[URBAN NOTE] "Transit historian writes the book on downtown transit relief"

[rfmcdonald]

Tess Kalinowski's Toronto Star article takes a look at a historian and an e-book which make the case for the Downtown Relief Line. Will it materialize in my lifetime? Hopefully ...

[I]nternational transportation consultant and Toronto transit historian Ed Levy, 79, has written a complete history of Toronto’s transit plans, including a century of the political follies and foibles that have seen the [Downtown Relief Line] rise and fall a dozen times.

Levy’s e-book is eminently clickable with historical transit maps and photos. But the feature likely to incite the interest of Toronto transit watchers is the post-script called, “Completing the Regional Connection.”

It makes the case for the DRL as the missing link connecting Toronto’s suburbs and the region with the downtown in a way that amalgamation has failed to do.
Photos View gallery

Although he couldn’t have predicted it when he started writing four years ago, the delicious timing of his book’s release this week is inescapable.

Finally, Levy says, the DRL is about to be built.

“We’re near a turning point. We’ve got a very fine subway system for a city of 1.5 million. Trouble is there’s four times that many people,” he said.'