City
What ever happened to the Queen Street Subway Line?
As I was shooting the photographs for my story on the questions that surround the future of the Dufferin underpass at Queen, I noticed something that had previously eluded my attention. On the northeast side of the bridge, right where the limestone begins, is a monument that reads "Queen Street Subway" followed by "R.J. Fleming, Mayor" and "E.H. Keating, City Engineer" and the year "1897."
When I saw this, I immediately did a double take. I was aware, of course, that there were once plans to build a Queen Subway Line, but the year 1897 didn't seem to make much sense. Sure enough, the sculpted plaque has nothing to do with the aborted subway line, but is the inscription for the underpass that I was writing the story on, the lot of which used to be referred to as subways.
After I sorted this bit of nonsense out, however, I was compelled to take another look at the plans for the ill-fated subway line that would have serviced passengers traveling east/west throughout the core of the city.
Now, lots of great, in-depth stuff has been written about this project, so I'll confine myself to a quick little overview with links to further reading.
The idea for a subway line on Queen dates back to 1942, when the the TTC put together a proposal for two streetcar subways, one running north/south between Bay and Yonge, and the other running east/west along Queen Street. Eventually, the decision was made (in 1945) to build a heavy-rail subway for the north/south route, while the Queen line would still be serviced by streetcars.
According to Mark Osbaldeston, author of Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City that Might Have Been, "It would run as its own right-of-way between Trinity-Bellwoods Park and and Logan Avenue. For most of the route, this right-of-way would be in an open trench, generally behind the buildings fronting the north side of Queen, but the sections between University Avenue and Church Street would be located in a tunnel."
Believe it or not, a small portion of that tunnel was actually built during the construction of the Yonge Subway Line at a cost of around $5-million. Underneath Queen Station on the current YUS line sits the shell of City Hall Station, the one and only portion of the line that was built.
So what happened to the Queen Subway Line?
Not so long after the original proposals, the TTC started thinking about the need to increase service through midtown. As Osbaldeston notes, two competing visions for a midtown route of thus arose. Allan Lamport, TTC chair at the time, advocated a straight line running underneath Bloor/Danforth (as we have today), while Frederick Gardiner wanted a U-shaped line that would service midtown before dipping to Queen throughout the core (from Christie to Pape).
Ultimately, Lamport's straight line won the day, but even then the Queen line wasn't dead. It still appears as late as 1966 on the official plan for Metro Toronto (as a full subway line). Over the next decade or so, however, the priority placed on the construction of the line began to wane. Pressure increased to extend the Yonge line north of Eglinton and up the Spadina side north of St. George.
Although the TTC approved the construction of the Queen Subway Line in 1973, with three quarters of the money for the project to come from the Ontario government, it was once again delayed on account of the province's desire to see the results of a study of Toronto's transportation needs. When the final results of that study were released two years later, it was concluded that the passenger demand along Queen just didn't warrant the construction of a subway line.
That was basically it. When Metro's official plan was released in 1980, the Queen subway was nowhere to be found. And yet, even to this day, with the route of a future Downtown Relief Line up in the air, speculation regarding the construction under Queen Street remains. Who knows? Maybe at some point in the future, they'll even find a use for the partially built City Hall Station.
Further reading:
Images from the City of Toronto, Wikimedia Commons and the gettorontomoving.ca.
Discussion
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So that makes the Bay Street streetcar tunnel between Queens Quay and Union Station, a SUBWAY.
I think that given the condo boom deep in the downtown corridors as well as the swell of suburban housing, a Queen subway line would make an amazing amount of sense. It would certainly be more efficient than the Gardiner/Lakeshore shit-show that currently exists.
Add insult to injury with a subway extension into Vaughan where 'at best' they have 1/5th the density of TO (including all our 5 buroughs).
The grass roots advocacy for the DRL was active and firm in the first half of 2009. It died once Miller and the NDP gave them marching orders to fall back into rank and support Transit City instead
They're everywhere!!
That said, nowadays Queen Street would be a poor choice, due to how dense and closed in a lot of it is. A DRL built along Front, that could utilize parts of the rail corridor, link up at with Y-U-S at Union, and eventually meet up with the Bloor-Danforth line in the east and west ends, would be the best plan for the city.
Some might say Front itself isn't dense enough through the east end, but in reality it'd be a lot easier to build through there, rather than Queen. Besides, with Cityplace, Union, the Financial District, St. Lawrence, The Distillery, new waterfront neighbourhoods, the Beaches and so on, it'd really go a long way toward improving the east-west travel through the core, which is currently a nightmare.
How is it that another downtown line in x or y form is always the next thing on everyones agenda but the massive, poor and underserviced suburbs of Toronto never get mentioned?
Oh, and as Trull and KL have mentioned, it probably has something to do with the fact that the rest of the city doesn't really care about the darkies out east.
But I can acknowledge that many people living in the area work downtown and rely <b>heavily</b> on the Bloor Danforth Line. But the Bloor Danforth line is almost at capacity and has the capability to cripple the city when it runs into problems.
With no parallel alternative, when the B/D goes down, most east/west travel in the city goes down as well. Sure, we have the streetcars, but they don't come anywhere close to being able to handle a fraction of the traffic and are incredibly unreliable.
I live ON the Queen streetcar line and I usually prefer to walk north for 10 minutes, get on a bus, transfer to B/D, transfer to YUS and get off back at Queen downtown. It's faster and that is downright pathetic.
BTW, in what insanity do subways need parking lots??
Service in these areas is lacking right now, but the Transit City plan is almost entirely about serving Scarborough and North Etobicoke. http://www.toronto.ca/involved/projects/transit_city/pdf/transit_city_map.pdf
Transit City didn't look at putting any new lines in the downtown core, instead focusing on building fast and reliable transit into the inner suburbs that will be able to comfortably carry the projected ridership for these areas.
Furthermore, Scarborough residents who commute downtown would be one of the primary beneficiaries of a DRL, as it would let them switch to a downtown-bound train somewhere on the Danforth instead of trying to get on a packed train at Bloor-Yonge station.
No wonder traffic is so bad in this city, both subway and highway expansion has been virtually non-existent for over 40 years.
What we really need is a crosstown bicycle expressway! That'll solve our transit woes.
Look at that 1966 map... pretty much all that's changed transit-wise in 45 years is the addition of the Sheppard subway line and the Scarborough LRT, not a single new expressways whatsoever, and still no transit link of any kind to the airport. What a joke.
That map was relevant to that day, before all 905 existed. If the 905ers want better access to streets in downtown TO then they should move back into the city and create the density ie the catalyst for more subways
As for Manhattan, that's nowhere near a valid comparison. First of all, Manhattan is not even close to Toronto's population. Manhattan itself is only 1.6 million, and the NYC metro area is 8.4 million. Toronto is 2.5 million, while the GTA is 5.1 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto
Yes, Toronto is about 10 times the size of Manhattan, but its population is over 50% higher, not half. Yes the population density of NYC is higher, but that's STRONGLY encouraged by the fact that Manhattan and all of its boroughs are either islands or parts of islands, so it's not like they have a choice. And you'd also have to ignore all the nearby pseudo-suburbs like Jersey City and Long Island to claim that NYC is innocent of urban sprawl.
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The development in the Tri-State Area is still better than the development in our GTA. Each satellite city around NYC has its own better local transit system, some with light rail or subway (PATH)
The fundemental point is that had TO been land locked like parts of Montreal then it would have had no choice but to build up. Extending a subway line further into S'ough or worse into Vaughan is just a reward for that urban sprawl and will not promote smart growth
Second is that the megacity/NYC mentality and aspiration, is not matching with what Toronto really is and was planned to be. This NYC-level mentality is continuing to hurt Toronto. Sure, we should have a more extended subway system with numerous lines by now, but at the same time, the greed had also caused too many houses to be built in suburban Toronto and the next door 905 cities, immigration as well. TOO MUCH! Remember that these 905 cities including suburban Toronto sprawl, all rely on downtown Toronto at the same time. THIS has created a more severe transit issue than it should have been. But the main point is that we're just behind in transit and everything! Too much talk, or not even talking or planning, and no building of anything! The 905 cities are also irresponsible for not being their own cities and having their own life just like how any real city develops and goes through!
Marc is right, there is no centralization/core development outside of Toronto. Mississauga is the planning-equivalent of the borg collective. Durham is worse, there are several, parallel, major streets with identical names, there certainly won't be a "City of Durham" amalgamating Pickering/Ajax/Whitby/Oshawa.
(Unrelated to Marc's comment)
PLEASE stop referring to Scarborough, Etobicoke, East/North/York as the 'inner boroughs'. They are a part of Toronto. We need to serve each of these areas properly.
YES! Transit City was focused on getting these communities moving. YES! We still would need a DRL from Eglinton East to Eglinton West (via Queen, I think), but I imagine that is the only subway-level service that will be required for a LONG time. Pet projects would include making Sheppard's Stubway into a useful line, and completion of the true-crosstown Under/In Eglinton.