Getting around

We’ve survived our first working week in Toronto! But with new jobs come new commutes, and the challenge of negotiating one of the world’s major cities. I can walk to work in about 35 minutes, but Harriet is based in the leafy northern suburbs of Toronto and becoming well acquainted with Canadian public transport.

Toronto is built on a grid system and so easy to navigate on foot. Yonge Street (pronounced ‘Young’) – which has a (disputed) claim to be the longest street anywhere – acts as a dividing line down the middle. The main commercial thoroughfare, it marks the point at which intersecting streets are named east or west, and hosts Hudson’s Bay and the Eaton Centre as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame. Yonge-Dundas Square, towards the north of Downtown, is Toronto’s Times Square or Piccadilly Circus. As I walk westwards from Yonge each morning my choice of street depends on the weather: those further south can be exposed to a bitter January wind. Front Street used to mark the waterfront before the city’s extension into Lake Ontario; King Street hosts elegant restaurants and theatres; and along Queen Street can be found Old City Hall as well as some of the city’s edgier cafes and shops. These routes take me past Bay Street, home to the city’s financial district; University Avenue, which leads to the main U of T (University of Toronto) campus; and Spadina Avenue (to rhyme with ‘minor’), an imposing road that used to lie at the heart of the city’s industrial district and now runs through Chinatown. The main challenge when walking around Toronto is that cars are permitted to turn right on red lights, even if people are crossing the road. It’s difficult to say whether this encourages speedy traffic, but it certainly makes for alert pedestrians.

Toronto’s subway, buses and streetcars are overseen by TTC, the Toronto Transit Commission. Long-time residents of Toronto don’t look favourably on their public transport as the system matches the rigid layout of the roads (particularly when compared to London’s sprawling Underground), but to us it seems clean, efficient, and reasonably comfortable. The subway even has a certain charm: there are few ticket barriers, with travellers being trusted to carry the correct pass, and each stop has its own colour and personality, from the hustle and bustle of King (yellow) where Harriet begins her commute, to the wealthy neighbourhood of Rosedale (green), where the stop stands above ground among trees and parks. But the subway is limited in its reach – there are only two main lines – so Harriet takes a bus for the last part of her journey.

The biggest transport difference compared to London or Oxford is the streetcar system, which has been operating here since the nineteenth century. (Electric cars replaced the horse-drawn railway in the 1890s.) The streetcars function like trams and buses with request stops on eleven different routes; although, as the tracks run down the middle of the road, alighting passengers need to watch out for passing cars on the right. Few North American cities have retained a light-rail system – Toronto’s is the largest – but attempts to demolish it over past decades have encountered fierce resistance, and we’ve found it a fun and easy way to travel around the city. It adds to the sense that, although Toronto is a vast and seemingly unending city, it possesses a charm that helps us feel at home already.