A TTC Streetcar travels along King Street in Toronto on June 4, 2024.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
If there is one thing Torontonians can agree on it’s that they can’t agree on streetcars. To some, streetcars are a quintessential part of the city’s transportation history and future. To others, they are a painfully slow, archaic hindrance. No one is ambivalent.
Streetcars inspire deep emotions. It is a strictly Toronto issue, at least in Canada. Most main Canadian cities did away with streetcars in the 1950s. Streetcars (powered by horses) started running in Toronto in the 1860s. In the mid-1960s, there was a plan to get rid of them by 1980, transit advocate Steve Munro told the CBC. But that was reversed.
According to the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), “With 11 streetcar routes spanning 308 kilometres, the TTC’s streetcar network is the largest and busiest in North America. In 2024, customers made over 34.5 million streetcar trips.”
A horse-drawn streetcar in Toronto in 1892.William James/City of Toronto Archives
The PCCS (Presidents' Conference Committee streetcars) or Toronto's fabled Red Rockets were first introduced in 1938. This is one of the last ones that was still running in 1995.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
A streetcar passes Maple Leaf Garden in 1994. This type of vehicle, the CLRV (Canadian Light Rail Vehicle), began regular service in 1979.Doug Pensinger/The Associated Press
Notice they didn’t say “fastest.”
To those who drive (let’s call them “drivers”), streetcars cause much misery. I label them drivers, acknowledging that a single person can be driver, pedestrian, cyclist, all on the same day. But one of humanity’s greatest gifts is malleability when it comes to grievance, and someone who bemoans the torments of driving in the morning can easily switch to lamenting the burdens of public transit in the afternoon.
Back to streetcars. To call streetcars slow is an insult to slow things everywhere. Snails are slow. Streetcars are glacial. They barely appear to move. During peak rush hour, it’s sometimes faster to walk than take the streetcar. To drivers, streetcars are something dreamt up by Satan to torture innocent motorists whose only sin is a desire to get somewhere before the end of time.
To those who ride the streetcars, drivers are the villains. Cars block streetcar tracks. Drivers flout laws and street regulations and cause delays. They ignore signals and speed by as streetcars try to load and unload passengers. This dangerous practice is so common that the Toronto Transit Commission recently launched a nine-month pilot project to nab drivers who illegally pass open streetcar doors. It will use cameras to measure how often drivers pass illegally. Data collected by the TTC between 2014 and 2024 reveals that 141 people were hit by vehicles while boarding or exiting streetcars.
They’re both right. It’s “Clark’s Law” a theory that states when two negatives are in conflict, both are true.
Streetcars hinder automobile traffic.
Cars hinder streetcars.
They don’t belong together.
If you remove the cars, the streetcars move fine. This was proven by the King Street Transit Pilot launched in November of 2017. It was a simple fix. The city limited street parking on King Street between Bathurst Street and Jarvis Street. Cars driving on King Street were required to turn after one block. Taxis were allowed regular use. Ridership increased by 16 per cent and a 2017 study from the University of Toronto’s Spatial Analysis of Urban Systems department showed that streetcar travel times between Bathurst and Jarvis dropped to 17.3 minutes from 22.8 minutes.
TTC streetcars on King Street West in Toronto on October 18, 2019, where the street has limited parking and vehicle traffic to allow for faster transit service.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
The project was made permanent in 2019 but by 2023 the dream was fading and the media reported that travel times had grown worse (to 29 minutes during rush hour), because of drivers ignoring signage and using King Street as normal. Meanwhile, the Waterfront East Network Expansion project now underway will expand the streetcar network in a dedicated right-of-way from Union Station, along Queens Quay East to Cherry Street.
With a municipal election coming up in the fall, one would expect transit – and streetcars in particular – to be a big item on the agenda. Surely there is a transit candidate who is vowing revolutionary change. A candidate who will create a dozen more King Street Pilots. Or a reactionary who will finally erase streetcars from our transportation system.
But this is Toronto, the city that put the “can” in “can’t.” Why do today what you can claim to have done tomorrow?
There’s an old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
In Toronto city politics, the saying is, “If it ain’t broke, wait, it will break. Then blame the wreckage on your predecessor.”
Like all the mayoral elections before, transit will get sidelined by the city’s twin plagues: homelessness and crime. Once it’s done, Toronto can return to its natural gridlock and traffic congestion cycle. The municipal government will blame the provincial government for a lack of funding, while the provincial government will blame the municipal government for mismanagement and waste and both will agree that the real fault lies with the federal government.
I remember the streetcars of my youth. Armed with a newspaper or a book, morning sunlight waking the city as it rolled by; it was a wonderful way to move. The streetcar was never lightning fast, but it moved at a steady, jaunty pace. People weren’t using them as makeshift dwellings. Such trips are still possible of course, but no longer the standard. Somewhere out in the vast obscurity of the city that world came and went.