Updated May 30, 2014: The TTC has announced that streetcar service along Queen will resume its normal route at 7:00 pm on Saturday, May 31. The shuttle buses will continue to terminate at Church because Victoria Street will not reopen to traffic until June 7. At that point, the shuttles will be extended to Victoria to make a closer connection with the Yonge subway.
Updated May 29, 2014: This project is now substantially complete. All four quadrants’ special work plus connections to the existing track have been installed and set in concrete, and as of today, paving work and other cleanup activities were underway in the curb lanes.
Reconstruction of Queen & Victoria began on May 12, 2014 with excavation and removal of the old track. Following a typical pattern for intersections, the job reached the point where some of the new foundation slab was in place by May 16.
Track panels for the diamond and for the east quadrant are parked on Victoria at Richmond (the diamond) and on Queen east of Victoria.
This is a 3/4 grand union with a pair of curves in all but the northwest quadrant.
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- Looking NE across Queen and Victoria
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- Looking N on Victoria across Queen.
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- Looking W on Queen across Victoria
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- Queen/Victoria diamond
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- Installing the diamond
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- Looking W on Queen across Victoria
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- Looking N on Victoria
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- Looking E on Queen to Church
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- Looking SW across Queen
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- Looking E from Yonge
Steve Munro 
You know, that Northwest corner is kinda opened up.
This would be a great place for a grand union (in terms of having 501/502/503/504/505 all being divertable via Bay, Church or McCaul in one way or another).
Steve: It’s a bit late for that change (there is a lead time of a year or so on the order for castings), and in any event there are other options using Church.
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Steve, despite how it renders on your site when clicked, the image of the faded Lowe’s sign is rotated 90 degrees.
Steve: This appears to be a problem with Firefox and images in portrait format that have been created since I shifted over to a new PC. The orientation is correct for older images, and they also display correctly in IE. I will have to chase this problem to see which piece of software is responsible.
Updated reply: It turns out that this is a known problem, and it is quite pervasive. What happens is that when a photo is taken, it includes “EXIF” data that specify its orientation. This applies to devices like iPhones which “know” the orientation of the camera. However, not all browsers and image editors handle the EXIF tags correctly and this can cause problems.
When Word Press uploads a photo, the version that it displays inline has the EXIF data stripped out, but the raw file, as is, that was shipped is presented when you click on the image. The normal use for this is to have a larger image available by a click through the inline version. However, I size the inline versions to be the same as the “full” version so that I’m not storing high-res photos on my site.
I will have to test whether there is a change in image editing between my old and new desktop, or if the problem was introduced by a change in a recently-installed version of Word Press on this site.
The reason that the problem does not occur on IE is that this software ignores EXIF data.
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I’m curious as to how you got that aerial shot. Did you lean out of an office window? Did someone let you access the roof of the building on the SE corner? The shot seems to be from the corner of the building but there is a windowless pillar there.
Steve: Top level of the Toronto Parking Authority garage on the south side of Queen.
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No need to publish this but I am using Chrome with Windows 8.1.
Steve: The problem exists in Chrome too. There are several discussion threads running currently about this problem because so many people take portrait-format photos with iPhones and they don’t display correctly when embedded in certain types of web displays (including webmail packages like G-Mail).
Updated reply: The problem has been resolved by removing the EXIF data from the images published in portrait format.
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Reading your mention of the Lowe’s theatre sign makes me wish for the days of movie palaces. As a child in the 1990s we still had the Uptown, I miss that theatre so much. There was so much hype that went into the Paramount/Scotiabank theatre and the AMC 24/Cineplex Yonge-Dundas. At the very least they could re open the Eglinton theatre again near Eglinton and Avenue Rd. I remember sometime around spring that theatre would show older movies and I remember seeing Blade Runner there in the spring of 1997. Anyway, nice shots of the trackwork, I might try that parking garage there and I think the parking garage above the Shoppers Drug Mart at Spadina/Queens Quay and the condo parking garage at Rees/Queens Quay might work too for the work going on on Queens Quay right now. : )
Steve: The upper levels of the Shopper’s parking on QQ are for the condo residents and they are not open to the general public.
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Thanks for the update Steve.
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While it is certainly good to see the Queen/Victoria intersection being redone I really wonder whether the track on Victoria from Queen to Dundas will last until the scheduled replacement in 2017 or 2018. Even if they are OK for streetcars the street is quite dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians (crossing in mid-block) because the rails are higher (and lower) than the road surface in many locations.
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This seems very disruptive, especially with a hospital right there. We tunneled the University line to avoid this kind of thing near hospitals.
This is what really gives light rail and streetcars a black eye — ordinary road repaving with one lane closure at a time just doesn’t produce a mess anywhere near as bad as this.
Steve: Considering that this type of work is done about 4 times a century, and at the scale of the current project with complete replacement of the foundation, even less so, it’s a big stretch to justify a tunnel under Queen Street here to avoid a three-week shutdown. Queen gets lots of attention this year because there are three track jobs affecting the service with Leslie in progress and Broadview to come.
St. Mike’s continues to operate with its emergency department at the north end of the building (Shuter and Victoria), and with public entrances on Victoria and on Queen. The latter can be reached by walking in from Bond Street.
As I have said many times, the TTC is catching up on poor construction techniques for special work during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and has only been building “new” style intersections for about a decade.
Meanwhile, passengers on the subway endure slow orders and erratic service thanks to deferred maintenance, and multiple weekend-long shutdowns are required. The TTC still hasn’t figured out how it will handle reconstruction of the segment between Muir Portal (north of St. Clair) and Berwick Portal (south of Eglinton). Can you say “subways last 100 years”?
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Took an hour this afternoon to get from Queen and Jarvis to Queen and Bathurst. I think it’s time for a referendum on the future of streetcars as should be in a democratic society. Those who oppose any referendums belong to dictatorial countries and not Canada.
Steve: Considering that you are making a trip through the middle of a construction area, long travel times are not surprising, although an hour suggests that there is more going on than just the work at Queen & Victoria.
As for a referendum, it’s called an election. If you want rid of streetcars, vote for Rob Ford and Tim Hudak. Beware that they come with a lot of baggage.
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Subways being built *now* might very well last 100 years, just as the streetcar track being laid now might last 25. Only time will tell.
Streetcar track reconstruction never seems to end, because the TTC does it TOO gradually. Some part of some line is always down, and the commuting public notices it, because it is VERY disruptive. Why I’ve lost count of the number of times Harbourfront has been down. When we try to defend these constant closures, we just end up looking stupid.
The average person wonders if it’s all worth it, and when you weigh all the pros and cons, it probably isn’t. Stops are going, headways will be wider, and POP will reduce revenues. These are all the result of a streetcar transportation model that no longer exists, because if it did, a manufacturer would be still making CLRV-sized cars, and we would have bought those. Let’s face it — we’re stuck in the past, and these new streetcars, as nice as they are, are like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. They aren’t a good fit, and we were forced to buy them simply because nobody makes short streetcars anymore. The hypocrisy here is it’s OK to abandon the RT for the same reason, but not OK for the streetcar network.
As for Yonge, if it hadn’t been built on the cheap with surface running to save money, it wouldn’t have deteriorated so badly.
Steve: Would you care to comment on all of the leaking tunnels and the spalling concrete, not to mention the tunnel liner problem on Yonge north?
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Not only do these streetcars cost massive amounts of money (on top of slowing down both transit riders and drivers and on top of never ending streetcar track construction in spite of the fact that the network is not growing (with this much construction, you would expect a streetcar network throughout Toronto but no, the same small network needs never ending construction and maintenance further slowing everyone down)) but these streetcars also steal buses from other routes on which TTC dumped the cheap buses vs expensive streetcars. Yesterday once again, it grew so bad that buses had to be called in to replace the streetcars. How is it fair that streetcars on which so much money has been spent (including billions of dollars for the new streetcars that have been in testing for years yet never seem to be ready for service and these were ordered more than a decade ago and still no service to be seen) end up drawing buses away from routes on which very little money is spent on cheap buses?
My point is that if you want to keep your extremely expensive streetcars, then keep them but just don’t steal cheap buses from other routes thereby slowing down and causing overcrowding on those other routes which don’t get their fair share of transit money spent on them. Streetcar construction and reconstruction / break-down can end up reducing bus frequency and cause overcrowding in Scarborough on which hardly any transit money is spent, how is this fair?
Steve: The last time I looked, “yesterday” was Saturday, and there were ample surplus buses. The temporary replacement of streetcars for construction was planned in advance, and many of the vehicles to handle this come from normal summer service cutbacks.
Never-ending construction? Well, somewhere there will always be something to be rebuilt, but the quality of what is being done now is far better than what was done in the two decades after we “saved” the streetcar system. A sure-fire way to undermine a mode’s credibility is to build unreliable infrastructure and then sit back and watch it fall apart.
In case you’re interested, replacing the streetcar fleet with buses would take over 300 vehicles, not to mention the additional ones needed to make up for a backlog of unmet service requirements. People on streetcar routes have put up with overcrowding for years.
The pricetag for the new streetcars is $1.2-billion, not “billions”.
Scarborough may not have the best transit possible, but it’s not thanks to the streetcar system. It is a direct result of the fact that politicians would rather promise subways in a decade rather than improving service on the street today. Ford and Stintz are responsible for worsening the crowding standards, cancelling an order for about 150 buses, and delaying the construction of a much-needed new bus garage. Oddly enough, that garage (in Scarborough) is now facing opposition from local residents.
Please (and this goes for all readers) cut out the crap about “poor Scarborough” as an excuse to bash anything else in the city or the transit system.
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That is a particularly bizarre comment considering that St Mike’s recently constructed a new building and have another planned for the parking lot at the corner of Queen and Victoria. Streetcar track replacement takes about 3 weeks, constructing a building takes about 3 years. Are you proposing NO construction near hospitals, or schools (or your own home)?
Steve: And if anyone bothers to actually visit the hospital, they will know that access for ambulances making transfer runs has been preserved at Queen Street while visitors use the Victoria Street door. Emergency is at the north end of the hospital and is not affected (although maybe we should stop the condo construction project behind Massey Hall across the street to be sure).
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I recently saw a video on the Vaughan subway extension tunneling technology. It’s a totally different animal from what was done on North Yonge in the early 70s. No comparison. As I said, only time will tell if it will hold up for 100 years, but it’s supposedly leak-proof. Who knows. They never sealed the concrete used in the subway, so that’s a factor also.
I simply stated a historical fact — that the University line was tunneled to avoid creating that kind of chaos near the hospital district, and that Toronto’s streetcar network is based on a model that no streetcar manufacturer currently supports.
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What model is that? No one in North America is allowed to build high floor cars without some sort of lift device because of various acts that require full accessibility for people with disabilities. New Orleans is building brand new 1920’s era street cars. The lift device takes about 5 minutes to load someone on a wheel chair. Could you imagine that on King Street?
There are several companies that will build a 2 truck, 3 section car with all low floors or a 2 truck single section car with a low centre section. Would you prefer that to a car with twice the capacity? There are a number of US cities that are building Street Car, not LRT, lines using CLRV sized vehicles so they are available, search the literature. Go here and you will find a list of them. Some of these will use CLRV sized cars but of a modern design.
No one builds single truck Birney cars any more but that does not mean that street cars are out dated.
The chaos near St. Mike’s will be 3 to 4 weeks while the chaos around University Avenue and the hospitals would have been 3 to 4 years. The chaos is not in the same ball park. If they tunnelled under Queen would you like to guess the disruptions that would be caused by digging the insertion and removal pits for the tunnel boring machines and the stations. It would be a lot more than 4 weeks. Before you come up with a half baked idea think out ALL the consequences.
What about all the road construction?. The Gardiner is down to 2 lanes in places in each direction until the end of 2016. That is mighty damn inconvenient. Why can’t they fix it without disrupting traffic? (Because it is impossible for those of you who cannot comprehend irony.) There is major road construction going on all over the city but no one says “Lets get rid of cars and go back to horses.” Well, almost no one.
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Pity they didn’t fix the Church intersection by adding a north to west curve when they dug that up a couple of years ago.
It’s some kinds of ridiculous that 501 and 504 cars on diversion need to make 3 turns (including 2 lefts) to get on to Queen Street.
Steve: The TTC adds curves to existing intersections rarely, and I have not seen a consolidated “wish list” (presuming one even exists) of curves that should be added to simplify operations.
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I see the streetcar wires are cut back at Victoria and Richmond. Is this because of work on Richmond or is the TTC not renewing the occasional running of streetcars along Richmond to York street.
Steve: This is to simplify the utility work now in progress. Once Toronto Water gets out of the way, the TTC plans to renew the Richmond Street track.
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TTC seem to be rebuilding every streetcar line even some that have never seen a streetcar since the beginning of time.
Where is the TTC document (with work schedule) that authorizes/approves this work (itemized cost details and work schedules)?
Steve: It’s in the capital budget in the Blue Books, and reported at a summary level in the overall budget. I have been reporting on the track reconstruction plans here for years, assuming you were paying attention.
As for lines that have not seen a streetcar since the big bang, name one. The track is all used for diversions and short turns, even if there is no regularly scheduled service.
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There was a prioritised Report to the Commissioners several years ago on the various junctions on the streetcar network that might benefit from additional curves: you mentioned it here (but I can’t find it). It recommended adding a few new curves – though not, I think, this one.
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Found it!
Steve: This report is only a partial list and was a response to a specific set of suggestions from a TTC employee rather than a system-wide review.
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With intersections at both Leslie and Victoria off-limits to streetcars, it currently takes an average of 150 – 160 minutes (!) for a trip from Neville to Long Branch (and slightly less for the return trip). There was no provision in the schedule for the diversion around Queen and Victoria, so no wonder service is a mess!
Steve: Yes, that is one of those mysteries of TTC planning. A smaller but important cock-up was the failure to use York westbound to avoid King-Spadina which was known as a terrible intersection for a Queen diversion from past experience. It took a week for this to be corrected. The originally announced diversion was via Richmond, but then someone noticed that it was under construction and had no overhead west of Victoria. How is it possible that the greatest transit system on the planet does not know about these things in advance?
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Why are they making no effort to run a split system for this? I understand it’s a relatively short bump in the plan … but it’s frustrating as hell.
I’ve come to realize that King and Church is just as much a pain as King and Spadina … they almost need an east to south curve at Church just to help return cars the otherway … since northbound Church is a disaster.
I’d even say (but it’s because I’m a beaches person) just have the 501s go from Neville … up Coxwell and back to Main Street … at least the east would have total streetcar service!
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Peter: Well, let me be the first one to say “Let’s go back to horses!” I might be dating myself, but there was still some horse traffic on Toronto streets when I was a kid, and my first car was a Ford Model B with a crank starter.
Actually, I do not mean for people to trade in their cars for horses, but rather, for the TTC to “upgrade” to horse-drawn streetcars.
Here are the advantages: 1. Toronto will become more famous than San Francisco for its streetcar system, drawing tourists from all over the world just for this; 2. horses are not dumb, they will take you home if the driver is not sober or fell asleep; 3. the cost of oats is much less than electricity; 4. you could add thousands of inexpensive streetcars to the fleet, and building new track would be super easy since it will not have to handle heavy vehicles and no unsightly overhead wires; 5. I betcha that this is way better than swan boats, because Toronto does not have a canal network in place yet.
Steve: But there will have to be TTC horses and Metrolinx horses, that “horse of a different colour”, don’t ya know?
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This might be a bit off-topic, but here is what I experienced: Yesterday at 4:30 pm I took the Spadina streetcar northbound at Queen. I was lucky to get a seat, but the streetcar became quite loaded at this stop. From Dundas onwards, the car could not take all the passengers waiting. At a couple of the minor stops where no one was getting off the streetcar merely drove through without taking anyone on.
Obviously the Spadina route is ready for the new larger LFLRV’s.
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I noticed there are red restricted speed zone signs hanging from the overhead along York Street, and westbound 501 streetcars proceed north at a slow speed.
Given that the track on York Street was recently rebuilt, why the speed restrictions?
Steve: There are supposed to be problems with the overhead, although what they are is hard to tell. It is a continuing mystery that the TTC does not fix problems like this.
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Signs are now up on York saying it will be closed overnight for the first week of June. Is that connected to repairing the overhead? I walked York from King to Queen faster than a 501 today.
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It’s for a movie shoot.
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Horse cars!
Here’s a few currently operating;
In Australia
In Japan
In California
And a very sophisticated horsecar transportation system at the Paris Disneyland.
Has anyone recently put forth a proposal for a horsecar tourist attraction in Toronto? I presume that the key question is: Is there a viable route that even on a weekend would not mess up regular streetcar service?
Strongly suspect the answer is “no” … But hey, it’s a fun idea!
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In response to the topic of horse cars, Steve wrote:
That could be very useful, just like the horse of a different colour in The Wizard of Oz…
It could be Metrolinx green when on one of their lines, then change to TTC red when it moves onto TTC track. Then when it crosses north of Steeles, it becomes YRT blue, and then…
😉
Steve: That was precisely my allusion!
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Does the 53 steeles bus have a daily ridership weekday of 53000? That should be a streetcar or LRT.
Steve: The correct number is 28,100 (for 2012) per the TTC’s route-by-route summary.
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More streetcars needed in Scarborough. Tired of the useless buses.
Steve: More buses are needed too. Cannot run streetcars everywhere.
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With all this talk of track replacement I am surprised nobody in the past 50 years has bothered to remove the track on Cedervale and Strathmore!
They can rip up track on Adelaide no problem but it appears Cedervale and Strathmore remain…
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Surely the unused track on Adelaide hasn’t been used in the 50 years since Adelaide was made one way … in 1964. Presumably the track is somewhat older than 50 years.
Track on Cedarvale and Strathmore was only first used in 1966. Presumably it has some years of life left in it until it’s as old as the track on Adelaide! 🙂
(which makes me wonder how old IS that Richmond and Adelaide track … presumably it hadn’t recently been replaced in 1964!).
Steve: The track on Adelaide eastbound from Bathurst to Church was used by the Bathurst car until the BD subway opened in February 1966. I have photos of diversions using Adelaide as an eastbound bypass for events at City Hall after that time. The death knell came when portions of the street were occupied for the Bay Adelaide Centre’s construction, and nothing has been maintained since (even though the TTC has installed brand new overhead poles beside the track they appear ready to abandon).
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Steve, given the exposed rail ends and edge of the base slab, do you know if the TTC plans to partially reopen the intersection before installing the panels north of Queen? Also, on May 20th, I made a post in this thread but it appears to not have been moderated yet. Not sure if it just got missed or if you were preparing a more elaborate response.
Steve: It would make sense to open the east-west part first, but don’t know for sure. I suspect the north quadrant has been held back in order to keep Victoria Street operating as much as possible north of Queen during the main project at Queen.
Your May 20 post asked which bits and pieces I would add to the system. This really is not the sort of thing to just toss off, but it also only makes sense in the context of the TTC’s plans for major intersection reconstruction projects. In a few cases, missing curves would be “nice to have” but they would require manhole relocation(s) which are unlikely.
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I was thinking of how old the westbound Adelaide track and eastbound Richmond track are, that haven’t been used – as far as I understand it, since Richmond and Adelaide were made one-way … which I think happened when the Richmond/Adelaide intersection of the DVP opened in 1964. Presumably the track then must be somewhat older than 1964!
Steve: Yes, probably, although the TTC did replace some “wrong way” track to protect against changes in the one-way pattern, notably the curves at Church & Wellington.
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Re: Comments about the tracks on Adelaide St
A PCC tour used Adelaide St eastbound sometime around 1984. I recall the tracks at that time had cobblestone paving and that the cobblestones had a greenish tint. So sometime after that the track area must have been repaved with concrete.
The PCC tour had 2 cars – a Cleveland car and a Louisville car – whose distinguishing characteristic was air conditioning housing on the roof. The tour promoters said the 2 cars were real clunkers as the car “heating” came from applying the brakes.
Steve: That was not AC. Ventillation yes, but not AC.
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Peter Strazdins – with all the thought about reverting to the use of horsecars, there is the minor problem of “what to do with the ‘horse exhaust’ – i.e. manure”!
Imagining one of the new Bombardier low-floor cars powered by horses and heated by stoves fueled by dried manure chips!
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Say, Kevin? You forgot to mention the 2 Disney parks in the good old Les Etats-Unis. I know the one in Florida has one but I can’t remember if the one in California has one or not but I would presume it does. I seem to be recalling about some kind of horse tramline in Indianapolis as well but I can’t recall anything about it at the moment.
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Okay, welcome back 501. We miss you on Queen Street!
I really don’t understand why isn’t the TTC running the 501 buses to University, the 502 and 503 in their originally routing as previously planned? Service on Queen is already erratic. Forcing everyone to walk to Church or wait for a packed streetcar isn’t very customer friendly.
Steve: The buses got stuck in traffic and service was very bad.
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The Queen Victoria intersection is open to streetcars and traffic. Noticeable is that overhead has not been updated; which means another closure or can it get done at night??
Is it that car drivers cannot count, or read the writing on the wall? Count how many people on the streetcar you complain about and perhaps with a little humility you might just say ‘it is more important than I am’. Moreover the writing, writ big, on the wall says ‘it is only going to get worse’.
Steve: Much of the overhead work is done in the middle of the night. For example, King & Spadina has been underway for a while and was almost complete when I visited recently. Broadview & Queen is partly completed, and Broadview & Dundas was finished with no service interruption.
With Queen east of Broadview shut down, some work, notably the underpass trough at the CNR/GO crossing at DeGrassi, is underway.
It is not really practical to do overhead work concurrently with trackwork because the intersection is not completely restored even when service resumes on the track.
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Just a minor note. The interior heat for all the PCC cars was provided by the application of the brakes. Therefore, we can assume that all the PCCs were ‘clunkers’.
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