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Venerable Bingham Loop

Text by James Bow.

Bingham Loop came into being on December 2, 1922, soon after the TTC extended its authority over Kingston Road between Queen Street and Victoria Park. Up to that time, the area was served by the Scarborough Radial Line to West Hill, but residents welcomed the new, more comfortable and more frequent city service. Bingham Loop stretched between Victoria Park and Bingham Avenue (the residential street for which this loop is named) and originally featured a storage siding, and loop-the-loop capabilities.

Six years later, on the 18th of November, 1928, the TTC extended the Kingston Road line east to Birchmount Loop. Bingham Loop continued to see frequent service, however, as the TTC turned back every second Queen car here, doubling the frequencies along Kingston Road west of Victoria Park Avenue. Bingham Loop's loop-the-loop capability remained, as did its storage siding, but it was impossible to enter this loop from the east, so no Birchmount to Bingham short-turns were possible.

On July 1st, 1954, a rebuilt Bingham Loop opened. With a new fare structure, the TTC replaced the Victoria Park-to-Birchmount section of the Kingston Road line with buses, and converted Bingham Loop to a suburban terminal. The north siding track disappeared to make way for a shelter and a bus lane, and this is how Bingham Loop has remained, more or less, to this day.

Update: In the summer of 2013, the TTC replaced the tracks on Kingston Road from Queen to Victoria Park, including the tangent tracks around Bingham loop. The tailtrack extending along Kingston Road east of Victoria Park (a remnant of streetcar service to Birchmount) was removed, and the loop-the-loop track from Bingham onto Kingston Road was eliminated.


Bingham Loop Image Archive


References

  • Bromley, John F., 'Toronto Streetcar & Radial Loop History', Transfer Points, March 1999, p4-10, Toronto Transportation Society, Toronto (Ontario).
  • Stamp, Robert M., Riding the Radials: Toronto's Suburban Electric Streetcar Lines, The Boston Mills Press, Erin (Ontario), 1989.
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