What if Toronto had a Queen Street subway route

Memory of the Queen Street subway #toronto #westqueenwest #queenstreetwest #queenstreet #subway #alternatehistory by Randy McDonald, on Flickr

The commemorative monument at the centre of the photo, erected on Queen just east of Dufferin dedicated to the "Queen Street Subway" with a date of 1897, is, as Derek Flack noted in 2010 at blogTO misleading: "Subway" was the word that the late 19th century used where we would use "underpass". People who are informed about the history of mass transit in Toronto could be easily confused, since discussion of a Queen Street subway line goes as far back as 1911, with one proposed route extended from Trinity-Bellwoods Park in the west to Logan Avenue in the east.

Flack's blogTO essay goes into the history of this proposed route at some length, while James Bow at Transit Toronto describes how Queen Street contended with Bloor-Danforth throughout the mid-20th century to be the location of the main west-to-east subway route in Toronto. Get Toronto Moving also has an extended overview of proposals to build the Queen line, noting how this has morphed over time into the Downtown Relief Line. The only physical vestige of this line is the Lower Queen station at Yonge, described by Bow at Transit Toronto here and by Tess Kalinowski at the Toronto Star in 2007 here.

James Bow's Transit Toronto essay "What if the Queen Subway was built instead of the Bloor-Danforth?" is a fascinating exercise in alternate history, considering how Toronto's transit system would have evolved in this case. The effect on Toronto's urban geography would have been equally noteworthy. Perhaps the waterfront would have been developed earlier, with Queen Street being the main street of the city, with streets to the north like Bloor--never mind St. Clair, or Dupont--lagging?
 
For one thing, the prescient actions of Edmund Burke and Thomas Taylor, in the construction of the Prince Edward Viaduct across the Don Valley would have gone unrewarded and unfulfilled. This was done because Bloor St. was foreseen as the main east-west artery long before the Queen St. subway was suggested, none of which ever reached Dufferin St. anyway. The Queen St lines were always a short line for a small city, and time and 9,000 riders per hour on Bloor St passed them by. Personally, I really miss the Bloor streetcar.
 
Bloor Street was by WWII the primary east-west route through the city, and as a result even if one had built the Queen Subway the Bloor Subway would have eventually ended up being a necessity in any case. The route Get Toronto Moving has (and what I've studied in my TLs) is a good one for relieving pressure on the line, but it runs into one major problem in that is has to cross the Don River, and at Queen Street that's more difficult than it is at Bloor because of the presence of the Viaduct. Just Leo is correct in his statements, but the Queen line today would today settle the debate over the Downtown Relief line.

If it had been built with the existing transit infrastructure, you'd probably have more of the condo boom that started in the 1970s move east into East York, owing to the presence of the Queen and Bloor subways after the Queen Subway's initial section (Keele-Woodbine) opens in 1966. One other result is that the parks in Scarborough would probably be bigger and more heavily used, because the subway from downtown would go directly to them before turning north. It would probably shift Toronto's residential development further to the East, which would probably accelerate the redevelopment of the Lower Don River and the Port Lands. It would also possibly toss the Scarborough Expressway.
 
Bloor Street was by WWII the primary east-west route through the city, and as a result even if one had built the Queen Subway the Bloor Subway would have eventually ended up being a necessity in any case. The route Get Toronto Moving has (and what I've studied in my TLs) is a good one for relieving pressure on the line, but it runs into one major problem in that is has to cross the Don River, and at Queen Street that's more difficult than it is at Bloor because of the presence of the Viaduct. Just Leo is correct in his statements, but the Queen line today would today settle the debate over the Downtown Relief line.

Bow's assumption that there would not be additional construction, especially if there will plausibly be a lot of need on the Bloor-Danforth route, is perhaps questionable. Extra subway building could have interesting consequences on public finance. Might we perhaps get into the habit of adequately funding transit?

If it had been built with the existing transit infrastructure, you'd probably have more of the condo boom that started in the 1970s move east into East York, owing to the presence of the Queen and Bloor subways after the Queen Subway's initial section (Keele-Woodbine) opens in 1966. One other result is that the parks in Scarborough would probably be bigger and more heavily used, because the subway from downtown would go directly to them before turning north. It would probably shift Toronto's residential development further to the East, which would probably accelerate the redevelopment of the Lower Don River and the Port Lands. It would also possibly toss the Scarborough Expressway.

And encourage talk of redoing the Gardiner?
 
Top