To better understand the current challenges in expanding Toronto’s transit system,The Toronto Star recently took a closer look at its history, with insight from Professor Eric Miller (CivE), Director of the Cities Centre at U of T.

In 1959, it had been five years since the original Yonge line from Union to Eglinton had opened and Toronto was eager – and able – to get building again, even without provincial funding.

How can the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) expand today? It comes back to the relationship between land use and transit and the need to reconnect mutually supportive forces in order to make costly infrastructure pay and keep expansion going.

Professor Miller said that “we’ve been fooling ourselves for decades” with the idea that development and urbanization will automatically follow subways in places first developed around the car.

“It was always a well-crafted myth that the TTC and others generated,” said Miller. “Building heavy rail is a necessary but not sufficient condition to generate high density in the suburbs.

“We have to get really serious about ensuring that density, walkability and rich mixes of land uses happen, and we can’t waste time.”

To read the full article, visit The Toronto Star.