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GenerationLee said:
I've noted privately before that I find some platforms too narrow, especially at Eglinton and Eglinton West.
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Yeah, I thought that. It's like they've forgotten lessons learned from the 1960s stations.

Narrow staircases in those stations too, lack of escalators. Only 2 escalators where there should be a 3rd redundant one. Lack of redundant elevators (hopefully this is not true in the very deep stations). And even broken elevators and escalators, with no warnings. Arriving at Eglinton station, there was a person with a wheelchair who got off, by the elevator, only to find an out-of-order sign on it Is there a second elevator on that platform somewhere else?

Normally in these circumstances one takes the train an extra stop, and then doubles back - but that falls apart on centre platforms.
 
To be completely honest, I've been on and off observing this thread and I have no clue what exactly is being argued about anymore.

The closest I can figure is that this originated from "6 is confusing because newcomers think it's rapid transit but is just a tram" -> "Very few if any tourists will visit line 6" -> suburb v. city centre argument all over again...
I'm not going to enter the suburb v. city centre argument because this thread is not named 'Suburb v. city centre argument"
But wrt wayfinding... Not everyone is a transit-fan. many people I know IRL were not even aware that line 5 had opened. Prior to opening, I knew many who did not even know 6 was under construction.
wayfinding is not just for the tourist, but the man who doesnt keep with the news, the newcomer to toronto, the 905er who hasn't taken the system before, and everyone in between...
5 being a tram-subway hybrid thingamajig, fits in both yet neither subway or tram. But I find that it acts like a subway in the western section, progresses fast enough in the eastern section, and I assume the ridership amounts are more focused on the west end, that it is probably less wrong that this line be classified a subway route before a streetcar route. And I have hope that this will become even less wrong as TSP rolls out.
6 remains to be seen... but if after all our efforts in a year or two's time it still is just as fast as a streetcar... I see no reason to keep it on the map, a la Spadina and Harbourfront LRT.
 
T3G said:
See, you may be one of the few people to defend the suburb, but this doesn't exactly answer the question, does it? What, apart from the Toronto Zoo, could possibly attract someone to go there? The core of Toronto has museums, theatres, restaurants, nightlife, a bustling lakefront, and tourist attractions such as the CN Tower or Casa Loma, which are the things a tourist is typically known for going to see (and, indeed, the phenomenon of a tourist staying in the core of a city is pretty regular all across the tourist travelled world). The suburbs have endless stroads, sprawling subdivisions, big box stores, and strip malls, none of which are things that will attract any considerable percentage of tourists, and highly questionable transit connections to boot.

So, again, why?
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There have been several advocating the removal of the Aga Khan stop on Line 5…it might surprise some that this jewel of a museum is far better known internationally than by Torontonians,,,when it was being planned I remember reading a large article about it in Le Monde when I was in Paris before there was any mention of it in Toronto.
 
lastcommodore said:
But wrt wayfinding... Not everyone is a transit-fan. many people I know IRL were not even aware that line 5 had opened. Prior to opening, I knew many who did not even know 6 was under construction.
wayfinding is not just for the tourist, but the man who doesnt keep with the news, the newcomer to toronto, the 905er who hasn't taken the system before, and everyone in between...
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To this point, a friend of mine who lives in the west end and takes Line 2 and Line 1 every day for work, recently told me they took the "new TTC line" the other weekend to go somewhere. They were talking about Line 4!!

For a lot of people, and I'm nearly one, unless they have taken a transit route/line or live near one it's as though it doesn't exist. That might seem crazy to some in this little corner of the internet, but I happily live with zero knowledge about the many things that I don't find interesting, and for maaannnnyyyyy people that's transit.
 
Burnt creek said:
What I want to see when I travel is the experience of something unique that I wont see here. Like in Vancouver for example, I'll never forget crossing the Capilano bridge and seeing trees with those humongous tree trunks. Or the first time i saw Palm trees or a camel or the various mountain ranges of Europe. The Toronto Islands and waterfront offer no unique experience. The only thing that i heard from overseeas visitors that stood out to them in the downtown area is the Skyscrapers. Other than that, visitors were most impressed by Muskoka, Niagara falls and the sense of commercial vitality of our city (the downtown sky scrapers, the nice big malls, the big homes and parks in the suburbs).. And especially seeing the 401 for the first time.
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While it might not be sexy to the garden-variety tourist, ultimately "uniqueness"--or at least the single-loaded emphasis upon it--is overrated. Because *everyplace* is unique

As I like to say: as I child, I went with my elders to the playground at High Park, and while that was certainly the core destination (maybe w/the zoo as an add-on), the walk there was meaningful as well. Likewise even going shopping with my parents, my grandparents, whatever--every trip felt "unique", even if it was a familiar ritual. And I liked going new places, discovering new places, noticing new things, augmenting my youthful mental map, etc. A lot of it was perfectly "ordinary" activity; yet it felt special and implied infinite worlds beyond. And even now I find myself in a "every trip is unique, even if it's to a familiar or recently-visited place" state of mind a lot of the time.

Once one develops that sensibility early, it never really leaves the person. And it can make visiting even "ordinary" places feel extraordinary--whereas a more conventionally "touristic" approach can leave one feeling, "is that it?".

Sure some of these "unique attractions" can be *coordinates*, but it doesn't mean they have to be single-loaded for their uniqueness.

And to return to the subject at hand...Line 5 offers its own "uniquenesses". On opening day, it was fun to clamber up and down all the underground entrances and exits and get a sense of the stations' configurations. And the open-air eastern part might be slower, but the window view offers a different form of "uniqueness"--underground, you move fast, yet what's on street level is mute and out of sight/out of mind; but in the slower-moving "streetcar-esque" E, it enables one to engage to place in practically a worm's eye fashion. The Aga Khan, the Abraham Lincoln Bear, the swinging girl, all emblems of "uniqueness"--and even the ordinariness observed can carry its own unique passing poetry. Maybe we'll just watch it from the train, maybe we'll be tempted to go out and see for ourselves, maybe we'll trace our way to some BlogTO-recommended eatery somewhere. And it's all part of a bigger world out there, which the fortuitous fact of the GTA's multiculturalism has a way of microcosmically underlining...
 
txlseries4 said:
For a lot of people, and I'm nearly one, unless they have taken a transit route/line or live near one it's as though it doesn't exist. That might seem crazy to some in this little corner of the internet, but I happily live with zero knowledge about the many things that I don't find interesting, and for maaannnnyyyyy people that's transit.
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And one bit of little-commented-on ugly truth: a lot of regular TTC users (particularly Metropass-users) relate thusly to the GO network.
 
February 11, 2026:

Part 2: Avenue Station Secondary Entrance Stairwell:

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Part 3: Secondary Entrance will be up tomorrow.
 
adma said:
Another reason to pay heed to the "friends and family" school of visiting Toronto, as that evades the expensive-hotel question as well as enabling more of a worm's-eye scale of "appreciating" Toronto.

And actually, re all of this tourism discussion...I wonder how many "visitors to Toronto" were among the Line 5 opening day crowd? That is, those who didn't come to Toronto *for* the opening, and who may not even be transit/rail geeks in and of themselves; but for whom the opening just happened to coincide with their visit, and upon hearing about it, thought...hey, why not, as long as we're here, etc. And in so doing, getting "caught up in the rapture", as it were. In the end, it's events like *that* which make an extended visit to Toronto magical, not rote visits to the CN Tower and Ripley's...
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Mt. Dennis Station on Line 5 has transfer connections with GO Transit's Kitchener line and the Union Pearson Express. Kennedy Station on Line 5 has transfer connections with the Stouffville line GO train service. So "visitors" from the 905 can use Line 5 to get to places like the Ontario Science Centre.
 
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