The City of Toronto is a very diverse place and even when you are not at one of the major tourist attractions, you have the chance to see something spectacular.  If you’re interested in a way to tour the city as us locals see it, then I’ve come with a way that you might be able to do that for a very reasonable price.

I call it touring the city on the TTC.  All you have to do is get on a bus or streetcar route that goes by a number of places that you want to see and then either stay on the vehicle the whole time (paying just $2.75 for your trip) or get off at various intervals to see different things, getting back on the next bus or streetcar when you feel like leaving.  Because a day pass on the TTC is $9, you’ll never actually end up paying for more than 4 trips, so this is a great way to save some money if you really want to get down into the cultural underpinnings of the city that prop up the great tourism industry it enjoys.

The 506 Streetcar

Route 506 is a streetcar route known colloquially as the Carlton Streetcar.  While TTC copyright prevents me from posting a route map of the streetcar, you can check out a list of TTC routes and select 506 from the drop-down menu in order to get the map of the route I’m talking about.  Essentially, the route starts in the west on College and continues along Carlton and Gerard, covering about 2/3 of the East-West subway line that the city has.  It’s a particularly fun trip to take because of the ease of sitting down on streetcar during off hours and staring out the window at the world going by.

Highlights of the Trip

College and Ossington

College and Ossington is the first place that I’d like to point out.  It’s the first of the highlights that you reach if you’re coming from the West and the last if you’re coming from the East.

What makes this particular intersection so interesting is that it happens to be the heart of the Portuguese community in Toronto and for that reason mixes immigrants from both Portugal and Brazil in order to create a flair that is probably unique to the City of Toronto.  You can eat at both Portuguese and Brazilian restaurants and buy music and drink that originated in both countries.  The people in this area are extremely friendly and I still have the Brazil soccer jersey I purchased at one of the stores here a decade ago.

College and Spadina

Not soon after you’ve crossed out of the Portuguese area of the city, you’ll come to College and Spadina (assuming you’re coming from the West).  There are two things in particular that warrant interest about this intersection and they are both things that I get the pleasure of enjoying whenever I’m at the University.

The first of those things, as the previous sentence implied, is the University of Toronto St. George campus.  If you want to tour the university, then getting off either at this stop or at the next one is a great place to start and even if you don’t want to tour the university you can get some good shots of the campus as it looks from College Street right from the seat on your streetcar.

In addition to that, there is also Chinatown on Spadina south of College.  While getting a picture would be hard from the streetcar (you only get a brief glimpse as the streetcar goes through the intersection), you can certainly get off and walk a bit to encounter restaurants, clothing stores and souvenir shops that all have an Oriental flair.

Gerard and Coxwell

Gerard and Coxwell is the final intersection/area I’d like to draw your attention to, because it is the heart of the South Asian community in Toronto.

Whether you are interested in figures and sculptures such as the ones depicted in the picture or great food cooked in one of the many South Asian culinary styles, Gerard and Coxwell is definitely where you want to start your search.  There are literally hundreds of different establishments with a South Asian theme that are in walking distance of this intersection.  That makes it the final highlight of the 506 streetcar route.

Final Thoughts

While touring the city using public transit is not exactly the most conventional thing for a tourist to do, I think that many people would find it a fun exercise if they give it a chance.  For just $9 (make sure you buy the day pass if you want to get off at all three highlight locations), you can do the following things:

- Start at High Park and take pictures in one of the most beautiful natural areas of the city

- Visit three of the major cultural areas within the city

- Take time out of your day to relax on a scenic trip even if you don’t want to get off the streetcar

- Have access to dozens of different authentic foreign cuisine types

- Fit some genuine interaction with Toronto residents into a 1-2 hour chunk of your day that otherwise would have been spent doing nothing

If you’re up to it, touring the city on a bus or streetcar can be an extremely cost effective and authentic experience.  The 506 is by no means the only bus or streetcar route that gives you this chance, but it is most definitely one of the most intense.

Photo Credit: Flickr (Streetcar Starbucking), Flickr (college/ossington), Flickr (Spadina x College), Flickr (Sacred Hindu Cows)

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Understand the Schedule:  For the most part, the subway in Toronto runs from 6 am to 1:30 am except on Sunday when it runs from 9:30 am to 1:30 am.  Forgetting this little fact has cost me big in cab fare a few times over the years, so make sure you keep those endpoints in mind when using the subway to travel around the city.

Get a Transfer: Toronto’s subway system costs one fare for your entire travel one way on the system and transferring from bus to streetcar, bus to bus or in some cases subway to bus is done through the use of transfers, which act as proof of payment.  However, if you are travelling around the city, you might change your mind as to what you want to do at some point.  To avoid paying extra fare if you get yourself into one of those situations, get a transfer as soon as you pay your fare.  You can get transfers either by asking your bus or streetcar driver for one or by obtaining one just after you’ve paid your fare at a subway station.

Multiple Fare Passes Can Save You Money: When you are purchasing your fare, consider whether or not a multiple fare pass can save you money.  Day passes, weekly passes and monthly passes are all available on the TTC and in many cases if you are going to be travelling a lot, they can save you a lot of money.  A person that goes to and from work and stops by a gym to exercise on the way home (i.e. uses three fare payments per workday) would save money through the use of a multiple fare pass, which means that most tourists could probably save some money as well.

The Ride Guide is Your Friend: The first thing you want to do when coming to Toronto is pick up a Ride Guide, either from one of the TTC stations or from their website at http://www.ttc.ca.  This is a guide to all of the different routes available from the TTC and you can use that guide to map out your routes to all of the places in the city that you want to visit.

Consider Connections Between the TTC and Other Public Venues: There are five different subway stations in the downtown core that are connected to the PATH underground walkway, which in turn is connected to a large number of accommodations and entertainment venues.  This walkway is great when the weather is bad, so keep it in mind when travelling on the TTC.

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Photo Credit: Flickr

1) Strikes Affect the City Massively: The TTC has been on strike before; many times in fact.  During my own time in primary, middle, secondary and now post secondary school, the TTC has had at least three different strikes that I can remember off the top of my head and there were probably a number of near misses as well where the union was able to negotiate a deal with the city at the last minute in order to avoid a strike.  And those near misses were good things too, because the city is paralyzed without the TTC.  People can’t go to work, tourists can’t visit the places they want to visit and generally the mood of the city goes down when the TTC is not around.

2) Main Tourist Attractions are Near Subways: Whether you are talking about the CN Tower, the Rogers Centre, Roy Thomson Hall, Casa Loma or any other major tourist attraction in the City of Toronto, almost all of them are built near subway stations.  This is not to say that the buildings themselves were constructed with the subway in mind, but rather it is to say that the TTC provides a route to the city’s main attractions that allows tourists that don’t know the city very well to get to them relatively easily.  This makes the TTC very important for Toronto’s tourism industry.

3) Rush Hour is better on the Bus: I remember the feeling of joy I had when I first got my driver’s license and now six years after the fact I’ve come to realize that I hate driving downtown.  If I take the bus, train or streetcar however, I can fall asleep and let someone else worry about the driving.

4) The TTC is Cheaper: Whether you are a person working a job where money is tight or whether you are a tourist trying to see Toronto on a budget, the TTC provides you the opportunity to save a ton of money on gasoline.  A monthly metropass is just over $100 and a weekly pass is around $30.  If you toured Toronto in a car for a week, the first time you filled up you would already be past the amount of money you’d need to pay for unlimited weekly travel on the TTC.

5) The TTC Reduces Smog: Whenever people ask me when they should come and visit Toronto, I usually recommend that they do so during the summer.  While part of this is just my Canadian bias feeling that someone can’t truly see Toronto in all its glory without some snow on the ground, another part of it is the fact that downtown Toronto during the summer has problems with smog from time to time.  For a city’s downtown core that is already prone to poor air quality days, can you imagine how much worse it would be without the downtown subway system?

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

Photo Credit: Flickr

A few days ago, I wrote a post that talked about how Toronto subway stations have distinctive tiling and how that tiling had been captured by a set of buttons that were now on sale.  While that post was originally just going to be a stand alone post in and of itself, it actually planted a few seeds of thought in my head.  Seeds of thought are dangerous things for bloggers because they can lead to crazy ideas for posts and in this particular case that’s exactly what’s happened!

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce Subway Sundays, the newest series of posts that will be debuting with this post on The Toronto Traveler.  As the name implies, this series will be a weekly segment on the blog with one post a week discussing information, news, events and other useful information for travelers to know regarding the Toronto Transit Commission, the organization that is responsible amongst other things for the maintenance and extension of Toronto’s subway system.

Toronto, like many of the best tourism destinations around the world, is a city that could not exist without its subway system.  Some might say that statement is a bit of a stretch, but when you consider how many tourist attractions are near subway stations and then add to that the fact that so many different riders take transit to work every single day, I think that for practical purposes that statement is a truism.  And since I’m supposed to be blogging about things that are important for travel and tourism as well as important for Toronto, this seems like a pretty good idea.

Also, I’m trying to get myself back to a time when I was posting regularly (i.e. once or twice each day as opposed to lengths of silence and then a flurry of posts over 2-3 days) because not only did that help me keep the material fresh and on-going, I know anecdotally that it helped many of my readers as well.  I’ve found that series (such as my Hogtown Halloween series) are easy to do on a consistent basis and am hoping that Subway Sundays will get the posting on The Toronto Traveler back to where it was in 2007.

So sit back, relax and tune in next Sunday for the first non-intro post to Subway Sundays and prepare to learn far more information than you ever knew existed regarding Toronto’s transit system!

Post from: The Toronto Traveler

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC for short) is the government authority that controls and maintains the subway system in Toronto.  They are responsible for not only making sure that the current stations and trains remain in good authority, but they are also responsible for making additions whenever the funding they receive allows for it.  A full map of the subway system as it currently exists in Toronto can be found here and while understanding the system enough to be able to navigate to different places in the smallest amount of time takes some practice, there are a few things that you can start doing right now to get off on the right track.

1) If in doubt, ask: The TTC information helpline located at 416-393-INFO is your best friend.  You can use it to get the best directions for where you want to go directly from the horse’s mouth.

2) Most attractions will be close to a subway station: If you are in Toronto and are looking for a tourist attraction, chances are it is going to be very close to one of the subway stations.  This is because stations are built with tourism in mind and they have been for decades now, so the city knows pretty well where to put new stations.

3) Day passes might be worth it: The TTC has a day pass that they sell that allows you to take a family around for a full day.  This pass can end up saving you dozens of dollars if you are planning to have a busy day of activities with the whole family in tow.  The pass is sold on a daily basis at all of the subway stations, so make sure that you consider purchasing it if you forsee the potential use of multiple TTC fares during the day.

These are just three tips to whet your appetite and get you started; I’ll have more to say about using the TTC later on down the road.

Post from: The Toronto Traveler