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Anybody who relies on the Scarborough RT — also known as TTC’s Line 3 — knows all too well that winter is the system’s biggest weakness.

Snowfalls warnings are almost always followed by service notices advising that the line is out of service.

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How exactly did the odd little train that seemingly sprouts out of the eastern end of the Bloor-Danforth subway come to be? And why does anything more than a moderate snowfall bring it to its knees?

A space-age stop-gap

As Toronto grew throughout the 1960s, urban sprawl prompted the creation of an ambitious region-wide transportation strategy — one that promised to forever change the city’s transportation landscape.

While this plan would eventually result in the formation of GO Transit, it also gave birth to the Urban Transportation Development Corp. (UTDC) — a provincially-owned firm dedicated to developing cutting edge urban transportation solutions for Toronto and the world.