St. Clair Avenue

St. Clair Avenue is a major east-west street in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was laid out in the late 18th century by the British as a concession road (the Third Concession), 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of Bloor Street and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) north of Queen Street.

St. Clair Avenue has two sections. The western section extends from Moore Park in the east to Scarlett Road in the west, a distance of approximately 10 kilometres (6.2 mi). An eastern section picks up on the far side of the Don Valley at Taylor Creek Park, extending for 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) to Kingston Road. Like all streets in Toronto which cross Yonge Street, St. Clair is divided into separate East and West sections, each with its own street numbers beginning at Yonge Street. Unlike other concession roads in Toronto, St. Clair does not extend west into Etobicoke.

St. Clair Avenue West has heavy automotive and public transit traffic. Over half the commuters in rush hour traffic travel by streetcar. The 512 St. Clair streetcar line connects with St. Clair and St. Clair West subway stations on Line 1 Yonge–University.

512 St. Clair

The 512 St. Clair streetcar is an east-west streetcar route in Toronto, Canada, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission.

History

The streetcar route along St. Clair Avenue was created by the Toronto Civic Railways in 1911 in a successful attempt to promote development in a newly annexed section of the city. Originally, the route ran in a dedicated right of way. The route was transferred to the Toronto Transportation Commission upon its creation in 1921, which removed the dedicated right of way in 1928. It is the northernmost streetcar route still in operation, and was the first to make an underground connection with the subway's St. Clair West Station. It also once ran past St. Clair Station up Mount Pleasant to Eglinton Avenue, but this portion was later made a separate Mount Pleasant route that was subsequently converted to bus operation in the 1970s.

When first built, the St. Clair streetcar operated in a dedicated right-of-way, similar to the modern 510 Spadina route. A dedicated right-of-way is a lane generally in the centre of the street, reserved for transit vehicles. However, it was removed between 1928 and 1935 and replaced with paved trackage open to mixed traffic. The TTC later came to regret this decision, and in 2005 it began rebuilding a dedicated streetcar right-of-way.

Saint Clair

Saint Clair (also spelled St. Clair, St Clair or even Sinclair, and is sometimes also pronounced that way) may refer to:

Saints

Clair is the French form of the masculine Latin name Clarus, meaning "clear" or "bright".

Places

In Australia

In Canada

In France

Lake Cities (Amtrak train)

The Lake Cities was a daily passenger train operated by Amtrak between Chicago, Illinois and Toledo, Ohio via Detroit, Michigan. It was formerly known as the St. Clair, a Chicago–Detroit train which operated in tandem with the Wolverine. The extension to Toledo gave travelers in Michigan the opportunity to connect with eastbound trains such as the Lake Shore Limited without backtracking to Chicago.

The Lake Cities made its first run on August 3, 1980, using the same Turboliner equipment as its predecessor. Amtrak re-routed the Lake Cities to Pontiac, Michigan in 1995, mirroring the route of the Wolverine and the Twilight Limited. The Detroit–Toledo segment was replaced by Thruway Motorcoach service. Amtrak proposed to restore the Lake Cities to Toledo as part of its network growth strategy in the late 1990s but ultimately cancelled the project.As of 2013 it is still not possible to travel by train to or from Michigan without passing through Chicago's Union Station. On April 26, 2004 Amtrak dropped the individual names for the Chicago–Detroit–Pontiac trains, naming them all the "Wolverine."