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On Board PCC 4549

By David Topping



Turns out the TTC didn’t need Ashley Madison to give streetcar riders a free trip; it just needed to finish the St. Clair right-of-way between St. Clair West Station and Lansdowne.

On Saturday, Torontoist boarded one of two special Presidents’ Conference Committee streetcars (or PCCs) running on the expanse of new track between St. Clair West Station and Lansdowne Avenue. Part of a class of streetcar used by the TTC in various iterations over five decades, the car we got on—number 4549—was one of those ordered by the TTC on March 2, 1950, and has been restored to look the part, with saturated green ceilings, incandescent dome lights, and a surprisingly powerful heating system.

Inside the car, there were nearly as many cameras as passengers, as the Hillcrest Village Choir sang out stop names in the absence of automated announcements; outside, along St. Clair, pedestrians gaped or pointed or smiled huge. It’s been a while since anyone’s seen streetcars along this stretch of St. Clair West: the free rides on Saturday, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., were to celebrate Sunday’s long-delayed opening of the same streetcar right-of-way that the PCCs ran along on Saturday. (We’ll have more about the St. Clair right-of-way early this week.)

If the inaugural rides along it are any indication, though, the route is ready for mass consumption. Even in the older car, and even when it was packed to capacity, the entire ride felt smooth, including along the area of track near Oakwood Avenue, the subject of much controversy after photos shot with a telephoto lens made it look as though the streetcar ride would be a lot more like an amusement park ride. This proves, once again, that Steve Munro is always right: he said earlier this month that “the situation on St. Clair has been misrepresented by the choice and composition of the photos….the shots that have been published suit the agenda of the anti-St. Clair and, by extension, anti-Transit City factions who seek to discredit what the TTC is doing by any means possible.” On board PCC 4599, there were few complaints.
All photos by Remi Carreiro/Torontoist.

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  • http://undefined mister anchovy

    I lived in the St. Clair and Calidonia area for a number of years, and moved away during the construction. It’s been a difficult time for a lot of people in the area, and the whole business divided the community.
    I hope that resumption of street car service marks a new and positive time for the neighbourhood.

  • TokyoTuds

    The anti-St. Clair ROW folks have to take responsibility for a lot of the delay since they took the TTC to court and got an injunction to stop construction. Even if a ROW was never built, all the track was at the end of its design life and St. Clair would have been torn up anyhow. And added to the bargain, they got necessary upgrades to the water-main, and significant burying of hydro wires.
    This significant city infrastructure improvement will benefit the residents and businesses of St. Clair the most, but you have to “break some eggs to make an omelette.”

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping

    I spent a bit of time yesterday talking to Joe Mihevc and some local businesses about just those things, TokyoTuds and mister anchovy (ahem). More soon!

  • http://undefined Green Sulfur

    I hope you also visited some of the new stores opening up on St. Clair. It seems like there’s one or two that have been opening up every week as of late. Between the streetcar, the street improvements and the Wychwood Barns, it’s an exciting time to live in that neighbourhood.

  • http://www.actsofminortreason.com/ Acting Minor Traitor

    It looks like 4549 was the comfortable one – I was on 4500, and it was packed to the rafters for the whole time. Good ride nevertheless, though – the open mic Mike Filey, Joe Mihevc, and Adam Giambrone had going on there was pretty cool.
    Lived in Toronto for three and a half years, and now I’ve finally seen a streetcar west of St. Clair West. Good times.

  • http://undefined mark.

    I went up for a ride on one of the old cars – was fun!
    But I truly hope that someone will publish something like a ‘lessons learned’ from this. It’s nice that there’s a ROW now, but so much more could’ve been done. Bike lanes? There is so much space from storefront to the storefront across the street. There aren’t even ring-and-posts yet. There are already ‘utility cuts’ filled in with asphalt in the sidewalk, granite tiles already uneven.
    Coincidentally, I read an interview with Andres Duany yesterday. He argues that the biggest impediment to ‘smarth growth’ and good design is citizen participation. Touche…

  • http://undefined Green Sulfur

    Mark, can’t argue things could have been done better but there’s no way for bike lanes and a ROW on St. Clair. In fact, St. Clair is too narrow for just a ROW. Thanks to political will the ROW was shoehorned in (and I’m happy it was).

  • http://undefined W. K. Lis

    If you look at just the track-work for the streetcars only, you would have noticed that the actual construction time was short. About 6 months for each block, from ripping up the old tracks, laying the new foundation, laying the new track, concrete, platforms, poles, and overhead.
    What took the most time was the digging for utility work. Sewers, water pipes, natural gas pipes, and the addition of electrical conduits took the majority of time.

  • http://undefined mark.

    I assume you missed a negative – that things could’ve been done better. And they could’ve. There is a lot of room from the buildings on one side of the street to the other – room to put in whatever we want… the key being what we want. In this case, wide sidewalks with big planters and spindly trees won out over sharing the road with cyclists. And, there’s also the matter of how the TTC insisted that it use those centre poles to power the streetcars. I’ve heard that if they just set up the power lines like everywhere else, this would’ve freed up the room necessary for bike lanes. As it has been done, St. Clair is one of the most dangerous streets in the city to ride a bike on.
    Further, there’s no need to have an ROW in the middle of the road. In fact, someone here (or maybe it was Spacing?) made a very strong case for why it’s actually better to have an ROW on one side of the street (had to do with snow, ice, run-off, etc.).

  • http://undefined Green Sulfur

    I think you misread what I wrote the first time but that’s academic.
    Can you link somewhere that shows how it is that bike lanes could fit? Sure, some portions of the sidewalk could be cut in further to accommodate the bike lanes but in other sections the sidewalk had to be cut to fit the ROW in as it is. Bike lanes just couldn’t fit in a way that would make them effective. Fortunately, there is a bike lane that runs parallel to St. Clair on Davenport so between that and the relatively calm side streets, it is possible to cycle safely in the neighbourhood.

  • http://undefined Greg

    I had no idea that Toronto also ran PCC’s on their transit lines. I write a blog in San Francisco about Muni (our sad little transit system) called ” The N Judah Chronicles” and this popped up in one of my google news searches. Very cool. We have PCCs on the F-line thanks to the hard work of the folks at Market Street Railway, who restore old streetcars of all sorts. You’ll see ‘em on that (annoying) TV show “Trauma.”

  • http://undefined iwdrutledge

    In Melbourne they run vintage streetcars along a fixed route circling the city for free.
    I suggest TTC do the same thing>> perhaps college to broadview to king to Bathurst

  • http://undefined Bubba

    It was fun to ride the old streetcar again, last time I was on one I think I was 10 or 11, it was nice to see the neighbourhood again as I did as a kid growing up on St.Clair during the 70′s and 80′s.
    Ding, ding!

  • http://undefined Andrew

    I don’t mean to harsh everybody’s buzz here, but I don’t get what’s so awesome about these old-ass streetcars. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in Toronto.
    Generally, you know what’s not a great design principle in transit planning? Nostalgia.

  • http://www.torontoist.com David Topping
  • http://undefined mark.

    I don’t have a link that shows how bike lanes would fit on St. Clair. But, then again, I also don’t have a link that explains how something a meter or so wide fits inside something multiple meters wide. Perhaps Kant’s transcendental aesthetic? Or simply Aristotle ? I’m being cheeky, of course. More seriously, though, have a look someday at the new sidewalk on St. Clair and note how there’s that granite (looking?) tile right at the curb, then space given over to the trees and in the summer you’ll see big planters. So, anyone who says “there are no bike lanes because we wanted spacious sidewalks” needs to explain why a large portion of the sidewalk has been given over to decorations. Again, we can put whatever we want on the street – if we really wanted to, we could’ve fit a small roller coaster. We could even put buildings in the middle of the road… if that’s what we wanted. My point is that bike lanes are not impossible; rather, we made decisions to not have them.
    For a while I sort of accepted your point that bike lanes on Davenport are close by and there’s quiet streets around to cycle on. I’d even add to your point by suggesting that St. Clair might not serve cyclists well because of the elevation (cycling up to St. Clair from the south is big chore). But, shunning cyclists from St. Clair does not invite people on bikes to come to St. Clair and shop. The St. Clair set-up is very hostile to anyone on a bike, and that’s a pretty big segment of potential customers to not just ‘ignore’ but actively discourage.
    Further, to return to my cheeky self, imagine the following conversation:
    “There’s no traffic lanes on St. Clair. I want to drive my car on St. Clair!”
    “Well, fortunately there’s a road just south (Davenport) that you can drive your car on, and there are also lovely side streets that you can drive on too!”

  • http://undefined Joey

    Haven’t been on a PCC since the mid-1980s. I never did like the gold and wine livery that was the TTC’s norm in the 50s-80s. For the time, the PCC’s were a great design, and the fact that they were in continuous service with the TTC for 50 years proves it. I’m glad that the ROW was built, and had many arguments with my friends that did oppose it. Hope the problems faced on this ROW’s construction will make it easier to construct the Transit City lines, which started today at the Sheppard LRT construction kick-off ceremony.

  • http://undefined Green Sulfur

    Between things like fire hydrants, waste disposal bins, benches and all the other elements that need to fit on a sidewalk that’s wide enough to be accessible for people with strollers and accessibility aids, the bike lanes simply weren’t going to fit. Trees and other design elements fit generally in line with the other design elements of a sidewalk, using space that would otherwise be empty but not available for a sidewalk cut that could add a full bike lane (they would only be large enough to fit a parked car, then the sidewalk would have to jut out again).
    Ultimately, bike lanes were studied on St. Clair and for the reason of space and space alone they were ruled out. Given Joe Mihevc’s record on bike lanes (always votes for them and has implemented all lanes called for in his ward by the City’s bike plan), I think it’s fair to believe bike lanes really did get fair consideration.