For TTC streetcar users who ride the 501 Queen line, service in the downtown is a lot different compared to plans in the early-to-mid 1900s.
Did you know plans had the busy streetcar line travelling underneath Queen Street from Parliament Street to as far west as Shaw Street with a direct subway connection?
The only remnant of those plans is a cavernous, empty east-west track bed steps below the existing Queen subway station. It runs roughly between Yonge and Victoria streets.
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“If you look at old archival footage of Toronto, the traffic and the congestion with streetcars and automobiles – and even if you go further back horse and buggy – it was a congested, congested downtown core,” TTC chief spokesman Brad Ross told Global News during an exclusive tour of “Queen Lower.”
“It’s always been busy and so that’s where the city of the day said, ‘Well, let’s bury part of the 501 underneath Queen Street – it can intersect with the subway.'”
However, with those plans being cancelled the space now sits empty. Getting to Queen Lower is as simple as crossing through a door from a hallway that allows passengers to transfer between the Line 1 northbound and southbound platforms.
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It currently houses conduits and elevator mechanics to support the subway station.
Also hidden at Queen station is an old stairway from street level to the east side of the station at subway platform level. It was shut down in the early 2000s after a new office building and subway connection opened at the northeast corner of Yonge Street and Queen Street East.
It’s sights like this that excite Ross.
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“It’s nostalgic in a way. I grew up in the city and I used the TTC as a teenager and as a child even. Now I get to work here and I get to see these behind-the-scenes places that no one gets to see,” he said.
Meanwhile, the City of Toronto is undertaking studies for the creation of the Downtown Relief Line – a new subway connection between downtown and the Bloor-Danforth subway line – and staff are looking at a Queen Street alignment.
Ross said although it is possible it could run through Queen Lower, he said a lot of engineering work would be required to do so.
Watch Global News at 5:30 & 6 p.m. ET Tuesdays for our weekly 6ix Secrets series.
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