A Toronto resident has shared their own version of a New York-inspired subway network for the city but experts say the city lacks the budget or the speed to make it happen.
People are reacting online to a Reddit user’s photo of a Toronto map they created highlighting ideas for how the city’s transit plan should look like.
Here, have a wildly unrealistic future version of the subway network, complete with express trains ripped straight from New York!
byu/TheUltraInferno intoronto
“Here, have a wildly unrealistic future version of the subway network, complete with express trains ripped straight from New York!” the caption read. The map itself includes a sentence that reads, “from a wildly distant and almost certainly non-existent future.”
The user said they used quad tracking for every two different trains that are running next to each other to allow for local/express services. Beyond this, others are double tracked as normal.
“I kept the technology between different lines consistent, too. The equivalents of the real-world lines 1, 2, and 4 all use the same train technology, and the A and B trains are still trams. What I’ll call the Queen St. line uses the Ontario Line technology, and so does the 11 train, which allows them to meet up and run local/express up to Vaughan,” the user explained.
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Despite the detailed effort of a new transit map, transportation experts say the city alone simply cannot afford it.
“While the city can advocate for such an expansion of the subway system, the municipality does not have the capacity or budget to actually implement such an expansion. This level of investment and expansion would require alignment of priorities from the municipality, province, and federal levels of government,” University of Toronto Director of the Urban Studies Program David J. Roberts said in an email statement to Now Toronto on Thursday.
“This, alone, makes such an ambitious plan hard to imagine coming to fruition. Another challenge is the speed at which such infrastructure may be built. If the Eglinton Crosstown is any indication of the speed at which mass transit is built in Toronto, it is hard to imagine how long this initiative may take to be completed,” he continued.
Meanwhile, transit advocacy organization TTC Riders agrees with the sentiment, adding that the city’s current priority projects lack funding.
“The Eglinton East LRT, which would connect Kennedy Station to Malvern via the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, and the Waterfront LRT, which would serve Toronto’s eastern waterfront, are both unfunded,” Executive Director Shelagh Pizey-Allen said in a statement to Now Toronto.
“And even when funding gets promised, it’s not always delivered right away. For example, the Canada Public Transit Fund announced yesterday means that the TTC can now apply for funding for the new Line 2 subway trains it needs, but funding won’t get delivered until 2026,” she continued.
On Wednesday, Mayor Olivia Chow and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the start of the applications for the Canada Public Transit fund which will be used to replace the Line 2 subway trains.
Although experts are skeptical about the Reddit user’s proposed transit map, some residents are impressed but acknowledge this could only be a possibility far into the future.
“This is totally possible. I think your great grandkids kids kids kids kids kids kids will really enjoy the grand opening,” one Reddit user commented.
“Probably a reality in 2097,” another user said.
“Sad to think this is what it should look like by now. Sad to think I could make it downtown in 15 minutes by transit instead of 1 hour and 15 minutes (the drive ranges from 15 minutes – 50 minutes),” another user noted.
