnants of the once great Bloor streetcar. Other than these streetcar routes, the 1968 subway extensions did not come as close to duplicating or intersecting the old streetcar network as the first segment of the Bloor-Danforth subway had done.
In 1968 Toronto still had a two-zone fare system. The inverted “T” shape of the City of Toronto, plus just enough of the suburbs to make a smooth, roughly semicircular shape, formed Zone 1; everywhere else was Zone 2. So the subway crossed the zone boundary at Jane and Main Street stations. But applying the zonal fare system to the subway would have been inconvenient. Either passengers would all have had to carry some sort of ticket while riding, or Zone 2 stations would have to use a payment-on-exit system, which would also have constrained the fare structure.
Instead the TTC elected to make the entire subway, even the parts in Etobicoke and Scarborough, part of Zone 1. Passengers living near a suburban subway station and riding downtown would pay only the Zone 1 fare, but those transferring from suburban buses would have to pay for both zones.
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Main Street station’s mezzanine level. The former home of that station’s fare booths. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
Since the area inside the subway fare barrier was in Zone 1, but the stations’ bus terminals were in Zone 2, the bus terminal had to be outside the barrier in each station. (At the boundary stations, Jane and Main Street, Zone 2 buses and Zone 1 buses or streetcars came together. Rather than the complexity of separate terminals, a single terminal outside of the station’s fare-paid zone was used in each case.) At Royal York and at Main Street stations, the fare booths were placed on the mezzanine level between the bus terminal and the subway platforms. When the zone fare system was eliminated, the TTC moved these fare booths into the bus terminal, between the main entrance and the westernmost bus bay doors. This is why the mezzanine levels of Royal York and Main Street stations are especially long.
Islington had more difficulty in expanding its fare paid zone to include its bus terminals, primarily because the TTC did not want to move the collector booths from their original location. The fare barriers were forced to meander in order to separate passengers entering from the street exits from the bus terminals. This was solved when the entire fare area was reconfigured and the collector booths moved during renovations in 1996. In the case of Old Mill station, buses turned around right outside the main entrance to the station, making the expansion of the fare zone to cover the bus stop impossible. A similar problem occurred at Jane station, with the bus terminal and the street entrance being too close to each other to easily separate. To the east, Victoria Park and Warden stations were quickly converted to include their bus terminals in their fare paid zones.
The Queen Subway’s Last Gasps
After the construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway, a Queen line remained the City of Toronto’s choice as the next rapid transit priority. Maps in the late 1960s show a proposed line running south from Greenwood or Donlands station to Queen Street and west along Queen to Roncesvalles. At this time, the Queen subway proposal competed with a proposal to run a subway line up the median of the Spadina Expressway. This option was favoured by most of the suburban municipalities, especially the village of Forest Hill and the townships of York and North York. Again, the matter was put off by extending another of the established subway lines, in this case Yonge north of Eglinton. The debate raged on while construction crews brought that subway from Eglinton to Finch.
Proponents of Spadina criticized the Queen subway for providing rapid transit to an area that was already effectively served by the Bloor subway. Spadina, these supporters argued, brought rapid transit closer to underserviced north-western Metro. Proponents of the Queen line criticized that the Spadina line was unlikely to attract as many riders, separated from stores, offices and apartments by expressway lanes on either side.
The issue was settled after 1967. In that year, the Ontario government completed a review of Metropolitan Toronto and ordered that it be restructured. The thirteen member municipalities were consolidated down to six, with Long Branch, Mimico and New Toronto merging into Etobicoke, Weston merging into York, Leaside merging into East York and Swansea and Forest Hill merging into Toronto.
The restructuring also redistributed Metro Council seats to each member municipality according to their percentage of population within Metro. The suburban municipalities had grown considerably since 1954, such that their combined populations were larger than that of the City of Toronto. As a result, the suburban municipalities received a majority of Metro Council seats. The Spadina subway was quickly chosen as the TTC’s next priority for subway construction. The Queen line was left to languish. Queen remained on the books as the priority that would follow after Spadina’s opening. In the late 1960s, an opening date for Queen was set at 1980, at which time the remainder of Toronto’s streetcar network would be abandoned.
The Final Bloor-Danforth Extensions and the Death of the Queen Subway
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An aerial photograph of Kennedy station, showing commuter lot, LRT platform, and LRT loop. |
But the political will to build the Queen subway faded after 1972. The high costs of subway construction were making the TTC and Metropolitan Toronto reconsider the merits of new subways. As the Spadina subway reached its last phases of construction, the decision was made to extend the Bloor-Danforth subway one station east from Warden to Kennedy and one station west from Islington to Kipling. This $110 million expansion ($71.4 million for Kennedy, $38.6 million for Kipling) was touted as the last subway extensions to be built for some time. From this point on, the TTC claimed, the LRTs would extend rapid transit service into the suburbs.
The extension to Kennedy took the subway deeper into Scarborough, and shortened the commuting time for a number of the residents of this borough. Although the extension followed the underused railway that paralleled the tracks southwest of Warden station, complaints from local residents and problems crossing railway spur lines forced the TTC to build the extension underground, in a cut-and-cover tunnel that was longer than the entire University subway. An emergency exit was placed at Birchmount Road, halfway through the tunnel, but no provisions were made for a possible station there.
At Kennedy, a large complex was built, with four levels. At the bottom were the station platforms themselves, followed by a large mezzanine level with underground connections to street exits serving Eglinton Avenue, the nearby neighbourhoods, and the commuter parking lots (585 spaces and a Kiss ‘N’ Ride facility). Above the mezzanine, at the surface, was a large bus terminal. Above the bus terminal was an elevated station designed for the proposed Scarborough LRT.
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TTC images of Kipling Station on the eve of opening |
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At the west end, the extension to Kipling took the Bloor-Danforth subway west into a low density industrial area. Emerging from a tunnel by the CP main line and crossing Bloor Street over a new bridge, the extension parallels the railway tracks and terminates just west of the Kipling Avenue bridge. Kipling was the first station to have the tracks at ground level (not counting the ones in the Allen Road median where the local ground level is depressed). The station’s only entrance is at the end farthest from Kipling Avenue itself: passages below track level run to the commuter parking lots, the GO Train station (opened in 1981), and Aukland Drive at St. Albans Road. Buses climb a ramp from that intersection to reach a terminal located above the subway platforms, and exit by another ramp onto St. Albans.
As an extension, Kennedy was significantly more useful than Kipling. Although a number of west-end buses were rerouted to Kipling, Mississauga buses continued to use Islington and Islington continues to benefit from a substantial traffic of local area, walk-in riders. Plans exist for a regional bus terminal at Kipling, but Mississauga refuses to help fund the project, and dislikes the location of Kipling station as too far south for its Burnhamthorpe and Malton buses to access easily. Plans to increase development around Kipling station and the Six Points intersection are stalled due to opposition from the residents living in the area north of of Bloor Street.
While Kipling provides a direct connection with the Milton GO line, such a connection was possible at Islington as well, although it would have been via a long walkway, or via a new entrance built into the western end of Islington station. There are some who believe that the Kipling extension was designed to placate Etobicoke when the decision was made to take the subway further into Scarborough. However, the TTC were also considering building a new and larger subway yard on land the commission had acquired west of Kipling station. A tunnel-like enclosure and track allowance on the north side of the station is a provision for a track running into this yard. Kipling also has ample parking, with space enough for over 1300 vehicles.
Like Kennedy station, provision was made for a connection with a suburban LRT network. The bus bays occupy only the northern side of the upper level. Along the southern side, a glass wall reveals an empty track bed running along the roof above the southern service track. This area was to be the loading platform for a possible Etobicoke LRT, possibly running from Kipling station to Pearson Airport. This proposal never materialized.
Kipling and Kennedy stations opened to the public on November 22, 1980. The day before, a special train of H-5 cars (5807-5806-5791-5790-5804-5805) left Davisville Station at 12:40 p.m. and proceeded through Lower Bay station to Warden where Scarborough Mayor Gus Harris and Ontario Minister of Community and Commercial Relations Frank Drea were waiting. At 1:30 p.m. the two men flipped a switch to work a ceremonial signal to clear the train to Kennedy station where speeches were given and a commemorative plaque unveiled. The train then left Kennedy at 2:20 and ran to Islington, stopping only at Warden and Yonge (the latter unscheduled, to let one rider off). At Islington, the same signal ceremony was performed by Etobicoke Mayor Dennis Flynn followed by a short run to Kipling. Once speeches were completed here, the special train departed Kipling to enter regular service at Islington around 4:10 p.m.
With the opening of Kipling and Kennedy stations, subway construction came to a halt. It was the first time since 1959 that work was not continuing on a subway somewhere in Metropolitan Toronto. Kipling and Kennedy stations would be the last new subway stations to open on the system until North York Centre opened in 1987, and the last extensions to open until the Spadina line was pushed north to Downsview in 1996. The search was on for a cheaper rapid transit technology to serve the lower density suburbs, and this was the final blow to the Queen subway. As Toronto’s downtown expanded, the costs of a Queen subway increased rapidly and, by the time the 1970s drew to a close, it was not considered a serious priority.
There were faint echoes of the Queen subway during the 1980s. As Metropolitan Toronto put together its Network 2011 proposal for rapid transit expansion, congestion at the Bloor/Yonge transfer point led to the proposal for a Downtown Relief Line running from Pape station to Union station via the CN railway tracks. When concerns over conflicts between the subway and the railway were raised, suggestions came forward to bring the line downtown via either Queen or King Streets. However, as the province delayed in approving the Network 2011 plan, the political will backing the Downtown Relief Line evaporated. Modifications to Bloor/Yonge station reduced the need for the line and, when the province began approving portions of the Network 2011 proposal, the Downtown Relief Line was nowhere to be seen.
The Future of the Bloor-Danforth Line
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The proposed extension to Sherway Gardens. |
The prospects for expanding the Bloor-Danforth subway are limited. To the east, the Scarborough RT provides the link between the eastern terminal and the Scarborough City Centre, effectively blocking the line in that direction. No such block exists to the west, but densities drop off dramatically and the area becomes more industrial and suburban. When Metropolitan Toronto approved the Network 2011 plan, the proposal called for a subway along Eglinton West to the Mississauga border. The Bloor-Danforth subway was not touched. It was only after the Network 2011 plan failed that the most recent proposals to extend the Bloor subway started to appear. In the Liberal government’s ‘Let’s Move’ plan of 1989, one of the proposals called for an extension of the subway west from Kipling, via the CP railway tracks and then underground, to Sherway Gardens mall at the edge of the city.
The ultimate goal of planners is to take the subway further west into Mississauga, but this runs into political problems. Mississauga has been lukewarm to the proposal to extend the subway to the Dixie GO station (in the centre of yet another low density industrial area) and refuses to consider paying for it. Even the extension to Sherway has its critics. While this mall may be one of the largest trip generators west of Kipling station, TTC traffic between Kipling station and this mall is light, with the Shorncliffe bus providing the most direct service between Sherway and the end of the subway at twenty minute intervals during the midday. An extension to the airport from Kipling has also been considered, but the high costs and the low density neighbourhoods along the route do not lend it much support. It is far more likely that we will see the Yonge or Spadina subways extended north than see the Bloor-Danforth subway extended east or west.
In some ways, the Bloor-Danforth subway line finds itself suffering from the same human geography issues that made the Queen subway obsolete. Running through the south of the amalgamated city of Toronto, it is too far away from neighbourhoods in the north of the city to make it especially convenient for true cross-town travel. This is one of the reasons the Sheppard subway is being built, and why the Eglinton West subway was proposed. This fact is acknowledged by the northeasterly turn the Bloor subway makes on its way to central Scarborough, and by the U-shaped route extending into the northeastern and northwestern suburbs the final maps of the Queen subway and the Downtown Relief line show. To the west, the location of the Bloor-Danforth subway leaves northern Etobicoke underserved, but there is no Etobicoke RT to finish the trip up Highway 427. The bulk of development in the Region of Peel to the west is also well north of Bloor Street.
Still, there is no denying that the Bloor-Danforth subway has been a success. It is a major transit corridor used by the citizens of central and southern Etobicoke, Mississauga and much of Scarborough to get downtown. It travels through moderate to high-density neighbourhoods that also help to keep the ridership numbers up. It is doubtful that the Bloor-Danforth line could have been this successful, if it had been built still further north. Unlike the rest of the Toronto subway network, the Bloor-Danforth line may have been built in just the right location and to just the right length.
As for the Queen subway, it may yet come full circle. Congestion along the line continues to increase, making many at the TTC wish that they could put those streetcars underground.
Other Bloor-Danforth Images
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(Above) Felix Tse took this shot of RTS bus 1000 poking out of an Islington station bus bay. |
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George Davidson took this shot of crews working on the scissors crossover east of Keele Station, early in the year 2000. Vincent (Keele) Yard is visible in the background. |
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During work to replace the scissors crossover, the replacement tracks were stored on the commuter lot east of Keele Station (bolted together in their proper layout). This shot shows the bridge leading into the station structure. Photo by George Davidson. |
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An H-4 pulls into the westbound platform of St. George station. University trains are rumbling above. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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The street entrance to Castle Frank station, complete with cupola-like dome. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Another shot of Broadview station, showing the tile patterns and ceiling structure. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Pape station bus platform, looking west to Pape Street. This is the only station left on the rapid transit system where passangers are allowed to walk across a bus driveway. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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The exit to Coxwell station is well-contained and functional. We see the general waiting area for buses, the stairs and escalator to trains, the fare collection area and the exit to Strathmore Blvd. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Victoria Park station. Like Keele, the tracks are located above the street entrance and the bus terminal level. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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The bus bays at Victoria Park station. The design is similar to that found at Islington and Warden stations. Here, the bus bays are significantly underused. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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Kennedy station’s large mezzanine level. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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The bus terminal level of Kennedy station. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
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An H-2 train sits in the Kennedy tail track. Photo by David Cavlovic. |
The Spadina Subway
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"Spadina Summer Under All Seasons", by James Sutherland, at Dupont Station. Photo courtesy JBC Visuals. at Box 5736, Station A, Toronto, ON, M5W 1P2. |
Text by James Bow, photos by David Cavlovic, unless otherwise noted.
History
The Spadina subway is probably the only subway in Toronto to be fathered by an expressway. The William R. Allen Road whose median the line traverses is so closely married to the subway line that one could almost consider them two pieces of the same project.
From the 1940s onward, city planners made a number of proposals for a new arterial road connecting downtown Toronto with the city's northwestern suburbs. Originally envisioned as an extension of Spadina Road to the north and west, all the way up to the 401, the project was upgraded by the 1950s to a full-fledged expressway. Frederick Gardiner, the first Chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, had a vision of a city crisscrossed by subway lines and expressways. If his vision had borne fruit, the Gardiner Expressway would have continued east, paralleling Kingston Road, to the 401 in eastern Scarborough. The Spadina Expressway would cut through the Nordheimer Ravine and beneath Casa Loma to deposit suburban commuters downtown. A Crosstown Expressway would run from an extended Highway 400, along the CP railway tracks to the Don Valley Parkway, and another expressway would connect the Crosstown and the Gardiner along Christie and Grace streets.
Metropolitan Toronto planners pursued this car-oriented plan for development despite opposition from local citizens. The Gardiner Expressway and the Spadina Expressway inched forward in stages as nearby residents protested that their neighbourhoods were being adversely affected so that suburban residents could breeze past in their cars. Then, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the age of civic action that prompted the TTC to abandon its streetcar abandonment policy, the local groups got more organized and their representatives took control of Toronto City Council. The Spadina Expressway became a flashpoint, the final battle over whose vision would dominate city planning for the next few decades. Downtown residents and politicians fiercely fought for their quality of life over suburban residents and politicians who wanted quick car access to the centre city. The Spadina Expressway had reached south to Lawrence Avenue (starting at the 401) when the Province of Ontario sided with the downtown residents. The Spadina Expressway was killed (although the section between Lawrence and Eglinton, which had already seen heavy construction, would be finished), and a more transit-oriented policy was established within Metro.
The Spadina Expressway has since undergone a couple of name changes, the first renaming it the William R. Allen Expressway, after the Metro Chairman of the time. It would later be renamed to the current William R. Allen Road, despite its obvious expressway appearance. Extensions north of Wilson were done as an ordinary road, however.
The First Proposals
In the 1960s, proposals to build a subway line along the median of the Spadina Expressway surfaced. Chicago had experimented with a similar setup in the 1950s, with a subway built up the median of its Eisenhower Expressway. Some suggest that this was an attempt by suburban politicians to make the Expressway project more palatable to opponents. Instead, it was ridiculed as a Trojan horse, with critics noting that the Spadina line would not attract nearly the ridership of the Yonge line. The suburban councils, however, got behind the project as it improved subway service to the underserved northwestern sector of Metro. Although it didn't move as far west as would be desired from a northwestern line, constructing the line up the median of an expressway would reduce costs. The TTC also felt that the Spadina Subway would help provide relief to the overused Yonge Subway line.
On the other hand the City of Toronto was adamant that if there was to be any new subway construction, that it should be under Queen Street, especially given the low ridership figures projected for the Spadina project. When the City of Toronto held half the seats in Metro, their vision held sway. Then, in 1967, the province reorganized Metropolitan Toronto, merging the thirteen member municipalities into six and giving the remaining suburban municipalities a majority on council. The Spadina subway was quickly made Metro's next priority after the North Yonge extensions, with the Queen line to follow soon thereafter. The Queen line was never built.
The setup of the Spadina line took some debating. The proposed alignment started near Wilson Avenue in the middle of the Spadina Expressway and followed this expressway south to Eglinton. There, the expressway stopped, but the subway continued, following the Nordheimer Ravine at grade along the Expressway's proposed alignment. After tunneling under Casa Loma and Spadina Road, the line would connect with the underused University subway at St. George. However, the City of Toronto and the Borough of York had concerns about the use of the ravine for the subway line, and campaigned to have the subway built under Bathurst Street, either all the way to Wilson, or just up to St. Clair Avenue. Others pointed out that Bathurst Street, or even Dufferin Street, had higher densities that could support the subway line better than the thinned-out development surrounding the Expressway would. The mayor of North York, James Service, even suggested that the Spadina line be run down Davenport Road to join the Yonge line south of Rosedale, with alternate trains taking a loop created by the Yonge and University lines (via Lower Bay Station) clockwise and counter-clockwise. In the end, the cheaper alignment was chosen (although it was decided that the subway tunnel underneath Nordheimer Ravine in order to save the greenspace) and the Province approved the project on January 18, 1973. Construction began soon thereafter.
Design
When design work began on the Spadina Subway, a conscious effort was made to get away from the 'functional but Spartan' look of previous stations and emulate the artistic atmosphere of Montréal's Métro. The results varied, with some stations now appearing quite dated in appearance, but all featuring a distinct look from each other. There is more artwork, primarily of the abstract 1970s variety, on this line than there is in the rest of the system.
The Spadina subway starts where the University subway ends, at St. George Station. There, track switches pull inside the tracks connecting the University line to the Bloor-Danforth subway west of Bloor Street. Once able to pass over the connecting tracks, the line takes a sharp turn right and burrows under Spadina Road to a new station just below Lowther Avenue. Originally, this station was to be called Lowther and exist separately from Bloor-Danforth's Spadina station, but the decision was made to add another connection to the Bloor-Danforth subway line. This gave Lowther access to the Spadina subway entrances closer to Bloor and to the Spadina bus platforms and saved the TTC money on personnel by eliminating the need for a staffed entrance at Lowther.
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The long connection between the Bloor-Danforth subway and the Spadina subway at Spadina station, with moving sidewalk. |
To make this connection feasible for the average patron, the TTC built a moving walkway to ease the long trip between the Spadina line platforms and the rest of Spadina station. This moving walkway arguably became the most popular feature of the station for children of all ages.
The northern entrance to Spadina station was built into a restored old house. The house had to be put onto tracks and pulled back from its foundation so that work could go on below ground connecting the entrance to the station. For all this work, the entrance is typically unmanned, and accessed by token or Metropass only. Two pieces of art were commissioned for this station, one "Morning Glory" by Louise de Neverville and "Barren Ground Caribou" by Joyce Weiland.
The work done to connect the Spadina subway's Spadina station with its Bloor-Danforth counterpart may not have been the only reason why this station was renamed Spadina from Lowther. Some reports indicate that the name was change in case the University subway still did not prove financially viable. At the time, the University subway was closed Mondays to Saturdays at 9:45 p.m. and all day Sundays and holidays. If this arrangement had to continue, Spadina Station would have to be used as the southern terminal station of the Spadina line (although it would have been far more convenient for passengers to transfer to the Bloor-Danforth subway at St. George). This is why a crossover was installed just to the north of the station and "Spadina" installed on the subway rollsigns. Thus by naming the station 'Spadina' people would be able to connect the station in their minds with the Bloor-Danforth subway far more readily than a 'Lowther' terminal. However, the opening of the Spadina line and increasing overcrowding on the Yonge line increased ridership on the University line, so these precautions proved unnecessary.
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Entering Dupont station's southbound platform. |
From Spadina, the line travels beneath Spadina Road to Dupont Station. This station appears as though it was cut from the earth, with a large cavern opening up in the middle of the station, connecting the platforms with the mezzanine. Here, a mural of tilework graces the walls, "Spadina Summer Under", by James Sutherland. The entrances (all at the Dupont-Spadina intersection) can be best described as "glass bubbles". Here, an on-street connection exists with the 4 Annette and 127 Davenport buses.
North of Dupont, the line tunnels beneath Casa Loma and Nordheimer Ravine to St. Clair West station. This complex station offers an underground connection with St. Clair streetcars and a number of bus routes, plus exits onto St. Clair Avenue, Nordheimer Ravine itself, and a separate entrance to Heath Street. Excavation of this underground loop forced the St. Clair streetcar to be diverted onto the south side of St. Clair Avenue, but streetcar service was maintained throughout construction.
Another interesting bit of artwork, often ignored, is the pictures by the stairway leading to the bus platforms. Fading in colour rapidly, they nevertheless represent an era of Toronto now 30 years gone. One photo even shows a GCL-Grey Line GMC New Look, with Sightseeing ceiling windows, northbound on Queen's Park at College.
Immediately north of the station, a centre track opens up between the two service tracks. Trains short-turning at this station detrain their passengers at the northbound platform, pull into this track, and reverse into the southbound platform, picking up passengers for the ride downtown. The short-turn service, with every second train turning back at St. Clair West instead of proceeding to Wilson, has continued throughout the Spadina line's existence, although it has been reduced to a morning-only service, and may soon be eliminated altogether.
The artwork for St. Clair West station is an abstract enamel mural entitled "Tempo", designed by Gordon Rayner. Visitors can find it at on the mezzanine of the station. The station has not changed much since its opening, although the entrance to Nordheimer ravine was locked and roped off due to lack of use and safety concerns.
North of St. Clair West station, the line proceeds through a long segment of tunnel underneath the Nordheimer Ravine, emerging at Eglinton West Station. This station is a transition point for this line. From here on out, the Spadina Subway was built at grade within the median of the Allen Expressway. The station reflects this transition in its structure, with half of it built underground, and the other half above ground. At the middle of this station, Gerald Zeldin's "Summertime Streetcar" artwork, featuring images of a PCC streetcar, graces both walls. Bus platforms can be found at the south end of the station. If the Eglinton West subway had been built, the transfer point would likely have been placed at the south end of the station as well.
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Glencairn Station. |
North of Eglinton West Station, the line proceeds at grade into Glencairn, serving the residential neighbourhood of northwest Forest Hill. This simple station is built primarily out of concrete but features a stained glass skylight called "Joy", designed by Rita Le Tendre. Sadly, this station has deteriorated badly. The concrete walls keep the station underlit, and water damage is obvious. From Glencairn, the line passes a siding between the service tracks (this has been used to turn back trains as well) and then enters Lawrence West Station. Also primarily done in concrete, this station contains a larger number of windows, particularly at the bus shelter area, which keeps this station fairly well lit. At Lawrence West, "Spacing ... Aerial Highways" greets passengers at the Lawrence Avenue entrance.
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A T-1 leaving Lawrence West station. heading downtown. |
Further north, Yorkdale Station is done primarily in glass and metal. The arched glass roof of Yorkdale contains a number of neon lights of various colours that are supposed to light up from one end of the station to the other in a flowing motion designed to match the coming and going of trains. This piece of artwork, entitled "Arc en Ciel" (French for "rainbow") and designed by Michael Hayden, has not been in working order for years. Yorkdale does serve the shopping centre of the same name, and receives fairly high patronage because of it. One had to cross a large parking lot to get to the mall at first, but when the mall was renovated, an enclosed connection was built, also serving an intercity and GO bus terminal.
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Exterior view of Yorkdale Station, looking back from a southbound subway train which has just departed. |
North of Yorkdale, the line crosses over Highway 401 on twin single-track bridges and enters Wilson Station, located directly over Wilson Avenue. This station features large parking lots, a "Kiss 'n' Ride" facility and a two-level bus terminal. With such a stretch of pavement surrounding this station, Wilson appears as though it is located in the middle of nowhere. Wilson was the hub of a large network of bus routes serving the western and northern suburbs of the city, however. Indeed, the number of buses terminating at this facility increased so dramatically since 1978 that the TTC built a third, 'north' terminal to the north of the original bus terminal, to handle the overflow. At the mezzanine level, visitors are greeted by Wilson Station's art centrepiece, a sculpture entitled "Canyons" designed by Ted Beiler.
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The sprawling complex of Wilson Station as illustrated from the lower bus platform. |
At the top of the Spadina line, a new subway yard was constructed, alongside a new bus garage. Wilson Yard started accepting trains as early as August 1977, as the new H-5 trains delivered to the system found little room at the Vincent, Greenwood and Davisville yards. The H-5s remained at Greenwood, where they could be tested and put into service, while older trains were towed using the TTC's diesel-electric locomotive, RT-18, up the unpowered Spadina Subway tracks into the new yard. This yard remained out of sight for subway patrons until the Spadina line was extended to Downsview Station in 1996.
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Views of Wilson yard. North end (above); south end (below). |
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Strikes caused similar problems to the Spadina Subway as they did the North Yonge extension, with an electricians' strike holding up vital signalling work and pushing back the opening date from October 15, 1977. These were eventually resolved and opening ceremonies for the line took place on Friday, January 27, 1978. At that time, two trains loaded with dignitaries departed from Wilson and St. Andrew Stations at 2 p.m., bound for St. Clair West. At St. Clair West, dignitaries and media representatives listened to speeches and toured the facilities. A newly delivered CLRV (4002) was on display for the occasion along with PCC 4527 and Witt 2766. The public got to ride for free the next day, provided that they entered via one of the stations on the Spadina line.
Service in the first few weeks was disrupted by switch problems, particularly in the open sections of the line. Initial ridership was low at first, but rose to the predicted 8000 passengers per day by the end of the year. The low ridership was defended by suggesting the line was "a long term investment", designed to increase development in North York, and provide an alternative to northern commuters heading downtown. Initially proposed with a $80 million price tag in 1968, the final cost of the 6.17 mile long line was assessed at $212 million.
Changes Since Opening
The Spadina subway is, with the exception of the Scarborough RT, the youngest line on Toronto's rapid transit network (it will remain so until the Sheppard subway opens in 2002). Despite this, it will celebrate its silver anniversary in 2003, and so enough time has passed for significant changes to occur.
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The platform of Wilson Station, which was the end of the line for eighteen years before Downsview Station opened. |
One of the stations that has undergone the most change was Wilson. When the Spadina line opened, the TTC routed a number of suburban routes into this station. As Toronto grew towards the north, Wilson's two-level bus platform found itself handling more buses than it was designed to handle. The creation of bus-only lanes on Allen Road and Dufferin Street, and the desire to reduce pressure on the Yonge subway caused further buses to br routed into Wilson, exacerbating the problem. The TTC responded by building a third terminal, called the North Terminal, north of the current two-level terminal. This terminal replaced a pedestrian exit onto Transit Road, and operated until March 30, 1996 when the Spadina subway's Downsview extension was opened. With a number of bus routes now rerouted to the new station, Wilson's North Terminal was declared surplus and closed to the public. The site has occasionally been used for film shoots.
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The Spadina station mezzanine. A mess of styles and a significant transit hub. |
Another station that has changed extensively since opening is Spadina station. Already a melange of styles when opening in the Spadina subway opened in 1978, the addition of the underground terminal for the Spadina streetcar line has turned Spadina station into an extremely busy transportation hub, and this is not to mention the new exit to Walmer Road, added to the Bloor-Danforth platforms of the station.
In 2004, Spadina station lost its popular moving walkway between the Bloor-Danforth and Spadina platforms. Time had taken its toll on the long sidewalk, and it was spending more and more time shut down for maintenance. In February of the year, a TTC report recommended that the walkway be removed. It was too expensive to maintain or rebuild, and no company made walkways that long anymore. The TTC's tight capital budget spelled the end for the popular feature, and the walkway was removed over the summer.
Eglinton West station was almost significantly changed. In 1994, the NDP government of Bob Rae approved construction of an Eglinton West subway running west from Eglinton West station to Black Creek Drive. Construction was halted a year later when the Mike Harris Conservative government took power. The hole in the ground was filled in. No work had been done to Eglinton West station itself.
Yorkdale station used to be far removed from the shopping mall for which it was named. Patrons arriving via the TTC had to cross a large parking lot to get to the mall. The Mall owners realized their mistake and set to work expanding the mall out to the station entrance, and now TTC passengers have a completely climate controlled walkway to Yorkdale's shops and services.
Other than an additional entrance here and there (or, in the case of St. Clair West, the closure of its exit onto Nordheimer Ravine), the Spadina subway from Wilson to Spadina has not otherwise been changed significantly, a fact that has been somewhat to its detrement. Built in the late 1970s in a significant departure from the previous subway's utilitarian design, many of the stations now look dated and, in some cases, are in need of renovation.
The Future
The Spadina Expressway issue was not resolved until the early 1980s. A number of suburban politicians and citizens clamoured for the project. The current location of the SkyDome was supported by these same politicians and citizens because of the possibility that it might drag the Spadina Expressway down to service it. The matter festered until, in one of his last acts as Premier of Ontario, Bill Davis transferred a small strip of provincially owned land at the base of the Expressway from York to the City of Toronto, ensuring that the expressway would never be extended south without the city's consent. Now that there is a greater understanding of the folly of building new roadways to solve traffic problems, the issue is considered a political non-starter.
The Spadina Subway remains underused. This fact gave some life to the proposal to link the Spadina and Yonge subway lines together, either along the Hydro right-of-way north of Finch or via Steeles and York University, so that passengers that had been bound towards the overused Yonge subway could have the alternative of taking Spadina instead. However, its usefulness has grown in the years since its opening. When this portion of the subway was taken offline, thanks to the fatal subway accident between Dupont and St. Clair West stations in 1995, dozens of buses were required to move the passengers between Wilson and St. George stations. West-end buses and streetcars that terminate at Yonge line stations tend to pull into Spadina line stations as well, and many passengers already go out of their way to take the Spadina line so as to avoid the crowds on Yonge. Should the Sheppard Subway ever be extended to Downsview Station, Spadina could become an even greater relief line for Yonge.
Ironically, Spadina, which has always played second fiddle to Yonge, may end up getting extended further north than Yonge's northern terminus. There is considerable political support for extending the line to York University, and the City of Vaughan has expressed interest in taking the line even further north, past Highway 407, into its proposed new downtown core at Highway 7 and 400. Although Spadina never replaced a heavily used streetcar route, and although it doesn't travel down Toronto's main street, it finds itself well suited to offering a transit alternative to the burgeoning communities in northwest Toronto and to the north of Toronto. In that respect, the long term investment that Spadina represents may yet pay off.
Other Spadina Subway Images
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The bus directory at Wilson station. Note the empty left-side where the directory used to list the routes that loaded at the now abandoned North Terminal. |
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A direct view of the defunct North Bus Terminal at Wilson station, as seen from the lower level of the original bus terminal. Note the former pedestrian entrance to the left that was and still is sealed off when the North Terminal was opened. |
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The Yorkdale Station platform, as seen from the back of a train, leaving southbound. |
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Westward view of the bus waiting area at Lawrence West station. A simple yet effective design. |
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In the background is the entrance on the north side. A variety store on the right opened recently. |
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A H-5 train enters Eglinton West Station northbound, passing the well known and well liked PCC artwork by Gerald Zeldin. This picture is actually a scan of a postcard produced by the TTC celebrating art in the subway. It may be available from JBC Visuals. at Box 5736, Station A, Toronto, ON, M5W 1P2. |
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The dark yellow, circular motif on the Spadina subway's version of Spadina Station is very different from the Spartan tiling on the Bloor-Danforth counterpart. |
The Scarborough Rapid Transit Extension
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A Map showing the alignment of the Scarborough RT extension in relation with the rest of it. |
by Peter Drost and James Bow.
Overview
The Scarborough Rapid Transit Line is technically an unfinished project. Ideally, the system would have supported the "Malvern Gateway" in the growing north-east section of Scarborough.
Historically, a Malvern transit corridor was proposed as early as 1975, when the Scarborough RT project was first announced. The first stage was to take the LRT to the Scarborough Town Centre, but beyond that, the TTC hoped to serve the developing community of Malvern, and perhaps points further east, such as the Zoo, or even Pickering. Malvern was always part of the RT plan, even after its design was changed to accommodate ICTS technology.
But why Malvern?
The City of Scarborough had by the early 90's approved $1 billion in development in the Malvern area while predictions indicated that growth around the Town Centre would add approximately 15,000 residents plus 21,000 jobs. The place was booming.
When the Scarborough RT opened to just past the Scarborough Town Centre in 1985, the next phase of the project would have taken the line to the abandoned right-of-way of the Canadian Northern, which proceeded northwest from the McCowan/Ellesmere intersection, past the Sheppard/Markham intersection, to the corner of Finch and Morningside. The teething problems experienced by the new ICTS cars cooled the TTC's enthusiasm for the extension. The TTC noted that the proposed right-of-way northeast of Sheppard and Markham shrank rapidly, and the line through here would be near people's backyards. The TTC was unwilling to have a repeat of the vocal complaints they had received from residents abutting the line north of Kennedy Station. Rather than plan for the cost of mitigating the effects of the line north of Sheppard Avenue, the TTC decided to end the RT extension at Sheppard instead, if indeed they decided to go that far.
Although the TTC was less than enthusiastic about the success of the Scarborough RT, other interests put the extension back on the front burner. Under the NDP government's "Let's Move" program a formal design for the route and stations was carried out in 1992. The extension would have cost an estimated $430 million dollars, almost double what the initial line cost to build.
The route
The proposed 3.2 km route would have taken passengers on an elevated guideway east of McCowan station, then slightly south through the existing (but, by the time of the extension's opening, decommissioned) McCowan Yard then north again across Bellamy Road. A station was proposed for this location, but the drawings of the recommended undertaking indicate it was to be deferred. Continuing east and parallel to Highland Creek trains would have passed the new Bellamy Yard.
If the RT system had expanded, it would have outgrown the McCowan Yard, and thus the TTC decided to plan for a new yard instead of expanding the old one. The yard would have been located east of the future Bellamy Station location, with the two running tracks straddling a third centre track, rising up from ground level and connected to the main line by switches in both directions. The third track would pass under the main line at both its east and west ends and turn north to the carhouse and storage yard, which would have been built at ground level, to the north of the line.
Once past this yard connection, the main line would run north-east to a station at the Markham-Progress intersection. From there the line would head north. Many people assumed that the RT extension had suddenly come to life again in the mid-90's when piers appeared over highway 401 north of Centennial College. However, this construction turned out to be to an extension of Progress Avenue. The RT route across the 401 would have been slightly west of this new bridge, between it and Markham Road.
A station would have been built at Milner Avenue and the route would have terminated at the Sheppard-Markham intersection.
Stations
Under the 1992 plan, there would have been three new stations added to the system, with a possible fourth to be added later. Descriptions of these stations are as follows:
Bellamy Station - This station would most resemble Midland station. It would straddle Bellamy Road and serve a largely industrial area. Plans called for this station to be deferred until a later date, but a provision was made for a centre-platform station. Planners must have thought that this location was sketchy at best, with a limited amount of people willing to walk to the various plants and offices that offered free employee parking.
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Engineering plans showing Markham Road Station and the pedestrian connection to Centennial College |
Markham Station - Reading the plans, this would have been a challenging location to build a station. Looking at the area today three problems are immediately visible: 1) It's in a valley, 2) It's crowded by development on all sides and 3) Extremely busy with traffic moving on and off the 401 and to and from the college. Plans show that the station would straddle Markham Road at an angle, just north of Progress Avenue. The main part of the station would be located to the west of Markham Road, while the more northerly east side would have a large pedestrian entrance for students at Centennial College. There would also be 250 to 1,000 parking spaces and a small bus terminal at the northwest corner of Markham Road and Progress Avenue.
Milner Station - Would have been located just north of Milner Avenue and slightly west of Milner Business Court. Other than crosswalks for pedestrians, the station would have few amenities, as it would only connect with the Milner bus. There would be 500 to 750 parking spaces.
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Engineering plans showing Sheppard East Station. Future extensions would be north via Markham Road. |
Sheppard East Station - The only RT station comparable to this would be the Town Centre station. As proposed it would have been located in the midst of a large commercial development at the south-east corner of Sheppard Avenue and Markham Road called Palmerston Place. The station would straddle Sheppard Avenue with a tail track jutting out north-west. (If there was another extension it would likely head north along Markham Road.) The station would serve as a hub for at least 10 local and interregional bus routes. Other features would include an underground bus platform with 12 to 16 bus bays. There would have also been 500 to 750 parking spaces.
Vehicles
The extension would use ICTS vehicles like those used on the existing RT line - no real difference. The total number of train cars needed for the entire line would ultimately be 114 ($53 million of the $430 million extension project was earmarked for the purchase of new trains). Rail and Transit magazine said "because of its short length, the Scarborough RT extension would likely be the first to open, if everything goes according to schedule, just before the turn of the century".
Planning Run Amok
Of course, the extension did not go according to schedule. In the entire history of transit projects in and around Toronto, few (if any) have suffered the politics surrounding the RT line itself. Growing from a relatively simple proposal to run ALRVs on a right-of-way, the plan grew and grew and grew.
In the end, the 3.2-km extension would have cost over $400 million, double the price of the original line and almost five times the original cost of the ALRV proposal. Moreover, the extension's route would have missed some important stops. To the north of McCowan station is a set of offices and an enormous condominium development that would be better served by a station built at Bellamy Road.
Worse, the extension would not have entered the Centennial College campus, but just flanked it leaving hundreds of students with a long walk, crossing busy Progress Avenue every day.
Finally, the travel time downtown would have been long if you were to start at Sheppard East station: Probably 20 minutes to ride the RT, 5 to 10 minutes to interchange at Kennedy, 25 minutes to Yonge Street, 10 to 15 minutes to a downtown station. In total 60 to 70 minutes, assuming that there were no delays. Compare this to, say, the Agincourt GO station with an approximately 25 to 30 minute run to downtown.
In the end, it was the cost of the project, taken alongside the four projects the NDP government was pushing (Sheppard Subway, Eglinton West Subway and the York University extension) that caused the Metro government to hesitate on approving this proposal. Metro councillors weren't willing to raise taxes in order to provide the funds necessary, and so the Province and Metro proceeded with the Eglinton West and Sheppard Subways, leaving the Spadina Subway and Scarborough RT extensions on the back burner. Then, in June 1995, the Conservatives under Mike Harris were elected to office. One of their first acts was to cancel the construction of the Eglinton West subway. Six months later, they pulled out of capital spending for public transit altogether.
The RT Extension Today
Plans for RT extension have pretty much dropped off Toronto's "transit radar". Other major projects look more promising, including a subway extension to York University. A Malvern transit gateway is still mentioned in the media, but only in relationship to GO Transit, which may (if funding permits) run trains on the CP tracks in the area.
Moreover, other factors have now come into play. The Highland Creek bed, in and around Bellamy Road, has been given an expensive "environmental make over". Palmerston Place never took off, although the whole area has undergone extensive development including a very large pocket of townhouses at Markham Road and Sheppard Avenue.
Given these changes over the last few years the proposed extension has too many obstacles to overcome now. It is doubtful that it will ever be built as currently planned.
Looking back it seems that the politicians, buoyed by dreams of revolutionary new modes of travel, could not countenance a very basic engineering principle: Keep it simple and stupid (KISS). The result is that the RT is frozen in place, which is unfortunate because land for a further extension is ready to be used.
If you've ever driven on Markham Road north of Highway 401, you may have noticed a large centre median. This median was set aside years ago for the RT project. It wouldn't take much for a streetcar to travel on this stretch, but the RT vehicles would need an elevated guideway that will cost millions to build. And there's the rub. All the elements that have gone in to the Scarborough RT have conspired to rob it of a meaningful future.
Downsview Station
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Two T-1s at rest at Downsview Stn. (looking south). |
Text by James Bow, photos by David Cavlovic.
History
The Network 2011 plan for subway expansion established Metro Toronto's subway construction priorities from the mid 1980s onward. The plan called for the construction of a Sheppard Subway from Yonge to Victoria Park by 1994, a Downtown relief line by 1998, a busway along Eglinton Avenue soon thereafter, and an extension of the Sheppard Subway west to an extension of the Spadina Subway and east to the Scarborough Town Centre soon after that. This was the plan Metro took to the province in 1985 and in 1988, after much hemming and hawing from the newly elected David Peterson Liberals at Queen's Park, the province approved plans to extend the Spadina Subway one station north from Wilson Avenue to Sheppard.
Why did the province approve such a small first-step to the plan, and a step that was to be taken late in the subway construction process, no less? Part of the reason was the Liberals' reluctance to commit to the expensive plan, and throwing a small bone to Metro in the form of this short extension of an established subway line was seen as buying time. Also, by this time, there was a debate over whether the Sheppard Subway should be the first priority, or if the Spadina subway should be extended to York University. Toronto was campaigning to host the 1996 summer Olympics at this time and it was felt that York University was an obvious venue and one that needed a strong rapid transit connection with the rest of the city.
The Spadina extension to Sheppard was the common part of both plans, so it made sense for the province to commit to this project first and get shovels in the ground while planners and politicians debated over the next priority. Ironically, neither the Sheppard West extension nor the extension to York University seem likely to appear in the near future. The one station extension has been criticized as 'a subway from nowhere to nowhere'. Scarborough politicians were particularly upset, fearing that the planned first phase of the Network 2011 plan, the Sheppard Subway from Yonge to Victoria Park, would end up delayed. However, as this was the only subway construction the Liberal adminsitration was offering immediately, Metro Council decided to support the $160 million project and voted in favour of it on April 26, 1989. It was the first subway extension to be commissioned in over ten years.
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A view from one of the Mezzanine walkways, looking south at the subway platform. |
The extension underwent a surprisingly long process of environmental assessment. The project was complicated by its proximity to the Canadian Forces' base at Downsview airport, despite the fact that this army base was due to be closed. Two proposed alignments were vetoed by the base because they approached too close to a munitions storage and disposal building. The TTC had hoped to build the line so that it would take a wide curve and swing east, giving the station at Sheppard an east-west alignment in anticipation for a link (and perhaps interlining) with the Sheppard Subway. Eventually, a strict north-south alignment was chosen, likely with a transfer between two lines planned instead of interlining, and the line pulled away from the Canadian Forces' base. The project cleared the Ministry of Environment in September 1991.
Groundbreaking for the project took place on June 22, 1992. Tunnel construction was primarily cut and cover, with a long section of the line located in open cut. Tracks were extended north of Wilson Station and run alongside Wilson Carhouse for much of the way. After four years of work, the line opened to passengers on March 30, 1996. The total cost of the project was $117 million. The name Downsview was chosen over Sheppard West in a naming contest that took place amongst neighbourhood residents and featured 2500 entries. The name was officially announced in 1994.
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Mezzanine level of Downsview station showing escalators to bus platform. |
A tour of the station
Downsview Station offers a wide centre platform and a sloping, curved roof that's not unlike an airport hangar in design. Blue and grey tiles are mounted on the walls, and drop-down lights illuminate the station and provide signs to inform patrons. A long walkway running the length of the station, one level up, takes passengers to the north side of Sheppard Avenue, and to a bus terminal at the south end of the station. The connection with the future Downsview Station on the Sheppard line may take place here. The bus terminal is large and airy, thanks to high ceilings and extensive use of glass. Most of the buses that connect with the subway here used to connect using the north bus terminal at Wilson Station (used when one of the station's other bus terminals is offline for maintenance). Downsview Station may have been a 'subway from nowhere to nowhere', but it cut short a number of bus trips to Wilson Station and may have improved some commuters' travel times.
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The Downsview subway platform, looking north from the top of the stairs from the mezzanine level. The Hanger design is evident here. |
Two tailtracks are offered to the north of the station platform. In the tunnel on the south side of the platform is the usual crossover track. There are no hints of plans to connect the Spadina and future Sheppard subway lines with a wye, although this will likely happen once the Sheppard West extension is built, to give Sheppard trains easier access to the Wilson Yards.
Downsview is located in the middle of fields, well away even from the development of Sheppard Avenue. Plans are afoot for higher density development to be built here, but most traffic has to be bussed in. Except for a Kiss 'n' Ride facility east of the station, no parking facilities exist. The TTC hopes to add 500 parking spaces to this station in the near future, however.
Downsview and its place in Toronto's Subway History
Downsview was Toronto's 66th subway station to open. It is unfortunate that Downsview is significant in Toronto's subway history for being the first subway extension to be built in over 15 years. Indeed, with the exception of the Scarborough RT (which hardly rates as a subway), the City of Toronto and the TTC have not been able to build anything more than single-station extensions of established lines since the opening of the Spadina Subway in 1978. This streak persisted until 2002 when the five-station Sheppard Subway opened to the public.
Downsview Station was not a bad addition to Toronto's subway network. It is well designed, and cuts travel times to passengers heading to York University, the City of Vaughan and northwestern Toronto. The construction of 500 parking spaces will make Downsview even more useful for getting commuters out of their cars. However, Downsview still stands as a symbol of Toronto's disappointing roster of rapid transit improvements throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Its construction was an optimistic presage of two potential major subway extensions, and yet it is not likely that we will see these extensions for years. We should have had so much more.
Other Downsview Images
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One of the two T-1s pulls out of Downsview Station. |
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Downsview Stn. Passenger pick-up and drop-off with view of bus platform in backgorund. A study in steel. |
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Downsview station bus platform east side. Extensive use of glass aboveground contributes to the airy feel of the station. |
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The T-1 in Downsview Stn. is patiently waiting for the approaching T-1 to cross-over to the other side. |
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Furthering the aiviation theme the dispatch signal for the guard at Downvsview Stn. resembles a 1940's factory warning light. |
The Sheppard Subway
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(Above) A TTC plan drawing showing a pedestrian corridor in Don Mills station, including artistic tilework. (Below) A map and trackplan of the current Sheppard subway. |
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(Above) A map of the Sheppard subway as it would look when all planned extensions are completed. |
by Aaron Adel and James Bow
See Also:
A History of Northern Crosstown Subway Proposals
Proposals for an east-west rapid transit line across the northern edge of Metro Toronto (now Toronto) have been floating around since the 1960s. Its first appearance came from the mouth of mayor James Service of North York (one of Mel Lastman’s predecessors). He suggested that the ends of the Bloor-Danforth subway be extended north through the middle of Etobicoke and Scarborough and across the top of North York (likely along the Hydro right-of-way north of Finch Avenue) to form a large belt line. This proposal was not taken seriously. Although a line across the top of Toronto would bring rapid transit access within two kilometres of most residents of Toronto, the densities along the route would make the line unprofitable to run.
The proposal did not go away, however. The suburban municipalities of Toronto had seen the boost in development brought by the Yonge and Bloor subways, and a subway line of their own became an obvious means to kickstart their own downtowns. Also, as the seventies moved into the eighties, commuting patterns started to change, with more and more people not bound by a suburban home and a downtown workplace. These commutes were not adequately served by a transit network focusing on suburb-to-downtown travel. People living in northern Etobicoke and bound for northern Scarborough faced a long trip out of their way by bus to access the Bloor subway, and another bus at the end of the subway to complete his trip. With Highway 401 running across the top of the city, it’s no surprise that public transit began to fall behind the automobile in terms of modal split outside of Toronto’s downtown core.
Further proposals cropped up to build a northern crosstown rapid transit line, many put forward as a means of handling suburb-to-suburb commutes. A number focused on the Hydro right-of-way north of Finch Avenue, mostly because it would be cheap and easy to build a line there. Even the Government of Ontario got into the act, suggesting that a long-distance commuter based rapid transit line could run along this corridor from Oakville to Pickering. The Sheppard subway proposal materialized because its proponents realized that Sheppard Avenue was becoming a heavily used corridor for suburb-to-suburb commutes. The route was also a line connecting two rapidly developing satellite downtowns in North York and Scarborough and ridership on the Sheppard bus routes was rising, as were the number of buses required to maintain service. In 1982, politicians and planners proposed that a line be built running from the Yonge-Sheppard intersection, east on Sheppard to Brimley, and then south to the Scarborough Town Centre. By 1984, the Sheppard subway proposal included a westward extension to the Spadina subway. It was the centrepiece of Network 2011, Metro Toronto’s official plan for rapid transit over the next twenty-five years.
The fact that Toronto has a Sheppard subway at all is due to the efforts of Mel Lastman. When he was Mayor of North York, he had a grand vision of turning his sleepy suburban borough into a city in its own right, with a downtown to challenge that of the City of Toronto. To his credit, he understood, more than many other people who have tried similar feats, that a downtown can’t be just for cars — pedestrians must be accommodated, as must people who use public transit. So he located his downtown on a major rapid transit line, the Yonge subway, and convinced the TTC to build an additional station, North York Centre, to service it. To further enhance his downtown, he latched onto the proposal to build a subway along Sheppard Avenue between the Spadina subway and the Scarborough Town Centre. By building a rapid-transit crossroads, he believed that development would bloom in his new downtown.
The Network 2011 proposal might have been built had Bill Davis stayed on as premier of Ontario one more year. The fall of the Conservative government of 1985 brought the Liberal Party to power, and they blanched at Network 2011’s $2.1 billion sticker price. The Sheppard line itself was priced at one billion 1985 dollars. The proposal was delayed and deferred, until a scaled-down version was proposed by the Liberals in 1990. Then the Liberals too were defeated, by the NDP and Bob Rae. The Sheppard subway was delayed for another four years.
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Shovels in the ground. Construction of the Sheppard-Leslie station. Photos by Aaron Adel. |
 (Above) Another shot of construction at Leslie station. Photo by Aaron Adel. |
By the time the NDP granted enough funding to get the shovels into the ground, 1994, the price tag had ballooned and both Queen’s Park and Metro Toronto were reeling from the effects of a major recession. There wasn’t enough money to build all of the needed subways at once, so to get construction started, and to make sure that all of the players within Metro were satisfied with the spending they received, the first phase of the Sheppard subway was cut back from Victoria Park to Don Mills. A shortened Eglinton West subway started construction from the Spadina line to Black Creek Drive at the same time. This political compromise was all for naught, however. As soon as the Conservatives under Mike Harris won the 1995 election, the Eglinton West subway project was cancelled and the province dropped all capital funding of public transit. Sheppard was itself almost cancelled, but Mel Lastman’s lobbying saved the line. After considerable political jockeying (where, at one point, Metro council agreed to build the Sheppard subway tunnels but not the tracks or the stations), the line’s future was confirmed. Construction continued unabated through to 2002.
The subway stations enroute were built using the traditional “cut-and-cover” method of subway construction and this method was also be used for the western tailtracks. The rest of the line, however, was bored using two huge tunnel boring machines (TBMs) which were placed underground near Leslie station and made to tunnel west to Doris Avenue (just east of Yonge Street). When they reached Doris Avenue, the machines were removed and transported to a second launch site east of Leslie Street, to complete the tunnels to Don Mills. The TBMs (nicknamed “Rock” and “Roll” were designed to dig up to 15 metres a day each, versus the 5 metres per day progress when the Yonge subway extension to Finch was constructed. These machines not only dug through the earth, but installed reinforced concrete liner rings as they passed. The twin tunnels of the Sheppard subway are 13 metres apart and 15 to 18 metres below ground. The TBMs bored through the sites of Bessarion and Bayview stations, and construction commenced on these stations after tunnelling was complete and the tunnel liners dismantled where the station platforms were to be.
The Sheppard subway, as originally proposed, would serve plenty of useful purposes. If it were to run from the Scarborough Centre to Downsview station, it would go a long way to easing those cross-town commutes which do not pass through downtown Toronto. Also, despite being four kilometres away from the City of Markham, the presence of the Sheppard subway might convince some of their residents to leave their cars. As a stub line, however, Sheppard’s usefulness is curtailed. Scarborough residents heading to North York Centre used to have only one transfer to make in order to complete their trip (85 Sheppard East bus to Yonge subway). Now they have two (although a branch of the 85 Sheppard East bus continued to operate to Yonge Street, albeit at reduced frequencies). Reliance on the Bloor-Danforth subway for cross-town commutes is also not reduced. Markham residents, however, may be convinced to leave their cars at the Sheppard stops to take public transit the rest of the way downtown, but that’s about all.
The Stations Enroute
Sheppard-Yonge station is the western terminus of the new line. The new part of the station sits in the narrow gap above the Yonge subway and the street level. It was a considerable engineering challenge, featuring both center and side platforms, to eventually allow for loading and unloading from each side of any train. The center platform has been left unfinished and inaccessible, and won’t be used until increasing ridership justifies the construction of side platforms built into the Yonge line station. The current station was renovated to allow for free transfers to the bus terminal, and new entrances were built on Sheppard Avenue West.
A double tail-track extend to the west of the station, joining together, and also connecting with a switch that will take cars from here onto the southbound Yonge tracks. When the subway was being built, there were suggestions that trains would pull into the north tracks of the station, let off their passengers, pull into this tailtrack and then switch onto the southern tracks for the eastbound run. This has not happened since the line opened, and in-service trains have changed tracks using the crossover to the east of the station. Passengers board and disembark at the southern platform of the Sheppard subway; the northern platforms are open, but used only occasionally, when a train pulls onto the north tracks before going heading west into the tailtracks, out of service.
Sheppard-Yonge also boasts an eight foot high, 12,000 square foot panoramic landscape of Yonge Street. The mural depicts, in compressed form, a trip north from Toronto using one square inch porcelain tiles.
Sheppard-Yonge station was originally named just Sheppard station when it was only served by the Yonge subway. Building the Sheppard line put TTC designers into a small quandary. At other stations where passengers could transfer between two lines, most platforms shared the same name (Spadina, St. George, Kennedy). However, to name the new line’s platforms “Sheppard” would have been confusing to passengers since they were already on the Sheppard line. The new platforms could not be named just “Yonge” either, since the Bloor-Danforth subway had already taken that station, and “Yonge North” did not seem suitable, either. After briefly considering naming the station “Princess” to commemorate the death of Princess Diana in 1997 (The proposal was widely panned; the Spenser family also turned down the request), it was decided to rename the whole station “Sheppard-Yonge”. The Yonge platforms of this station received new signs, laid over the original station signs. It was the first time a subway station in Toronto has been renamed.
As a result of the new subway, Sheppard-Yonge station became a sprawling complex featuring not only a bus terminal and two subway platforms, but no less than four entrances off the street. The main entrance is off the northeast corner of Sheppard and Yonge, while a separate staffed entrance exists off the west side of Sheppard and Yonge (accessible from the north and south sides of Sheppard Avenue). The stairs and passageway from Harlandale and Yonge, which originally led to the main collectors’ area, was modified into an automatic fare entrance. The fourth entrance is the original automatic fare entrance at Poyntz and Yonge at the south end of the complex. After a trial period, it was reported that the staffed entrance on the west side of the Yonge/Sheppard intersection was handling fewer passengers than each of the automatic entrances, and less than a tenth of the passengers at the main entrance on the east side of Sheppard and Yonge. As a result, the TTC decided to remove the collectors in January 2004 and turn the west side entrance into the third automatic fare entrance to the station.
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Interior and exterior design concepts of Bayview station. |
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No station was built at the intersection of Yonge and Willowdale, one kilometre east, due to community opposition and the fact that the densities in the area are not suitable for such a station. Provisions have been made for one to be built in the future, however. The next station east of Yonge is Bayview, located just east of the Sheppard/Bayview intersection, in front of the Bayview Village shopping mall. This station will serve residential communities and commercial properties at the intersection, including several high-rise condominiums that were built as the line was being constructed. Bayview station features a single central platform and three entrances: the main entrance at the northeast corner of the intersection (and the closest to the mall), and secondary entrances at the northwest corner of the intersection and on Sheppard Avenue east of the station. Connections with buses are on-street and passengers have to show a valid transfer to transfer between subway and bus.
Bayview station also features a selection of optical-illusion art. Using paint and tilework on the walls and floors, objects are made to look as though they are floating in air, depending on where the viewer stands to stare. Fortunately, the mezzanine level is wide enough that nobody should be trampled underfoot if they stand around too long.
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Design concepts of Bessarion station. |
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East of Bayview, Bessarion station serves the area of Sheppard Avenue mid-way between Bayview and Leslie stations. Centred on the Burbank Drive/Bessarion Road intersection, the station was built primarily to serve the redeveloping Canadian Tire lands. Bessarion has no bus terminal, requiring none since the only surface route nearby is the 85 Sheppard East bus. It has a single centre platform and a mezzanine level. The station features artwork in the form of a photographic frieze of hands, backs of heads and feet, representing the users of the station. The images were created from photographs of people in the surrounding community.
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Leslie station |
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Leslie station, served by a single centre platform, was built south of Sheppard Avenue (to avoid the foundations of a bridge) between Leslie Street and the CN tracks with the main entrance off Sheppard Avenue. Oriole GO train station is on the CN line about one kilometre south of Sheppard, and it was proposed to relocate it adjacent to the subway station with a direct passage between them, but this has not yet occurred.
Leslie features three entrances, including an automatic fare entrance from Old Leslie, closest to North York General Hospital and the proposed site of the relocated Oriole GO train station. A bus terminal sits by this entrance, at the west end of the station, with four bus bays. Two exist for the 51 Leslie bus, while the third was supposed to be for a rerouted 115 Silver Hills. That rerouting never materialized, giving the bus terminal two spare bus bays instead of one. Though the bus terminal is underused, the TTC received complaints in its first year of operation about the automatic fare entrance here. With full adult fare required to enter via this entrance, seniors arriving from North York General Hospital have to either pay more than they need to, or walk some distance to access the manned entrance at the corner of Sheppard and Leslie. The TTC is considering staffing this entrance as a result, although the low passenger volumes make such a change unlikely.
Leslie station featured an interesting artistic concept that was heavily promoted during the line’s construction. About 7,000 unique tiles were mounted throughout the station, each silk-screened with the words Sheppard and Leslie, handwritten by members of the community. The concept for the public art, by Toronto artist Micah Lexier, reinforces the location of the station and involves the community in creating the art and leaving behind their own handwriting.
East of Leslie station, the line passes through a bridge over the Don River East Branch. This bridge, which cost nearly $15 million to build, is a 60 metre long, completely enclosed box of concrete. The structure, located just south of Sheppard Avenue, is watertight and designed to withstand water levels high enough to submerge the bridge entirely. With this bridge, the TTC crosses one of the major obstacles to the Sheppard subway, making eastward extensions easier than if the line had been built to Leslie alone.
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The exterior of Don Mills station, according to artist rendition, showing Fairview Mall and bus platforms. |
Don Mills station is the eastern terminus of the first phase of the Sheppard subway line. An underground bus station with 14 bays was built south of the parking lot of Fairview Mall, along with an underground parking lot beneath Sheppard Avenue. Don Mills is served by a single centre platform. As with all other stations on the line, Don Mills has elevators, making the whole line wheelchair accessible.
Don Mills has two entrances: a manned entrance at the corner of Sheppard and Don Mills, and an automatic entrance closer to Fairview Mall. Since the line has opened, a number of passengers have made use of this entrance and have complained about having to pay full fare to enter the subway here. According to a TTC Report, “There is no clearly-defined walking path across the mall parking lot private property to the main station entrance, which is staffed with a collector, but is located some distance away, on the north side of Sheppard Avenue.” As a result of this, and high traffic volumes (an average of almost 26,000 passengers used Don Mills station each day during the first year of operation), the TTC is considering rebuilding this entrance to install a collector’s booth that would allow the use of discount tickets and cash fares.
Station Structure and Technical Details
Although few liberties have been taken with the basic station structures in order to keep costs low, this hasn’t stopped station designers from working with playing with this basic design to create distinctive subway stations. The floors have more colours and varying patterns. Walls are finished with ceramic tile or architectural concrete and distinctive, informative signage has been installed to direct passengers through the station, including a new signage band on the edge of the station platform.
The platforms are among the widest in the subway network and the stations are brightly lit. All light fixtures throughout the line are modular and interchangeable to cut maintenance costs. Stainless steel fare barriers, collectors’ booths and stair railings complement warm coloured tiles and the patterned terrazzo floor. Because the TTC envisions using only four-car subway trains to provide service for the foreseeable future, portions of each station have been walled off, so that station platforms aren’t longer than they need to be, but can be extended should service levels increase. These partitions have been finished to look like any other station wall, so there is no sense that the line has been left incomplete. It was planned for all stations to have glass platform barriers, like what was built for the Jubilee Line Extension in London, England, but this idea was dropped due to budget constraints.
All subway cars operating on the Sheppard line are stored on the line itself (mostly on the tailtracks). Five trainsets have been assigned to the line, with four providing service every five minutes, thirty seconds, throughout the line’s operating day; the fifth trainset acts as the spare. When they need maintenance, they head to Davisville Yard using the wye tracks connecting the Yonge line with the Sheppard line at Sheppard-Yonge station. The TTC briefly considered building a single-track tunnel to Downsview station as a connection with Wilson carhouse, but this idea was dropped as too expensive. Provisions were made for a wye connection to the north, however, in case the proposal to join the Spadina and Yonge lines along Steeles Avenue bears fruit. Sheppard trains could get to Wilson carhouse more quickly this way.
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Tunnel-boring machine used for the Sheppard line, seen below after construction sitting idly by some tunnel lining segments. |
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The First Year of Operation
After opening with much fanfare, the Sheppard subway has operated reliably and with good reviews with riders. However, eleven months after the line opened, the TTC came out with a report on the line’s performance which had some disappointing numbers. Initial projections for the line called for 15 million riders, 1 million of which would be new to the TTC. Ridership figures show that, instead, the line has taken 11 million riders, only 800,000 of which are new to the TTC. The TTC blames SARS and a slightly stale economy for the lower-than-expected ridership figures.
The fact remains that ridership on the Sheppard subway is twice what it was when only buses operated along Sheppard Avenue, and some of the connecting bus services have received a considerable boost as a result of the new service. The 190 Scarborough Centre Rocket, a limited stop service between Don Mills station and the Scarborough Town Centre, carried twice as many riders as expected. This is a good sign for a service which is seen as a precursor to a subway extension to the Scarborough Town Centre. The TTC also noted that ridership on the subway line is growing, and will continue to grow as a number of high rise projects along the line open. With cars operating half full, there the Sheppard subway has plenty of room to grow.
Where does the TTC go from here?
Officially, the top expansion priority for TTC and Toronto planners is to complete the subway extensions started in 1994 but cancelled by Mike Harris (the Eglinton West line, and the subway extension to York University). Before the 1999 provincial election, however, when speculation abounded that the Conservatives might be willing to spring for some election goodies, Mel Lastman commissioned a report on what would be the best subway expansion projects.
Although the TTC, under David Gunn, cautioned that maintaining the current system should still be the top spending priority, it identified a short, two-station extension of the Sheppard line to Victoria Park (with the intermediate station being Consumers) as the best choice. Such an extension would take the subway to the edge of Scarborough and bring service to a major industrial park, increasing ridership on the line by thousands each day. No money materialized, but this extension remains the TTC’s top priority should any other funds appear in the future.
Eventually, the TTC would like to finish the whole of the Sheppard line, from Downsview to the Scarborough Town Centre. The western extension of the line would have one intermediate station at Bathurst, plus two potential stations roughed in at Faywood and Senlac. To the east, stations would be placed at Warden, Kennedy and Progress before the line terminated beneath the current Scarborough Centre RT station, and there is a possibility of a station just east of Kennedy connecting with the Agincourt GO station on the Stouffville line. Once completed, the Sheppard subway would offer a trip from downtown Scarborough to downtown North York in under thirty minutes, competing well against the congested Highway 401 and striking at the heart of the northern suburbs’ dependence on the automobile.
In the extreme long term, the TTC saw the Sheppard subway running further west, but taking a hop north to Finch Avenue, where it would run along the Hydro right-of-way. The line would enter northern Etobicoke and then travel south on Highways 27 and 427 to connect with the Bloor-Danforth subway line. Back in 1985, this was not listed as a priority for 2011, and it will be decades before such a line comes to pass, but it is still in the TTC’s books. It looks as though James Service’s original proposal is being taken seriously after all.
Sheppard In Service Gallery
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A T-1 train including cars 5284 and 5285 await passengers at the southern platform of Sheppard-Yonge station. The tunnel to the tail-tracks are in the background. Picture donated by Mike Tricarico. |
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The long mezzanine as one approaches the south platform of the Sheppard/Yonge Sheppard-line platform. Photo by Dave Eustache. |
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This photo by Dave Eustache shows the northern platform and the unused central platform, as seen from the south platform of Sheppard-Yonge station. This picture nicely shows the gentle arch of the ceiling. |
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