Parliament streetcar line

A BLOOR PARLIAMENT car at the loop at Bloor and Parliament, September 8, 1965.

The loop at Bloor and Parliament, shortly after construction.

Various organizations operated streetcars on Parliament street, in Toronto, Ontario. The Toronto Transit Commission discontinued scheduled service, on Parliament, in 1966, when it opened the Bloor-Danforth subway.

The first streetcar whose route ran on a portion of Parliament, was the Winchester route. It began operation in 1881, using horse-drawn vehicles. The portion of the route west of Parliament changed, several times, but the route turned onto Parliament at Gerrard, and ran north to Winchester Street, Toronto, where it ran east to Sumach. The Winchester route was electrified in 1894.

When the TTC (originally named the Toronto Transportation Commission, later renamed the Toronto Transit Commission), a City of Toronto agency, took over responsibility for all the privately owned streetcar lines in Toronto, it extended streetcar tracks north on Parliament, to a loop on Bloor, enabling a transfer to the Bloor streetcar line. In 1923, when that extension was finished the route was renamed Parliament, and the track on Winchester, from Parliament to Sumach, was abandoned.

From 1924 to 1947 Parliament streetcars ran from the loop at Bloor south to Queen. They reversed by looping up Church Street for a block, east on Adelaide, for a block, and then south on Victoria, back to Queen.

In 1947 the TTC built a new loop on the southwest corner of King and Parliament. The loop's main purpose was to allow some King cars to short-turn, but the Parliament streetcar started to use this loop as its southern terminus.

During the 1960s the TTC was slowly replacing streetcar routes with bus routes. When the TTC replaced most of the Bloor streetcar line with the Bloor-Danforth subway, it also replaced several north-south streetcar routes with buses. The Parliament route was one of those.

However streetcar tracks remain in use from Carlton, to King. The 506 Carlton streetcar route uses the block of Parliament between Carlton and Gerrard. Streetcars use the remaining track when they are shifted from one route to another, or when a traffic accident or routine maintenance requires a temporary diversion.