THE PEOPLE MOVERS
Subway expansion extends the GTA in every direction
The 1960s was the decade when The Better Way got better. In 1963, the Yonge subway was extended north from Union Station up University Ave. Better still, the Bloor-Danforth line opened three years later. It ran from Keele east to Woodbine. As the media was quick to point out, the new subway went from suburb to suburb, all the way from Etobicoke to Scarborough. It was a measure of the importance of the new line that both Ontario Premier John Robarts and Prime Minister Lester Pearson were on hand on 25 February, 1966, to bask in the glow of the unveiling.
Their presence was understandable. The newly expanded subway system confirmed the thinking of the time that Toronto was moving beyond the conventional car-based model of mobility to something urban and efficient. People hoped it would reduce congestion, cut pollution and make getting around a whole lot less stressful, if not more comfortable. Experts also argued that development would respond to transit and become concentrated and connected.
The need for the Bloor-Danforth subway had long been obvious. The streetcars it replaced carried 9,000 passengers hourly during morning and evening rush hours. By comparison, the subway moved 40,000 an hour in both directions. Interestingly, though enhanced rapid transit led to an increase in development, especially around busy stations such as Bathurst, much of Bloor and Danforth remained relatively untouched. That was especially true along Danforth, where minimum city-parking requirements and height restrictions limited growth.
Though plans originally called for the line to be built in three phases, a last-minute $60-million loan from the province allowed simultaneous construction of the second and third sections. Speaking of moving quickly, it’s worth noting that work on relocating utilities began just weeks after the Ontario Municipal Board approved the Bloor-Danforth subway in September, 1958, and Metropolitan Toronto Council okayed the line’s $200-million budget. Premier Leslie Frost officially kicked off the project from the cab of a power shovel just over a year later, in November 1959.
It helped that the new lines could be financed without assistance from Queen’s Park or Ottawa. The money came instead from TTC surpluses and property tax surcharges levied by Metro. Torontonians were overwhelmingly on board with building subways. Underlying this confidence was the fact that the new lines would mostly run through high-density neighbourhoods and would, therefore, be able to pay their way through the fare box.
On the other hand, the city’s monumental failure to build the Downtown Relief Line (DRL), first proposed in 1911, is an indictment of a political system
that increasingly treated transit as a means to encourage growth even when the potential was limited by low densities. Low population density, of course, leads to low ridership and low revenues.
As Andy Byford, TTC CEO from 2011 to 2017, argued before he left Toronto, “I think the most pressing need is to focus on subway expansion where it’s not so much that they will come, it’s [that] there’s already a demonstrable need.” Bloor-Danforth had shown that the old build-it-and-theywill-come approach didn’t work. But by then, subways were an emotional issue. When Toronto Mayor Rob Ford proposed a Scarborough subway in 2010, provincial politicians latched onto the idea with tenacity. And so it is that the subway lines on which the vast majority of Torontonians still rely every day are those that date back to the ‘50s and ‘60s.
By contrast, the University subway was aimed less at moving people than taking care of business. It served the Financial District and provincial government employees, but then, so did the old Yonge line. On the other hand, unlike more recent TTC subway expansions to the north, the University route increased capacity as well as ridership.
“[W]e can’t build only downtown,” says respected Toronto transportation engineer, Ed Levy, “but it was madness to stop building subways in old Toronto in the 1960s.”
Transit planners and users would concur. But the debate about whether the future belonged to the car or public transit raged then as now. Though Metro chair Frederick Gardiner made no secret he preferred cars, a decade after he retired, Ontario Premier Bill Davis killed the Spadina Expressway, and with it Gardiner’s vehicular dreams. Half a century later, we’re no closer to agreement. In good Toronto fashion, we demand transit, but only if we can still take the car.