5 underground dreams Toronto never realized - blogTO (blog)
Toronto has long fancied itself as an underground city. Since the early 1900s, when Boston and New York were excavating their first underground rail lines, this city has dreamed of building subterranean streetcar "tubes. " By heading beneath the earth, the citizens of Toronto could commute, move between downtown buildings, visit the Toronto Island, even drive through the core without being troubled by the unpredictable elements. Unfortunately, for all its ambition, Toronto has a long history of finding ways to kill or indefinitely delay its tunnel projects, sometimes after construction has already begun. It hasn't always been the city's fault, but the fact remains, Toronto's tunnel building record is less than perfect. Toronto's subway dreams go back a long way. Long before the Yonge, University, Spadina, Bloor-Danforth or ill-fated Queen line were envisioned, controller and later mayor Horatio Hocken planned a network of transit "tubes" beneath our streets. At the time, the city was locked in a legal battle with a private, pre-TTC streetcar operator, the Toronto Railway Company, over service to suburban areas. In response, Hocken conceived a transit system running beneath downtown streets that would circumvent the TRC's contract for "street" transportation. Source: www.blogto.com
