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When did public transit start in Toronto?
When did Toronto's first subway line open?
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How did public transit change in the 1910s?
The City of Toronto was once an international leader in public transit. TTC was one of the first operators to integrate buses, streetcars, and a subway across a metropolitan area. From 1954 to around 1980, strict planning controls encouraged high-density development along the subway, and along major arterial routes with good bus services.
- The Earliest Days
- The Rise of The Toronto Street Railway Company
- Steps Towards Electrification
- The First Stab at Public Ownership
- William Mackenzie Takes Over
- The TTC Through Boom, Bust and War
- Metropolitan Toronto and The Car Change The Picture
- Decline, Fall and Rise
- Where Do I Go from Here
- References
When Toronto was incorporated as a city in 1834, it had a long way to go towards becoming the metropolis of today; it’s population at the time was barely 10,000, or less than half the current population of Owen Sound. Though Toronto was already a significant commercial centre, the only transportation the city could boast were stagecoaches to and fr...
The popularity of Williams’ service had already demonstrated to city council and various business interests the viability of public transit in the city. This would prove to be his undoing. In 1861, Alex Easton, a Philadelphia native came to Toronto to help set up a conglomerate of local business owners to build a street railway in the city. Having ...
In the 1870s and 1880s, electricity transformed from an experimental curiosity into something practical that could light cities and moves vehicles about. The 1880s found John Joseph Wright, an English immigrant, experimenting with electricity in a small shop near Yonge and King, and selling light bulbs and the electricity to light them to various s...
As Toronto grew, so too did the ridership of the Toronto Street Railway, from 44000 in 1861 to 55000 in 1891, when the TSR’s 30-year franchise expired. On May 16, 1891, the city sought to take over the system. The attempt did not go as well as planned. The city first ordered the Toronto Street Railway Company to agree to hand over operations withou...
The Toronto Railway Company’s president and owner was William Mackenzie, a railroad mogul who had founded the Canadian Northern. In the TRC’s first years, Mackenzie introduced a number of innovations, and his leadership proved popular with the public. The new company maintained a five cent fare, introduced free transfers and reduced fares for child...
The 1920s was a period of great activity within Toronto. Not only was there considerable work in uniting the operations of the Toronto Railway Company and the Toronto Civic Railways, but the TTC had also inherited from the TRC an aging system which had been left to deteriorate by its disinterested owners on the eve of the end of their franchise. A ...
In the early 1950s, Toronto and its suburbs had to contend with sprawling development held back after two decades of depression and war. In order to answer the problem of sharing infrastructure funding and distribution, the Province of Ontario took the step of collecting Toronto and its twelve suburbs under the auspices of the Municipality of Metro...
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Toronto Transit Commission was seen worldwide as a ‘transportation showcase’. From 1979 until 1990, it won awards after awards for safety and design. Unfortunately, in the 1990s, it fell upon hard times. Political foot-dragging slowed subway development to a crawl, and budget cuts, the recession, and the inability to...
Click here for our history of Toronto’s bus network, particularly 82 RosedaleBromley, John F., TTC ‘28, The Upper Canada Railway Society, Toronto (Ontario), 1968.Bromley, John F., and Jack May Fifty Years of Progressive Transit, Electric Railroaders’ Association, New York (New York), 1973.Filey, Mike, Not a One-Horse Town: 125 Years of Toronto and its Streetcars, Maps Project handbooks, Toronto (Ontario), 1999.Hood, J. William, Street Railways - Toronto: 1861 to 1930, Maps Project, Toronto (Ontario), 1999.Public transit was one of the essential services identified by Metropolitan Toronto's founders in 1953. On January 1, 1954, the Toronto Transportation Commission was renamed the Toronto Transit Commission and kept the acronym of TTC and public transit was placed under the jurisdiction of the new Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.
Aug 8, 2016 · Up until 1920 Toronto’s transit was run through a multitude of private transit companies, such as the Toronto Street Railway Company, but in 1920 the Toronto Transportation Commission (the original TTC) was formed, and they planned to turn transit service into a municipal operation.
Oct 20, 2023 · Over the last 20 years, public transit in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area has expanded significantly, with lots more underway. We look at all the work that GO has done to expand their train lines and bus routes, along strides at local transit agencies across the GTHA.
Apr 18, 2019 · Ontario unveils an 'ambitious' outline for rapid transit within Metro Toronto and beyond in 1982. Eight years later, the Progressive Conservatives were still the government in power and...
Mar 30, 2013 · Fifty-nine years ago today, Tuesday, March 30, 1954, the TTC ’s first subway — the first subway line in Canada — opened between Eglinton and Union Station. In Transit Toronto’s history of the line, James Bow describes the opening: Ontario Premier Leslie Frost and Toronto Mayor Allan Lamport officially opened the Yonge subway on March 30 ...
