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History of the Toronto Street Cars

By: Rob Parker

One sure-fire sign of a long established city in North America is the presence of a public transit system that has evolved through the ages in terms of vehicles, but has always followed the same routes and rules. While the scenery around the routes may change, as well as the design and power supply structure of the vehicles themselves, the routes tend to be the same in all major cities from Mexico City to Chicago, Vancouver to Montreal.

More often than not, the symbol of the streetcar is one that many cities prefer to retain in order to demonstrate their place within history. In this context, Toronto is no exception; the visual history of the streetcars that have served the city is well established, with many old cars preserved and sold to high bidders or granted to museums. In this article, we would like to contribute a little bit to the written history of Toronto’s Street Cars by tracing their evolution to the present day.

The Forerunner: Horse drawn cars

The public transport system had been established in Toronto well before the invention of the internal combustion engine; in fact, the city was the first in Canada to endorse and implement any kind of public transport system. The cars themselves were perhaps more truly carriages, built by the most prominent designers of the day. The city itself granted the operating privileges of the line to the Toronto Street Railways on a thirty-year lease in 1861.

End of the horse drawn era

The Toronto Street Railways Company went through extensive changes in the 1870s, and when their 30-year franchise was up the city chose not to renew the contract. Instead, a new franchise was awarded (after the city had operated the system for a few months) to the Toronto Railway Company. Part of the directive in the lease included an agreement that the company would modernize the transport system. The TSR moved quickly on this part of the arrangement; they brought in the first electric streetcars almost immediately, in 1891. By 1895, horse drawn streetcars were history.

Battles and Endings

When Toronto expanded, the city expected the TRC to expand as well, but the company refused. Although eventually they were forced by the courts to include services to the other areas, they were typically run by streetcar models that were past their prime. In the meantime the city developed their own companies to run the lines to the outlying areas. When the shortsighted TRC had their lease run out in 1921, the city combined the Toronto Civic Railways with the newly created Toronto Transportation Commission, run by the city.

The TTC created 35 new routes between 1921 and 1954, and also managed to upgrade the models of streetcar to the PPC car despite the World War and the Great Depression that preceded it. Today the TTC still operates Toronto’s public transit system, though it is now known as the Toronto Transit Commission.

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