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Bathurst Street Yard
A history of commuting in Toronto
The stretch of railway near today’s Union Station is among the busiest in the city. Commuter trains have relied on this stretch of track, known as the Union Station Rail Corridor, as well as the nearby rail yards for over one hundred years. In 1906, the Grand Trunk and Canadian Pacific Railways created the Toronto Terminals Railway (TTR) to help maintain rail infrastructure and to oversee the creation of what would become Toronto’s third Union Station. During the 1920s and 1930s, TTR made multiple improvements to the railways, including implementing a state-of-the-art interlocking system and building a roundhouse to service trains. The nearby rail yards, once known as the Spadina Yard, are now known as the Bathurst Street Yard and also form part of the Union Station Rail Corridor.
Although both cargo and passenger trains use the yard, commuter trains have arguably had the largest impact on the Union Station Rail Corridor. Over two million people commute daily to Toronto. Of commuters that do not drive, almost half use some sort of rail transportation.
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Bathurst Street Yard
Toronto's first commuter train
GO Transit is Ontario’s main commuter rail provider today, but it was preceded by another commuter railway, known as the Toronto Belt Line Railway. Founded in 1889, the Belt Line Railway served smaller communities north of the city, including Moore Park and Forest Hill. The Belt Line ran from Toronto’s Union Station along the former Ontario, Simcoe and Huron rail line. The base fare was ¢5 with a maximum fare of ¢25 to travel the entire route.
Unfortunately, much of the area that the line travelled through was sparsely populated. Due to low ridership, along with the relatively high fare price for the day, the railway shut down in 1894. A large portion of the line now serves as a walking and biking trail. Created in 1989, the Beltline Trail spans nine kilometers from Caledonia Road to east of Yonge Street.
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Bathurst Street Yard
Trains and the TTC
Toronto’s first electric street railway system started operations in 1892. Run by the privately-owned Toronto Railway Company (TRC), the system helped move passengers throughout the downtown. In 1921 the city merged the TRC’s routes with the Toronto Civic Railway and created the Toronto Transportation Commission (TTC) to help standardise transit in the city. The TTC continued to increase its routes all over the city as ridership increased.
By the 1940s the city realised that there needed to be substantial improvements in Toronto’s transit system. In 1946 the public voted in favour of the TTC creating an underground subway system. Construction began in 1949 of a twelve-stop subway line from Union to Eglinton Avenue. The system officially opened in 1954 and became Canada’s first subway. At present, nearly 600,000 people ride Toronto’s subways every day.
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Bathurst Street Yard
On the GO
Following the Second World War, governments around the world promoted the idea of travelling by car. By the 1960s, highways throughout Ontario had become extremely congested. With an ever-increasing number of automobiles on the road, the Ontario Government decided to launch a new commuter rail service called GO Transit in 1967. The service was popular from the start, seeing 2.5 million people travelling on the system in its first year.
By the 1980s, GO Transit had significantly expanded its service. Unfortunately, the Bathurst Street Yard could not deal with the increase in trains. At this time, it was common to see GO Trains waiting for up to 10 minutes to get through the yard. By 1983, Go Transit redeveloped the yard and created the Toronto fly-under. Using multiple levels of tracks, a fly-under allows trains going in different directions to cross each other without crashing. Composed of a 400-foot tunnel and two levels of rail line, the Toronto fly-under substantially reduced the wait-times that GO trains had to deal with coming in and out of Union Station.
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Bathurst Street Yard
Additional resources
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “Toronto’s First Streetcar”, originally aired in 1954.
Metrolinx, “GO: 50 years going strong”, 2017.
Ozzie Williams, “Toronto Subway Song”, 1950.
Toronto Belt Land Corporation, “The highlands of Toronto”, 1891.
Toronto Terminals Railway, “History”, 2017
Toronto Transit Comission, “History”, 2022.
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