The Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, is a public transportation authority that operates buses, streetcars, and subway lines in Toronto, Ontario. At one time it operated trolley buses, but it ceased those operations in 1993.

The TTC operates one of the most extensive urban mass transit systems in North America. As of 2004, there are four rapid transit lines (three subways and one light rail metro line; see Toronto Subway and RT), with a total of 69 stations, as well as 149 connecting "surface" routes (buses and streetcars). The average daily ridership exceeds 1.3 million passengers. The TTC also provides door-to-door services for persons with disabilities. Colloquially, the streetcars are known as "red rockets"; hence the use of "Ride the Rocket" in advertising material for the TTC (which uses the phrase to advertise the entire system), and the use of the word 'Rocket' in the names of some express buses.

Contents

1 Fares 2 History 3 Subway lines 4 Streetcar service 5 Trolley bus lines 6 WheelTrans 7 Interesting facts 8 See also 9 External links

Fares

Fares can be paid in cash, using discount tickets or tokens, or with daily or monthly passes. Senior citizens, Toronto high school students, and children pay lower fares. In 2003, Toronto university students recently won the ability to purchase discounted monthly passes after years of extensive lobbying. Passengers using tokens can enter the subway through automatic gates, thus avoiding queuing at a ticket booth, and at some stations they can also be used in unstaffed entrances which are otherwise unusable; on the other hand, tokens are available for full-fare only (since the automated gates can't check the passenger's age or identification).

The TTC does not use a system of fare zones; paying the fare once allows for one continuous journey of any distance using multiple forms of transport. Proof of payment is required only when transferring between two forms of transport, and sometimes not even then; at subway stations served by more than one line, both come into the same fare-paid area, and at many stations buses or streetcars also come into a terminal within the station's fare-paid area. At stations where this is not the case (principally in the downtown area) or when transferring between two buses or streetcars, a paper transfer is needed (obtained from the driver when boarding the first vehicle or from a machine within the fare-paid area at the starting subway station). Some intercity buses require the payment of a second fare upon exit, if the passenger is disembarking outside the city limits.

The TTC fare does not allow free transfers to connecting suburban routes run by other operators (such as GO Transit and York Region Transit), though discount fares are generally available.

History

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. It abandoned money-losing radial railway lines (known as 'interurbans' elsewhere in the continent), and amalgamated five private bus lines into Gray Coach Lines, which was immediately profitable.

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 TTC realized that improvements had to be made despite the depression and in 1936 purchased the first of the newly-developed PCC streetcars. 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; employers had to stagger work hours in order to avoid overcrowding the streetcars. Toronto continued their program of purchasing PCC cars, running the world's largest fleet, including many obtained second-hand from U.S. cities that abandoned streetcar service.

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.

The original Union Station-to-Eglinton section of the Yonge Street subway, Canada's first, was conceived and built with revenues gained during the war, when gas rationing limited the use of automobiles. The subway line opened to the public on March 30, 1954, after five years of work. Its underground portions were built entirely using cut-and-cover construction, with reinforced boards and even temporary streetcar tracks laid over the trenches to allow Yonge Street to remain open as the tunnels were built. The original Yonge Sreet subway line went from the railways' Union Station on Front Street north to a suburban terminus at Eglinton. Premier Leslie Frost and Toronto mayor Allan Lamport, among other important persons, rode the first train that morning, going north from the yards at Davisville Station, and then south from Eglinton along the entire line. At 2:30pm that day, the last streetcar to travel Yonge St. south of Eglinton made its final ride. The subway reduced the trip from Union to Eglinton from about half an hour by streetcar (in good traffic) to less than fifteen minutes.

It was the first subway line to replace surface routes completely. It was also later the site of as 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.

The University line opened nine years later, continuing from Union back north under University Avenue to St. George station; it was intentionally designed to serve much the same area as the Yonge line, in order to increase capacity in anticipation of the planned east-west line. Another three years past that, the original Bloor-Danforth Line was built, going under Bloor Street and Danforth Ave. from Keele in the west to Woodbine in the east. Within two years, the Bloor-Danforth line had been extended in both directions, to Islington in the west and Warden 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.

Changes to the composition of the Metro Toronto council moved the balance of power towards the suburban areas, and soon afterwards in 1973 the Yonge subway line was extended north to York Mills Road, and the next year it was as far north as Finch Avenue. Five years later, the Spadina line opened, going from the north terminus of the University line to Wilson Station. 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 L-shaped Scarborough RT line (originally envisioned as a light rail line using streetcars in a dedicated right of way, but ultimately built as a mini-subway), 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 at Downsview.

In 1998, Metropolitan Toronto ceased to exist and was replaced by a new City of Toronto formed from the amalgamation of its six former municipalities. 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 only as far as Don Mills Road, instead of connecting with the Scarborough RT at Scarborough Town Centre (which remains one of the TTC's priorities for further extensions, should the funding become available). The TTC is running four-car trains on the abbreviated Sheppard Line, 2/3 the size of those on the other Toronto subways, but the stations were built to accommodate full-length trains should sufficient traffic develop.

In January 2005, the cash-strapped TTC introduced a plan to curtail costly subway expansion and look at expanding the rapid transit network less expensively. This could involve busways, or expanding the streetcar system with more modern vehicles and less running in mixed traffic.

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.

Subway lines

Main article: Toronto Subway and RT

The regular subway trains operate on the U-shaped Yonge-University-Spadina Line, the long east-west Bloor-Danforth Line, and the Sheppard Line (which is the only line running entirely underground). The Scarborough RT, though it runs primarily above ground, and uses shorter trains based on highly different technology, is still essentially similar in operation to the other lines, and is depicted on the same Subway & RT maps and included in the same level of administration.

Streetcar service

The surface routes of the TTC include both diesel buses and streetcars, but the latter are found only downtown, none running further north than St. Clair Avenue, about 5 km from the waterfront.

The TTC operates 11 streetcar routes which are altogether 305.8 km long. Because the TTC has maintained a large portion of its pre-World War II streetcar system, the streetcars operate in prewar style, spending most of their time in mixed traffic, and stopping at frequent request stops like buses rather than having established stations. 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 streetcars operate underground. Despite objections from local merchants, the TTC plans to construct a separated right-of-way on St. Clair Avenue West, from Yonge Street to just past Keele Street, to be completed by 2007. There are underground connections to the subway at Union, Spadina, and St. Clair West stations.

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 waterfront. 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. The Oakwood route, which operated north of St. Clair, was eliminated in accordance with this policy and replaced by an extension of a trolley bus line (since converted to diesel).

Two other lines which operated north of St. Clair were abandoned for other reasons: the Rogers Road route to free up streetcars for expanded service on other routes, and the Mount Pleasant route ostensibly because of traffic problems it created.

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, and because of their lack of permanence don't have as much of an effect on land use) on heavily-travelled main routes.

Trolley bus lines

The system once operated trolley buses, mostly on downtown routes and a few in the northern limits of the old City of Toronto. Many of these routes replaced streetcar routes, using the old overhead power lines which were adapted to dipole service. The buses consisted of a standard bus platform with electric motors with two poles connected to electrical lines above. The system was scrapped due to high operating cost and the age of the vehicles used; this decision has been criticised by some, who note that the prices of gasoline and natural gas have increased dramatically in the subsequent years.

WheelTrans

The TTC also runs WheelTrans, a special service for the physically disabled with special buses designed to accommodate wheelchairs. Some Wheel Trans buses run according to a regular route while others are dispatched through pre-arranged appointments.

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 double-length ALRV (Articulated Light Rail Vehicle) were designed by the Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC, 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. The CLRVs and ALRVs retain many features of traditional streetcar design; they collect their power by trolley pole rather than pantograph, and are unidirectional, with a cab at only one end and doors on only one side, and so require track loops in order to turn around. Plans to sell the CLRV to other cities which retained streetcar services proved unsuccessful. Until the mid-1990s, the TTC also operated PCC streetcars in regular service; it retains two such cars for private charters.

The tracks of the streetcars and subways (though not the Scarborough RT) are of a unique gauge, slightly wider than the usual standard. There are arguments over the reason why this is (one popular belief is that the City of Toronto feared that the Toronto Railway Company, which held the franchise to run streetcars before the TTC was created, would allow Canadian Pacific Railway to operate steam locomotives through city streets). The more practical reason is that early tracks were used to pull wagons smoothly in the days before paved roads, and that they fit a different gauge. Due to the cost of converting all the tracks and vehicles (and the lack of any real benefit in doing so), the unique gauge has remained to this day. The use of standard-gauge tracks on the Scarborough RT makes it impossible for there to be any connection between it and the other lines, and when RT vehicles need anything more than basic service (which can be carried out in the RT's own McCowan Yard), they are carried by truck to the Greenwood subway yards.

Advertising is common place and prominent in all TTC vehicles and locations, in fact some subway stops are periodically entirely repainted on the inside to the wishes of a paying corporate advertiser. Most recently this has occured for the movie The Day After Tomorrow. However the amount of money the TTC receives for allowing advertising on its property is very small. For the year ending 2003, the TTC received 2.3% of its revenue from advertising, or almost 17 million dollars. Critics charge that as the TTC states a ridership of over 1.4 million passengers on average each weekday, all advertising could be removed from all TTC property for one year in exchange for a one-day addition of just over ten cents to each rider's fare.

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.

See also

• Lower Bay
• Lower Queen
• Toronto, Ontario

External links

• Official TTC site (http://www.ttc.ca/)
• News, history and discussion (http://transit.toronto.on.ca/)