Subways are necessary in Toronto

We do need to respect the spending of tax money. Money spent on Transit City would be wasted and stopping it is important.

Visit the SRT in Scarborough. The TTC internally calls it the Silly Ridiculous Train. It is a good example of money wasted and it shares the same problems with Transit City. Also, ride the new St. Clair line and you will see what I am talking about. The worst waste is the fact that with each system you need maintenance, inventory, staff and storage facilities. Think about that. Imagine if every system we built needed a separate support system.

Do you like standing in a blizzard waiting for a surface vehicle that will be late because of the storm?

That is St. Clair.

The tracks are exposed to the same weather and do not last. We have spent millions replacing track and concrete that keeps breaking up on the streets and anywhere it is exposed to the Toronto weather.

By the way, the new light rail vehicles (streetcars in disguise) will be low-floor. How well do you think that will work in deep snow? We need subways in this environment. There is no other way to go.

Yes, they are more expensive but they are much better investments. Building Transit City would be a much bigger waste because it would end up like the SRT and St. Clair. It would have to be replaced and at a much higher cost.

I must also mention an important design principle called grade separation.

Any two systems that share the same plane must interfere with each other. A mathematician can prove that, a draughtsman knows it and a 10-year-old can understand it.

Any emergency like a fire and, whoops, the surface line is dead. We need subways and we are now decades behind on their construction.

We were supposed to build a few stations each year since 1960. If we proceeded then, we would have a complete subway system like any other city of similar size. Some people say we can't afford subways. We need them. Think about it. Where do we have problems?

The parts of the system that are exposed to bad weather, like the North Yonge subway, the SRT and of course St. Clair. Even Montreal has a subway system. What is Toronto's excuse?

The Eglinton "Streetcars in Holes" system would suffer the same fate as the SRT. It will have to be replaced and the tracks and holes (tunnels) will not be big enough for subways so the whole thing will have to be rebuilt. Toronto has unquestionably lost its world-class city rating. One of the reasons is transit. Go to any major city and you will see the difference. How did we get the Yonge subway? It was a referendum. If necessary, that is the way we will have to go. Cheapest is not best. By the way, Canada makes the biggest and best tunnel-boring machines.

I am a retired professional engineer and I am sad to see the sorry state of Toronto's system. Engineers can and will design much better more economical systems if asked to. Would you buy a car just because it is cheap? The contractors say pay me now or pay me later. We are now being forced to pay and pay more. Let's stop the nonsense. I wish I had taken dentistry instead of engineering. At least I would see some positive results.

John Bailes (letter written to the Mirror)
picture of Russell (Connaught) Carhouse on Queen East and Connaught