Before the subway, Yonge Street had the streetcar. We should bring it back.
The best cities in the world make trams and metros work in harmony.
In large cities where metro stops are too far apart to serve local routes, but bus routes are already at maximum capacity, tram lines serve a useful niche. Trams are able to serve shorter stop spacings than metro lines, while carrying a plethora of additional people in comparison to any bus, even an articulated BRT.
According to the TTC’s own figures, their standard 40-foot buses hold approximately 51 passengers, while the 60-foot articulated buses hold approximately 77 passengers. These figures are rough, as the TTC operates a mixed fleet of buses from a variety of manufacturers.
In contrast, the Bombardier Flexity Outlook variant used on Toronto’s legacy tram network can fit a maximum of 181 passengers. The five-car variant of the Flexity Freedom, planned for Toronto’s Line 5 semi-metro, has a max capacity of 251 passengers. Finally, the four-car variant of the Alstom Citadis Spirit, planned for the Line 6 and Line 10 trams in the GTA, has a max capacity of 340 passengers.
If labour is one of the TTC’s largest operating costs, increased bus frequency or a BRT lane will not scale as effectively as a tram line will. A single Flexity Outlook tram in Toronto carries more than double the standing capacity of a 60-foot articulated bus. For the cost of training a vehicle operator and paying their salary, trams have a clear benefit over buses on popular routes which demand high-capacity vehicles.
If you have even a passing familiarity with the City of Toronto, you understand that Yonge Street is the street. Line 1 is the busiest metro line in Canada, with an average weekday ridership of ~670k in Fall 2022. Both the trains and the platforms on Line 1 are frequently crush-loaded, not merely an inconvenience but now an outright hazard to human life.
We have multiple options to relieve the strain on the Yonge Street side of Line 1, beyond merely fixing the current state of disrepair. As-is, the current level of automation is already at GoA2, which means that the currently infrequent service is solely the result of austerity budgets slashing away at maintenance and operators.
First: Metrolinx has already begun construction of the Ontario Line metro, which will run from Exhibition Place to the Ontario Science Centre in Phase 1, terminating at the Line 5 station on Eglinton Avenue. With design protections for a second phase that would extend the Ontario Line further north, it could instead terminate up at Fairview Mall on Line 4, building a parallel north-south line to Line 1.
In addition, Metrolinx is exploring a westbound extension of the Line 4 metro, connecting Sheppard Station with Sheppard West Station. This would allow transit users in North York to quickly cross across both sides of Line 1, redistributing traffic over to the western half of the “U”-shape.
If this proposal instead extended one stop further to Downsview Park, it could meet the Barrie GO line, which will soon have two-day all-way RER service. In all of these proposed cases, the addition of new north-south metro and RER lines could provide parallel alternatives to Line 1 on Yonge Street.
Unfortunately, many people need to travel on Yonge Street, either because that’s the most direct route for them, or because it is their actual destination. That provides us with two options to augment Yonge Street’s public transit service:
Add additional tracks to Line 1 in order to add express service, with less popular stations being skipped. This can include anything from adding some passing loops to quad-tracking the entire line, and it would be extremely expensive. Only New York City does this, while cities such as Paris, London and Tokyo overlay RER lines instead for synergy.
Replace a large segment of the 97 Yonge Bus route with a surface tram, operating along Yonge Street in the median, compatible with the legacy tram network and thus able to link into the existing tracks at Union Station and St. Clair Station. Newer vehicles than the Flexity Outlook can be procured, as long as we design them with a compatible loading gauge and minimum turning radius.
For obvious reasons, I think that a surface tram on Yonge Street would be much more viable. It would be complementary to Line 1 rather than duplicative, and it would be orders of magnitude cheaper. And most importantly? It’s something that already used to exist.
The Past…
Before the opening of the original TTC metro line in 1954 from Union Station up to Eglinton Avenue, Yonge Street was served by a tram service. Built and operated by the Toronto Street Railway before Confederation in 1861, this would become Canada’s very first streetcar line.
During the management of the Toronto Street Railway, the Yonge Street service was operated by horse-drawn trams. In a fashion, these 19th century trams could be considered to have an “engine” of one horsepower.
By 1891, the thirty-year operating franchise for the Toronto Street Railway had expired, and the city opted to grant the Toronto Railway Company a new thirty-year franchise. This operating franchise was conditional on the Toronto Railway Company electrifying the tram system; this can be considered the true birth of the electric tram as Toronto knows it today.
Finally, by 1921, the City of Toronto assumed direct control over the Toronto streetcar network, establishing the Toronto Transportation Commission and ordering 350 Peter Witt-design streetcar trams. By November 1922, the Yonge streetcar line ran up to the city limits of Old Toronto on Glen Echo Road, at the southern tip of Hoggs Hollow before the dip into the valley.
From that northern terminal, passengers could transfer to interurban trams on the Metropolitan line, and proceed on that railway north all the way into Lake Simcoe. By 1927, the TTC had acquired the Metropolitan line, and after 1930 would cut back service of the Metropolitan line to terminate at Richmond Hill, renaming it the North Yonge Railways. This interurban would later close by 1948, replaced by bus service.
Within a few short years of the closure of the North Yonge Railways, the end of the road also came for the Yonge streetcar, as Toronto began construction on a metro line between Eglinton Avneue and Union Station. On March 30th, 1954, the Yonge subway line opened to the public, and on the same day the Yonge streetcar line closed, ending almost a century of service in the City of Toronto.
To fill the gap in coverage left between Glen Echo Road and Eglinton Avenue, the TTC would adapt the overhead wires for trolleybus service; rail service would not return to North York for two decades, until the opening of Lawrence Station and York Mills Station in 1973; further stops to Sheppard Avenue and Finch Avenue would open the following year, and North York Centre would later become an infill station.
Toronto embraced the Yonge Street metro, and the Yonge Street tram soon faded into the annals of history, forgotten by the public.
But what is old, could still become new again.
…And The Future
Currently, the 97 local bus route operates along Yonge Street from Steeles Avenue down to Union Station, broken into three different sub-routes. The 97C sub-route covers the segment of Yonge Street from Union Station up into the bus terminal at Eglinton Station.
The 97A and 97B sub-routes have their southern terminus at St. Clair Station, and run up north to Steeles Avenue, where they loop back south. The small distinction is that 97A continues straight on Yonge Street between Lawrence Avenue and York Mills Road, while 97B dips onto Yonge Boulevard and then cuts back on Wilson Avenue towards Yonge Street to merge back in.
While there is a small section of overlapping coverage between the 97AB and 97C sub-routes on the segment between St. Clair Station and Eglinton Station, the 97 is best described as two separate routes in practice.
Because of the presence of Line 1 below the street, the frequency of the 97 bus is very poor. The 97C operates just every thirty minutes, only during weekday commuting periods. The 97A and 97B each operate every fifty minutes at offsetting times, throughout all weekdays and weekends.
Toronto is capable of doing much better. In the age of the Yonge streetcar, Toronto was sending trams out of the station quite literally every single minute. Now, we can barely send a bus every half-hour. The 97 bus is not serving a complementary purpose to the Line 1 metro; the lack of synergistic surface transit on Yonge is a symptom of our city’s wider decline.
My proposal for a solution is clear: Create a new 502 tram route operating between Union Station and St. Clair Station, replacing the 97C with a fast and frequent surface route that can carry much higher capacities of passengers. Transit users could then transfer at St. Clair Station from the tram to the reduced-length 97 bus route, or into Line 1 for longer-distance journeys.
Overlaying different modes in complementary fashions like this is a great strength of Parisian public transit; when the RER A became exceedingly popular, Paris built the Line 14 metro line on a route intended to relieve RER A’s congestion.
By building different modes rather than duplicating the same mode, they are able to complement a wider variety of journeys while also increasing capacity for the types of journeys that both are suited for.
This modern Yonge Street tram could be built along to the standards of the legacy 500-series network. In doing so, this would provide the ability to link into the existing 509 and 510 routes at Union Station, and the 512 route at St. Clair Station.
By linking these tracks together, and placing switches at ideal points, Toronto would be able to create additional tram routes beyond my hypothetical “502 Yonge”, as demand merits it. Of course, all of this new trackage should be constructed along to the guidelines I’ve suggested for improving Toronto’s existing 500-series legacy network.
Ultimately, this would create the necessary conditions to compell the TTC to finally renovate the existing tram platforms at Union Station and St. Clair Station; their current dimensions were built for Toronto’s shorter and older trams, not the current Flexity Outlook which make up the entire legacy tram fleet. These termini also do not possess any passing tracks or loops, limiting their potential to serve multiple routes.
These station renovations are quite frankly something that should be done anyway, but Toronto only does the right thing when they’re faced with the maximum pressure to do so, and a big ribbon cutting project like this would certainly provide additional urgency. Indeed, St. Clair Station’s tram platform was recently renovated…without adding any passing loops, which infuriates me.
In any case, if Toronto is already making plans to expand the 500-series legacy trams on the East Bayfront towards the Port Lands, these are changes that Union Station needs sooner rather than later.
Keeping a Yonge Street tram in mind while those changes are made will prevent needing to make more changes later, like we will need at St. Clair Station if we ever plan to add a passing loop.
Toronto can have much better surface transit on Yonge Street than we do right now. If we cared attempt even a tenth of what our predecessors did in this city one hundred years ago, we could revolutionize public transit for all Torontonians.
Do not mistake my intent; I am a queer Jew, and there is no world in which I would rather live in 1924 over 2024. But it is disheartening to see that over the past century, there are indeed things in our city that have gotten worse.
I have the ambition to see our city try to strive for greater things, as we once did. Toronto used to be a city that built things, rather than destroy them. And some day, I truly believe we will be a city of builders again.