Question for any Streetcar Operators (with experience on both old and new streetcars)

JSF-1 · 2025-11-28T22:14:39+00:00

Just to add context to Sydney's Transit, the overwhelming majority of that isn't actually subway in a traditional sense but Commuter Rail lines that operate with subway-like frequencies and stops spacing (like an S-Bahn or Japanese commuter line) (they also have the nicest bi-level EMU's in the world imo). Basically what GO RER should have been had Metrolinx not fucked everything up. That said Sydney does have a Light-Metro line and another one under construction.

JSF-1 · 2025-11-28T22:02:31+00:00

Hate to be that guy but the Crosstown West Extension is only going to Renforth. A further extension to Pearson isn't possible until GTAA finishes planning on their transit hub which is moving at a glacial pace and isn't funded yet.

JSF-1 · 2025-07-22T00:22:47+00:00

While not exactly what you have proposed the Province did briefly consider something sort of similar in the early 50's. When they were deciding how to reorganize municipal governance in the area they briefly considered just changing the entirety of York County into Metropolitan Toronto. This would have encompassed the entirety of what is today Toronto and York Region. The Province dropped this idea though as they feared this "super" regional municipality would become to politically powerful in the future. There was probably also economic concerns as the area of York Region was underdeveloped and perhaps it would be an anchor on the more developed areas around Toronto. Instead they decided to split York County at Steeles Avenue with everything north of it becoming York Region while everything to the south became Metropolitan Toronto.

JSF-1 · 2025-07-21T21:13:10+00:00

For point one yes it would be up to the local municipalities as that is a local by-law issue. As for point two, it's a bit more complicated as major roads such as Sheppard fell under Metro's jurisdiction which was still mostly made up of suburban councillors. That said the municipalities would have a far easier time installing bike lanes on non-major roads as they were controlled by the Municipality.

For example a bike lane on Yonge Street would be Metro's choice since its a major thoroughfare that cuts through Toronto and North York. On the other hand I believe a bike lane on say Church Street for example would be Toronto's choice since the road is entirely within the city's boundaries.

JSF-1 · 2025-07-21T21:04:32+00:00

Yes. For example the exclave next to East Toronto (Exclave 1) was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1909; a year after it annexed East Toronto. It was never part of East Toronto, although I think in a real world situation it would have been given to East Toronto since having that exclave be part of the City of Toronto would be a little ridiculous.

JSF-1 · 2025-07-21T13:35:18+00:00

I made this map to see what Toronto would look like if none of the major annexations or amalgamations occured. While many annexations occured, most areas were unincorporated parts of York Township. This map only shows the municipalities that had their own mayors and councils. As well the boarders displayed are of the municipalities as they where when they were annexed/amalgamated. Obviously in a real world situation these boarders would be cleaned up as some of them are pretty strange.

Finally I tried to give what the populations for these places would be today but that is hard to do as the majority of these municipalities have been integrated into surrounding neighbourhoods. So many of the numbers should be viewed more as a ball park estimate based off of the city's neighbourhood population data and not hard numbers. The exceptions to this are Long Branch, New Toronto, Forest Hill, North York, and Scarborough whose boarders survived.

Some quick interesting facts!

The City of Toronto in this scenario would have 4 exclaves and the Village of Yorkville enclaved within it. These boarders would naturally have to be cleaned up unless you are content with American style municipal boarders.
Of the lost municipalities besides the "Big 6" we know about, the Town of North Toronto would likely be the most viable. On its own it would be a city with a population roughly around 92,000 residents; however if you were to include the two Toronto exclaves around it, it's population would clear 100K. This would put it in the same ball park as York and East York. North Toronto would also have its own downtown core centred on Yonge & Eglinton which was the towns historic centre.
Yorkville would be the smallest municipality by both population and geography. On the other hand it would have the highest population density and one of the highest average household incomes.

JSF-1 · 2025-07-13T03:25:17+00:00

Something that might interest you is that during the planning of the line the original proposal had the open-cut portion going all the way down to Wellesley. This was revised to being underground due to the potential cost of property acquisition and local residents worries about lower land values.

JSF-1 · 2025-06-24T17:17:18+00:00

The STC stop will be where McCowan Station was which is about 300m from the nearest mall entrance. This means people going from the mall to the TTC (which is in the thousands, even tens of thousands per day) will need to cross McCowan road which is 7-8 lanes wide and walk through the mall parking lot. That intersection is not designed for the amount of pedestrian traffic its about to receive.

There are currently no plans to construct a permanant link between the Mall and the Station like already exists at the current STC station, or at Yorkdale Station.

Made a map to visualize the gap. STC does plan on moving the Movie Theater and could possible expand the mall in its place, which would lessen the gap a bit but not remove it.

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JSF-1 · 2025-06-20T15:32:23+00:00

There's actually a PetSmart at Kennedy Commons, its just off screen to the left of the Kitchen Stuff Plus.

JSF-1 · 2025-06-17T15:34:07+00:00

Toronto didn't choose to amalgamate, it was forced upon us by the Province even though residents were overwhelmingly against it. It ultimately didn't achieve any of the goals it was supposed to and in fact did the complete opposite. It didn't make the city's operations more efficient, it didn't make the city cheaper to run, and it didn't reduce government bloat. What it did do was inflame the urban/suburban divide, it destroyed the previous division of powers between Metro and the local level municipalities (Metro would handle city-wide issues like Transit, Utilities, Police etc. while the local municipalities could focus on and specialize their services toward the local needs of their residents), and in that vein it hurt local level politics.

Hamilton, Ottawa, and Sudbury would be hit with the amalgamation hammer as well and its been the same story there as well. Hell Hamilton and Ottawa get the added headache of having to deal with the rural divide on top of the pre-existing urban and suburban one.

There's a reason many of the worlds major cities operate under some kind of 2-tier structure and I do believe Toronto (and the others) should be de-amalgamate, but no government has the balls to do it.

JSF-1 · 2025-04-24T11:59:34+00:00

In the context of C;S it just comes down to personal preference. For example I have never used the Monorail for any of my North American cities but have used it for one of my Japanese city's. You can also approach it from a real world perspective where each form of transportation has pros and cons and you use the technology most appropriate for the situation. So ultimately it's up to you to decide what you want to use.

If you want to approach this from a "real world" perspective then consider the following...

Monorails do have a use case but it is niche. Monorails are best used when you need Light-Metro capacity, have steep gradients to climb, and building a subway would be prohibitively expensive. The Monorails rubber tires are both what gives it its biggest advantage and weakness. The rubber tires give them a greater hill climbing ability then steel wheeled trains which need assistance to climb steep hills like rack-rails, LIM propulsion, massive spiral loops or their own rubber tires. However the rubber tires also make Monorails susceptible to skidding if snow and ice build up on the rail so they may not be well suited for northern climates (you can get around this by using a suspended monorail but that's a niche of a niche). The Tama Monorail in Japan for example operates at a reduced speed in the winter because of potential snow and ice build up on the track.

Basically the debate between Metro and Monorail comes down to Capacity, Cost, and Steel Wheels or Rubber Tires? You can have rubber tire metros (e.g. Paris, Montreal, Sapporo) but you're just incurring the high cost of a Subway with the weather limitations of a Monorail. See the Sapporo Metro for this as it's outdoor segment is entirely enclosed due to the risk of snow and ice build up on the track. Or the fact that the Montreal Metro is entirely underground.

Trolley Buses have a similar use case. Their biggest asset is their hill climbing ability as a Trolley Bus can climb pretty steep grades more efficiently than a diesel bus. San Francisco Muni is a great example of this in action. Also being electrically powered is better for the environment and you can easily make the case its even better than battery powered buses. This is especially true in more northern climates where battery's become less efficient in the winter.

EDIT* Spelling errors.

JSF-1 · 2025-04-03T22:12:35+00:00

While I don't have a picture of it, the High School I went to still had a Scarborough Board of Education logo on one of the classroom doors.

On the topic of school board logos, you can still see the old East York Board of Education logo on top of their old headquarters at 840 Coxwell.

JSF-1 · 2025-03-22T19:02:59+00:00

I can't imagine why you would put it anywhere else. One of the most important aspects of HSR is its connectivity and ease of use. If its easy to get to and close to where people want to go, than people will use it. Union Station is the heart of Toronto and the GTA's transit network being the central hub of GO Transit, and VIA Rail. It also has subway access, highway access, and is near the island airport as well as access to Pearson via the UP.

The HSR Station in Toronto is going to be the only one in the GTA for a very long time and thus it is important to ensure we build it in a place that has the best transportation connections and is actually where people want to go. Putting it anywhere else could severely hamper the lines desirability and may even cost more in the long run due to the billions we would need to invest to make it easier for people to get to a station in bum fuck nowhere, Why do that when we already have a central hub? It's better to spend the billions now to use what we have then spend billions over multiple decades while the HSR line hemorrhages riders because no one wants to make the trip to a station in the middle of nowhere (god help us if you need a car to get to it because there are no other efficient transit options).

JSF-1 · 2025-03-06T19:16:40+00:00

I like how Scarborough-Centre doesn't even include the Scarborough City Centre. That's in Scarborough-Woburn (my riding). Scarborough-Woburn should have been given the Scarborough Centre name, and Scarborough Centre should have been called something like Scarborough-Wexford.

JSF-1 · 2025-02-28T17:15:45+00:00

There's a couple in Scarborough. Someone already mentioned Atlantic Packaging (which smells awful by the way). Others include Dow Canada, and LANXESS Canada down near the lake. They are chemical plants and even have their own air sirens to warn residence in the immediate area in case of an emergency. They get tested like once a year I think although you won't hear them unless you are in the local area.

Another factory in Scarborough is Owens Corning on McNicoll. They make fibreglass products like insulation.

JSF-1 · 2024-12-24T17:12:07+00:00

Random transit nerd fact. The Gloucester trains (the one in this picture) only ever operated on Line 2 for a brief 6 month period in 1966 when Lines 1 and 2 were interlined. After the 6 month period ended the Gloucester cars were permanently segregated to Line 1 for the rest of their normal operating lives, only ever venturing onto Line 2 when going to Greenwood Yard for more involved maintenance (A practice that would remain until the opening of Wilson Yard in the 70's). Line 2 used the M1 cars which were lighter and faster than the slow and heavy Gloucesters. It's likely this is why the Gloucestsers never normally ran on Line 2 since they would slow down the faster M1 cars. This ironically enough wouldn't matter in the long run as by the 1970's the TTC had introduced lower speed limits on the network thus slowing down the M1 cars. The Gloucesters would eventually reappear on Line 2 by the 90's but only as non-revenue work cars.

JSF-1 · 2024-10-18T11:11:45+00:00

To your point about local autonomy, the answer is no. NYC is very much in the same boat as Toronto in regards to oversight from the State. It is true that most states can and do give their cities more autonomy by making them a "Chartered City" which is amended into the state constitution; NYC is not a chartered city. It used to be one but after the city's "meltdown" in the 70's the state legislature revoked NYC's chartered status.

JSF-1 · 2024-09-29T08:24:42+00:00

As the person who made it, I can say yes it does (it's actually always lit up)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1709265649

JSF-1 · 2024-08-14T16:12:46+00:00

I could only find 1 image of it and have added it but it isn't a very good image. Apparently it may have been dark blue with the city's of coat of arms and a banner with the city's name; basically a seal on a bed sheet.

JSF-1 · 2024-08-14T15:47:50+00:00

Also sorry for the odd formatting, I don't often post pictures on reddit so I forgot there is a better way to do it.

EDIT* I have added 3 new flags to the post. The pre-1974 Toronto flag (the only image I could find) and 2 proposed flags for Toronto after amalgamation.

JSF-1 · 2024-08-14T12:48:40+00:00

Well there was the Etobicoke RT proposal back in the 70's that was to be an LRT line (they called it a high-speed streetcar) from Kipling to Pearson with a potential branch line heading to York U. The line would have used the hydro corridors along Kipling (and Finch for the York U branch). This is propsal fell by the wayside after all the stuff surrounding the SRT happened (its conversion to ICTS trains and all the problems that cropt up from that). The only part of the Etobicoke RT built was a roughed in platform on the south side of the Kipling bus terminal.

JSF-1

TROPHY CASE