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Mayor, TTC have tunnel vision
Eglinton Avenue should see a subway, not a streetcar
MICHAEL WALKER Ward 22 Councillor
AS MANY OF you are aware, a short, noninclusive process regarding a new 31- kilometre streetcar line along Eglinton Avenue, running from Lester B. Pearson Airport in the west and Kennedy subway station in the east, is drawing to a close.
The environmental assessment process run by the city and the TTC has not included any town hall–style public meetings, but only a few sanitized open house public meetings that divide residents.
The TTC’s plan is to install a streetcar line along Eglinton Avenue, but a segment, roughly between Jane Street and Laird Drive, will run underground.
While I embrace a new transit line for Eglinton Avenue, I do not embrace a streetcar line. I believe anything less than a subway line would sell all Torontonians short.
I am convinced that a streetcar line would not accommodate all the transit riders on Eglinton Avenue. The existing 2,500 buses a day that come into Eglinton Station bring many more people than a streetcar can handle.
Also, this streetcar would stop every 850 metres instead of the existing 250 metres between TTC bus stops. We have more senior citizens than ever and a new boom of babies in North Toronto, not to mention our cold winters. Most of the existing bus routes along Eglinton Avenue would not continue under this proposal.
Also, this streetcar would travel at slower speeds than a subway. In my opinion, transit service would not be improved but reduced.
To tunnel 17 kilometres to install a streetcar begs the question, why not a subway? One of the main obstacles is that no one has created a plan for a subway. We should be engaged in the discussion about the future of transit in Toronto because streetcars alone cannot be the transit backbone of a world-class city of nearly three million people.
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