History
The streetcar route along St. Clair Avenue was created by the Toronto Civic Railways in 1911 in a successful attempt to promote development in a newly annexed section of the city. The route was transferred to the Toronto Transportation Commission upon its creation in 1921. It is the northernmost streetcar route still in operation, and was the first to make an underground connection with the subway's St. Clair West Station. It also once ran past St. Clair Station up Mount Pleasant to Eglinton Avenue, but this portion was later made a separate Mount Pleasant route that was subsequently converted to bus operation in the 1970s.
When first built, the St. Clair streetcar operated in a dedicated right-of-way, similar to the modern 510 Spadina route. A dedicated right-of-way is a lane generally in the centre of the street, reserved for transit vehicles. However, it was removed between 1928 and 1935 and replaced with paved trackage open to mixed traffic. The TTC later came to regret this decision, and in 2005 it began rebuilding a dedicated streetcar right-of-way.
The TTC is now running a pilot project of time-based transfers on portions of the 512 St. Clair, under which passengers who take a transfer (see Toronto Transit Commission fares) may disembark and then board another streetcar from the same route, even one going in the opposite direction, as long as they do so within a certain amount of time after their original boarding. This means that one can stop part-way through a journey and then continue, or even make a round trip, without paying multiple fares.
The line is usually operated with Toronto’s single-length CLRV streetcars.
Roncesvalles Carhouse serves the St. Clair streetcar route. When a 512 St. Clair streetcar begins service, it travels from the yard at Roncesvalles and the Queensway, along King Street, then on Bathurst Street, which connects to St. Clair Avenue. When a 512 streetcar finishes service, the roll sign indicates "512 RONCESVALLES", and the vehicle travels on Vaughan Road to Bathurst and King Streets, ending in Roncesvalles Yard, with some ending at Bathurst Street's Hillcrest Yard.
Read more about this topic: 512 St. Clair
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)