Toronto Transit Commission
The Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, is a public body that operates buses, streetcar and subway lines in Toronto, Ontario.
Fares can be paid in cash; using discount tickets or tokens; or with daily or monthly passes. Students, senior citizens, and children pay lower fares.
Colloquially, its streetcars are known as "red rockets".
The TTC provides door-to-door service for wheelchair users at the same fares as for its other services.
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2 Subway Lines 3 Streetcar Service 4 Interesting Facts 5 See also 6 External links |
History of the TTC
Toronto's first public transportation company was the Williams Omnibus Bus Line, which carried passengers in horse-drawn stagecoaches along Yonge Street between the St. Lawrence Market and the Village of Yorkville for sixpence in 1849. The city granted the first franchise for a street railway in 1861.
In 1920, a Provincial Act created the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) and, in 1921, the Commission took over and amalgamated nine existing fare systems within the city limits. Between 1921 and 1953, the TTC added 35 new routes in the city and extended 20 more. It also operated 23 suburban routes on a service-for-cost basis.
The Great Depression and the Second World War both placed heavy burdens on the ability of municipalities to finance themselves. During most of the 1930s, municipal governments had to cope with general welfare costs and assistance to the unemployed. The war put an end to the depression and increased migration from rural to urban areas. After the war, municipalities faced the problem of extending services to accommodate the increased population. Ironically, the one municipal service that prospered during the war years was public transit. The Union Station-to-Eglinton section of the Yonge Street subway—Canada's first—opened on 30 March 1954 and was conceived and built with revenues gained during the war, when gas rationing limited the use of automobiles. It was the first subway line to replace surface routes completely. It also was the site of an experiment with aluminum subway cars which led to their adoption throughout the system and by other transit systems. Several expansions since 1954 have more than quadrupled the area served, adding two new connected lines and a shorter intermediate capacity transit system.
Public transit was one of the essential services identified by Metro Toronto's founders in 1953. On January 1, 1954, the Toronto Transportation Commission was renamed the Toronto Transit Commission and public transit was placed under the jurisdiction of the new Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. The assets and liabilities of the TTC and four independent bus lines operating in the suburbs were acquired by the Commission. In 1954, the TTC became the sole provider of public transportation services in Metro Toronto.
On March 30, 1954, after five years of work, the first subway in Canada opened to the public. The original Yonge St. subway line went from Union Station north to Eglinton Station. Premier of Ontario Leslie Frost and Mayor of Toronto Allan Lamport, among other important persons, rode the first ride that morning, going north from the yards at Davisville Station, and then from Eglinton, south along the entire line. That day, at 2:30pm, the last streetcar to travel Yonge St. south of Eglinton made its final ride.
Following nine years later was the University line opening, continuing from Union back north to St. George Station, and another three years past that, the original Bloor-Danforth Line was built, going under Bloor St. and Danforth Ave. from Keele Station in the west to Woodbine Station in the east. Within two years, the Bloor-Danforth line had been extended in both directions, to Islington Station in the west and Warden Station in the east.
The 1970s saw Toronto adopting a streetcar abandonment policy; the plan was to have low-volume services be served by buses, and more heavily-used routes to get subway lines. Later in that decade, the rising cost of subway construction and the awareness of the limitations of buses reversed that decision; Toronto is now one of the few North American cities to retain its streetcars through the 20th century, and is now considering expansion of the service.
In 1973, the Yonge subway line was extended north to York Mills Station, and the next year it was as far north as Finch Station. Five years after that, the Spadina line was opened, going from the north terminus of the University line to Wilson Station. And in 1980, the Bloor-Danforth Line was extended once again, to the current termini of Kipling Station on the west end and Kennedy Station on the east.
But after that, subway building came to a standstill. For the next 16 years, there would be no more subway extensions, and for eight years past that, any new subways. Instead, a proposed extension on the Danforth end of the Bloor-Danforth line was built in 1985 as the Scarborough RT (light rail transit) line, which went from Kennedy to McCowan Station. Two years later, a new station was added south of Finch on the Yonge line, at the North York Centre.
Even so, plans were developed to build new subway lines along Eglinton and Sheppard Avenues, as well as an extension to the Spadina line. However, with the incoming Conservative provincial government in 1995, work on the Eglinton line was stopped and the partially dug tunnels filled in. In 1996 the Spadina expansion opened, adding one new station, Downsview Station.
In 1998, Metropolitan Toronto ceased to exist and was replaced by a new City of Toronto formed from the amalgamation of its six former cities. Four years later, the Sheppard Line was opened, the first new subway line in decades. But it was much shorter than originally planned, going from Yonge St. east to Don Mills Station.
The TTC continues to be the sole provider of public transit within the City of Toronto, as well as operating contracted services into the neighbouring York Region. Regional commuter service (both bus and rail) is operated by GO Transit, the vast majority of which goes to downtown Toronto's Union Station. Connection buses of the Mississauga, Brampton, York Region, and Pickering and Ajax transit systems enter Toronto at various points.
Main article: Toronto Subway and RT
The regular subway trains operate on the Yonge-University-Spadina Line, the Bloor-Danforth Line, and the Sheppard Line. The Scarborough RT is also considered a 'subway-style' service and is included on subway maps and in that level of administration, though it is primarily aboveground, has less capacity and uses highly differing technology.
The surface routes of the TTC include both buses and streetcars, but the latter are found no further north than St. Clair Avenue. That is, all but one of the routes passes through downtown Toronto, and the other starts from a point only 2 km north of the downtown intersection of Yonge and Bloor and proceeds no further north (south of downtown is Lake Ontario).
The TTC operates 11 streetcar routes which are altogether 306 km long. Because the TTC has maintained a large portion of its pre-World War II streetcar system, the streetcar routes operate in prewar style, with almost all of the route mileage in traffic rather than on reserved track. On the Queensway, Spadina Avenue and Queen's Quay, however, the streetcars have a separated right-of-way in the road median, and on Bay Street between Front Street and Queen's Quay cars operate underground. There are underground connections to the subway at Union Station, Spadina station, and St. Clair West station.
After a long period in which its policy was to eliminate all streetcar routes, in part because subway development was thought to eliminate the need for them, the TTC returned to building new streetcar routes in the 1990s with the Spadina route, which opened in 1997. In 2000 it extended the Harbourfront route, and further extensions of the Harbourfront and St. Clair routes are being considered.
The previous policy of eliminating streetcars accounts for the concentration of streetcar lines within 5 km of the waterfornt. As the city developed northward, transit service was provided by extension of bus routes rather than of streetcar routes. Later the subway was extended north with bus routes feeding it.
Retention of streetcars was in large part due to resistance by citizens' groups who succeeded in persuading the TTC of the advantages of streetcars over buses (which carry fewer passengers) on heavily travelled main routes.
The tracks of the streetcars and subways, but not the Scarborough RT, are of a unique gauge. There are arguments over the reason why this is (one popular belief is that the TTC didn't want the Canadian Pacific Railway to operate steam locomotives through city streets). The more practical reason is that early tracks were used to pull wagons smoothly, and that they fit a different gauge. Due to the cost of converting all the tracks and vehicles, the unique gauge has remained to this day.
One of the best known secrets of the TTC is the second Lower Bay subway station. This subway station was briefly used in interlining between two of Toronto's lines in 1966. A lesser known station is "Lower Queen".Subway Lines
Streetcar Service
Interesting Facts
The two models of streetcars the TTC uses for revenue service are unique to the city. The CLRV (Canadian Light Rail Vehicle) and the ALRV (Articulated Light Rail Vehicle) were designed by an Ontario Crown corporation and a Swiss private company and built in Thunder Bay. This was because most North American cities were phasing out its streetcar fleets, while Toronto (as well a few notable American cities, such as Boston and Philadelphia) stubbornly clung on.