Tabula Rasa Toronto

[Second_in_pie]

I don't see why I shouldn't do my own...


1900-1925: The Turn of the Century

As soon as the 1900s had begun, the City of Toronto started thinking big. The Toronto Railway Company had recently electrified the city's many streetcar routes, but other cities in North America were already decades ahead of Toronto in terms of Transit. Even though the odds were against them, the city was determined to catch up. A plan, along with government funding and some private investments, was made to tunnel under Queen Street, and build Toronto's first subway.
The subway was very modest, stretching from Dufferin to Don Valley, and was completed in 1912. Plans were started just before the completion of the Queen subway for a North-South Subway, which would be constructed on Yonge St. However, the war cut these plans short, but funding was promised once the war ended, and was awarded in December of 1918, called "Toronto's Christmas Present." This subway stretched from Union Station to St. Clair, and was finished in 1925.

1926-1950: The Great Depression and The War Years

After an extension of the Yonge Subway to Eglinton, and the extension of the Queen Subway west to High Park and east to Coxwell, the city began making plans for a third subway on Bloor St. As space on Queen St. was running out to build, developers were turning to Bloor, and the Bloor Streetcar was becoming increasingly crowded. However, the Great Depression hit and transit development in Toronto could not continue.
The Depression took a hit on Toronto's Transit, but the Toronto City Transit Company wanted to continue to expand their service, adding several streetcar lines east of the Don River. However, to fund these expansions, the prices of Transit Fares rose. Many could not afford to get to work, and the government was forced to intervene. Thus the Toronto Transit Commission was created.
The end of the Depression did not signal the green light for more transit expansion, however. The city was focused on having developers fill the Downtown Core with large skyscrapers, and not much funding could be found for the TTC to use. However, shortly after war was declared, the government of Canada gave the TTC funding to provide heavy rail service to Malton Airport from Union Station.
Late into the war, Toronto took a hit when a bomb exploded at Union station, killing dozens of people and destroying the main portion of the station. The station was temporarily rebuilt, and life continued as usual in the City. Two days after, the government began putting up recruitment posters that read "As long as we win the war, Toronto will get a new Station. Fight the Germans, and do your city proud."
Two years later, Germany surrendered and a new modern age emerged from the smoke and ashes of the last great war. The rebuilding of Union station began immediately, designed by world-renowned architects and made to reflect the City's bright, prosperous future.

However, that landmark would go underused for many years to come, as transit planning in Toronto was going to take a different turn. Whether it was for better or worse is still disputed today.
(This means I'll continue it later, like everyone else seems to be)

 

[wyliepoon]

Suggestions to alternative history writers... maybe you can spoof (or photoshop) some web-found graphics to show what Toronto's transit system might have looked like.

Anybody know that Desjardins Insurance ad showing people today still flying in zeppelins? That's the idea.

*****

I'd like to see if you guys can write alternative transit histories of Toronto based on these scenarios...

- Toronto as a canal boom town. What if a project like the Newmarket Canal (see Unbuilt Toronto), connecting Lake Ontario at Toronto with Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron/Georgian Bay was built in the first half of the 19th century, turning Toronto into Canada's Gateway to the West, and a boom town like Buffalo as a result of the Erie Canal. Not only would Toronto's development pattern have been dramatically different (more emphasis on north-south development following the course of the canal), but Toronto might have gotten a subway much earlier and for less money (by converting an abandoned canal bed into a subway, like the old Rochester Subway or Cincinnati's failed subway-building attempt).

- Toronto the massive railway hub. Instead of being like Buffalo, Toronto becomes something like Chicago, the undisupted main hub of railways and industry in Canada. Would a legacy of a massive industrial railway network result in a much enlarged version of GO Transit?

- Toronto with an elevated railway system, like Chicago and New York. What if Toronto built a 'L' system in the late 19th century, centred on a 'Loop'. Would Toronto have kept such a system like Chicago did, or would we have demolished the Els like Manhattan?

- What if Toronto follows the trend of most North American cities in the post-WWII era? Metro manages to build all of its planned urban expressways. TTC dismantles the streetcar system and builds only the original Yonge Subway, or no subway at all. Toronto still manages to become a vibrant city, but desperately needs a modern rapid transit system (similar to Houston, Phoenix or LA).

- Toronto the City Beautiful. What if Toronto built Cambrai Avenue, Vimy Circle and got it lined with Art Deco/Beaux Art skyscrapers? Would Toronto's downtown subway system have been built under Cambrai Avenue, or radiated out of a massive station under Vimy? How would that affect subway planning in the suburbs?

- Finally, how would Toronto have turned out in terms of transportation if Southern Ontario was colonized by a transit-building nation other than the British? (French, German, Russian, Japanese, etc.)

 

[Second_in_pie]

Toronto as a canal boom town. What if a project like the Newmarket Canal (see Unbuilt Toronto), connecting Lake Ontario at Toronto with Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron/Georgian Bay was built in the first half of the 19th century, turning Toronto into Canada's Gateway to the West, and a boom town like Buffalo as a result of the Erie Canal. Not only would Toronto's development pattern have been dramatically different (more emphasis on north-south development following the course of the canal), but Toronto might have gotten a subway much earlier and for less money (by converting an abandoned canal bed into a subway, like the old Rochester Subway or Cincinnati's failed subway-building attempt).

That'd definitely be a cool one to take a shot at. If nobody else does that, I think I might try to take that on

- What if Toronto follows the trend of most North American cities in the post-WWII era? Metro manages to build all of its planned urban expressways. TTC dismantles the streetcar system and builds only the original Yonge Subway, or no subway at all. Toronto still manages to become a vibrant city, but desperately needs a modern rapid transit system (similar to Houston, Phoenix or LA).

Waaay ahead of you

- Toronto the City Beautiful. What if Toronto built Cambrai Avenue, Vimy Circle and got it lined with Art Deco/Beaux Art skyscrapers? Would Toronto's downtown subway system have been built under Cambrai Avenue, or radiated out of a massive station under Vimy? How would that affect subway planning in the suburbs?

Ah, if only that were the case.

- Finally, how would Toronto have turned out in terms of transportation if Southern Ontario was colonized by a transit-building nation other than the British? (French, German, Russian, Japanese, etc.)

A Japanese-colonized Toronto would appeal to me, but I'm not sure how much of an effect it would have on Transit. Maybe with the French, we'd be getting a really good metro system, and the Germans would have Toronto be more focused on regional express rail, you mean?

 

[Whoaccio]

- Finally, how would Toronto have turned out in terms of transportation if Southern Ontario was colonized by a transit-building nation other than the British? (French, German, Russian, Japanese, etc.)

In short, awful. The British have their flaws, but history has show them to be pretty good colonizers. Ask an Indian what they think of England, then ask a Korean what they think of the Japanese, or what the Algerians thought of the French (never mind their screwed up colonies in Central Africa). The German genocide in Namibia of native tribes should have been a warning sign to other Europeans that something bad might be coming. Colonialism was very rarely a good thing for locals, but very rarely did colonizers send generals with orders to poison wells and induce mass dehydration.

 

[Hipster Duck]

As promised, here is Part II

A City Beautiful 1900-1914

Despite its growth, civic leaders in Toronto became increasingly frustrated with the crowded, dirty conditions of the great mercantile metropolis. Daniel Burnham's White City at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 coincided with the centennial of Toronto's founding and Craig's urban plan. In an editorial in the Toronto Daily Mail, architecture critic Christopher Humewood lamented on the deplorable aesthetic state of Toronto, and how Craig's plan had been compromised by late 19th century conveyances, among them the "forests of electric wires that mar our cityscape" and the "monstrous sky-scraper - latter day monuments to Babel". Fearing that private railway operators would obscure the city centre with elevated railway lines, city council passed an ordinance in 1904 forbidding the construction of elevateds within the central city. A subway building boom ensued, with competing companies building parallel lines along well-traveled corridors to link up with their elevateds and suburban electric railways.

In 1910, Daniel Burnham was commissioned to draft a plan to redesign Toronto and to bring it back to its Georgian roots. Conceding that following in Craig's footsteps was to "stand on the shoulder of giants", Burnham largely deferred improvements to the downtown core and focused on clearing some of the slums that had been constructed near the harbourfront, as well as extending Craig's avenues into handsome parkways in the suburbs. Like Craig a century before him, Burnham's plans were cut short by his death in 1912 as well as Canada's entry into another war: the First World War.

The Interwar Years - Toronto becomes a province.

Private railway operators had always used their political influence to force the annexation of suburban townships and villages to the city of Toronto. By the 1920s, Toronto had grown to encompass an area of over 350 square miles stretching all the way north to engulf the village of Thornhill, west to Port Credit and east as far as Highland Creek. While many of these quickly became commuter suburbs, there was still considerable backlash from former village residents that their needs were being completely subsumed by the great metropolis. In 1928, council voted narrowly to confer borough status on the former townhips and communities now known as Scarborough, Etobicoke, North York, East York, York and Mississauga. With significant power in Ottawa, Toronto was granted provincial status along with the revisions to the Statute of Westminster in 1931.

The creation of the Province of Toronto, and the Great Depression allowed the city to consolidate the operation of failing private rail operators into the Toronto Transit Commission in 1933. At the same time, demands for new road projects were growing, and it was felt that a single agency - a Department of Transportation - was needed to coordinate road, rail and other transportation projects. Thus, in 1935, the Toronto Transportation Authority was created.

Cars were popular and were beginning to create traffic havoc on city streets. Daniel Burnham's parkway model was expanded into the boroughs and some of the first automobile suburbs, such as Don Mills and Rexdale were built in the late 1920s and into the 1930s. At the same time, handsome art deco apartment blocks were built along the parkways, themselves, following the example of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, taking advantage of both easy rail access into the core and the wide automobile parkways.

The TTA felt that excessive car use might undermine the viability of its transit lines, but since it controlled road planning in the city, it had the option to put in place tolls on controlled access roadways. Thus, in 1939, the Queen Elizabeth Turnpike was constructed as a joint project between the provinces of Toronto and Ontario.

Also in 1939, the Grand Trunk RR completed a major public works project, adding a third track and electrifying its corridor between Montreal and Windsor. Pulled by GG1 locomotives at up to 100 miles per hour, the line cut travel between Montreal and Toronto down to just 4.5 hours and a trip to Ottawa (which the line traveled through) in just over 3 hours. Rail historians believe that it helped establish passenger rail as one of the dominant modes of transport along the corridor, even after its popularity began to decline across the rest of the continent in the 1950s and 1960s, and helped secure the construction of a dedicated high speed rail line between the cities in the
late 1990s.

---

Cot'd in Part III

 

[allabootmatt]

In short, awful. The British have their flaws, but history has show them to be pretty good colonizers. Ask an Indian what they think of England, then ask a Korean what they think of the Japanese, or what the Algerians thought of the French (never mind their screwed up colonies in Central Africa). The German genocide in Namibia of native tribes should have been a warning sign to other Europeans that something bad might be coming. Colonialism was very rarely a good thing for locals, but very rarely did colonizers send generals with orders to poison wells and induce mass dehydration.

Indeed. British has, historically, been a good thing to be. There's even some interesting statistical work in political science that suggests British colonization is one of the best predictors of future uninterrupted democracy.

Empirically, the reason *seems* to be that British colonies were either a) dominated by settlers who actually stayed, retaining durable democratic institutions in the process or b) were encouraged to take on some kind of self-rule at an early stage. The obvious contrast is to French colonies, which as I understand were pretty much run directly from Paris--thus preventing the growth of local democratic institutions, etc.

But that's off-topic. I am loving these alternative histories!

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Wow wow wow wow. Like a mini sim city thought experiment. I'm not as good a story teller as other members here, but I'll take a shot at it. But, again, wow where to start? There were so many events and decisions made that were key turning points in the city's history.

I'll be approaching this a little differently.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Continued from my Part I above.

1951-1975: Automobile City

The end of the war signaled a change in the world. Technology was expanding at a faster pace than ever before, and society was once again becoming more modern. One trend that was quickly picking up wind in North America was the automobile, and suburbia.

However, at the beginning of the 1950s, the wind had not yet blown the American dream in the direction of Toronto, and the downtown core continued to expand, with many large skyscrapers dominating the waterfront. Union Station was officially re-opened in 1951, accompanied by an express service to the growing neighbor city of Mississauga. The station was a symbol of the modern age, with underground train platforms and a seamless connection to the Yonge Subway.

In 1949, the Bloor-Danforth Subway was started, assisted by the Prince Edward Viaduct which was built based on plans for a Subway along Bloor St. and Danforth Avenue. Completed in 1956, the subway stretched from Woodbine Avenue to Jane St. in the West. Along with a Queen St. Subway extension to Victoria Park, this was going to be the last step forward in Toronto's public transit system for many a year to come.

Unfortunately, Toronto could not hide from the Automobile forever. Satellite cities were springing up faster and faster. The sea of suburbia was swallowing up what was just years ago empty farmland, and more and more suburban dwellers were turning to cars to get downtown to work. In response, the city began planning an extensive freeway and expressway network to get the people, and their cars, around. In 1957, work began on the Lakeshore Expressway, a continuation of the QEW into the Downtown Core. A year later, work began on the Don Valley Expressway to connect the end of the Lakeshore to Highway 401. Both these projects were finished in 1962, and so the Expressway Network had begun.

City councilors were pushing for Expressway through every part of Toronto, and even the outlying regions were asking for government money to expand their highway network. The backbone of the new project was the Spadina Expressway, which ran down from Highway 401 down through the Downtown Core to the Gardiner. The Toronto Transit Commission pleaded with the City for an expanded subway system, and so the Spadina expressway was built with an empty corridor in the median for rail expansion. The city asked the TTC whether they wanted to expand their service along the expressway, and limited government funding was offered to build stations and rail, but the TTC declined the offer, knowing that the over 10-kilometer line would only be a black hole to suck up the limited funds the TTC had to operate it's citywide bus routes, even after the initial investment.

While public transit was at a loss, the city wasn't. The expressway system had created an unprecedented amount of growth in the downtown cores of Toronto and Mississauga, which were both filled with office towers. The massive expressway system had done it's job. Toronto's population was just over 3 million people, and Mississauga had a population of around one and a half million. The GTA as a whole contained just less than 10 million souls, with the population growing higher each year. Considering the population of the area, congestion was minimal. Ontario decided to create a Toronto Area government, which oversaw everything throughout the growing area around Toronto, and had it's own regionwide taxes to support the region as a whole, with less support needed from the Province.

1976-1985: A light in the darkness

Unfortunately, though business was going well in Toronto, congestion was beginning to come out of hiding. By the end of the 1970s, getting to work from Pickering to Toronto commonly took over 2 hours. The region was still prospering, but congestion was slowly beginning to strangle the economy.

In 1978, a young UofT business graduate teamed up with his buddy who was studying Transportation Management in Montreal. Sensing a business opportunity, the two of them found funds from the Greater Toronto Metropolitan Area government to start a rail line along the east coast of Lake Ontario. In the first 2 years, the company, called Go Rail (Get on the Go, not the Slow,) provided a commuter service from Downtown Pickering to the relatively unused Union Station. By 1979, Pickering Go Terminal had a Parking Garage with over 3000 parking spots, and was providing over 5000 commuters a day a quick bypass to the Gardiner and Don Valley Expressways, reducing commuting times by often an hour and a half. Service was extended to Oshawa, one of the two main industrial areas in the Region, and the Humber River, the boundary of Metro Toronto, and due to different taxes, the end of the Downtown Core. A new commuter line was also started to the City of Richmond Hill, where Richmond Hill and Markham were at the receiving end of heavy 401 traffic and congestion before the Spadina Expressway extension to the Highway 7 Expressway.

With the revenue Go Rail was taking in, they bought a large parking lot in Mississauga from the city, and teamed up with developers to build a new station. Go Rail had managed a deal with CN and CP to use their Toronto Mainline to provide service from Mississauga to Union station, and the upper reaches of the Metro Toronto Downtown Core. While service was a hit for both Cities, it was hard to expand due to the relatively limited funds Go Rail had compared to the cost of the line.

Though the two City Centre lines were limited to expansion, the rest of the system was not. Go had expanded service to Brampton and Markham in 1981, and Lakeshore service was extended all the way to Hamilton, connecting two massive industrial centres. Seeing an opportunity, Go expanded their service to two-way commuter service, to pick up people both going to businesses downtown and to factories in Hamilton and Oshawa.

In 1983, the Greater Toronto Metropolitan Area Government recognized the need for Go Rail. After very little deliberation, Go was given the funds necessary to fully buy the Lakeshore and City Centre Lines, and by the end of the year, trains were running once every 20 minutes each way.

Due to the increase in transit passengers around the downtown core, the TTC started a project to open the bottom half of the preplanned Spadina Line. The Spadina Line originally ran from Go's Upper City Centre line down to the CN Tower and Skydome, heart of the CityPlace condo center, a concentration of massive high rises built in the 1970s. Rail was laid and stations built within a year and a half, later being extended two stops to Union Station, the first tunneling of Mass Transit to take place in over 20 years.

In 1984, Go Rail took over VIA Rail's Airport line, which was hailed as the only useful Mass Transit line during the 1960s and 1970s. This express train, which ran every 15 minutes to Pearson International Airport, was Go's first electric line, having been converted in the late 50s. With congestion still at an all time high and Go being in control of 4 express rail lines and 3 commuter lines, expansion was only expected, and the GTA was going to change once again.

Continued in Part III...

 

[ShonTron]

I have kept my alternate universe firmly rooted in historical plausability. Beck's traction dreams, the 1912 subway proposal are both historical facts, but never went that far unfortunately. I imagine my system as if people like Beck, Harris, and others had their way.

PART II

In 1928 (see map) the Queen Streetcar Subway opens, with several subway-surface routes: Queen West-Keele, Dundas West-Lansdowne, Swansea; Broadview, Beach, and Gerrard.

The first electric railway abandonment was by the HEPC, abandoning the little-used Schaumberg and Aurora Railway in 1927, acquired as part of its acquisition of the MacKenzie and Mann interests a decade earlier. But the HEPC also expanded - it built a new direct link from the Scarboro Radial to downtown via Eastern Avenue, allowing the standard gauge interurbans to operate independent from TTC streetcars.

But with the expansion of the surface-subway network, the time was drawing to a near for some other car routes - the depression would finally kill some of them off.

The Depression Years

With a diversified economy, Toronto was relatively protected from the worst of the Depression. Still, the Dominion Government turned off the tap of new immigrants and some industries, such as the large farm implement plants began cutting workers, as did the two national steam railways. As consumer spending dropped, so did the demand for many goods.

However, some projects did see completion. Expecting downtown to creep north, the T. Eaton Company confidently completed its College Street Store, along with an art deco skyscraper, moving all its offices out of the rabbit warren of stores and factories at Albert and James. The Canadian Bank of Commerce completed a new skyscraper on King Street, near the King Station entrance, as did the Bank of Nova Scotia across the street. Toronto was becoming a serious competitor to Montreal as the financial hub of Canada.

The first casualty was the HEPC's Guelph Suburban Railway. Northwest of Churchville Junction, traffic loads were very light, and Eldorado Park closed for good. On October 1, 1931, the Guelph Line was closed between Guelph and Churchville Junction, with interurbans continuing to operate between Kitchener and Guelph and Brampton/Streetsville and Toronto. The Brampton and Streetsville lines were diverted to the Lakeshore High Speed Line near Dixie, and rails abandoned from Dixie to the Town of Islington.

Another effect of the Depression was the relief of overcrowding of the original Avenue-Bay-Yonge subway. As Forest Hill, Fairbank and North Toronto grew through the 1920s, the crowding of streetcar trains, particularly through the central tunnel became dangerous. By 1929, plans for a heavy rail subway were in the preliminary stages, but were dropped by 1931.

Make-work projects did see some earlier plans revived. While the Federal Avenue plan was not revived, some "city beautiful" elements were incorporated. University Avenue was extended to Union Station, and Vimy Circle was built at its intersection with Richmond Street. Utilities were built as to easily accommodate a planned University Avenue Subway.

In 1933, the first streetcar line was abandoned, the Dupont line, and replaced by motor buses. Extensions of the street railway to Armour Heights and up Dawes Road were also postponed, and buses remained on those routes. That year, the Lake Simcoe Line was cut back to Newmarket, with Grey Coach buses providing service north of there. However, reconstruction of the renamed Yonge North Line in a centre ROW north of Glen Echo Loop replaced HEPC standard gauge with TTC gauge, and selected trains ran through the Yonge portal downtown.

A Slow Recovery

In 1935, both the Provincial and Federal Governments were replaced. Adam Beck, now an old man, and weakened by anemia, found himself as premier of Ontario in 1934 leading a CCF-Conservative coalition government, beating the Liberals under the young and charismatic Mitchell Hepburn of the Liberals, who was favoured to win.

Beck was considered a populist from his efforts to create a unified, public power company and a public electric railway empire, was emboldened. However, he did see highways as an important piece of Ontario's future.

By 1937, Ontario, and particularly Toronto, began to see some prosperity. Beck had died soon after taking office (surviving his wife by 12 years), but his legacy was apparent: a new University of Ontario system of public colleges was established, with a central campus formed out of the Ontario Normal School in Toronto, and other campuses in Guelph (out with the Ontario Agricultural College and School of Veterinary Medicine), St. Catharines, North Bay, Peterborough, Cornwall, and in Waterloo, near Beck's hometown of Baden. Technical colleges were established in selected other county seats, including Brampton and Whitby.

The Weston-Woodbridge OEPC electric railway was removed from Weston Road between the Junction and Oak Street in Weston, and moved to the CN/CP corridor in 1937, providing a fully grade-separated railway as far as Weston, where commuters enjoyed two-car trains arriving as often as every 10 minutes. However, radial service was cut between Newmarket and Richmond Hill as ridership declined and a highway widening project required the side-of-road tracks that still existed north of Richmond Hill, which was by-passed with a new Highway 11 alignment.

Also in 1937, the first phase of the Niagara Highway was opened from the Humber River to Freeman in what is now Burlington, following the Lakeshore Hydro Railway as far as Port Credit, and continuing on the Middle Road alignment west of there. The Toronto-Oshawa Expressway was also completed between West Hill and the industrial centre, where a strike by GM workers ended quickly and amicably under the Conservative-CCF coalition as opposed to fights pitting the UAW against police and company aggression in Dearborn and Flint, Michigan.

By 1937, the original Streetcar Subway was again becoming very crowded, as Forest Hill (now a compact city of 50,000), Fairbank (which resembled Montreal's Mount Royal, centred around the Belt Line, incorporated as a town of 30,000) and North Toronto started to grow again. Also, the Bloor-Danforth streetcar line was becoming crowded. An upside-down "T" based system was proposed, with a trunk line passing under University Avenue to Bloor Street, with branches on either side to Woodbine and Jane Streets, diverting some of the subway-surface line traffic and reflecting downtown's drift westward. A new bond issue was raised, and construction started under University Avenue in 1939.

In 1939, the Toronto metropolitan area's population was heavily skewed to the west, and Toronto's urban area was roughly bounded by Wilson to the north, then diagonally down Lawence/Bayview, Leaside and Birchmount on the east, with a suburban strip along Kingston Road, but on the west, urban development was continuous along Lake Ontario from Port Credit, then diagonally through the towns of Islington and Weston, with an urban population of 1,700,000.

Brampton had a respectable population of 12,000, Streetsville and Cooksville each with 5,000; Woodbridge with 3500, the now-incorporated towns of Willowdale with 6,500, Thornhill with 5,000, Scarborough Village with 4,000.

During the Second World War, construction stalled on the University Subway, as well as the Scarborough High-Speed electric railway, the Belt Line subway-surface route extension to Downsview, and a resurrection of the East Toronto electric railway to Scarborough Township, though existing transit routes were strained by record ridership, some wooden streetcars that were to be torched were brought back into surface, Subway-Surface trains were diverted onto Yonge Street, and maintenance of the extensive, but unreliable subway system was making matters even worse.

NEXT: The post-war years and the ascent of the townships.

 

[kEiThZ]

No subways. Electrified regional rail, some LRT, some BRT, lots of local bus service focused on those regional rail stations.

A good example of this strategy: Malvern.

It's ridiculous that all those buses run to STC. Instead, what has always been needed was a GO station at Malvern and buses that centre on Malvern Town Centre with maybe some BRT to Scarborough Town Centre.

If we had a decent regional rail system and one that people were accustomed to using frequently, it could have easily displaced the subway as the backbone of transport within the 416. Indeed, the rail corridors are far better distributed throughout the city than the subway system ever will be.

 

[Whoaccio]

I sort of tried to copy Hipster, ShonTron & Second_in_Pie by creating an alternative history. It was to be centered around William Mackenzie defeating the British garrison in 1837 and creating establishing Toronto as the capital of a more republican oriented Canada. I got sort of far, but I noticed my alternate history was slowly becoming a discussion on British Parliamentary tradition and Toryism as opposed to anything to do with transportation. Anyways, I reverted to what I am most comfortable with: Mole People.

Part 1.) Prologue.

2010 - Global Warming in conjunction with minor variations in Earth's orbit change conditions in the upper levels of the Earth's crust. Like the Goths thousands of years earlier, the Mole People, spurred by changing climate, begin their migration towards the surface of earth. After reaching the surface, they are immediately repulsed by the light of Yonge/Dundas burning their undeveloped retinas. Unable to survive on the surface, the Mole People retreat to the subways of Toronto.

2011 - Within short order, the Mole People establish numerous settlements throughout Toronto's spacious tunnels. Toronto's civic leaders of the recent past soon become deified within the community due to their insistence on constructing over sized subway systems, easily doubling the sustainable population of the Mole People Colony. A capital is established at the Lord of the Rings scale Steeles station. Toronto's surface peoples, unwilling to remove the Mole People due to precedents set by Critical Mass riders and Tamil protesters during the prior decade and fearing a suit at the Human Rights Commission, become accepting of the fact that the Toronto subway system is effectively destroyed. Community leaders soon begin to issue calls for new solutions to remedy the congestion problems and 'get Toronto moving again.'

Coming Soon! "Part 2.) Proposals"

Anybody who would want to just try to come up with a proposal based on this premise is free to do so. (you can replace Mole People with anything).

 

[junctionist]

In short, awful. The British have their flaws, but history has show them to be pretty good colonizers. Ask an Indian what they think of England, then ask a Korean what they think of the Japanese, or what the Algerians thought of the French (never mind their screwed up colonies in Central Africa). The German genocide in Namibia of native tribes should have been a warning sign to other Europeans that something bad might be coming. Colonialism was very rarely a good thing for locals, but very rarely did colonizers send generals with orders to poison wells and induce mass dehydration.

Ask a Kenyan what they think of British colonization, or read Steve Biko's "I Write What I like". "Good colonizers" seems to mask a history of atrocities and oppression.

 

[adma]

Anybody who would want to just try to come up with a proposal based on this premise is free to do so. (you can replace Mole People with anything).

This'll take care of the Mole People--with Sketch Paree thrown in for good measure

(Warning: offensive on grounds of racial stereotypes and the rape of comic classics.)

 

[Second_in_pie]

Part III

Continued from Part II

1985-1995: City Centres

With Go Rail's massive success, the Government of the Toronto Metro Area became more and more inclined to provide better transit service. Up until now, special taxes in Metro Toronto strongly encouraged developers and businesses to take their business to the centre of the city. At rush hour, the 8 million working people of the GTA would all take their cars to the downtown core as early as possible to avoid traffic. There was very little reverse commuting, if not none at all.

The Government's newest plan for the city's transportation problem was City Centers. These would be strategically placed centers that would make better use of the expressway system, by spreading out the load of rush hour. After a one year study, the plan was in full motion, with City Centers planned to appear in the middle of Scarborough, the already developing city of North York, Etobicoke, Pickering, Markham, and Vaughn. On top of this, there was going to be encouraged business development in the city of Mississauga, which was a mainly residential city.

At the same time, Go was becoming less and less of a private corporation. The Metro Area Government was providing more and more funding for service expansion, seeing the Rail service as a good way to get some cars off the highway. The Lakeshore line was fully electrified by 1988, with trains running once every 10 minutes. Funds were given to improve parking facilities at Go stations, and to buy new Bi-level cars. Unfortunately, with the City Centre Plan, Go's potential for expansion fell. With the new plan there would be less need to bypass the busy expressways, as the mix of commuters and reverse-commuters would free up the system.

Fortunately, the City did not blindly fly into this plan without new transit. In 1986, the Toronto Public Transportation Board was created. This board was made up of experts in mass transit, and heads of the region's many transit systems. The board had put the priority on 3 projects: The extension of the Spadina Subway to Vaughn City Centre, The extension of the Yonge Subway to Finch, and the extension of the Bloor-Danforth Subway to Etobicoke City Centre and Scarborough City Center. These, they had decided, would be the most cost-effective way of linking the City Centers together.

The Yonge Extension was the first to finish, being completed in 1990. Shortly after, in 1991, was the Spadina Extension, and then in 1992, the Bloor-Danforth Extensions. These extensions were accompanied by a new fleet of subways, replacing the aging Gloucester cars. By the early 90s, all of the City Centres were fully underway, and their effects were beginning to be seen. Congestion all throughout the Metropolitan Area was visibly getting better, but there was still a long way to go and growth in the Region wasn't stopping anytime soon.

By 1994, all of the City Centers were completed phase 1, with over ten thousand jobs in each. Since 1987, much of the Metropolitan Area's growth was focused on these Centers, and suburban development was slowing dramatically. It was yet another time for mass transit to rise again, and the turn of the Century and the new Millennium was a perfect time for this to happen.

Continued in Part IV...

 

[toraerach]

Ask a Kenyan what they think of British colonization, or read Steve Biko's "I Write What I like". "Good colonizers" seems to mask a history of atrocities and oppression.

Or an Irishman, or an Acadian, or someone displaced by the India-Pakistan partition, etc. Being a British colony only really had one advantage over others - English was/would become the global lingua franca, which would become a great asset to the colonial interpretive class as the world's economy globalized. In fact, it could be argued that that expansive interpretive class and their comparatively better-off position in British colonies may colour our perceptions of a gentler colonizer more than anything.

Back on topic, some great creativity in this thread so far!