Reclaiming the Rails: Reimagining Urban Mobility through Toronto's Midtown Freight Corridor

Abstract

Canadian Pacific's Midtown freight corridor runs east west through some of Toronto's densest and fastest growing neighbourhoods without stopping once. This thesis proposes its adaptive reuse as a Regional Express Rail passenger line, running from Kipling to McCowan across eleven stations. At a time when Toronto struggles to keep pace with its demand for transit and mobility needs are shifting, reconsidering how the city builds transit is urgent. The city's rail corridors are some of its most overlooked and underutilized assets. This thesis seeks to understand how to leverage this existing infrastructure to serve a growing and more distributed city. The thesis acknowledges the tensions of reusing infrastructure originally intended for a different purpose. It argues that the conversion of the corridor is only as successful as its stations, as they are what connects this adapted infrastructure to the broader urban fabric. It proposes a spatial solution across eleven schematic urban proposals that each respond to the conditions of its context through existing and planned transit connections, surrounding urban fabric, topography, and development potential. Station placement and integration are crucial in determining whether the corridor is feasible for adaptation. This thesis looks ahead to the future city, prioritizing how we can most effectively use infrastructure to serve the 21st century city and beyond.