I'll do my alternate transit history starting around 1900.
Background (all real history)
In 1900, of course, Toronto is a booming city of abour 400,000. It has recently completed the electrification of its street railway system, which is the second most impressive in Canada. Private interests have also built radial railways to Port Credit, Lake Simcoe, and West Hill. A second small street railway has also developed in the newly-annexed town of West Toronto, and in the midst of completing lines to Woodbridge and Guelph.
In 1907, Sir Adam Beck, the founder of the Ontario Hydro-Electric Commission decides that he wants to create a mass network of interurban railways across southern Ontario under the HEPC auspices. He starts by purchasing the Windsor electric railway system, then the Guelph street railway.
The Public Sector gets into the Traction Game
Burdened by their efforts to build a competing transcontinental railway, MacKenzie and Mann, who also control the Toronto radial railways as well as the Toronto Suburban and Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railways, sell these assets to an eager Beck and HEPC to focus on their mainline railway business. Realizing the futility of competing with the Grand Truck Pacific in trying to compete with the CPR, Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern merge in 1912.
Beck continues to develop his public railway empire, purchasing the assets of the London and Port Stanley Railway, the Thames Valley Railway between Ingersoll and Woodstock, the Grand River and Lake Erie and Northern Railway, and the assets of the Dominion Hydro interests, the last major private power producer which also happens to own the Hamilton Street Railway and its radials to Oakville, Brantford, Beamsville and Dundas.
Meanwhile, in Toronto, the city is unhappy with its decision with awarding the street railway charter to MacKenzie and Mann, who strangely kept the Toronto Railway Company despite selling all of their other traction enterprises. In 1912, a competing firm, realizing that the franchise for the street railway only provides for city streets, proposes a streetcar subway under Yonge and Bay Streets from the New Union Station to St. Clair Avenue, surfacing using the Belt Line Railway alignment to service the new Village of Forest Hill and areas annexed by Toronto since 1891 that the TRC refuses to serve.
The City, already starting work on a series of public-owned lines in areas not served by the TRC, is interested and persuaded by a Mr. R.C. Harris, allows a bond issue to guarantee the construction of the subway tunnel, with the agreement that Toronto Civic Railways are permitted to use the route. While a Queen Subway is proposed, that project is pushed back. Shovels enter the ground in late 1913.
By 1916, Canada is deeply involved in the war effort and infrastructure construction slows. However, the Prince Edward Viaduct, overseen by Harris, is constructed with a lower deck to permit future use by transit vehicles.
A Subway City
In 1918, 2 years behind schedule, Toronto's first subway opens between the vacant Union Station building and Avenue Road and St. Clair. TCR-operated streetcar trains operate via the St. Clair streetcar right of way from Caledonia Road to Avenue Road. As the TRC's franchise comes into effect on Avenue Road, a tunnel portal is built here. Under Avenue Road and following Davenport, Bay and Yonge (turning east just north of College Street) to a loop under Union Station, with stops at Yonge/King, Queen (with connections to Eaton's and Simpson's), Dundas, Gerrard, College/Yonge, Bay/Grenville, Wellesley, St. Mary, Bloor, Yorkville, Davenport, Dupont, Poplar Plains, Farnham and St. Clair. A second route, following Davenport Road from Toronto Junction enters the subway at a new portal at Bathurst Street (with a station at Spadina Road), directly competing with the TRC's western routes.
The private firm, known as the Toronto Subway Company, begins buying land north of Eglinton Avenue between Bathurst and the CN Newmarket Subdivision for land development surrounding extensions of its tracks. In the mid 1920s, a "garden suburb" opens up along the Belt Line corridor, with a mix of industry, apartments, strip retail and various housing types, with very respectable dwellings, as a larger counter to the MacKenzie and Mann's Leaside on the east side of Toronto. Other private developers begin development of the Oakwood/Rogers area.
Meanwhile, the HEPC connects and consolidates its new vast array of electric railways. It proposes a new four-track high-speed interurban to enter Toronto from the west, with interurbans entering downtown Toronto directly via the Exhibition, with a new depot on the site of the Old Union Station. Beck gets approval, and this is opened by 1924. Now, one could take high-speed interurbans from Weston/Woodbridge, Hamilton, Kitchener via Brantford, Kitchener via Guelph, Brampton (via a new spur from Churchville). Express trolleys serving Mimico, New Toronto, Long Branch, Lakeview and Port Credit use the route from the Humber River. The interurban express line becomes two tracks west of the Humber, following the "Middle Road" allingment as far as Hurontario Street, then following the Lakeshore Road on a private ROW to Oakville, Burlington and into Hamilton.
Towns around Toronto such as Islington, Cooksville, Port Credit, Woodbridge, Brampton, Streetsville (via another spur off the Guelph interurban) become somewhat attractive to long-distance commuters and grow through the 1920s. Unfortunately, Beck was unable to complete interurbans to the east, and abandons an effort to construct an interurban to Oshawa via the Taylor Creek ravine.
In 1921, the City of Toronto takes over the TRC and the Toronto Subway Company's rail asset (the TSC remains active as a real estate/development firm) and consolidates those with the TCR, creating the Toronto Transportation Commission. With all of its assets consolidated, it takes full advantage of the subway, adding a new branch tunnel from Bay and Davenport to Yonge Street, burrowing underground to Lawson, just north of St. Clair, with stops at Yonge/Belmont, MacPherson, the CP North Toronto Station, Woodlawn, and St. Clair/Yonge. North Toronto and new Mount Pleasant Streetcars use the subway, while local Yonge cars serve the surface between St. Clair and the docks. Streetcar trains of two or three cars run through the subway every 90 seconds on five distinct routes.
Also, in 1921, Canadian National Railways is formed by the Dominion Government after the joint Grand Trunk/Canadian Northern company collapses due to financial problems from rapid expansion and pressures of the Great War.
With a reliable, quick route to the downtown, suburbs such as North Toronto, Forest Hill, and Fairbank explode, attracting new industrial development, and turning into compact, yet attractive suburban satellites. Downtown, new office towers take advantage of the subway and the quick connections from outer suburbs via the fast interurbans and steam railways, who cut much of their local commuter milk runs in response to the interurbans.
Widespread ownership of automobiles begins by the 1920s. While as Toronto experiences an unprecedented boom due to inexpensive electricity from nearby Niagara Falls, an advanced transportation network, natural resources and agriculture, the population surge and traffic congestion overtaxes the transit system. The Queen Subway again becomes attractive, and work begins on the tunnel from the Don River to Strachan in 1925. It opens in 1928.
In 1928, the Toronto urban area, Long Branch to Birchmount Road up to Lawrence Avenue has a population of 1,200,000. The City has a population of about 700,000.
The largest cities in the GTA outside of the current City of Toronto are: Oshawa, 28,000; Brampton, 8500; Port Credit, 7500; Richmond Hill, 6500, Whitby, 5200; Burlington 5000; Oakville, 4800.
Map of System as of 1928.
NEXT: The Depression and Post-War Years.
