Prologue: When I started to write this story, John Tory was still Mayor of Toronto and the dynamics of City-Province relations assumed he was in charge. The context for these discussions was soon to change.
The Toronto Region Board of Trade holds a yearly “transportation summit”, and on February 8, 2023, this focused on the Greater Toronto Area’s transit, plans for the future, and the aftermath of the covid pandemic.
The TRBoT is no wild-eyed radical institution. The regional economy and businesses are at the heart of causes it advocates.
Both in the introductory remarks and in comments by speakers sprinkled through the day, the economic effect of traffic congestion was a mantra. This sets the framework for the importance of both transit and road projects, depending on who is speaking. The latest factoid describing Toronto’s problems is that we have the third worst congestion in North America and the seventh worst in the world.
A problem with this hand-wringing is that there is little acknowledgement that some particularly bad locations are related to major infrastructure projects such as the Gardiner Expressway rebuild and various rapid transit lines. Moreover, goods movement has severe problems in areas that historically have poor transit and show little chance of seeing any in the near future. No single project will solve the problem of many-to-many trips patterns that now depend almost totally on roads and private vehicles.
John Tory is no longer Mayor of Toronto. That astounding news landed on Friday evening, February 10, to the complete surprise of Toronto’s political scene. You can read the details in the Star, who broke the story, and other online sources.
The great irony here is that Tory was felled by that most garden variety political pecadillo, an affair with a staffer half his age. Meanwhile, up the road at Queen’s Park, Premier Doug Ford barrels through blatant conflicts of interest and corruption charges untouched, so far.
My topic is not to comment on either of these, but to look at Tory’s departure in the context of Toronto’s transit service and the TTC’s future.
Although Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie will take over the office pro tem, we will not have a real Mayor until, at least, an election likely in May (based on legal requirements of the City of Toronto Act). This means a caretaker government at a time when a clear vision (whatever it might be) is needed for the City’s future. No individual Councillor has the Mayor’s influence to advance programs and lobby other governments for support. Each Councillor has their own shopping list, their own political links and favours, that do not necessarily align with Council as a whole, or at least those who have been the power brokers in Tory’s immediate circle.
Any project hoping for the Mayor’s support – the Eglinton East LRT extension, Waterfront transit, green buses, Osgoode Plaza, and many more – have lost the heft the Mayor’s office might have brought.
One “legacy” of the Tory years, SmartTrack, should face a quick death if only to release the substantial capital from the “City Building Fund” it represents. However, that is not easily done because there are commitments by the City to fund new GO Transit stations under the SmartTrack banner, and some of these are already nodes for major new developments. Which of them should survive deserves a thorough review. As for Metrolinx, they no longer have to maintain the fiction that there is a distinct service brand.
On the bright side, Tory’s deal-with-the-devil – Metrolinx propped up his pipedream in exchange for uncritical support – should be dead and buried.
SmartTrack was a distraction that warped planning and funding allocations for far too long. The website extolling its benefits in travel time savings for a 22-station line is still active long after that campaign scheme turned to dust.
Over at the TTC, the crisis lies in a lack of advocacy for significantly better transit. This touches many issues including a high-handed CEO rumoured to be a Tory favourite, and a lacklustre Board where much institutional memory was lost with the post-election turnover. Their job has been to keep the lights on, and to preside over budget cuts that could hogtie transit’s ability to regain lost ridership. Red paint on a few lanes in the city, assuming they could even get Council’s approval, will not attract more riders if the service is undependable and crowded, even if slightly faster. Buses have to show up to carry riders.
I often use the metaphor of a store window in talking about transit’s attractiveness. The grandest marketing campaign – “BIG SALE” signs plastered over the building – cannot make up for a lackluster collection of mouldy products and empty shelves. Too much of our transit planning and political capital goes to the razzle-dazzle.
This brings me to the question of who will replace John Tory as Mayor. I can easily name people who might have been good candidates three years out running to replace a finally-retired Tory, but everyone’s political plans rested on those three years to develop a city-wide presence and articulate a plan for what a new Mayor would bring. That luxury is gone, and quite bluntly “more of the same” is not an inspiring thought.
The interregnum will strengthen the Province vis-a-vis Toronto because Council is unlikely to speak with one voice, nor is there anyone to go hammer-and-tongs to Queen’s Park demanding a better deal for the City. Some other big city Mayor will have to take up the banner of increased federal funding and revenue tools.
The relationship between Toronto and other governments should be an important part of any Mayoral platform. Sadly, I expect that some candidates would be more than happy to fall even deeper into the “embrace” of the thugs at Queen’s Park and its agencies like Metrolinx. Toronto needs its own clear voice.
A new Mayor will have to deal with the long-standing suburb-downtown split in answering the question: what should our city be? There is no single answer to that, and anyone who tries a one-size-fits-all response will just make the problem worse. Transit is only one of many portfolios, and its political support varies across the city and beyond into the Toronto region. Even the basic question of “what should transit do” has no simple answer, especially as its role in serving downtown commuters shrank with the shift to work-from-home.
Toronto has grave financial challenges, but the larger problem will be to keep the City together rather than splitting into rival groups with unyielding demands for “their” City vision.
Updated February 10 at 3:45pm: The TTC has advised that the 504C bus will not return to Roncesvalles south of Howard Park until mid-March.
The TTC has announced several service changes effective February 12. These are, generally speaking, not the changes pending due to revised Service Standards and the 2023 Budget which will not come to City Council until February 15. Those changes will begin to appear in late March schedules, although there is a good chance that that the details will be published soon.
Notwithstanding that, some routes will see service cuts in February “to match demand”, although the TTC sometimes masks this as a schedule adjustment for reliability. A headway (the time between buses) might be lengthened to provide more round trip with the same number of vehicles, but this also affects the level of service.
Details of the changes are available in the spreadsheet linked below.
Metrolinx plans along several of its corridors have provoked community opposition and proposed alternative schemes, but Metrolinx has been quite intransigent about “just getting things built”, the mantra of the Ford government at Queen’s Park. Opposition is not merely steamrolled, but is painted as anti-transit, out of touch, and nimbyist in preventing the wider population from enjoying the benefit of new transit lines.
This does not endear Metrolinx to many groups (and they stretch well into the 905, not just central Toronto), but Metrolinx does not care. For them, it’s all about managing the message. Most communities just roll over and give in to an unstoppable force trying to make the best of a bad situation. “Consultation” amounts to picking the colour of the tiles for a bathroom reno, and hoping that the contractor actually installs the ones you selected.
Several sites along GO corridors and the Ontario Line have been subject to tree clearing either to open construction sites, or to remove trees that will conflict with electrification infrastructure. A small grove at Osgoode Hall, although far from the largest area Metrolinx has cleared, received much publicity because of its location. The northeast corner of Queen and University is a park beside one of Toronto’s oldest buildings, a green space complementing the square at City Hall just to the east and a more recent arrival, Campbell House, to the west.
Although the park was owned by the Law Society of Ontario, the portion Metrolinx requires was expropriated for the Ontario Line. The community around Osgoode Hall (a mix of the legal profession, the local BIA, residents and heritage advocates) convinced Toronto Council to undertake a review of Metrolinx plans in comparison with alternative designs that would preserve the treed parkland.
This report was produced by a consulting firm, Parsons, and was posted on the City’s website on February 4. It exists in two formats:
An interim injunction, in force until February 10, paused the felling of trees at Osgoode Hall for a time. Other locations have not been as lucky, nor have they had groups like the Law Society capable of taking on Metrolinx.
An important distinction for this site is that it also contains a heritage building, and there are concerns for potential damage Osgoode Hall might suffer from the overall construction plans. However, the injunction itself only applies to the trees, and it is not clear whether the wider issue of construction effects will form part of the broader argument when the application is heard.
Among the legal issues will be whether a heritage site with mixed ownership (the Law Society, Metrolinx and Ontario) can be treated as “indivisible” for the purpose of heritage preservation so that one owner, the LSO, can prevent changes on property of another owner, Metrolinx. There is also the question of whether Metrolinx can even be bound by an injunction as it is one of many agencies that are exempt from many provincial regulations.
In Brief
An interim injunction pauses work until February 10, with possible extension, pending further review.
The Parsons report commissioned by the City was published at the last moment, and was seized upon by Metrolinx to justify commencement of work on the same day as the injunction hearing.
Parsons concurs that the Metrolinx proposal is the best of those analyzed, but suggests that an alternative using the Campbell House site should be studied in more detail.
The Campbell House option would effectively displace the house from its location, and it is doubtful that it could return in as harmonious a setting as it has today.
Parsons does not afford the same treatment to the Osgoode Plaza proposal even though this is the major contender among the alternatives.
The City’s inaction on the proposed Osgoode Plaza is an (almost) missed opportunity to make the new station and the intersection into a major site downtown. If this is to be pursued, prompt action by the City is needed so that Metrolinx could adjust their construction plans accordingly.
If City Council, and most importantly Mayor Tory, are serious about an alternative to the Metrolinx plans for Osgoode Station, they should proceed as quickly as possible to endorse the Osgoode Plaza scheme and work with Metrolinx to adjust construction plans for Osgoode Station on the basis of road space on University Avenue that the plaza will free up.
In the presentation accompanying the report, the Osgoode Plaza option is shown first, and it is dismissed for various reasons notably the absence of detailed studies because the City has not yet embraced the proposed reconfiguration of University Avenue. Rather than recommending that the potential of this scheme be examined in greater detail, Parsons rejects it. This effectively prejudices the report to endorse the Metrolinx scheme as the only viable option, with a faint hope alternative that is worse than the original.
Here we are again at this blog’s anniversary. Looking back over the past year, let alone ahead to the next one, I regret that I am not in an up-beat, optimistic mood.
A year ago, I wrote:
In Ontario, there is hope that opposition will coalesce to drive the Premier and his band of incompetent fools from office. Whether we will get a new band of fools remains to be seen, but a Toronto, an Ontario in which nobody named “Ford” has any power is long overdue. Simplistic, populist slogans and dogma are no replacement for competent, dare I say, inspiring government.
This year I really do want to look forward, even with some misgivings on the social and political landscape.
The NDP and Liberal opposition did not manage to seize power, and won’t even have a shot at this until 2026. Meanwhile, we are stuck with Doug Ford and his gang of rogues who will sell off the province to their pals. Between rhetoric for the cameras, and legislation working against any interest that does not contribute to his party, Ford’s reign brings fresh disasters at every turn.
If there were a credible alternate view at the municipal level, I might hope at least for some balance, an alternate voice, but Mayor Tory continues to focus on doing whatever he can to cheapen Toronto. Some effects are not immediately visible, but they are cumulative. The City’s ability to be great, to inspire citizens to hope for more, drifts further and further out of reach.
Both “leaders” share a common problem: their egos and their dislike of criticism or opposition. They are right and everyone else is wrong, part of a rabble opposition who can be dismissed, if need be by legislative fiat.
On the transit front, their respective agencies echo this stance. Metrolinx and the TTC are run by CEOs who want things their way, and who answer, if that is the word, to boards utterly unwilling to challenge their rule (or under marching orders to shut up and vote the right way).
Without question, three years of the pandemic have stretched every agency thin. The lights stay on, flickering, only by infusion of special subsidies that already wane and could disappear within one fiscal year. That environment gave management a chance to take more power from their boards who, especially at the TTC, had many other problems as Councillors. That power will not likely be clawed back and delegated authority will be the “new normal”.
Design of the Waterfront East LRT is still underway by Waterfront Toronto and the TTC. Whether this project will be funded in the near future and built remains to be seen, but one issue is now settled, pending public feedback and formal approval.
The question has always been “where will the line end”, at least in the interim configuration before the full buildout of trackage in the Port Lands.
Here is an overview map of the area. Note that it shows the configuration the rerouted Don River, and the new alignments of Cherry Street and of Queens Quay.
Starting at Union Station, the segment in red south and east along Queens Quay to the portal west of Yonge is a TTC design task that is now underway.
The blue segment along Queens Quay east to Cherry is a Waterfront Toronto design project. Note that it crosses a partly filled Parliament Slip (purple) rather than dodging north to Lake Shore Boulevard as Queens Quay does today.
The yellow segment is on New Cherry Street and Commissioners Street. It will include an extension of the streetcar network south from Distillery Loop and east via Commissioners Street. For those who are familiar with the area, New Cherry and the transit right-of-way will cross the Keating Channel on two new bridges (the red ones for those who know them).
Various extensions (dotted black lines) are proposed:
South via Cherry to Polson Street. This will take the line over the new Don River and will require twinning the existing yellow bridge where New Cherry makes the transition into Old Cherry as it crosses the new Don River.
East via Commissioners to Leslie Barns making a second connection to this major TTC site and a possible service through the eastern Port Lands. This will require twinning the double-span orange bridge which will carry Commissioners Street over the new Don River.
North via an extended Broadview Avenue to connect with GO and the Ontario Line at East Harbour Station and thence north to Queen Street.
Service on 501 Queen, 504 King, 29/929 Dufferin and 503 Kingston Road has been affected by two major water/sewer repairs both of which struck over the weekend of January 21-22, 2023.
Updated: The south end loop for the 29 Dufferin local service has been extended into Exhibition Place.
Updated: 501 Queen streetcars are now looping via Sunnyside Loop rather than around Roncesvalles Carhouse.
The intersection of King & University is closed due to a water main break which both undermined the road and flooded St. Andrew Station. The station was closed for a time, but reopened on the afternoon of January 22. The station is not currently accessible due to water damage of escalators and the elevator between the platform and concourse levels.
Dufferin is blocked north of Springhurst (the north side of Dufferin Gate Loop) due to a sewer failure. This affects the 29/929 Dufferin bus routes as well as the 501 Queen streetcar which has been using Dufferin Loop as a western terminus during the King-Queen-Queensway-Roncesvalles project.
501 Queen
The Queen car has been rerouted west to Sunnyside Loop Roncesvalles where it loops using the carhouse runaround track. Sunnyside Loop is not yet available as a terminus. (Updated Jan. 25/23)
29/929 Dufferin
The Dufferin bus services are making a long loop around Liberty Village instead of running south to Dufferin Loop.
Update: This loop has been revised for the 29 service to include Exhibition Place. Also, although the 929 express service is shown as operating east to Strachan, some buses make a shorter loop and turn south from King closer to Dufferin.
504 King
The King streetcars and buses are operating on a much-modified route due to the closure at University Avenue.
504A cars would normally operate between Dufferin Loop and Distillery Loop. They are running between Broadview Station and Distillery Loop
504B cars would normally operate between Exhibition Loop and Broadview Station Loop. They are running between Broadview Station and Church Street looping as shown below.
504C buses are in theory providing service to River. However, many of these never get east of Bathurst Street (their normal terminus) due to congestion over the diversion route. Parallel service through the construction zone operates eastbound via Adelaide and westbound via Wellington as shown below, and these buses terminate at River Street.
Information in vehicle tracking/prediction apps is rather scrambled because many vehicles are not where they are supposed to be on the schedule, and extra buses operating on the 504C are not tracked at all.
503 Kingston Road
The 503 Kingston Road streetcars are currently operating as buses and their normal loop downtown would be via York, Richmond and University. This has been changed to run via York, Queen and Bay.
There are no firm dates for reopening the streets and resuming normal service at either location.
Apologies for the soft images here. This is what the TTC provides on its site.
The TTC held a regular Board Meeting on January 19 with a rather light agenda.
Although there was the usual CEO’s Report, there was no discussion on the item. In past articles I have written about the shortcomings of this report, and that ties in with a major item later in the agenda.
The second report and presentation covered subway and streetcar closures for capital works in 2022 with details of the 2023 plan and a brief outlook into 2024. My article about this report has been updated with a few new maps and clarifications.
There was one deputant who spoke about facilitating subway replacement shuttles with paid duty officers and TTC staff to direct traffic, and the need for TTC to have more powers to do this so that they can supplement the available police. This evolved into a discussion of special constable powers that wandered quite substantially from the topic under discussion. It never really addressed the basic concern that subway shuttles can be mired in traffic.
One Commissioner asked about posting more information about projects, and for a moment I hoped this would turn into a discussion about the chaotic state of public information and operation of replacement services. Alas, the interest was more in the usual “good news” type of publicity saying to the public “look at the great maintenance we are doing”. Riders just want to know where to find reliable replacement service through the blizzard of outdated or inaccurate notices that appear both in hard copy and online.
At the beginning of a new Board’s term, an important briefing covers the duties and responsibilities of Board members under various law and regulations, notably the duty of care for safety of employees and passengers. The presentation was given by the TTC’s General Counsel, Michael Atlas, and the Chief Safety Officer, Betty Hasserjian.
It is not sufficient that the Board know that management is regularly monitoring and auditing the organization, but that there is a reporting mechanism to ensure the Board knows what is happening. This is supposed to occur via the CEO’s Report, but past experience shows that the Board rarely questions whether the data, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in that report tell a complete and accurate story. This shows up commonly in the wide gap between the quality of service riders complain of constantly and the much rosier view in the CEO’s Report.
In the course of her presentation, Hasserjian noted that the reporting requirements for major incidents on the system were approved by the Board in July 2021. What she did not mention was that this came after a big wake-up call to the Board when they discovered that a “near miss” between subway trains had occurred in June 2020 at Osgoode Station, but it was not reported to the Board until the story surfaced in the Toronto Star on June 4, 2021.
There was a presentation on the incident in a private session of the Board on June 16, 2021 at which they approved the following:
That the TTC Board direct the Chief Executive Officer to alert the Board when an incident meeting the identified thresholds for escalation occurs and subsequently report to the Board once a comprehensive review or investigation has been completed.
The new policy was presented at the July 2021 public meeting.
The TTC has implemented an Escalation and Notification Protocol, which requires that the Board be advised of all incidents that meet the following criteria: 1. Any Level 3 investigation. Level 3 investigations are conducted for our most serious incidents under the supervision of Senior Management and review and approval by the Executive. For occupational incidents, these investigations will address incidents where the amount and type of hazardous energy involved would most likely result in a fatality. For customer or public incidents, the consequence would be multiple fatalities. 2. Any near miss of revenue trains on the mainline. 3. Any safety investigation involving a 3rd party review. 4. Any matter at the discretion of the CEO or Chief Safety Officer.
It is truly astounding that such a policy was not already in place, and that it took a “near miss” plus a year’s delay and media reporting to trigger its inclusion. One small but key word in point four is “or” that allows the Chief Safety Officer to bypass the CEO.
Needless to say, there was nothing in the CEO’s Report presented at the July 2020 Board Meeting about the incident.
The fundamental point about “oversight” by a Board of Directors is that they have an active role. It is not to micromanage day-to-day operations, but to set policies and directions, and to ensure that there are reliable mechanisms in place for them to monitor how these are carried out.
This is summarized in Atlas’ presentation at page 5 where he lists the typical involvement of Directors of a corporation:
strategic planning
risk management
oversight/supervision of management
organization‘s values and policies
ensuring obligations to stakeholders are understood and met
major corporate decisions
Sadly the TTC Board does very little of this work preferring to rubber stamp management proposals and assume that all is well. One glaring problem, particularly concerning in today’s financial situation, is that past attempts to form a Budget Committee or to organize a meeting simply to discuss overall corporate direction have foundered for lack of interest.
There is an Audit & Risk Management Committee, and it does review management plans and performance, to the degree that these are reported. This is an exception to a generally laissez faire attitude.
The Board should not trust that all is well until the next crisis appears out of the blue on the front pages.
On a day that hinted vaguely of, dare I say it, Spring, I visited King-Queen-Queensway-Roncesvalles to see the current state of affairs.
In brief:
All track is assembled and concrete placement is underway for the north gate (Roncesvalles Avenue) entrance of the carhouse.
Eastbound road traffic on The Queensway is now using the new curb lane.
Construction of the track foundation between Glendale and Parkside is underway.
Overhead contact wire is up at Sunnyside Loop, although the work to attach it to hangers is not yet finished.
One might think it possible we will see streetcar service at least to Sunnyside on Queen and on Roncesvalles to Dundas West Station this Winter-Spring. Schedule details for the mid-February and late-March changes have not yet been announced.
At the very least, long-suffering residents of Roncesvalles should get their buses back between The Queensway and Howard Park in a few weeks unless the project is delayed in some mysterious way even longer.
The full list of closures begins on p 13 of the report. There is a variety of full weekend, early closing and late opening events (check the legend to the chart).
There are fewer Line 1 closures in 2023 due to ATC (Automatic Train Control) than in 2022 because the main work is complete. However, there is a follow-up phase that will require some weekend closures for testing and implementation. Other work affecting Line 1 includes repair of station finishes on the University subway, elevator installation at Lawrence, various track replacements, and preliminary work at Finch for the Yonge North Subway Extension.
On Line 2, there will be work at Kipling to add a new storage track, preparatory work at Kennedy for Scarborough Subway Extension, preparatory work on the east end of the line for ATC installation, and some track replacement work. As usual there will be several late openings of service on Sundays for beam replacement on the Prince Edward Viaduct.
Many closures involve only an early shutdown of subway service to give a longer overnight maintenance window than would be possible with normal hours of service.
Streetcar
There is a long list of events for the streetcar system, but many of them are short interruptions of overnight/weekend work for inspections or minor repairs.
The major trackwork planned in 2023 is listed both in the report (starting on p 19) and on the TOInview map of City construction projects. The schedule implies that a good chunk of the streetcar system will be shut down at various times during the year. The Ontario Line contributes some of this to the Queen car, but the long-suffering riders on King do not get a break either after years of work at King-Queen-Roncesvalles. Note that Adelaide from York to Victoria is a Metrolinx project and so does not appear in this list.
Some of the dates in the TTC list do not align with info on TOInview. This is very common.
Parts of the schedule simply do not make sense. Some projects have far more time reserved than they should take based on past experience. Some projects will block the routes from carhouses in the east end to the rest of the network either via Queen Street or via Coxwell and Gerrard Streets, and times for these overlap.
Update: The TTC confirms that planned work on Gerrard Street will not occur at the same time as projects on Queen will block access to Leslie Barns and Russell Carhouse. See the map at the end of this section for a graphic view of the planned work.
Details of the Broadview Station Loop expansion are not yet available, nor is it confirmed whether this will actually occur.
I hope to get clarification of what is going on from the TTC.
Feb 27-Mar 26: King Street West from Close to Strachan
Mar 10-Oct 29: Dufferin Loop
Mar 24-Nov 28: Queen Street East from Carlaw to Leslie & Leslie to Greenwood
Mar 31-Apr 7: Intersection of King & Church
May 1-Nov 29: York from Queen to Adelaide (Ontario Line diversion)
May 6-July 8: Intersection of Lower Gerrard & Coxwell
May 6-Nov 21: Russell Yard
May 14-Nov 8: Broadview from Gerrard to Broadview Station
June 18-July 29: Intersection of King & Parliament
July 30-Nov 18: Metrolinx work at Queen/Degrassi overpass
Sept 3-Oct 2: Broadview Station Loop
Sept 7-Oct 29: Queen from Parliament to River & Davies to Broadview
Oct 8-Dec 16: Oakwood Loop
Oct 16-Feb12: St. Clair West Station Loop
The report does not list specifics for 2024, but info already appears on the TOInview map. It is not clear how some of this work will interact with Metrolinx Ontario Line construction at King & Bathurst. There is a proposed track and lane realignment at Bathurst & Fleet, but it is not clear whether this will actually occur, or if the planned work is simply replacement of existing special work as is. Details of the Spadina Station streetcar loop expansion are not yet available.
St. Clair & Yonge
St. Clair & Bathurst
Queen St. W from O’Hara to Triller
King St. W from Strachan to Spadina
King & Queen (Don Bridge)
Bathurst St. from Queen to Front
Bathurst & Queen
Bathurst & Fleet
College St. from Bay to Yonge
Main & Gerrard
Russell Yard (continuing from 2023)
Expansion of the streetcar platform at Spadina Station Loop
Update: The following map was included in the staff presentation to the Board on January 19, 2023.
This map contains several geographic errors:
The project labelled Queen & Yonge points at King & Spadina.
The project for St. Clair & Bathurst is shown east of St. Clair West Station rather than west of it.
The project for St. Clair & Earlscourt is shown well west of Lansdowne rather than east of it.
Carstops on Queen East at Wineva and at Waverley are shown as west of Kingston Road rather than east of it.
The project for Queen & Jarvis is shown well west of Yonge.
The project for Fleet Loop actually points to Exhibition Loop.
There are a few more, but my point in cataloguing them is that this is sloppy work and it speaks to the quality of information presented to the Board by management.
Pantograph Conversion
Gradually, and several years behind the original target date, the TTC has converted overhead wiring designed for trolley poles first to a hybrid pole/pantograph configuration, and then to pure pantograph style. A map of the current status was included in the staff presentation.
There are some problems with this map which is based off of a track plan that is itself out of date. “Wrong way” track has been removed from the one-way streets downtown, although it still appears here. Also, some work is underway on King West even this is not shown with the orange “in progress” colour. The intersection of King & Shaw had already been converted to Hybrid format when I visited it a month ago. (There are other errors in the map, but please don’t bother commenting with fixes.)
One amusing relic is the legend “Hillsdale Ave” on Lake Shore Blvd West. This was the site of a long-removed wye, the last in the system, and the street is called “Hillside Ave”. “Hillsdale” is in North Toronto.
Again, this is an unfortunate example of how the “official” records of the system are out of sync with actual conditions in the field.
Steve Munro 