Feature Photograph

Pete Coulman submitted this photograph of a subway train entering Warden station on May 12, 1968, during the early days of operation on the first extensions to the Bloor-Danforth subway line. Now what’s wrong with this picture? Pete points out that, on the left side of the photograph, where you’d expect to see the short spur towards a set of maintenance buildings, all you see is cleared right-of-way. The spur was built after the extension opened.

You can learn more about the construction of the Bloor-Danforth subway in our route history article entitled A History of Subways on Bloor and Queen Streets. The thrust of the article is that, while planners and politicians originally envisioned the subway going beneath Queen Street, traffic patterns shifted demand north to Bloor, rendering the Queen subway plan obsolete.

But is a Queen subway really obsolete? Recent developments with Metrolinx might revive the defunct 1980s proposal to build a Downtown Relief Line, which is the Queen subway’s spiritual descendant.