King-Queen-Roncy Intersection/ROW

[turbanplanner]

The city mismanages tons of projects every year, another fun place to see where money gets drained away is the Kipling and Horner intersection. Like clockwork, there's some kind of "construction" going on there every 4-6 months (as we speak there's something going on yet again for who knows what now). Maybe that's where contractors and city crews go for practice to test and hone their mismanagement skills before they go to areas of the city like the KQQR intersection to implement what they've learned.

The repaved the whole road then cut it up less than 6 months later.

 

[Amare]

The repaved the whole road then cut it up less than 6 months later.

A City of Toronto specialty, I wasnt surprised when that happened. Which will be the exact same thing that happens somewhere along the KQQR project whenever we see the magical day that it's completed.

 

[drum118]

The repaved the whole road then cut it up less than 6 months later.

The problem with not only Toronto, but other places as well is the lack of coordination between all divisions as well utility companies.

St Clair was supposed to been the child for coordination after Toronto Hydro refused to do work on things that still had life in them set by the energy board to the point council said do it regardless of any life in it and costs.

Utility companies are mandated as to when things must be replace and most cases they do not meet the timetable when other work is to be done or a development that was not in any long range update plan to the point newly pave, built roads and sidewalks are cutup again a short time later on.

At the same time, waterlines and sewage lines that should be replaces are not done so since there is no money to do so at the time and is done later when there is money to do it or a break has taken place..

One can look at St Clair Ave W, Queens Quay W, Finch and Eglinton LRT lines to see that every things was done and the folks on them should be thankful that they will have a road and sidewalks that will not see any construction for 20-25 years hopefully until TTC has to replace their tracks. That said, with the development taking place on these roads today as well over the next 20 years, some things will have to be updated to meet the growing demand that wasn't visions when the work took place.

Mississauga Hurontario St has a mandated that the whole street cannot see any work of any type for 6 years after the completion of the LRT to the point future updates and expansion must take place now. This will cost extra cost on all parties today, but worth it in the long run.

Until Toronto and other places can get everyone on the same page and do the work in the plan timeframe, we will continue to see KQQR mess as well elsewhere today..

At some point, the Powers To Be who workers and sub trades need to be accountable for screws up and late delivery to either pay back their bonus or move on. If anyone of us did this, we would be seeing our walking papers as an employee of X.

 

[max]

Looks like Sunnyside Loop is back in service. Watching the trackers every Flexity vehicle I’ve seen on the 501 approach KQQR has proceeded along Queensway, South past the yard and into the loop.

Seems that sewer collapse on Dufferin that pushed 501 cars into the yard to turn around finally lit a fire under someone’s ass and got them to finish the wiring.

 

[drum118]

Looks like Sunnyside Loop is back in service. Watching the trackers every Flexity vehicle I’ve seen on the 501 approach KQQR has proceeded along Queensway, South past the yard and into the loop.

Seems that sewer collapse on Dufferin that pushed 501 cars into the yard to turn around finally lit a fire under someone’s ass and got them to finish the wiring.

Now to get the King Cars doing it as well, as well removing some bus service. Maybe the fire should increase to get King OS rebuilt as well. Still got the platforms to do and time to get it done, but not in today weather.

 

[crs1026]

Once again, a TTC vehicle was out today plowing snow off the Queensway streetcar tracks…. Which haven’t seen a tram since forever ….???

- Paul

 

[TRONto]

Once again, a TTC vehicle was out today plowing snow off the Queensway streetcar tracks…. Which haven’t seen a tram since forever ….???

- Paul

View attachment 453157

Saturday night I saw people walking down the ROW and another person reversing their car after getting onto this ROW. So the shoveling was for them

 

[Amare]

Now that the whole section of the ROW wont be ballasted, we're going to see some fun vehicle interactions between cars and streetcars whenever service actually resumes along this stretch.

I'm sure the TTC already has their pen and paper prepped/ready to go so they can go institute some new idiotic policies for streetcars.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Now that the whole section of the ROW wont be ballasted, we're going to see some fun vehicle interactions between cars and streetcars whenever service actually resumes along this stretch.

I'm sure the TTC already has their pen and paper prepped/ready to go so they can go institute some new idiotic policies for streetcars.

Policies that favour the single-occupant autos over the streetcars, instead of the reverse.

 

[turbanplanner]

Policies that favour the single-occupant autos over the streetcars, instead of the reverse.

How do you juggle a shared road plus the loop portion and the turn lanes at the intersection only meters away, and plowing, and entrances to carhouse etc.

I feel having the curb come and go randomly depending on the spot would be impossible to plow?

 

[W. K. Lis]

Historicist: Snowfight on the Streetcar Line​

From link.

The Fight Between the Storekeepers and the Company’s Employees by W.N. Langton in the Canadian Illustrated News of February 12, 1881.

Toronto has been considerably excited,” the Canadian Illustrated News reported on February 12, 1881, “by a battle royal between the employees of the Street Railway Company and the storekeepers on the line of the tramway.” A sudden snowstorm that month left Toronto blanketed in white and led to a spirited altercation between employees of the Toronto Street Railway Company clearing the streetcar tracks and Yonge Street shopkeepers who took exception to the zeal with which they performed their task. According to the legislation that incorporated the Toronto Street Railway Company (TSR) in 1861, “when the accumulation of snow or ice on the railway shall be such to impede traffic, every means shall be used to clear the track.” So whenever a deluge of snow disrupted transit service, streetcars were equipped with ploughs, and the company would even send out, in Adam Mayers’ words, a veritable “army of men with shovels, brooms and pickaxes to keep snow off the switches” and keep them from freezing.

On this occasion the TSR employees raised the ire of the public and storekeepers by ploughing all the excess snow onto the sidewalks along Yonge Street. Exasperated merchants took exception to having access to their shops blocked or their business disrupted because the street was all but impassable to any vehicles other than the streetcars themselves. They took shovels in hand to push the snow back onto the streetcar tracks. Insults would’ve been thrown—along with snowballs, one presumes—as one side cleared snow only to have it dumped right back where it had been. The Canadian Illustrated News report, reprinted in local historian Mike Filey’s Not A One Horse Town (1986), concluded: “A regular battle ensued in which the streetcars got the worst of it, and after defending themselves for a time, had to submit to being blocked up with the snow.” F.R. Berchem wrote in Opportunity Road: Yonge Street 1860 to 1939 (Natural Heritage/Natural History, 1996): “As a result, the cars were blockaded by the mounds of snow, about a dozen being completely put out of action. The public, generally, was delighted.”

From the day the streetcars went into operation, on September 11, 1861, Torontonians have had a love/hate relationship with privately owned public transit. At no time was it more evident than during the long, cold winter months. The battle over access to the roadways, which repeated each year, along with the other discomforts of winter travel were among the growing litany of complaints against the TSR that prompted the municipal government’s first foray into publicly owned transit.

The Blockaded Cars After the Battle Toronto. Snowing up the Toronto Street Car Company by W.N. Langton in the Canadian Illustrated News of 12 February 1881.

On July 22, 1861, Toronto’s municipal council granted Alexander Easton—an English-born street railway promoter who arrived in Toronto by way of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston—a thirty year franchise to operate the first street railway line in Canada. With a stable of seventy horses and eleven horse-drawn streetcars, the TSR travelled over six miles of track on two routes. One traced the same route across King Street from St. Lawrence Hall and up Yonge to Yorkville that Burt Williams’ omnibus had been taking since 1849, while the other ran across Queen Street.

The terms of the TSR franchise detailed many issues that would’ve seemed important in 1861. The company was to operate the system for sixteen hours per day in the summer and fourteen per day in the winter. They could charge a maximum fare of five cents per adult. Cars had to limit their speed to six miles per hour. However, according to Arthur H. Sinclair’s article in the October 1891 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the charter was silent “upon many important points regarding the relations of the company to city authorities,” particularly on issues that must’ve seemed of minor importance in 1861. One “prolific source of complaint” and serious contention between the railway operator and the municipality, Sinclair argues, was “the maintenance of the company’s part of the road-bed.” The terms of the contract required that the Toronto Street Railway, Sinclair notes, maintain “the road-bed between the rails and eighteen inches beyond on either side.” In winter, the company was to clear the tracks of snow.

But the city developed rapidly after 1870, which resulted in the corresponding growth and popularity of the streetcar system. From a ridership of two thousand per day in its first year of operation, the Toronto Street Railway was carrying fifty-five thousand per day in 1891, according to Filey. By this later date, the service—by now under different ownership but still operating as the Toronto Street Railway—had grown to include 264 horsecars, 99 buses, 100 sleighs, pulled by 1,372 horses over two dozen routes with 68 miles of track.

Sleigh from C.W. Jefferys’ The Picture Gallery of Canadian History, Volume 3 1830-1900 (Ryerson Press)

 

[W. K. Lis]

It’s romantic to imagine, as J. Edward Martin hints in On A Streak of Lightning: Electric Railways in Canada (Studio E, 1994), “horses at work, heads nodding, tails swishing, bells cheerily announcing the tram’s approach.” But in the Star, Adam Mayers disabused readers of any “Doctor Zhivago–like scene of pastoral winter tranquility.” The streetcars in winter were cramped, uncomfortable, and accompanied by a sub-zero wind chill to boot. Bundled in coats and mittens, passengers sat on frigid wooden benches. Hay or straw strewn on the floor provided some precious—though hardly satisfactory—insulation around their feet. Wood-burning stoves came later, but drivers—who had their own problems to contend with in wintry months—tended to the stoves infrequently.

Magnus Sinclair, a streetcar operator from the old days who’d help found the union, reminisced in Filey’s history of Toronto’s streetcars, painting a gloomy picture of life as a TSR driver. Through all kinds of weather—rain, sleet, snow, subzero wind, and ice—the driver stood exposed to the elements on the open platform at the front of the streetcar, directing it along its route while earning only fifteen cents an hour for a twelve- or fourteen-hour shift. The company steadfastly opposed windshields or other shelter based on the fear that they would obstruct the driver’s view with dust, grime, or ice and cause accidents. “Of course, many drivers became numb and unconscious from cold and exposure, and had to be carried into corner stores to be thawed back to life,” Magnus Sinclair recalled. “The provision of adequate shelter and warmth was one of the first major battles entered into by the Union.” Winter was not, strictly speaking, a profitable season for street railway companies in Canada either. Martin argues that in addition to the purchase and maintenance of sleighs and equipment, the company incurred costs to settle litigation over winter accidents and to replace horses injured in falls on icy roads.

Seasonal complaints against the street railway were common—although they seldom reached the comical pitch of the 1881 battle royale. “To suit its own convenience and profit,” the Globe grumbled on January 27, 1875, “that company has throughout all this season persistently kept to wheeled vehicles, and thereby made such deep ruts in the snow that there is no possibility of a sleigh or cutter crossing without a imminent danger of being overset.” The newspaper complained of a double standard in the city’s enforcement of snow clearing because, while the railway went unpunished, home owners on main thoroughfares who neglected to clear their sidewalks were frequently fined by the Police Magistrate.

The Globe also hinted that the core problem wasn’t lack of snow removal but the use of wheeled vehicles year-round. According to the terms of the 1861 agreement, when the tracks were impassable, “sufficient sleighs shall be provided [by the TSR] for the accommodation of the public.” Instead, Mayers adds, the TSR preferred to replace the regular, smooth streetcar wheels with ones with heavy-duty teeth that—with the weight of the vehicle—crushed the ice and allowed wheeled vehicles to continue to operate in inclement weather. Other cities were more successful in their dealings with streetcar companies. In London, city officials tired of fighting the London Street Railway over snow removal and putting salt on the tracks and banned snow removal of any kind to force the company to use sleighs. Montreal made no effort in the least to clear snow, so sleighs were common. The use of sleighs, however, had drawbacks. “[O]nce released from the constraints of rails,” Martin noted, “the public conveyances could be driven anywhere. Strict routing disappeared as drivers detoured around heavy drifts, dropped friends at their door and caused no end of disruption to schedules.”

 

[W. K. Lis]

The company’s conduct in snowy weather and its treatment of its drivers—which had led to disruptive strikes—were among the causes of increased friction between the TSR and the public it served by the mid-1880s. The city even took the company to court in 1886 seeking legal damages for defective paving the company had refused to fix in their portion of the street. The matter was finally settled in 1889 by the resolution that the city assume responsibility for the upkeep of the entire roadway and the company pay rent for its usage. In his 1895 account, Arthur Sinclair looked back at this period: “The citizens were goaded first into interest, then anger, and finally a determination to put an end to the franchise in 1891, when…the first opportunity of doing so presented itself.”

It was well known prior to the expiration of the TSR’s thirty-year franchise on March 26, 1891, that the city intended to take over the streetcar system. In 1889, the provincial legislature passed an act enabling the municipal government to “borrow whatever sum may be required to enable the said corporation to acquire the ownership of the railways of the Toronto Street Railway Company at the expiration of the current term of the said company’s franchise.” Once it had acquired the TSR’s property, stables, vehicles, and track, the city was authorized to operate the railway or sell or lease these assets to another private contractor

After some acrimonious negotiations over the purchase price—resolved through a six-month arbitration process that set the price at $1.4 million—the city finally took control on May 20, 1891. That the streetcar company had been so unpopular heightened the expectations Torontonians held for the public transit system. Expecting immediate improvements, such as the introduction of transfers and conductors on each train, the public was disappointed. So were employees who had hoped for better working conditions.

Almost immediately, civic officials came to understand the headaches the TSR had endured: lawsuits filed against the city for accidents; complaints from the public about the state of repair of cars and machinery; and allegations in the press about aldermanic interference and influence-peddling in the railway’s operation.

As high expectations proved impossible to meet, the public’s distrust of public ownership grew. On September 1, 1891, the city turned the streetcar system back over to a private company, railway magnate William Mackenzie’s Toronto Railway Company. The primary provision of the new contract called for the introduction of electric streetcars, the first of which went into operation on August 15, 1892, although horse-drawn streetcars remained in service until August 31, 1894. Other stipulations of the contract included the reliable heating of vehicles, a minimum wage of fifteen cents per hour for a ten-hour work day, reliable removal of snow and ice, conductors on each streetcar, and the acceptance of transfers—many of which dealt directly with the discomforts of using public transit in winter weather. These provisions ensured, as Arthur Sinclair put it, “that the painful experience of former years had borne fruit.”

 

[drum118]

Feb 12
Had a look at the area today and a real improvement with the eastbound lanes open now. A few drivers were confused as what to do at Roncesvalles intersection.

Streetcars were moving slowly for the yard switches and having a hard time trying to get to the loop as traffic was refusing to stop for them. All the streetcars where not stopping at all at the loop with squealing turning.

They are removing the rest of the existing eastbound road that still has to be built. The old road is 12" higher than the new one.

They are building a sloping highwall for the eastbound track and not sure why since there been nothing there sine the line was first built. Maybe protection for not having an speeder ending up on the ROW.

Some track place east of Parkside Stop with one section waiting for a top coat while the other section waiting to have the ties encased in concrete. Huge gap between this area and where the rails where place last year waiting to be built.

The eastbound platform is completed with no wall protection for it like St Clair. Going to be a tight fit to get the westbound platform in. The concrete ROW curb is cut at the east end to allow ambulance's gain access to the ROW to get to the hospital.

TTC has install new poles on Roncesvalles and the area is ready for the new OS to be installed. All the trackwork and road work completed. Sidewalk and platform in various stages of being removed and built.

I an posting some of today photos as I am still 3,000 behind in getting caught up to date and no idea when that will be or when the rest I shot today show up Working on Nov 15 photos now, and only added another 463 for today and a 1,000 for the week
.

 

[DSC]

Feb 12
Had a look at the area today and a real improvement with the eastbound lanes open now. A few drivers were confused as what to do at Roncesvalles intersection.

Streetcars were moving slowly for the yard switches and having a hard time trying to get to the loop as traffic was refusing to stop for them. All the streetcars where not stopping at all at the loop with squealing turning.

They are removing the rest of the existing eastbound road that still has to be built. The old road is 12" higher than the new one.

They are building a sloping highwall for the eastbound track and not sure why since there been nothing there sine the line was first built. Maybe protection for not having an speeder ending up on the ROW.

Some track place east of Parkside Stop with one section waiting for a top coat while the other section waiting to have the ties encased in concrete. Huge gap between this area and where the rails where place last year waiting to be built.

The eastbound platform is completed with no wall protection for it like St Clair. Going to be a tight fit to get the westbound platform in. The concrete ROW curb is cut at the east end to allow ambulance's gain access to the ROW to get to the hospital.

TTC has install new poles on Roncesvalles and the area is ready for the new OS to be installed. All the trackwork and road work completed. Sidewalk and platform in various stages of being removed and built.

I an posting some of today photos as I am still 3,000 behind in getting caught up to date and no idea when that will be or when the rest I shot today show up Working on Nov 15 photos now, and only added another 463 for today and a 1,000 for the week.View attachment 455889View attachment 455890View attachment 455897View attachment 455898View attachment 455908View attachment 455909View attachment 455912

I am confused. Are the photos from today or weeks ago? If from today, how much track do they still have to finish? I though all the track was finished....