Cities are as much the result of what didn’t happen as what did. And this week, the second volume of Mark Osbaldeston’s Unbuilt Toronto (which I should mention I read through and offered suggestions on prior to publication) looks into another bunch of almost-were’s. Like Spadina Gardens, or Ataritiri. But one of the most compelling ones is the Queen subway line. It almost was a bunch of times, most notably in 1912 and in 1946. It was rejected by popular vote the first time, but even though it was approved the second time, it never happened. Would the city be a different place if we’d had the gumption to actually dig down there? Would West Queen West have been a 1920’s phenomenon instead of a 2000’s one? Osbaldeston has no idea. But he does know just about everything else about the subway that never was. It sounds like the idea of having a subway line on Queen goes way back. There was plan by the city’s commissioner of works in 1911 to have a Yonge line, a Bloor line and a Queen line. Yonge was supposed to be the first phase. The Yonge line proposal was projected to cost $5.4 million between Front and St. Clair. It went to the voters in 1912, and they rejected it. In those days, things that involved the city borrowing, the issue of debentures, required the approval of the electorate. According to one calculation, that $5.4 million would be about $92 million in today’s dollars, the Sheppard line cost $142.5 million per kilometre. Looks like our great-great-grandparents snoozed on that one. What about when it came up again? It was actually approved by voters in 1946. The idea was always that Yonge would go first. The plan would be for there to be a north-south line being Yonge, and the east-west being Queen. Starting in 1949, they built the Yonge line up to Eglinton, and when that opened in 1954, the chair of the TTC called for an immediate start to the construction of the Queen line, and the TTC staff looked into whether that still made sense. You had development and ridership shifting from the downtown north. And by 1956, Bloor was a busier street than Queen. According to James Bow, both lines at that time would have cost $42.3 million. Using that same calculator, that’s $379 million in 2010 dollars. A big number, but not the billions and billions it would cost now. So now, we’ve got official approval for Queen, but Bloor is getting to be the more likely candidate. So what happened next? By now there’s also Metro Toronto, which has taken over subway construction, and there’s bit of a fight, because the TTC staff wanted a straight Bloor-Danforth line, as did the TTC chair, Alan Lamport, who had also been a mayor of Toronto. But Metro staff and the Metro Chair, Fred Gardiner, wanted a U-shaped line that would be along the Bloor-Danforth in the far east and far west, but then would dip down in the middle along Queen. It would follow Grace-Gorevale, and then go up Pape. Finally, Gardiner changed his position, and the Ontario municipal road ruled infavour of the straight Bloor-Danforth line, which opened in 1966. So that’s when the Queen line officially died? Not at all. The Queen line at that point was still on the books. By the year the Bloor-Danforth line opens, it’s shown in the official Metro plan as a full heavy-rail line. From Greenwood in the east, it would go from the Bloor-Danforth line down to Queen, along Queen to Roncesvalles, and then up Roncesvalles to Bloor. But the problem was, again, the TTC and Metro were starting to question whether it was warranted, whether the numbers on the streetcar line justified it. In 1968, they declared Queen was their third priority of extension. The first priority was extending the Yonge line from Eglinton to Sheppard, and their second priority was to go up Spadina north from St George. Both of these happened in the 1970s. So Queen was cued up to be next in line… What happened next was, practically speaking, the last gasp. When they were building the Sheraton Centre, Toronto city council said “Hey, should we make them dig the tunnel while they’re at it?” and the TTC said they didn’t see it as a priority. So that’s when it breathed its last? These things actually die pretty slowly. In the early 1970s, there was massive transportation study that went on called the Metro Toronto Transportation Plan Review. All aspects of Metro transportation were being studied. In January, 1974, it released its transit report, and it said the case had not been made for a Queenline. One of the main reasons given for it had been as a relief line at the Bloor-Yonge interchange, something to siphon people off and allow them to avoid that subway interchange. But the plan review said that problem could be solved by other means, like a rapid transit route in the Don Valley. Something else that never happened. This is also the period of the reform council in Toronto. They were trying to reduce density in the downtown core. They didn’t want any more high-rises. They wanted office de-centralization, and they thought a Queen line would result in more pressure for office buildings downtown. But now there’s more pressure down there anyway, and no line to serve it. Ah well. At least they stopped the Spadina Expressway. So the reformers finally killed it? It was finally removed from Metro’s official plan in 1980. Is it dead-dead now? I think at one point Metrolinx mooted some plans for a downtown relief line, but not a Queen line. Because I take the super-long view, I wouldn’t say it’s never going to happen, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon. In all the current discussions about rapid transit, none of it’s happening south of Bloor. Mark Osbaldeston is giving an illustrated talk based on Unbuilt Toronto 2 at the ROM’s Signy & Clophe Eaton Theatre tomorrow at 7pm. It’s $10 for members and $12 forothers. Bert Archer is the Media Critic for the Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @BertArcher.
