Trolley Tuesday 1/17/21 - The Toronto Transit Commission (Part 2)

On last Thursday's trolleypost, we took you through the privatised history of the Toronto Railways, back when it was just a gaggle of independent companies providing a variety of quality services across the Queen City. Today, we're taking you through the modern history of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) that you know and love so much. From its beginnings in the 1920s all the way through to the "Lean Years" of the 80s and 90s, the history of the TTC is as engaging, as varied, and as beautiful as the Peter Witts, PCCs, and CLRVs we all love so much. Now climb aboard, let's get rolling, and please stand clear of the doors!

Public Operation for the People!

The Toronto street railway network after the establishment
of the Toronto Civic Railways, 1912. More legible version here.
(Sean Marshall)

    When we last left Toronto, the city had just formed the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC, note the different word used) under a 1920 Provincial Act that coincided with the expiration of the Toronto Railway Company's (TRC) franchise the following year. At the time the TTC was formed, it had combined the 22-mile-long city-operated Toronto Civic Railways (TCR) with the much larger TRC, which had amassed 142 miles of track over 15 remaining lines (to say nothing of the suburban radial railways like the Toronto & York Radial Railway and the Toronto Suburban Railway, among others). While the aforementioned TCR was designed to meet the growing needs of outer-belt Torontans on the fringes of suburban life where the TRC dared not to tread, it was also hampered by being such an insular system, necessitating temporary tracks to move cars onto the private system. 

Cobbled streets similar to the state the TRC was left in
upon Amalgamation, circa 1920.
(McGraw Hill)

    After the amalgamation, fifteen ex-TRC routes were transferred into TTC ownership with the oldest, the Yonge Line, dating back to September 11, 1861. These routes operated as-normal with their existing rolling stock (some still lettered for the Toronto Railway Company), but it was clear that heavy rebuilding had to be undertaken to restore good faith in the hearts of commuters. One important avenue deferred by the TRC was the use of "devil strips", the strip of pavement separating two parallel railway lines and quite dangerous if one were to stand in the middle. Previously, the gap between the tracks was set at 3 feet wide, but when the TRC attempted to widen the gap to 3 feet, 10 inches, the city blocked any more rebuilding until 1908 for a variety of reasons (disturbance to traffic, interruption of railway service, an artificial reason to not meet passenger quotas per their charter, etc). Because of this, existing cars were built offset on their truck kingpins to allow safe passage while also having wider cars. When the TTC inherited the system, the gap widened to 5 feet 4 inches and the cars got wider as a result.

On the St. Charles Avenue Line in New Orleans, the relative lack of a devil's strip down the center is quite apparent.
(Trolleyville Times)

One of the many divirging curves on the Harbord St. Line.
(blogTO)

    There are also other routes besides the Yonge Line (which again I will get to later) that are worth noting, both to highlight the local history of Toronto for all of you nerds who like that and to agonize the ones who just want me to talk about the cars. One notable line was the Harbord Line between Spadina and Ossington Avenues. Under TRC ownership, the line grew from its original terminal on Church Street to Bloor Street, through what is now Harbord Village and past the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. Further extensions by the TRC enabled it to run to Lansdowne Avenue, creating a zig-zag route that dipped and turned through much of the city's old street grid. Another line, the Queen Line (now the 501 Queen) runs from Neville Park to Long Branch at a distance of 15 miles, said to be one of the longest streetcar lines in the world and certainly the longest in Canada. Originally operated by the Kingston Road Tramway in 1875, it was actually abandoned in the mid 1880s before the Toronto Street Railway (TSR) lashed it to their King Horsecar Line to get to the Beaches district. It remained unchanged as it was electrified by the TSR and inherited by the TTC. 

(City of Toronto Archives)

It's Not About the Size of Your Witt, It's How You Use It

Your standard double-truck TRC streetcar, featuring all-wood construction.
(City of Toronto Archives)

A Cleveland Railway Peter Witt streetcar.
(Cleveland Landmarks Press)

    And now we get to the good part. Immediately following amalgamation in 1921, the new TTC had inherited an infuriating flurry of 830 non-standardized motors and trailers. Many of these cars had fallen to the same deferred maintenance that the infrastructure suffered and, thus, were tired, clapped-out, and ready for the scrapheap. Most of all, these shop-built cars were made of wood, and in a time when most street railways on both sides of the border were beginning to embrace steel cars, Toronto's roster needed to modernize quickly. The answer to Toronto's woes came from an unlikely place: Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Their transit commissioner, Peter Witt, designed a standard single-ended streetcar with a center-exit and an end-entrance that was thoroughly modern, efficient, and becoming quite popular across the United States. Best of all, these new cars could sit about 50-60 people, which was twice the capacity of the older cars, so the TTC tasked Canadian Car & Foundry of Montreal, Quebec, to license the design for themselves.

Two "Small" Witts rest at the Bathurst Line's carbarn in 1958, with 2848 sporting
the TTC "Keystone" logo on its side.
(John Chuckman)

Peter Witt No. 2932 demonstrates trailer service.
(J.R. Bernard)

    Compared to the original Peter Witts, which only came in one type (45 foot, 52-seat), the Canadian Witts came in two types: The "Large Witt" and the "Small Witt". The "Large Witt" (which were odd numbered) was originally 52 feet long by design, but when constructed by Canadian Car, Preston Car of Preston, Ontario, and Ottawa Car, the size shrunk to 51 feet, 10 inches because someone wanted OCD people to suffer. The "Small Witt" (even-numbered) was more or less closer to the original Peter Witt, being just 47 feet long. The difference in lengths was due to retracking along the entire TTC network, including widening the devil strip, so "Small Witts" could work on zig-zagging, highly-curved lines like the Harbord Line (where they wouldn't get in the way of motorists) while the "Large Witts" were put to work on busy commuter avenues like the Yonge, Bay, and Belt Line routes. Despite this difference, each car (and their adjoining trailers) had a maximum crush capacity of 140 people, with regular service seeing 113 passenger packed in like sardines (58 seated in the Large, 51 in the Small, and 60 in the trailers). The cars were also lovingly featured inside and out, with a beautiful maroon-and-cream scheme on the outside and matching maroon faux-leather seats on the inside, compared to the wooden slat seats on an American Peter Witt. 

The interior of TTC-preserved Peter Witt No. 2766 from 1923, showing off
its classy and understated red and cream interior.
(Greg's Southern Ontario)

Peter Wit No. 2544 perfectly captures the unique "Lake Simcoe" cars
as its seen here on the Yonge Line in 1950..
(Toronto Postcard Club)

    By the end of production in 1923, 575 cars (350 motors and 225 trailers) were built and in service across all of Toronto's streetcar lines. In 1928, cars No. 2500-2522 were refitted for "radial railway" service on the Lake Simcoe Line (ex-Metropolitan Line of the Toronto & York Radial Railway), similar to the "Valley Sevens" on Southern California's Pacific Electric Railway. These cars received air whistles, heavy-rail-profile flanged wheels, and flag and marker brackets to suit the high speeds out in the sticks. Their main purpose was to bring passengers from Bond Lake (north of Toronto's city limits) to Glen Echo, on Taylor Island just north of Gravenhurst, in an area around Lake Simcoe. Overall, the Peter Witts remained stalwart roster-fillers until their retirement between 1954 and 1965, and ten have found their way into museums, with "Small Witt" no. 2766 retained "for historical purposes" by the TTC and "Small Witt" No. 2890 preserved in operating condition at the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, USA.

Peter Witt No. 2890 in service around the Seashore Trolley Museum's 
little trolley park, looking dashing with its silver trucks.
(Seashore Trolley Museum)

PCCs, Eh?

 

PCC No. 4024 demonstrates the original generation of 
A-1 PCC cars, with a split headboard, thinner profile and
no standee windows.
(Unknown Author)

   Following the rise of the Peter Witt Streetcar, the TTC continued looking for new standard cars as replacement of the now-almost-20-year-old Peter Witts loomed ever closer. By complete chance in 1933, TTC head William C. McBrien was invited to join in on the Electric Railway President's Conference Committee (or ERPCC), an international consortium of street railway executives looking to produce a new standard streetcar that would be cheap enough to run at reduced operating expenses, but appealing enough to the average rider to choose over a bus or a car. Of course, the final product out of this conference was the famous PCC car, and Canada became the first country outside of the US to roster them, starting in 1938. Unlike the Peter Witts, which were licensed from the G.C. Kuhlman Company, the bodies of the PCCs were all constructed by the St. Louis Car Company in Missouri, USA, and shipped up to Canadian Car for final fitment. Nos. 4001 and 4002 were the first PCC cars (classed PC1, later A-1) to arrive in Canada on August 20, 1938, and were classified as "air electric" cars (meaning that air was still used to operate the doors and brakes). 

An odd assortment of rear ends as A-1 Class PCC No. 4003 (left) poses with ex-Cincinnatis
4575 (St. Louis, 1939) and 4600 (St. Louis, 1940) at the Russell Carhouse on October 24, 1954.
(John F. Bromley)

An A-11 ex-Cleveland car leads an A-7 all-electric on the 
Bloor Streetcar Line at Bathurst, 1965.
(Roger Puta)

    By the end of 1938, Toronto had amassed 138 A-1 Class air-electric PCCs and had set them to work on the St. Clair route (Now 512 St. Clair) between St. Clair and Gunns, the first in Toronto to be all-PCC. In 1939, the Carlton Route (now the 506 Carlton) between Main Street and High Park/Dundas and the Bloor and Dundas (now 505 Dundas) between Broadview and Dundas West fell to the PCC menace, and by the end of the year, the second order of fifty A-2 class PCCs were put to work on the King Route (now the 504 King). Conversions of lines and replacement of Peter Witts went smoothly into 1948, as the first all-electric cars (A-6 Class) arrived on the Bloor Line to displace both the air-electric PCCs and the Peter Witt cars. On March 13, 1950, TTC began operating two-car trains on the Bloor Line during peak periods using the A-7 cars, the only multiple-unit PCCs built for Canada, and by the end of 1951, the last shop-built Class A-8 PCCs rolled out of Canadian Car, bringing the current fleet size to... 540. Wow.

There's just way too many of them...
(Bill Thomson)

A-15 No. 4613 carries out the last PCC service on the TTC
on December 7, 1995, pulling up to the carhouse for decommissioning.
(Chadcruisers)

    And yet, Toronto could not be stopped, as postwar shortages in 1950 forced the TTC to also purchase another 205 cars from former American systems including Cincinnati (A-9 and A-10), Cleveland (A-11 and A-12), Louisville (a bit of A-12 too), Birmingham Electric (A-13), and Kansas City (A-14), as well as rebuilding 19 A8-class cars into A-15s in the 1980s for the Harbourfront Line (now the 509 Harbourfront). The air-electric cars were retired beginning in 1966, with most being sent to Alexandria, Egypt for continued use, while the first car (A-1 No. 4000) was sent for preservation to the Halton County Radial Railway on June 9, 1969, while all the other PCCs were being scrapped. Throughout the 1970s, the PCCs were displaced by the new Canadian Light Rail Vehicles (a derivative PCC of which I will go more into detail later), with the final PCC running regular services on December 7, 1995. 

Former TTC PCC No. 4601 glides past the Mayer Drugs Building
on 56th Street and 6th Avenue on a picturesque 2018 afternoon.
(Jonathan Lee)

    Many secondhand cars such as the A-10s, A-13s, and A-14s were sold to outside organizations like the San Francisco Muni, SEPTA, the Shaker Heights Rapid Transit of Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and the Kenosha Electric Railway of Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA. An additional 22 Canadian PCCs are preserved all over Ontario and in the United States including three at the Edmonton Radial Railway Society in Edmonton, Alberta, nine at the Halton County Radial Railway in Rockwood, Ontario (with No. 4618 being used as an ice cream shop), three on the McKinney Avenue Transit Authority in Dallas, Texas, USA, and one on the Old Pueblo Trolley in Tucson, Arizona, USA. As for TTC, they not only retained two PCCs used for rail-grinding until 2002 (Nos. W-30 and W-31, both now at Halton County), but they also retained Nos. 4500 and 4549 for charters and special events.

Rail-grinding PCCs Nos. W-30 and W-31 in service in the 1990s on the Spadina Line.
The clerestory roofs indicate these are ex-Cleveland "all electric" cars.
(Unknown Author)

  

The Subway Boom

    And now, after a few self-indulgent paragraphs, we return to some more grounded history.

Yonge Street being excavated outside Union Station on Front Street, 1950.
(SimonP)

    Despite the awful circumstances of the Great Depression wearing into the TTC's finances, the company was able to make up for its losses by becoming an important lifeline during World War II. Forced gas rationing meant more people rode the streetcars, but this also had an unintended knock-on effect on the infrastructure. For years, Yonge Street was the main street North out of Toronto, running from the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal on the Harbourfront, through Deer Park and Midtown Toronto out to Richmond Hill and Newmarket, by which point it becomes Canadian Route 1. Plans for a subway down Yonge Street have existed since 1909, but the TRC turned an English company willing to do the work down because of their limited charter. Further reasons for denying a subway included electorates rejecting a subway from Bay/Front to Yonge/St. Clair and, in 1931, City Controller Hacker' proposed Avenue/St. Clair to Front/York subway being rejected due to "Insufficient population". 

A typical G Series train at Rosedale Station, 1971.
These cars were unfortunately known as "red rockets"
due to their rapid turn of speed.
(Frank Denardo)

    Identifying key commuter routes during World War II helped the TTC determine what was the best routing for such a subway, running from "Northern Toronto" (now the Downtown Core) to the industrial areas along Yonge. When put to a vote in 1946, the new Yonge Subway was determined to run between Yonge/Front to Union Station, joined by a subway line to Eglinton to College Street and a "surface car subway" rerouting streetcars off Queen and Dundas Street, between Trinity Park and Gerrard Street/Paper Avenue. The response was overwhelmingly approving, thus beginning Toronto's subway boom. The planned rolling stock was going to be derived from the Chicago Transit Authority's 6000-series cars, as they shared the same PCC underpinnings as their surface counterparts, but due to the Korean War, PCC car production was looking impractical. Instead, the TTC ordered 104 "G-series" cars from the Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company of Gloucester, England. Because of this change in scope, the Toronto Transportation Commission became the Toronto Transit Commission, complete with a new logo.

Throngs of passengers switch from the old trolley to the nearby
subway station to ring in the new Yonge Subway, March 30, 1954.
(North York Central Library)

    Incredibly, Yonge Street remained open during construction as it was the first subway in Canada built using a cut-and-cover method, not bothering the street above. This ingenious construction method also accelerated the opening of the Yonge Street Subway on March 30, 1954. After five years of development, streetcars were now extinct on the surface as the subway cut down travel time between Eglinton and Toronto by half. Nine years later, in 1963, the University Line opened under University Avenue, running between Union and St. George Station and paralleling the Yonge Street Subway for quite a distance. Connecting the two was the Bloor-Danforth Line which opened in 1966, running to Islington in the west and Warden to the East. The planned Queen Street streetcar subway was later quietly cancelled in 1974 and replaced by new suburban lines. Around this same time, the TTC decided to experiment by turning to streetcar abandonment, accomplishing this by replacing low-volume trolley services with buses and high-traffic streetcar lines with subways. This decision was later reversed as subway construction costs rose and the limitations of the buses became quite clear. 

A TTC subway routemap by 1968.
(BlogTO)

The Lean Years

The Scarborough Subway at work.
(blogTO)

    The last big noise from the the Toronto Subway came in 1980 with the Bloor-Danforth Subway's extension to Kipling in the west and Kennedy Station to the east. After that, the TTC went completely quiet on any new subway or streetcar line construction for the next 16 years. After all, why would they need a new subway line? The 1970s "streetcar abandonment" plan had pared the streetcar lines down to just ten regular streetcar loops in and around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), which accounted for 51 miles of track and almost 200 miles of streetcar routes, and the subways now had three lines to contend with that made up 50 miles of rapid transit line. Thus began the "lean years" of the TTC, where expansion and new lines were kept to a minimum. OPnly one new extension appeared(the Scarborough RT "mini-subway" from Kennedy to McCowan Station off the Bloor-Danforth Line) and the North York Center station was added to the Yonge Line in 1985. Another planned expansion, dubbed "Network 2011" was also announced in 1985 to expand the Subway system past its current size, but only a small expansion on the Spadina Line, Downsview Station, was ever built.

The aftermath of the Russell Hill subway collision from
the southbound train.
(Unknown Author)

    Despite the era being relatively quiet for TTC's development, it unfortunately did not stop disaster from striking the system. No streetcar system, after all, is ever 100% safe; there are only steps taken to ensure terrible accidents do not happen again. The worst in TTC's history, and all of Canada's, was the 1995 Russell Hill subway incident on the Line 1 Yonge-University subway.  At 6:02PM on Friday, August 11, 1995, a southbound subway train ran into the back of a stationary train between St. Clair West and Dupont Station. 

The accident was due to the line going downhill between the two stations and the motorman of the southbound train, Robert Jeffrey, becoming confused at the lineside signal aspects (TTC had not employed cab signaling at this point) and passing a signal that he should have stopped at while assuming he had already passed it. The automatic train stop then failed to stop the train due to the use of a mechanical arm that linked to the trucks that was too high for the brakes to trip. A collision was, then, inevitable and in the ensuing carnage and blaze, three of the six hundred passengers in both trains died and thirty were hospitalized, with more than one hundred claims against the railway filed. In the aftermath, the TTC remedied their signaling and defective train stops and by 2015, all 18 of their inquest recommendations on the subway were met.

The ominous entrance of the Russell Hill emergency exit in Winston Churchill Park,
which was a haven for the survivors of the 1995 accident.
(Neal Jennings)

The Canadian Light Rail Vehicle

The CLRV displaces the PCC, as Nos. 4152 and 4500 are
seen here at a special exhibition event along the 509 Harbourfront.
(Reverend Edward Brain, D.D.)

    Around this time up above on the streets, Canada's streetcars were also undergoing a drastic change. With the PCC fleet getting up in years and the needs of the TTC shifting to prioritize accessibility as well as modern sensibilities, a new streetcar was soon developed that brought the technology and design practices introduced in the PCC to its zenith: the Canadian Light Rail Vehicle (CLRV). The CLRVs were created during the TTC's bustitution experiments, as it met the demands of local residents like Steve Munro who fought to keep Toronto's streetcars on the rails while also satisfying the TTC's need for a standard car, in line with the design practices introduced by the US Standard Light Rail Vehicle by Boeing Vertol. The new CLRV was first built by SIG of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1977 with construction undertaken by the Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTCD) and Hawker Siddeley, Canada's Thunder Bay Works (both are now part of Bombardier). In total, 196 non-articulated CLRVs and 50 Articulated Light Rail Vehicles (ALRVs) were built between 1977 and 1989.

CLRV No. 4048 leads ALRV No. 4249 on the
510 Spadina Station line, at Charlotte Street Loop on July 3, 2013.
(Drum118)

    On paper, the cars were built to an already-familiar standard. They were just shy of 50 feet long to nimbly access curving city streets, used a trolley pole to collect the 600V DC current instead of a modern pantograph, and used a familiar Westinghouse air brake system that fashioned them after the old air-electric PCCs. Inside, everything more resembled a contemporary bus, as the single CLRVs could seat 42 to 46 people with a peak crush capacity of 74 people standing and sitting. The ALRVs featured doubled everything on the CLRVs, with a 75-foot articulated length and capacity for 61 seats and 108 peak crush capacity. Both types were originally fitted with trolley gongs as standard, but later switched to electronic horns in the 1990s when assigned to the 510 Spadina line. One CLRV, No. 4041, was even given an air conditioning unit in 2006 but it gave more cold air to the motorman than to the passengers. 

CLRV No. 4041, the coldest car in Toronto, at King and Yonge on the 504 Broadview Line.
(TheTrolleyPole)

History meets history as London & Port Stanley No. 8
is posed next to CLRV 4010 during a maintenance day at the 
Halton County Radial Railway.
(Halton County Radial Railway)

    CLRVs totally replaced the PCC cars by December 7, 1995, but they themselves were out of service by December 29, 2019, after serving Toronto for forty-two years. This was due to a variety of factors: age, a constant rebuilding process, and another change in direction for Canadian transit needs. Thankfully, unlike the PCCs and the Peter Witts, TTC was more merciful to the CLRVs and earmarked some of both types for preservation. Fifteen remain preserved around the United States and Canada, with No. 4001 taking a special place in the TTCs roster as part of their historical special events and charter fleet, along with four other cars being used as charter cars or work cars. The Halton County Radial Railway has taken roster of four CLRVs and one ALRV, all of them operational, while the Illinois Railway Museum of Union, Illinois, USA and the Seashore Trolley Museum have both taken ownership of a CLRV each (to be regauged, of course). 

Flexing in the New Millenium

Move over, antiques! Time for a new trolley!
(drum 118)

    Replacing the CLRVs in the new millenium are the Bombardier Flexity Series light rail vehicles. These five-section articulated cars are the first in Toronto to run on a pantograph, yet somehow are still armed with a trolley pole when running along most of the TTC's street tracks. The first of these cars were delivered in 2012 to replace the CLRVs and have over time rendered them redundant, becoming the dominant streetcar in the city. Inside, they can seat 70 passengers and accommodate 181 standees along with two spaces for bicycles on either end of the train, and were the first streetcars in the city to run with a contactless fare card system. The cars are split into two types: one for the "legacy network" which run with trolley poles, and ones of the modern networks that have pantographs. Along with the introduction of the cars in 2014 were new streetcar routes like the 514 Cherry, running 4.4 miles between Dufferin Gate and the Distillery District.

Certainly one of the most interesting nights in TTC's history was the night of February 17, 2018,
when local furry convention Kerfluffle chartered ALRV No. 4215 for a 3-hr loop line party.
Let's just hope that blue-furred motorman's also licensed to drive!
(Technica Productions)

Toronto's Transit Future for 2023 and 2031.
Click here for a more legible version.
(Daily Hive)

    As for the company's corporate history in the new millennium, it is not without its ups and downs. Following the amalgamation of Toronto's six former municipalities, the new City of Toronto brought with it new subway expansion in the form of the Sheppard Line between Yonge Street and Don Mills Road. This stubby line was originally going to connect with the Scarborough RT in the west, but funding ran out and the TTC is waiting for the chance to resume work on this line and other extensions. The city was also plagued by two transit strikes in 2006 and 2008, with the former being a "wildcat" strike over safety concerns and late shifts, while the latter was due to being unable to come up with a salary increase for TTC workers. This was later remedied on April 27, 2008, with the passage of Ontario Provincial Bill 66, which legislated them back to work. Meanwhile, the TTC continues to tootle around the streets of Ontario, carrying hundreds of millions of passengers a year on its subway and surface systems. I hope this has been a pretty good (if short) coverage of the TTC, and before this ends I'd just like to thank you all for reading.

Adieu Toronto. Vous avez été merveilleux.
(blogTO)

  

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included "The TTC Story: The First Seventy-Five Years" by Mike Filey, the Toronto Transit Commission's website, the Halton County Radial Railway of Milton, Ontario, the Edmonton Radial Railway Society of Edmonton, Alberta, the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine, USA, the Illinois Railway Museum of Union, Illinois, USA, and the credits in each photo caption. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Thursday, we sit back and enjoy a much smaller history on the Alberta Radial Railway. For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!