509 Harbourfront

509 Harbourfront
A CLRV and PCC 4500 streetcar at Exhibition Loop
Overview
Type	Streetcar Route
Locale	Toronto, Ontario
Termini	Union Station (East) Exhibition Loop (West)
Stations	Union Queens Quay Exhibition Loop
Daily ridership	11,572 (2014)
Operation
Operator(s)	Toronto Transit Commission
Depot(s)	Leslie Barns, Russell
Rolling stock	CLRV, Flexity Outlook
Technical
Line length	4.65 km (2.89 mi)
Track gauge	4 ft 10 7⁄8 in (1,495 mm) - TTC Gauge
Electrification	600 VDC Overhead
Route number	509
Route map GO Transit & VIA Rail Yonge–University–Spadina line Union Station  510  Queens Quay Station  510   6  Bay Street Queen's Quay Harbourfront Centre Rees Street Lower Spadina Avenue  510  510 to Spadina Station Dan Leckie Way Queen's Quay Bathurst Street Bathurst & Queen's Quay Bathurst & Fleet  511  Bathurst Street Fleet Street Bastion Road(Lake Shore Boulevard) Fleet Loop Fort York Boulevard Strachan Avenue Fleet Street Private Right-of-Way Exhibition Loop  511   521   29  This diagram:

509 Harbourfront is a streetcar route in Toronto,Ontario, Canada, operated by the Toronto Transit Commission.

The Harbourfront LRT began service in 1990 as the 604 Harbourfront. It was the first new Toronto streetcar route in many years, and the first to employ a dedicated tunnel, approximately 600 metres long. This starts with an underground loop at Union Station, runs south along Bay Street to the underground Queens Quay station, then turns west and emerges onto Queens Quay. The line's original terminus was Queens Quay and Spadina Loop, at the foot of Spadina Avenue; beyond this point non-revenue trackage ran north on Spadina to King, as otherwise the new line would have been disconnected from the rest of the network.

Numbers in the 600-series were used at that time within the TTC for rapid transit routes (i.e., subways and the Scarborough RT) rather than low numbers as is the case today, and the Harbourfront LRT was given a number in this series to indicate that it was different from other streetcar routes; it was also shown like a subway line on the TTC map. Since the route is not grade-separated, this was later felt to be misleading and it was treated like other streetcar lines, taking the number 510.

In 1997, the completion of a dedicated right-of-way on Spadina Avenue resulted in the Harbourfront route being relaunched as the 510 Spadina. The "Harbourfront" route name disappeared until 2000, when the Queens Quay streetcar tracks were extended west to Bathurst and Fleet Streets. The Harbourfront was then reinstated with the new number 509, and extended to Exhibition Loop at Exhibition Place, sharing its route with the 510 from Union to Spadina and with the 511 Bathurst from Bathurst onwards. The Fleet Street portion of Route 509 has since been converted to a parallel private right-of-way, so that the entire route operates entirely separate from road traffic.