Updated May 25, 2012:
Port Lands
Waterfront Toronto’s public meeting on May 24 drew an audience of about 300. The presentation droned on for well over its allotted time, and consisted mainly of reading through a Powerpoint deck without benefit of a working laser pointer to highlight items of interest on the screen. Oh well. No marks for Management Presentation 101.
The content was more important than the style, and what came through loud and clear was that planning by bean counters has replaced planning with a vision for a great waterfront.
Council may have stopped the Fords in their tracks last fall, but Waterfront Toronto is clearly working to a penny-pinching agenda. This shows up in two major ways.
First, although the most recent plan (see page 12 of the presentation, right side is the newest) attempts to create more greenspace on the water’s edge, it has lost the magic of the revitalized mouth of the Don. The drawing still shows a river meander, but you have to read the text to learn that the outermost part of this, west of Cherry Street, would not actually be built until and only if the Lafarge Concrete plant decides to close up shop. Until then, the mouth of the Don will be the Lafarge slip. In the original plan, the river mouth was north of the slip and could be built independently of the plant.
Second, transit seems to have fallen off of the map. Something will be built, maybe, eventually, although for the near term we must make do with buses, possibly on a right-of-way. Waterfront Toronto is obsessed with the problems of connecting to Union Station (and associated costs as discussed elsewhere on this site), but seems to forget that an alternate option from the east end of the harbour, certainly from the Port Lands, is to go north via Cherry to King. Some of the staging of upcoming projects could support this, but bits are missing, and there is little sense that anyone really is looking beyond a bus route here and there.
Neither of these situations went down particularly well with the attendees. Examples of “transformational initiatives” (for which you absolutely positively must not ever dream they might mean “casino”) from other cities are included (Page 18), but as one speaker remarked, it is the river that is the “transformation”, the jewel of the project. Indeed, Waterfront Toronto can hardly stop themselves from talking about the international recognition the design received, a design which depends on the river mouth, now relegated to a “phase 5, maybe” status.
Many spoke about the need for good transit to the site. The staging (Page 25) could support a through LRT service, but only partly in the early years. Stage 1 includes realignment of Cherry and Queen’s Quay, but it does not include a new Cherry Street bridge over the Don (essential for an LRT line running south to the Keating Channel), nor does it include widening of the Cherry underpass at the rail corridor (essential for connecting north to the Cherry Street streetcar tracks to be installed later this year).
Adrian Morrow in the Globe wrote about the Tiny Perfect Streetcar Line in today’s Globe including the general problem that transit to real development in the waterfront is not on most politicians’ agendas while transit to phantom developments in the suburbs gets no end of attention. One big problem is that Metrolinx wants nothing to do with waterfront transit and regards this as a local initiative to be paid for on the City’s dime. I cannot help wondering just how Queen’s Park justifies its investment in many proposals for the 905 that will serve far less development than the waterfront LRT network, but leaves Toronto high and dry.
I may seem unduly harsh on Waterfront Toronto given the pressures they are under from the Monorail Mania at City Hall, but there is too much of a sense of making do, of a loss of emphasis on what will make the eastern waterfront a great place, not just an OK suburb of downtown. Particularly notable in the presentation was the absence of any explanation of how these lands would relate to nearby existing and future developments, a sense of place in the larger city. A big problem was that the presenter, a senior Waterfront Toronto exec, didn’t seem really thrilled about what he was showing us, but instead focussed on how the plan saved money, how it addressed the Ford’s desire for more and faster development. He was playing to the wrong crowd.
The new overall plan for the Port Lands is broken into three stages based on gradual expansion of flood protection that would allow a wider set of land uses in various areas.
Phase 1 (Page 20) creates a spillway parallel to the Don Roadway so that a flood from the river would not inundate lands west of Cherry Street. This frees up the first set of lands for redevelopment.
Phase 2 (Page 21) raises the Don Roadway itself to create a berm that protects the Film Studio district.
Phase 3 (Page 22) builds the new river mouth and associated parkland/spillway so that land between Cherry and the Don Roadway can be developed.
The presentation notes that the amount of land available for development is larger in the revised plan, but a number of speakers pointed out that by Waterfront Toronto’s own admission, the real estate industry cannot absorb all of the available lands for decades. Whether there is any value from the “new” land is unclear, although if this falls within, say, Phase 1, it would accelerate revenue from the overall project.
The whole issue was to go to Council imminently, but this has been put off until the fall so that details of how the financing might work can be figured out, and the plan can undergo an external review. The next public session will likely be in August with the, in effect, final version of the proposal that will go to Council. If Council approves the new scheme, this will trigger a roughly 18-month process to amend the approved Environmental Assessment.
Central Waterfront
The Waterfront Toronto Board has approved a project to rebuild the sidewalk and bike path (Martin Goodman trail) from Bay to Jarvis Street this summer. The work will also include reconstruction of the aging Jarvis Slip’s dock wall and revision of its anchoring system to provide clearance for new telecomm and hydro ductwork that will serve the eastern waterfront. Some road refinishing will be done to tidy up Queen’s Quay if the budget permits.
The intent is to provide a link to the new developments on Queen’s Quay east that have been isolated from the stylistic changes further west and especially the major redesign of the road to begin this summer.
Governance
The CEO’s Report includes updates on all major projects at Waterfront Toronto (I tend to focus on transit and related issues). One of the most important notes in this month’s report is:
The province has indicated that it is tracking for a spring/summer approvals process for Waterfront Toronto’s long-standing request for increased operational governance. A scoped consent package has been negotiated with the three orders of government which would provide Waterfront Toronto the ability to borrow, create subsidiaries, receive revenues and encumber its assets. Once provincial approval has been obtained, the federal government will seek its respective approvals likely in the late summer/fall. (Page 6)
Several projects, including the transit infrastructure for the eastern waterfront, will require new funding sources among which may be new mechanisms within Waterfront Toronto itself. At the Board meeting, CEO John Campbell was optimistic that senior governments would agree to proposed changes, although he noted that Queen’s Park was particularly sensitive on the matter of creating subsidiaries in the wake of the ORNGE scandal.
Updated May 24, 2012:
Port Lands
Waterfront Toronto will hold a public meeting tonight to present the current status of the review of plans for the Port Lands. This was supposed to be the final meeting, but the study period has been extended through the summer and the report to Council will now occur in the fall. At yesterday’s board meeting, Waterfront Toronto CEO John Campbell indicated that there would likely be a fourth public meeting to review the final report in August.
Tonight’s meeting will be at the Convention Centre, Room 105, North Building, 255 Front Street West from 6:30 to 9:00 pm.
West Don Lands
There will be an update meeting on the West Don Lands in The Great Hall at St. Lawrence Hall, corner of Jarvis & King, on May 29 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
Queen’s Quay East and West Projects
The project to rebuild and reconfigure Queen’s Quay from Spadina to Bay will get underway in August, although some utility work has already begun. 509 Harbourfront streetcars will be replaced with buses at the end of July.
There will be two presentations of detailed information on Central Waterfront projects and on the construction plans. The first is on Wednesday, June 6 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm in the Brigantine Room at Harbourfront (Lower Simcoe & Queen’s Quay). On Saturday, June 9, from 10:00 to 2:00, there will be a drop in at 20 Bay Street in the lobby.
The complete reconstruction project is expected to take 2½ years.
Between Bay and Jarvis Streets, Queen’s Quay is a bit of a mess thanks to construction and to removal of the Redpath rail spur. Waterfront Toronto’s board has now approved a project to rebuild the south edge of the street with a new sidewalk and cycling path. A major part of this project will be the reconstruction of the aging Jarvis Slip dock wall both to repair the 60-year old structure and to modify its anchoring system under Queen’s Quay to make room for new hydro and telecomm ducts that will eventually serve developments in the eastern waterfront.
As for transit on Queen’s Quay east, Waterfront Toronto commissioned a study of alternative “interim” configurations pending the construction of the full planned LRT route. Although over 200 permutations of options were on the table, this has been narrowed down to 8. WFT will undertake an amendment to the transit project’s EA, and consultation for this will begin in late June. The list of options will probably not surface until that time.
Updated May 21, 2012:
The track strings for Cherry Street are now sitting across from TNT Foods just south of Commissioners Street.
Construction is well underway on Cherry which is closed from Lake Shore north.
Original post from May 15, 2012:
Thanks to Jacob Louy for bringing to my attention a notice that the TTC has begun work welding track for the Cherry Street line.
The right-of-way for streetcars will be constructed as part of the Cherry Street project now underway, and this notice confirms that streetcar track will be included in the original construction even though streetcars won’t likely run here until after the Pan Am Games in 2015.
The track assembly is taking place near Cherry and Polson near TNT Supermarket and far from the existing streetcar system. The last time streetcars were in this neighbourhood, they were on a boat heading for Egypt. Who knows when we might see track installed on this part of Cherry in the Port Lands.
Steve Munro 
Will the streetcars run in separated right of way from traffic, or will the run in the same lanes as traffic?
Steve: The streetcar lanes will be on the east side of the street.
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Good to see this. Steve, is your sense that this construction will mean track gets laid all the way from King (the existing line) to Lakeshore? I seem to remember something about the King-Front segment being a separate, TTC project (as opposed to WT) that might not happen concurrently, but may have imagined that. Rather ridiculous for there to be two jurisdictions over such a short distance if that’s the case.
Now we just need the Queen’s Quay East project to re-surface (pun intended). I’m hopeful the new Commission can move forward on that one, given Council would likely be supportive.
Steve: I don’t expect to see the piece at King including the intersection laid until much closer to the start of actual operation.
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Apparently, the tracks will be built but there is no funding for the TTC to operate streetcars on them (yet). (Steve, I’ll search for the link for this info.)
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I noticed all of the track there on Monday evening. Sorry, but I don’t quite understand why the work is being done there at this time. Will the track just sit there unused until they actually decide to have streetcars running down Cherry Street mid-decade?
I also noticed one of those city development proposal signs on the south side of the Keating Channel at Cherry Street for a mixed-use property. I wonder if the developers are starting to move into that area. I guess there is also the whole issue of how contaminated that soil is.
Steve, do you have any info on the TTC’s project schedule and scope for Cherry Street? Thanks.
Steve: The track will stay there until the roadbed is ready for its installation later this summer. It’s down at Polson Street because that’s well out of the way and does not block other construction activity. I will check into the scope of work, but at this point believe that it is from either King or Eastern south to the rail corridor.
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Wow, this is impressive news, a approx. 500 metre double track streetcar extension cannot be up & running by 2015.
Steve: Perish the thought we might do anything quickly around here.
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Well isn’t this a bit of good news? Kind of strange though how it’s “quietly” announced..
So this line will go up to King, correct? As a spur line of the 504? (Sorry, still getting my bearings together with this project).
Steve: Yes, it will branch off of King. The exact routing for the “Cherry Street” car is not yet determined. Eventually, the line will connect under the rail corridor southwest to Queen’s Quay and southeast to the Port Lands. That’s far enough in the future that nobody really knows what the routes will look like.
Also, Steve.. this is off topic but have had a look at this, that just popped up on the TTC website?
Steve: This looks like a public-facing version of an internal report. The problem with the “targets” they are reporting is that they are ridiculously easy to meet in some cases. All those green check marks show is that they are hitting the same old level of “service” they have aimed for over past decades. I will take this up in a separate article.
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Will we have enough of the new streetcars when the Cherry Street streetcar becomes operational? What is the current number on order anyways? Or will we have to keep enough of the old CLRV’s around as “heritage” streetcars?
Steve: Considering that the Cherry line won’t be running until late 2015 and we should have had two years’ worth of new car deliveries by then, I am not worried about the fleet size. One of the many issues facing the “new” Commission is some realistic planning and budgeting for fleets, maintenance facilities and service. We have seen far too much creative writing to meet budget targets over the past few years (including some in the Miller/Giambrone era) rather than a hard-nosed look at what we need to run the transit system.
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Of course, post-2014, Metrolinx will have published a long-term funding strategy, Waterfront Toronto will have the ability to take on debt to finance large projects, we may have a new administration, not just at Council but in Ottawa…
Given this rosy forecast, there had better be a critical mass of city building and infrastructure expansion/renewal starting or getting underway by then. I would be extremely disappointed if opponents find another channel to dissipate the momentum by then.
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Lets hope this doesn’t end up like the cancelled restoration of the Germantown streetcar in Philadelphia, where brand new track ended up rusting away due to lack of funding to actually operate streetcars.
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The great advantage of the Cheery Street “spur” is that the TTC can turn 504 eastbound cars around there and not at Parliament (returning them to westbound service at Church). The current turns (both scheduled and unscheduled) at Parliament and the return at Church means that the highly populated section of King east of Church gets quite poor service. Though I can see the TTC and the Pan-Am folk may not want streetcars on Cherry DURING the Pan-AM Games (within security barriers?) it would make sense (to me anyway) to get the Cherry Street track operating ASAP.
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Let’s try this one more time: EB 504 cars that are short-turned at Parliament do NOT come back into service WB at Church. They go north on Parliament – east on Dundas and come back into WB service when they make the east to south turn at Dundas & Broadview.
Steve: That is true for the simple reason that there is no north to west curve at Dundas and Parliament. However, a car that short turns eastbound at Dundas and Broadview can re-enter service westbound at Church and King.
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When will we see funding for the Queen’s Quay East streetcar, which ought to be connected to Cherry Street so as to provide a logical routing (like Union to Broadview Station)?
When will we see funding for additional streetcar lines in the Portlands development?
Until these projects happen, this short stub of a few blocks long is useless, except as a point to short turn King streetcars. Is there any point of running revenue service here at all, given that the ridership will be very low? This seems very similar to the short section of track on Dufferin St between Queen and the CNE.
Steve: Although the lack of attention to the eastern waterfront’s transit has been frustrating, it finally seems to be on the radar of some at the TTC and Council. The biggest problem lies with the funding for the Don Mouth reconfiguration which will, among other things, involve realignment of the streets in the Cherry / Queen’s Quay / Lake Shore intersection and insertion of a new underpass at the rail corridor to make room for the LRT line. All of this is bound up in the debate over the future of the Port Lands, the Ford Ferris Wheel, etc.
Another issue is the question of the link to Union Station whose projected cost just keeps growing. Part of this work should already have been underway concurrently with the Union Station expansion, but it’s not, in part because the TTC very significantly underestimated the cost of the waterfront east project. The exit from the tunnel at Queen’s Quay is particularly messy because after turning east at the foot of Bay, the line must actually dive lower (right beside the lake!) to get under an existing sewer before rising to the portal at Freeland Street (first east of Yonge).
Waterfront East was one of those projects that nobody quite seemed prepared to deal with even under the Miller administration, and it just bumbled along even though it is central to the redevelopment plans. With Ford’s election, the whole thing sat still at least until some of the developers started to complain about transit access. Waterfront Toronto is trying to figure out if there is an alternative way to get an interim LRT service down to Queen’s Quay without a connection at Union. A report on this has not yet been published, but does exist as it was mentioned at a recent meeting.
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Not that I’m advocating for this, but is it physically possible to move the existing streetcar portal from its existing location (facing west, west of Queens Quay Boulevard and Bay Street on Queens Quay) to a new location (facing south, north of Queens Quay Boulevard and Bay Street on Bay)? Meaning, is it possible to fill-in or deck over the existing portal and dig a new portal into the existing Bay Street tunnel?
This scenario reminds me of the conversion of the Sheppard LRT to a subway one day. I also wonder if it’s possible to remove such a portal to an entirely different location (or in the case of Sheppard, get rid of the portal altogether and make a tunnel).
Steve: This option was studied at length as we (Waterfront Toronto, the TTC and the community) wrestled with this part of the Waterfront East. The problem is with the street pattern north from Queen’s Quay and the very short blocks. The ramp and portal must fit within an existing block, and this forces a steep grade to keep the ramp inside the block. A further problem is that a “landing” is required at the top of the ramp where an LRV can stop for cross-traffic.
The community had really wanted to see a surface station where Queen’s Quay Station is now with a pedestrian precinct, but this was not recommended because of the combined volume of streetcar traffic for the east and west branches, the amount of pedestrian traffic generated by the ferry docks, and the need to maintain road capacity for access to adjacent buildings. You can read the analysis in the EA on Waterfront Toronto’s website.
The whole issue of Waterfront transit does little credit to the city and to the TTC both of whom seemed not to take this matter seriously while the area was developing. Union Loop was far too small from the day it opened, but at that point the TTC didn’t really believe that the waterfront service would amount to much. They also grossly overestimated the capacity of the loop and the connecting passage to the subway by, for example, forgetting that much platform space would be taken by swing out in the tight loop (and related speed and safety concerns when the loop is crowded), and by assuming that the full capacity of the corridor would be available in either direction at both times. This was not one of the TTC’s shining moments of design. Other aspects of Queen’s Quay’s transit right-of-way give too much prominence to auto traffic, a problem we are finally correcting 20 years later although I still have my doubts we will see true transit priority. The city has starved the project for funding through the assumption that Waterfront Toronto would pay the lion’s share, but not stepping up to keep a comparatively inexpensive transit project alive when WFT ran low on funds.
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There was a simple alternative to the stupid choice of a short tunnel and too-sharp curved underground station at Union. Keep the line on the street north on Bay to Front and west along Front to Spadina and south to Queens Quay. No need for a loop at all. Simply run cars in both directions on a continuous loop. Cost would have been LESS than the stupid tunnel and capacity wold have been higher plus it would serve the Convention Centre and CN Tower as well.
Steve: That’s what Streetcars for Toronto first proposed. However, the roads department wanted to maintain the option of using Front/Wellington as a one-way pair for on/off ramps to the Gardiner (part of the Front Street extension project) and they nixed the plan. The connection to the subway would have been quite simple, rather like the one the Bloor car used to have. It’s ironic that now the proposed configuration of Front Street post-construction will be very pedestrian oriented with limited capacity for through traffic.
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I suppose that Lake Shore Boulevard is one of those streets that can’t be blocked by an uninterrupted streetcar right-of-way (on a ramp), unlike other smaller streets.
I really like what Raymond Kennedy is proposing, to have everything completely on surface. Too bad that restoring transit on Front Street is no one’s priority right now.
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Hi Steve,
It’s so good to see some positive stuff happening on the streetcar front, albeit on such a small scale at this time. One thing that concerns me though (and this brings us back to the choice of a 100% low floor car) is the use of standard rail instead of girder rail. They will find (as we have in Melbourne) that rigid truck 100% low floor cars, like to “hunt” the rail using standard railroad rail. For this reason, all recent relays here have been to a new shallow web girder rail rolled in Europe. The cars track much better with girder rail. Of course, had they gone with a 75% car, it would not have been an issue. Even here, our new Bombardier cars that are being built, whilst marketed as 100% cars, they have ramped floors over conventional rotating trucks at the ends, I don’t care what they claim as %, I’m just glad they went away from rigid trucks, the present fleet of Combinos and Citadis (or is that Citadii??) chew up the rails.
Cheers
Greg
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One thing about putting the Harbourfront streetcars on surface up Bay Street: Transit Priority would be very unlikely at the Harbour Street and Lake Shore Boulevard intersections. Also, as discussed in the EA report on the East Bayfront streetcars, the pedestrian volumes would delay surface transit operations significantly across Queens Quay and Bay Street.
Steve, I take it that this all-surface alignment proposal is now considered undesirable, especially from a transportation operations perspective?
Steve: Yes. When the Harbourfront line was originally proposed, it would have surfaced just south of the rail corridor (in front of what was the Post Office, now the ACC). The Toronto Works Commissioner (for whom Bremner Blvd. is named) wanted more road capacity at Bay and Queen’s Quay, and so he pushed for (a) burying the line all the way south on Bay and around onto Queen’s Quay West, and (b) getting land from the developer of 10 and 20 Bay originally intended to make room for a transit corridor used instead for a left turn lane. That’s called “planning” in this town. Had the line been on the surface from the outset, all sorts of other developments in the empty or underused land along Bay would have happened with the streetcar right-of-way as an integral part of their design. Now, however, the streetcars are underground and the development patterns are set.
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Well it could, and I’m sure it’s happened, but I’ve never seen it unless there was a closure. I’ve ridden many of these (after walking from Gerrard to Dundas when there are no 504s coming from Broadview station), and they’ve always re-entered at Parliament/King … except for one that headed east down Queen from Parliament … not sure why it even bothered to head up Broadview in the first place, perhaps the switch was set wrong at Broadview/Queen.
Now, I’m doing this in AM peak, and mid-morning. Perhaps things happen differently in the afternoon? Though I haven’t really noticed this looking at the locations on the Internet, which I do every afternoon before I leave the office to catch a 504.
Steve: A short turn to Church tends to be for the purpose of parking a car for some length of time as opposed to immediately re-entering service. Most of the eastbound short-turns at Broadview do re-enter service westbound from King and Parliament. A car that short turns north on Parliament from King cannot re-enter service at Church because there is no north-to-left curve at Queen or Dundas, and if it went all the way to Carlton, it could not turn west-to-south at Church.
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Sorry I (re)started this whole 504 short-turn discussion but I have certainly quite often just missed a westbound 504 at King and Jarvis (or, more usually, been uanble to squeeze onto one) and have thus started to walk to the subway – reaching Church to see a 504 going south and turning westbound. The real problem is that the capacity on King (at least in the central portion of the route) is now clearly insufficient at rush hours. The area east of Church is more and more heavily populated (and I know there’s a similar situation at the west end of King) and the problem can either be solved with more streetcars or by using intelligent PLANNED short-turns to put more capacity in the central section of the route. Having the possibility of a short-turn ‘destination’ at Cherry should make route management easier – of course the TTC will need to do it properly. (well, one can hope.)
If this happens I hope that Timed Transfers will be in effect as people wanting to, eventually, transfer to a 501 streetcar (which they now do as soon as the 504 crosses the Don or at Broadview/Queen) should be able to walk to catch it by walking up the very short block between King and Queen from the Cherry/Sumach/King intersection.
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Speaking of too-sharp curves, does that turning loop kind of tight? Are they going to have to water this track like the way they do for Neville Park loop to keep the squealing down?
Steve: I presume you mean Union Loop? It already has wheel greasers, a more common approach to this problem system wide than watering the track.
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Its hard to grasp the length of the 14 rail strings shown in the photograph, but for 500m of double track, they would require about 2000m of rail stock (not including the loop) to complete the line. It does not appear as if they have welded enough rail stock to actually complete the line (Those strings would need to be 470 feet long each!), but perhaps just enough that they can construct a portion of the line and then continue welding rail at that location….
Steve: I don’t think that the whole of Cherry is being done in one go. From Front Street south to the loop is roughly 270m according to Google, and so the amount of track needed (and the imputed length of the strings) about half what you calculate. There is an update on the West Don Lands project coming soon, and I will ask about the staging of the track installation.
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In response to DavidC’s May 20th comment, an interesting route-within-a-route could be operated between the Dufferin loop and the Cherry street loop. They would take some of the load off of the King cars, and since Dufferin is being reconstructed this year, the track would be in usable condition in time for the opening of the Cherry Street line. Steve, do you know offhand if they are planning to reconfigure the Dufferin/Queen intersection to allow for North-to-West/East-to-South routing?
Steve: Curves will not be installed in the southwest quadrant at Queen and Dufferin because of the topography. It would be a compound curve turning down and then up, and this is very unhealthy for keeping streetcars on their tracks. Ideally curves should be on level ground. The curves to and from the east are also partly on a hill, but only on the Dufferin segment, not also on Queen.
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I’ve been in Union loop, and that is indeed a doozy. Especially since it’s underground so all that noise is just trapped in with all the riders. But no, I meant Neville Park loop. The tracks there are watered for noise reduction. I presume this is because those tracks aren’t underground and the noise is free to propagate to the nearby residences.
Additionally, while the sound levels in Union are much higher, a person would normally only be exposed to being in the car going through the loop once per trip. People living near a turning loop get exposed every time a streetcar goes through. Ontario (and most other jurisdictions) currently does noise impact assessments based on a one-hour equivalent exposure (Leq).
Steve: The validity of one-hour values came up in discussions about the Weston corridor. When trains run comparatively infrequently, it is quiet most of the time and the one-hour exposure looks just great. This ignores the effect of peaks as each train passes, especially when the ambient level is lower (as at night).
I believe that there is a wheel greaser at the entrance to Neville Loop.
Neville is not as tight a loop as Union. The original version of this loop was tighter with the exit on the west side of Nursewood rather than in the middle. The loop track was straightened out in the late 60s for PCC trains so that they would have a straight section for coupling and uncoupling.
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Steve, Globe reported recently on development plans in what I think was called the Canary District, after the old greasy spoon near Distillery District. However the timing and sequencing of this was not clear – any hope this might advance the spur off King?
Steve: It is one of the developments that will keep this spur on the front burner, but in the short term, these buildings are part of the athletes’ village, and won’t need transit service. They will become condos after the Pan Am Games, and transit service should start then.
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Steve, I found the reference related to operating streetcars on Cherry Street.
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Slightly off-topic, but I remember something from my childhood that perhaps someone can shed some light on. This would have been some time in the 80’s:
I was attending a summer camp at the Harbourfront Centre and recall seeing a freight train stop in front of the building on the then-still-in-place street track reservation. I’m curious what industry this train would have been serving at this point in time and how much trackage remained to the west of Yonge Street. I’d also like to know what purpose the spur down through the Harbourfront property served, remnants of which ended up saved for some unknown reason and built into a boardwalk. Did this access what is now the Powerhouse Theatre?
Steve: I got lucky in a search of the City Archives photos, and found this aerial view of the Terminal Warehouse and Power Plant buildings as they were in 1930. Note the amount of empty space around them — this area had only recently been filled in and “Lake Shore Boulevard” really had been a lot closer to the water.
The waterfront was originally industrial with a web of rail connections from the east and the west. This goes back to early days of the city — there was a rail yard south of Fort York west of Bathurst Quay more or less where the Gardiner sits today along with many condos. The lighthouse at Fleet Loop used to stand at the “Queen’s Wharf” as it was called, but was moved when the wharf was demolished.
You can find many photos of the waterfront and the old industrial buildings in the archives. Go to the database search page, click on “Search the Archives’ Database” and follow your nose for prompts. Simple ones like “Waterfront” or various street names usually do well.
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I said earlier:
Steve, do you concur with the arguments made in the EA against the Bay Street portal? Here’s what I have difficulty buying:
1) The EA states that Bay Street already operates at capacity for general traffic, and that the Bay Street portal would reduce the street’s capacity. However, is the location of peak traffic volume around the same area as well (near the Gardiner/Lake Shore)? If so, then I guess there’s nothing wrong here. But if the location of peak volume is in an entirely different location, then I believe that the EA made a false argument here.
2) The EA states that the parking lot on the northwest corner of Bay and Harbour would be accessible only to southbound traffic. However, it’s not like northbound traffic can’t make a U-turn at a designated location, much like on streets with physical right-of-ways.
3) Finally, the EA says that pedestrian volumes will be too high and compete too much with transit operations for green time, thereby justifying grade-separation in this location. Fair enough, but if pedestrians are granted a shorter walking distance, is it true that the same pedestrian volumes would require less crossing time? Is it true, and has it been argued, that pedestrianising Bay Street south of Harbour Street (or at least widening the sidewalks to increase non-crossing pedestrian capacity) can cut down on crossing time required?
Steve: All of the land along Harbour, except for the Harbour Commission building, is to be redeveloped and the general approach to all new buildings is “right in, right out” for traffic flow. That means from southbound Bay and the “constraint” is meaningless.
Bay is certainly very busy and this will change with various street modifications that are planned including the reconfiguration of Queen’s Quay, the demolition of the York Street ramp from the Gardiner, and the reconfiguration of the Harbour Street off ramp. It would be nice if the EA had addressed the road system as it will be, not as it is today.
The pedestrian volumes are a big issue for transit during busy periods for the ferries. If we had started a few decades ago with more space dedicated to pedestrians and transit generally and a deliberate attempt to restructure road traffic flows, we might have come up with a good design, but that’s a real challenge today now that the area is built up (on paper, if not yet in fact). The whole mistreatment of the Ferry Docks as an important pedestrian realm is shown by the way the “new” docks were sandwiched in between Harbour Square and Harbour Castle in a leftover strip of land with no presence on Queen’s Quay itself. Council didn’t care back in those days, and now we live with the results.
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Do you mean that’s a challenge to do without resorting to full pedestrianisation? Or coming up with a good design will be a challenge no matter what’s considered (even with full pedestrianisation)?
I ask this because if pedestrianisation of a portion of the study area is what some residents advocated for, then the EA may have missed a potentially workable solution to solving the problem of competing pedestrian and transit signal timings.
Steve: The challenge is that we are stuck with the road layout and traffic flows (on Bay) as they are and the constraints this places on the transit configuration. With or without pedestrianization, there would have been problems with transit/pedestrian conflicts at Bay and Queen’s Quay intersection when the ferries are busy. However, those periods do not correspond, generally speaking, to transit peak times. Pedestrianization would remove the last vestiges of auto traffic from the mix, but would tend to encourage a lot of free-flowing pedestrian movement (traffic light? what traffic light?). I can argue this from either side, but given the limitations on what we can do on Bay Street, feel that we’re past the point of no return.
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Re: memories of tracks on Queens Quay, I also remember them from when I was young. I remember noticing that they were like streetcar tracks but without wires. More recently, I attended “Doors Open” at Redpath Sugar a couple of years ago and while we were waiting to go in we got to look at and operate the switch in front of the plant that used to control access to the Redpath spur—although the trackage is now unused and disconnected from the rail network, there is still a working switch at the sugar refinery.
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Isaac said
The tracks were used by Redpath up to about 2009 but now they (and the switch) have all been removed east of Cherry Street (except a short stretch at Parliament Street) and Waterfront Toronto is about to start work improving the pedestrian/cycling ‘environment’ on Queen’s Quay East from Bay to Lower Jarvis.
Presentation to Waterfront Toronto Board of May 24, 2012
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Thanks, DavidC, for the update. I should have been more careful with my verb tenses—everything I said was based on one visit in I think 2010. I didn’t realize they had discontinued rail use so recently. I assumed it had been out of use for years. I wish they had left the switch in place—how many places can kids play with a real live railway switch?
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Are there any short term options that might make sense on Bay/Queens Quay? I’m thinking if they got some double ended cars that could be run without a loop … with potentially a smaller moving walkway in a tunnel instead of a full streetcar tunnel all the way up to Union Station (which could have an entrance in Harbour Square park so that pedestrians from the island could walk underground to Union…) …. or something like going up Bay and then cutting through the Toronto Harbour Commission’s parking lot to get over to Bremner (and have a stop right by the new entrance to Union (and possibly continue along Bremner to Bathurst)) … or run it up Bay and hang a right through the bus terminal and then back down Yonge?
Steve: The basic problem is that most of the traffic on this line is not going to Queen’s Quay Station but to other places along the route. This design would force a transfer at a station that has limited stairs and no escalator. If you want people to walk to Union, wait a few years and the PATH system will reach to Harbour Street via new condos to be built in the area. As for a moving walkway, do you really expect that the TTC could keep something like that working? That’s a long, long piece of hardware.
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A possibility could be to convert the Queens Quay curve to a straight on to Queens Quay East, rip out the existing track and install an automated people mover similar to the one between Heathrow Terminal 5 and the 5B satellite. Expensive yes, more hassle yes but in the long run probably cheaper than the crazily complex scheme for Union Loop which is liable to ensure QQE ROW never sees the light of day.
An alternative – leave the loop as is and reduce the westbound routes ex Union Loop to one – probably Exhibition. It would need an origin/destination study to decide how west-Union, east-Union and west-east routes interleave.
There was a time when the QQ route consisted of Exhibition, Harbourfront and the ACC. Now with subsequent developments there will surely be westerners going to George Brown/Corus/Sugar Beach and easterners going to the Island Airport – the question is how many.
Were the TTC to simply build the QQE line through the intersection without a curve, with intending passengers for Union doubling back at the next stop west, it would look similar to Dublin’s arrangement for Point Depot-Connolly Railway Station travellers who have to double back at Busaras. That has less to do with complex underground stations and instead bonehead calls on special work, mind.
Steve: This response is directed not at Mark, but at a number of people who want to cobble together any sort of “fix” to the Queen’s Quay problem (among others).
I am amused by how often the idea of some sort of shuttle on Bay from Union to Queen’s Quay comes up. It would be interesting to cross-reference advocates of this with people who are absolutely horrified at the prospect of changing from the Sheppard LRT to the subway at Don Mills, or from anything to anything else at Kennedy. The real high point is the gaggle who think that everyone wants to go from eastern Scarborough to northwestern Etobicoke in a one seat ride.
Yes, I am being deliberately sarcastic. However, I don’t think that everyone in the world wants to go to Bay and Queen’s Quay, and putting a forced transfer there where one does not now exist really is quite a joke considering the pedestrian handling capacity needed to deal with the result. Presuming that we maintain the demand, you will still need a larger and reconfigured terminal at the Union end of any people mover or shuttle. At Queen’s Quay, people will have to somehow get from under the street to the LRVs loading on the surface where, by the way, the road design does not have room for what would be a major transfer station, and the stairs to Queen’s Quay Station could not handle the pedestrian volumes.
Has nobody ever ridden service eastbound on Queen’s Quay in the morning peak (presuming you can even get on) to see the hordes using service from the condos around Spadina and points west to get to Union? This isn’t about the Ferry Docks, folks, it’s about the people living in all those towers that are beyond walking distance to downtown. And no, many people don’t want to walk or cycle. That doesn’t fix the problem either and presumes rather arrogantly that folks “close enough” to downtown don’t need transit.
From comments by the TTC, the structure at Queen’s Quay and Bay is not designed to permit a through east-west track and fixing this won’t be easy much as the ability to run service straight across the waterfront has its attractions.
The TTC’s plan for Union Loop is more complex than it needs to be. It includes provision for the Bremner streetcar, a scheme that I don’t think has a prayer of being built. Considering the many objections TTC staff raised to the operational plan for Queen’s Quay West (as redesigned) and East (as proposed), either of these would be child’s play compared to the many locations where there would be pedestrian and auto conflicts with a line on Bremner. Next, there is too much focus on getting people into the core via Bay Street rather than using Cherry and King as an access from the eastern waterfront. This may demand some real transit priority through downtown on King. Surprise! Maybe something real rather than a diamond lane that has never been enforced because the curb lanes are filled with taxis and delivery vehicles.
If we are talking about alternate, lower cost “solutions”, let’s look at something that can provide transit service, not some Rube Goldberg arrangement using flavour-of-the-week technology.
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Steve, does what you float from the east have any potential application from the west as well? Notwithstanding the catch that it would miss the Harbourfront segment east of Spadina, the infrastructure is existing to route a line Ex-Fleet-QQW-Spadina-King-Church (I understand that there would be potential issues at Lake Shore & Spadina, as well as at Charlotte Loop), if that would be viable for meeting needs that Union Loop is incapable of accommodating and nobody funds its expansion.
Steve: I think that the difference is with the size of the development and distance south of King in the eastern waterfront. Also, the western waterfront already has a connection to Union. Having said that, it might be nice to run a temporary service into downtown via King during the period that Queen’s Quay is being rebuilt.
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Couldn’t this still be done? I don’t think the existing tunnels PREVENT a surface routing even if it means the tunnel is partially redundant.
Steve: Front Street and Union Subway Station mezzanine level will be completely reconfigured following the work now underway to expand the subway station and revise the connection to the railway station. No, a surface LRT and station on Front will not be possible. Great idea, and what we in Streetcars for Toronto wanted all along, but the opportunity is long gone.
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To elaborate: the Spadina car could continue to use the tunnel to Union, while the Waterfront (west) cars could turn north on Spadina, east on Front, stop in front of Union Station, and then turn south again on Bay. Or where-ever.
Steve: This configuration has the additional problems (over and above your previous comment) that some sort of merge tracks would be needed for the surface and ramp tracks at the tunnel portal. There is no room for this on Queen’s Quay west of Bay in either the current or the planned future configuration.
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Steve, I took your comments in the spirit in which you intended but am frankly horrified that it will not be possible to through-run simply because it means any repairs to the section Queens Quay-Union will close both ROWs – the choice of single end-single side door cars for all downtown routes looks very shaky when you have to close all the trackage from Spadina to Parliament or even farther if Parliament Slip loop is temporary only.
I like you consider the Bremner car almost certainly doomed to indefinite deferral but fear that the presence of the line in theory will not only promote approval of large scale development in the area but delay more realistic transit solutions – Maple Leaf Square and the other south of the rail lands projects will need dedicated service soon if they don’t already.
I reckon a Fort York-Bremner bus that went up York and down Simcoe looping at Richmond would remove some of the load from the aforementioned busy AM EB Queens Quay cars since many of the riders are likely passing through Union en route to the Financial District with comparatively few heading to the GO Train, thus adding to the load on PATH. That said it may not have yet occurred to Planning Staff that Simcoe is once again a through street…
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Is grooved rail a requirement for asphalted road surfaces? I had thought asphalt was a reason behind the use of grooved rail many decades ago, but I see that the rails about to be installed along Queens Quay West aren’t grooved.
Steve: Toronto hasn’t used grooved rail in years and track is laid in concrete (albeit with a rubber sleeve now). If the top layer were asphalt, it would creep into the groove, but that’s not an issue any more.
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Or you could do it with no physical connection between surface and underground tracks on Bay at all. In the longer term (really long, like post Bremner) punching a Front Street line under the railway and over to Dufferin loop along the ROW planned for the Front Street Extension doesn’t seem like a bad idea either. Really the only problem I see is the lack of need for the tunnel and loop platform if something like this was built, which gets us back to square one with all the problems claimed for a surface line on Bay.
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How is it not an issue anymore? Did they find a way to prevent asphalt encroachment without resorting to grooved-rail?
I do believe that asphalt surface is still the plan for Queens Quay West, unless I’ve missed something.
Steve: Concrete. Originally it was to be grass.
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