What started as a ‘little fun project’ quickly turned out to be a ‘little bit of nothing’ as I never completed this thing. As it turns out, photographing each and every stop on every subway and light rail line in your city is a helluvajob and takes ages. Especially now that the transit network had babies earlier this year and is currently pregnant again.
For those not in the know, Toronto’s transit network is notoriously terrible, and only recently started to expand and slowly improve. Slowly. Because as we speak work is underway on brand spanking new lines, recently all kinds of schedule improvements were announced on existing train and subway connections, and yet, just a few weeks ago, a bunch of those were cut down to mere percentages of their usual capacity – because of lack of train drivers and other obscure reasons. I mean, for crying out loud. Hire me then? I’ll drive your train at breakneck speed! Trains gotta go, they’re not supposed to sit in a yard waiting to come out for 4 trips per day. At times where nobody needs them.
The Soccer World Cup in 2026 showed a reasonably modern and well-oiled transit system to the world. Great. The week after the Cup life support was summarilly yanked out and entire lines or large portions thereof were unusable during weekends and sometimes during workdays, because of ‘ongoing maintenance and improvements’. This is daily reality here. Come ooonnnn.
Anyway, you may have sensed a slight displeasure in my tone with the way public transit is ‘done’ (or rather ‘not done’) here in the GTA. It doesn’t help I come from a country where public transport is -be it not cheap- seen as a right and not an unsexy political party promise that never makes it through to the next administration. My opinion on the transit situation here is therefor coloured, but the locals have enough to complain about themselves. Things here take foorreeevveerrr, if they happen at all, and when they do they’re not as robust or even polished as one would expect. Example: it took 15(!) years to complete a 19-kilometer stretch of mostly above-ground light rail, at a cost of $13 BILLION Canadian dollars. And the trains still give way to turning cars across the line at most street level intersections. Yeah.
The title of this article is a weak jab to the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission), who are not the only one to blame for the malay transit is in here. Metrolinx as well as the Ontario government have made just as much of a mess of it than previous municipal governments have over the years (read: decades). But that’s a topic for an entirely different podium. And this alleged conspiracy? Do some basic research and discover how Metrolinx came to be and how it operates now. Queue Sherlock: “Well, Watson, the game is afoot. Let’s solve this riddle: who’s pockets have the most marvelous lining?”
But, I digress. This outting wasn’t about all that. It was about documenting the network and the people occupying it, be it underground, above ground, in trains, stations and anything inbetween, because I’m fascinated by trains and the systems they function in. All in all I got just one roll in as many days and never picked the project back up again. Maybe I should, as it is, to me at least, an interesting subject with potential. If I do, I’ll use better gear though…this point-and-shoot camera may be mightier than it’s size but there’s nothing to control with it whatsoever. Not ideal in a subway car. Maybe next year?
For the discerning viewer; these photographs were taken along Line 1 (Yellow Line). I never even got to complete Line 1, start on Line 2 or 4 or 5, let alone other -newer- extensions. And I am sad I did not get any from the Scarborough Subway Extension, which is now defunct (cry emoji).
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