Day: July 2, 2021

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The Richard F. Glaze 16mm Film Digitization Project

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I do not post commercial pitches here. Lots of people have things that they want to sell, but that’s not what my site is about.

Here is an exception.

Richard F. Glaze was a visitor to and later resident of Toronto for decades. He started shooting photographs and film of the TTC while I was still at the “look, a streetcar!” stage my evolution. He was a crusty guy who would show up on fantrips, and our paths would cross socially from time to time.

About 18 months ago, Richard’s vast collection of slides and six hours of colour film were passed on to James Bow who many will know for his site Transit Toronto. Images from Richard’s collection have appeared regularly there as James worked his way through scanning the collection.

The film material is another matter, though, and it requires professional handling for cleaning, high quality scanning, colour and exposure restoration. To that end James has mounted a Kickstarter campaign in the hopes of funding this work. The short term goal is $6,900, and this will pay for about one quarter of the work.

For those interested in the preservation of Toronto’s transit history, this is a worthy goal. You can visit the Transit Toronto website where there is a sample of restored video (streetcars on Rogers Road) and a link to the Kickstarter page. The cutoff date for the campaign is July 16, 2021.

Richard’s photos appear in many places on the Transit Toronto site, but there is a small selection and brief bio here.

To whet your appetite, here a few shots taken from Transit Toronto’s site.

Glen Echo Loop with a regular service car (3010) and a fantrip (2528) signed utterly inappropriately for the location
Lakeshore Road at Parkside Drive looking east to Sunnyside Amusement Park. The Gardiner Expressway doomed all of this.
Queen and Bay looking northwest. Today New City Hall would be in the background. Street decorations anticipate the coronation of Elizabeth II.
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What Bus Service Will Replace the SRT?

In about two years, July 2023, the Scarborough RT will shut down and be replaced by bus services until a Line 2 Scarborough Subway Extension opens in 2030. For seven years or more, riders will use buses to reach Kennedy terminal on Line 2, a change that will strain both the transit service and roads.

The TTC has a survey underway to July 16, 2021, to find out how riders think the bus service should operate, and to get a sense of how they use the bus network today.

The SRT operates primarily as a link between Scarborough Centre (aka STC) and Kennedy Stations with Lawrence East Station in a distant third place mainly because of transfer traffic from the 54/954 Lawrence East bus services. A replacement service does not have to duplicate the route of the SRT, but rather serve travel patterns between the major nodes.

Source: TTC Subway Ridership 2018

The TTC plans to extend many routes now terminating at STC to Kennedy, but the challenge lies in the route that they will take. The combined service at peak will be about 1 minute, and that will strain road capacity. A saving grace is that buses will not stop often, and so they will not queue at curbside, but this bring an operational challenge for any mixture of local and express services. A reserved lane works best if buses do not have to pass each other by merging into other traffic.

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