All these controversies over public transit is a good thing in that it gives me plenty of opportunities to write about some not so dissimilar transportation debates from Toronto’s past.

Today’s controversies involve things such as where we are going to build the next subway line or should we build instead of a full fledged heavy rail subway should we be looking at a light rail line instead? Or why are construction costs always so far over budget and how do projected timetables become so off the mark? And why wasn’t the UP Express between Union Station and Pearson built as an electric line and will Metrolinx continue the Scarborough stretch of the Eglinton light rail line at grade or in a tunnel (calling Mr. Tunnel, Elton McDonald). Or just who is doing what and where and to who (or is it to whom)…the questions go on and on.

These debates seem interminable in spite of the fact that the hundreds of thousands of haggard transit users, who continually fork over millions and millions in tax dollars and ever-increasing fares haven’t had a new stretch of subway to ride for more than a dozen years (the 5.5-km. Line 3 Sheppard opened Nov. 22, 2002) and even then many say the Sheppard was built in the wrong place.

With that off my chest, sit back and read this week’s transit story from Toronto’s distant past.

This story deals with the nation’s first electrified inter-community commuter rail service one that in its heyday connected the City of Toronto with several suburban communities (we describe them as suburban today although back in the “olden days” they were in fact out in the country) and ultimately with the vacation communities along the south shore of Lake Simcoe.

Beginning its existence nearly a century-and-a-half ago as the Metropolitan Street Railway Company the enterprise went into business in 1884 providing horse-drawn streetcar service from a terminal on Yonge St., not far from today’s beautifully restored LCBO store in the old CPR North Toronto station, north to the community of Eglinton.

With this route up and running the company quickly recognized the potential for more business, both passenger and freight, by servicing communities further to the north such as the one that had grown in and around the Hogg Brothers “residential subdivision” in the hollow where the Don River crossed Yonge (York Mills Rd. and Wilson Ave.), Lansing (Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave.), Finch’s Corners, Newton Brook, Steele’s Corners, Thornhill and Richmond Hill.

It was just three years after the Metropolitan reached this latter location in 1897 that the line made the technology history books when it was electrified, making it Canada’s first electric commuter line.

Over the following years increasing numbers of passengers plus freight of all types were being carried and connections were eventually made with Aurora and in 1899 Newmarket. In 1904 this line was renamed the Toronto and York Radial Railway, Metropolitan Division. The term “radial” described the fact that this line and the company’s two other routes that operated east and west of the city, radiated out from the city.

Further extensions were made to Jackson’s Point (1906) and three years later to the T&Y’s northernmost terminal at Sutton. But changes were in the air (or on the ground). It was soon agreed by all that automobiles, transport trucks and buses could do the job more efficiently and cheaper and the line passed into history exactly 85 years ago today.

But wait, not all had agreed to the abandonment of the radial service. Just four months later municipal officials representing the Townships of North York, Vaughan and Markham and the Town of Richmond Hill arranged to have the line reinstated, but only from the TTC’s Glen Echo loop to Richmond Hill. But the car and a serious electricity shortage saw even that rebirth terminated on October 6, 1948. It took another thirty years for the GO trains to rumble into Richmond Hill, not electric but diesels.

“Mike Filey’s Toronto” is heard on radio am740 every Saturday at 12:30 noon. The show is repeated Sunday, same time, same station.