The Toronto Transit Commission looked at the dollars, thought about the donuts and ignored the people, when it reviewed its plan to build new streetcar tracks along Leslie Street during its meeting Wednesday.
The tracks connect the new streetcar storage and maintenance facility with Queen Street East. As many as 60 streetcars would pass beside homes and businesses on Leslie early every weekday morning, as the cars left the new Ashbridges yard — at the southeast corner of Leslie and Lake Shore Boulevard East — to enter service. The same 60 cars would pass the homes and businesses again to return to the carhouse throughout the day.
Leslieville residents have opposed the tracks and the resulting noise and vibration, ever since the TTC proposed the home for its new, longer cars in 2009. Although the TTC is already building the new facility, it reopened the issue of the Leslie tracks when it discovered that building the tracks also required the City of Toronto to rebuild or relocate water services under the street.
Local councillor Paula Fletcher spearheaded community efforts to encourage the TTC to move the tracks to another route. That route would see the cars cross Lake Shore east of Leslie, run along Knox Avenue beside the Canada Post facility on Eastern Avenue and then through the Russell carhouse at Queen and Connaught. For that proposal to work, the TTC would have to slightly redesign the Ashbridges site by sacrificing landscaping features it originally proposed for the north side of the new building. It also meant that the City would have to install traffic signals, where the tracks crossed Lake Shore and Eastern and where they joined Queen, impeding traffic on those three streets. But the Knox route also made sure that the tracks and early-morning cars didn’t affect local residents as much as the original proposal.
The Knox proposal increased the total cost of the Ashbridges Bay carhouse project and also would add another 12 to 15 months to the timeline.
Chris Yates, representing Canada Post, told the commission that the post office firmly opposed streetcars on Knox because the early-morning cars would block trucks dropping off and picking up mail. Yates also reminded the Commission that the Eastern Avenue facility had 1,600 employees — 800 of whom would be arriving at the facility at about the same time that most streetcars would be proceeding northward along Knox. He also said that anything that impeded trucks from moving at the plant would have major impact on mail delivery throughout Canada. Yates said the Eastern Avenue plant handled about 40 percent of the mail in Canada.
On the other side of the issue, the owner of the Tim Horton’s franchise at Leslie and Lake Shore, Timothy Webster, pleaded with the commission not to support the Leslie route, arguing that the extensive construction resulting from building the tracks and relocating the underground pipelines would discourage customers from reaching his shop (most of whom are car drivers). He suggested that Canada Post was exaggerating the effect of the tracks on its business and urged the commissioners to support the Knox route. If the TTC continued to propose tracks on Leslie, he asked that it consider financially compensating him for any business he lost because of the construction.
In the end, the commission chair, councillor Karen Stintz, thanked the community and councillor Fletcher for their input, but moved that the commission go ahead with its original plans for tracks on Leslie. She also proposed that the TTC continue to work with the community, include more streetscaping elements along Leslie Street to help mitigate residents’ concerns and… oh, yeah, make sure that the construction schedule did not impede anyone heading into Tim’s drive-thru for a double-double and a dutchie.
The commissioners approved the chair’s motion.
