Bay and Queen Streets

Below is a photo of Bay Street looking north, at Queen West, with the "Old City Hall" on the right, circa 1923.

Picture is courtesy the City of Toronto Archives

If you roll your mouse over the black and white photo, click on it, and look just behind the southbound Bay Street trolley, and you will see "Shea's Hippodrome".

I think the intersection looks wider, and the little island(on the north west corner) is still there some 84 years later.

Notice the traffic cop in the lower right hand corner.

This is a colour photo of the same intersection, taken in August of 2007.

You can see the "New City Hall" peeking out from behind the "Old City Hall".

Notice that there are no streetcars on Bay Street, but there are street cars or Canadian Light Rail Vehicles, on Queen Street.

And we have electric traffic lights, instead of a cop with signs.

Okay- these pictures are mostly for those of you across the pond, and also for Leona in B.C.

You can also see more pictures on Steve & Jennifer's blog:


Liam's first Christmas..............





Up close and personal.................




Of course, this is Len, with his granddaughter, Lucy.





This is a photo of Jennifer and Adam with the two new babies.





And this is Steve with the "Bug" and the "Bean".


Th-th-th-that's all folks.

The Miami-Dade Rail is the system built for this city.

I do not recall seeing any shots of this system on CSI – Miami.

It was opened in 1984 – the year Apple introduced the Macintosh computer.

Notice the pink triangle on the logo.

The information on Wikipedia is short and boring, but, Miami itself has many Art Deco buildings.

Since we are in the transportation mode; let’s look at the Greyhound station, at night.

Cool!

Then there’s the Breakwater Hotel.....

and the Argyle..................



then there's the Plymouth Hotel.............

So this is not so boring after all.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority or MARTA as it’s called was first put into service in 1979.

Nice view, eh?

MARTA has never received any operational funding from the State of Georgia, making it the largest public transportation agency in the United States not to receive state funding for operational expenses.

Gee, does this sound familiar?

The Metrorail in Washington, D.C.

Built in 1976, it was designed with the vision that it would be a regional transit system, since most folks live outside the core.

This subway is twice the length of our TTC, and is the second busiest in the United States.

The Metrorail, as it’s called, has a zero-tolerance policy of food and trash on the system. This philosophy also extends to the use of station restrooms. The Transit Police have a reputation for enforcing these laws rigorously. One widely publicized incident occurred in the year 2000 when police arrested a 12 year-old girl for eating chips in the Tenleytown Station.

Only in America, eh?

In Baltimore, Maryland, we find the Metro Subway, or Baltimore Metro, whichever you prefer.

Despite its name, less than half of the line is underground; most of the line is outside of the central city is elevated or at grade.

When the Metro Subway finally opened in 1983, it was only a single line. This was mostly due to the exorbitant construction costs and less federal money available, at the time.

Again, it seems that these North American systems do not have any interesting qualities – not like the European ones.

Did you know that Cairo has its own subway?

The City of Baltimore is much more colourful than a silly old train.

So I am putting a night picture of the skyline here instead………….

The SouthEastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority operates trolley, light rail, bus and commuter rail in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

SEPTA is a quasi-public state agency that serves 3.8 million people in five counties in the region. It is the fifth largest transit system in the United States.

The Subway–Surface lines are remnants of the far more extensive streetcar system once operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company. They were converted to a modern light rail operation with trains operating underground through the city centre. The system is comparable to Boston's Green Line and San Francisco's Muni Metro, which uses longer, articulated LRT vehicles.

In October 2006, Penn's class of 1956 funded the construction of an innovative portal for one of the eastbound entrances of the 37th and Spruce Street Station: a replica of a Peter Witt trolley.

Operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company until 1956, these trolleys brought university students to the campus and to Centre City, Philadelphia. Routes 11, 34 and 37 ran through the Penn campus on Woodland Avenue and Locust Street for nearly 65 years.

In 1956, the trolley route was buried to enable the university to unify its campus. Woodland Avenue and Locust Street became pedestrian walkway.

This is the Locust Walkway, as seen in winter.

According to to Wikipedia, this New York has the most extensive public transportation system in the world.

But the Tokyo Metro boasts itself as the cleanest and most extensive with 168 stations, 21 lines, and 183.2 km of track.

Whereas NYC has 468 stations, 26 routes and 1056 km. of track; I’d say NYC has it hands down.

This is the 125th Street station the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway.

Located at the intersection of 125th Street and Broadway, where Morningside Heights meets Harlem, it is served by the 1 train at all times.

It is the only station on the short elevated Manhattan Valley Viaduct, which bridges the Manhattan Valley from 122nd to 135th Streets. The viaduct allows the trains to remain relatively level while traversing the valley. Stairs and escalators lead to a mezzanine under the tracks that allows access to both uptown and downtown trains from either side of Broadway.

Downtown Boston’s streets are not organized on a grid, but grew in a meandering pattern early in the 17^th century.

This city is home to a mega-project called the Big Dig.

The construction plan was supposed to replace a heavily-used central elevated artery that ran through downtown Boston, and replace it with an underground tunnel. The project was fraught with criminal arrests, escalating costs, death, leaks, and charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials…..whew!

Here we see South Station, where Amtrak, commuter rail and bus service converge.

Now, about the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA):

The Orange Line is so named because it used to run down Orange Street (now lower Washington Street); the Green Line because it runs adjacent to parts of the Emerald Necklace; the Blue Line because it runs under Boston Harbour; and the Red Line because its northernmost station used to be at Harvard University, whose school colour is crimson, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here in Toronto, we have "The Red Rocket" - our trolleys, or streetcars, as we like to call them.



Transportation in Toronto was originally a privately-owned service that began in 1849.


In later years, a few routes were operated by the city, but it was in 1921 when the city took over all routes and formed the Toronto Transportation Commission to operate them.
During this period service was mainly provided by streetcars.


In 1954, the TTC opened its first subway line, and greatly expanded its service area to cover the newly formed municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.


There are three subway lines and one rapid transit line with a total of 69 stations, as well as 149 connecting "surface" routes, consisting of buses and streetcars.
One of these days, the folks who plan and operate this system will pull themselves out of the seventies, and expand the system so that it serves more Torontonians.

In 2010 Vancouver and Whistler will host the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The last time I visited this city was in 1986, for "Man and His World".

Vancouver currently has the second largest trolley bus fleet in North America after San Francisco.

TransLink, the Metro Vancouver Transportation Authority, is responsible for roads and public transportation within the region.

It provides a bus service, B-Line Rapid Bus Service, a foot passenger and bicycle ferry service (known as SeaBus), a two-line automated metro system called SkyTrain, and the commuter rail, known as the West Coast Express.

This is a super picture, from Wikipedia, of the San Francisco Bay Bridge that connects Oakland to East Bay.

Of course, no visit to this city is complete without a ride on the famous cable cars of Nob Hill.

The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) began regular passenger service in 1972, reporting more than 100,000 passengers in its first 5 days.

The Transbay Tube opened 2 years later (1974), thus linking each of the four branches extending to Daly City, Concord, Richmond, and Fremont.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake gave BART an unequalled opportunity to shine as a star and major hero during this catastrophe.

Transportation between San Francisco and Oakland was drastically affected with the breakage of the bridge and the near total destruction of the Cypress Street Viaduct. Within six hours of the original earthquake, BART trains were operational, effectively becoming the sole mode of transportation throughout the area.

Kudos!

The Moscow Metro spans almost the entire Russian capital, and is one of the world's most heavily used systems.

It is a state-owned enterprise, which was built under the 1930’s Moscow general plan and designed by Lazar Kaganovich.

The length of the route is 282.5 km in total, with 12 lines and 173 stations.

It is well known for the ornate design of many of its stations, which contain beautiful examples of socialist realist art.

Like this.......................

On a normal weekday it carries over 7 million passengers!

Each line is identified by an alphanumeric index (usually consisting of just a number, or a name, and a colour).

On all lines, travelers can determine the direction of the train by the gender of the announcer: on the ring line, a male voice indicates clockwise travel, and a female voice counter-clockwise. On the radial lines, travelers heading toward the centre of Moscow will hear male-voiced announcements, and travelers heading away will hear female-voiced announcements (a good mnemonic rule here is: ‘your boss calls you to work; your wife calls you home’).

The Copenhagen Metro, known simply as the Metro, was opened in 2002.

 

It currently has two lines and twenty-two stations, serving 120,000 passengers daily.

The trains are driver-less, and run entirely by a computer system called A.T.C or Automatic Train Control..

There are often Metro stewards on the trains, however, who provide passengers with information, as well as to handle any emergencies. 

If no steward is present on the train, passengers can call Copenhagen Metro Control  or C.M.C. from any call point on the train.

By letting a computer run the system, human errors are eliminated, and a low time interval between trains can be maintained. 
In the event of a failure of the ATC system, the trains can either be controlled remotely from the control centre or by the stewards on board.

The Glasgow Subway is an underground metro system in Scotland.

It opened on 14th of December 1896, it is the third oldest subway system in the world after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro.

It was unique in being the only cable-operated underground railway in the world.

Pictured here, are the directors, engineers, and officials of the original Glasgow District Subway circa 1896.

Most station entrances were buried in store-front locations: if you didn't know the subway entrance was there, you might take a long time finding it.

This station was the exception.

The cable system was characterized by a number of unusual features. There were two cables, driven by steam from a main power station, one for each tunnel. Each cable was an inch and a half thick, and weighed about 57 tons. The cables were placed between the tracks, kept in motion during the whole of the time that the line was open to traffic, and ran at a uniform speed of twelve and a half miles an hour.

Originally a cable railway this Subway was later electrified, but its twin circular lines were never expanded.

Officially called the Glasgow Underground between 1936 and 2003, it has reverted to its colloquial name of Subway.

Here in London England we find the world's oldest underground system, and one of the longest in terms of route length.

Services began on January 10, 1863 on the Metropolitan Railway; most of the initial route is now part of the Hammersmith City line.

Despite its name, about 55% of the network is above ground.

Popular local names include the Underground and, more colloquially, the Tube (in reference to the cylindrical shape of the system's deep-bore tunnels).

The Underground has 275 stations and runs over 253 miles (408 km) of line.

There are also numerous closed stations.

This is the City Road station, and is relatively inconspicuous from the surface: the only suggestion that a station ever existed is a brick ventilation shaft that incorporates parts of the original station building.