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Toronto’s streetcars form part of our fabric. They lend glamour to our flat, modern, grid-based city. Naming Toronto No. 1 on its list of Top 10 trolley rides, National Geographic magazine writes, “Route 501 boasts one of the longest streetcar routes in North America. Starting on Lakeshore Boulevard, it whisks through lively downtown Toronto and into the Beach district.”

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Okay. But the 501 doesn’t whisk. Like other streetcars, it crawls, it bunches. Our poor streetcars provide terrible service.

On Monday I described the squalor of my morning commute on the 501 Queen streetcar. I was engulfed by mail, from streetcar riders and operators, more than I have ever received for a story. Many share Terence Corcoran’s view — scrap the streetcars.

“Streetcars are fine for Judy Garland in ‘Ding, ding ding went the trolley,’ ” writes Robert S. Orr, a professor of physics at the University of Toronto. “They have no place in 21st-century Toronto. Get rid of them.”