'Things could have been different': Frustration building amid Spadina Avenue TTC construction

A six-month project to upgrade the streetcar route along Spadina Avenue has only just started, but is already causing headaches for drivers, cyclists and businesses alike.

On June 23, the TTC switched out streetcars for buses on the busy downtown artery to perform critical track renewal work at Spadina Station. The project also includes upgrades to the overhead electrical system on sections of the right-of-way route, including between King Street and Queens Quay and between College Street and Spadina Station.

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Since then, the TTC has said southbound travel times in the area have tripled from 20 to 25 minutes to more than an hour in the first week of construction alone, citing a bottleneck near the Gardiner Expressway – which is also under construction.

On Monday, the TTC modified its bus service near Rogers Centre during the weekday rush hour to circumvent the perpetual traffic jam.

But despite the service adjustment, some businesses in the area say that they remain worried that the increased traffic on one of the busiest streets in the city over the next six months could have a negative impact on their bottom line.

“When you restrict the flow of traffic and people coming into the area, obviously your business is going to suffer,” Tonny Louie, Chair of the Chinatown BIA, told CTV News Toronto in an interview.

Louie, who said businesses in Chinatown are still struggling to return to the level of business they saw before the COVID-19 pandemic, explained that the major complaint he’s hearing from business owners is the lack of parking for their vendors and suppliers in the area as a result of the construction.

“They’re eliminating all the parking along Dundas Street…so once a truck comes into the area, if there's no parking on the laneway, where the cars normally park…then they have to double park, and when they double park I mean, there's only one lane that you can use for the bus and for other cars. So that will create a lot of slowdown, especially during rush hour,” he said, adding that the BIA has been meeting with the TTC on a weekly basis for updates on the project.

The intersection of Spadina Ave and Dundas Street is shown in Toronto, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Jesse Ye from the Toronto Community Bikeways Coalition said cyclists were already feeling the pinch on that stretch of Spadina Avenue before the construction started, but now the path for bikes is even narrower.

“Now, of course, with the buses in the lane, you now need to contend and compete with this limited road space, with more vehicles, not less,” she said.

“Certainly, it's added to congestion on the road, and during the planning process, I don't believe that enough attention was given to vulnerable road users, cyclists and pedestrians alike, to consider when it came to these changes.”

Coun. Ausma Malik, who represents Ward 10 Spadina-Fort York, appeared to agree with that sentiment at a Toronto and East York community council meeting last week.

“We know that the 510 Spadina streetcar is one of our busiest streetcar routes in the city, with tens of thousands of riders each and every day. And I'm one of those riders,” she said. “I know firsthand that this construction has had a big impact on neighbours and workers and businesses and all road users and it has been a source of incredible and very understandable frustration, because we know that things could have been different.”

To that end, in a motion presented to council, Malik suggested the creation of a dedicated priority bus lane southbound on Spadina Avenue between Richmond Street West and Lake Shore Boulevard West as long as the construction is underway.

That would mean all southbound traffic in the area would be reduced to two lanes and on street-parking and a taxi stand would be removed.

“This southbound lane between Richmond Street and Lake Shore [Boulevard] West will ensure that buses aren't caught in the congestion and they aren't backed up one after another along Spadina,” she said.

Malik’s motion indicates that, according to the Toronto Parking Authority, the lost revenue and operating expenses from removing parking in the area would amount to roughly $163,000 pre-tax. Meanwhile, the price to introduce a bus lane would cost approximately $78,000 pre-tax.

The motion was carried, but it won’t appear before Toronto city council before July 24, meaning that any relief for the route at a city-level will take some time.

Until then, TTC spokesperson Stuart Green says the TTC is continuing to monitor the situation and will make service adjustments as required.

“We don't want to keep putting buses down into that most congested area knowing full well they're going to get trapped in there for, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes, leaving people that are traveling north on Spadina stranded without any service,” he told CP24 last week.