Black car service on the Harbourfront and Queens Quay

The waterfront from the driver's seat

The Harbourfront is Toronto's front porch: the ferry to the islands, the Harbourfront Centre's concerts and festivals, the Music Garden, the sailing clubs and the Power Plant gallery, the Redpath sugar boats, the cruise terminal to the east and the airport to the west, and — since the towers went up — one of the densest residential districts in the country along Queens Quay, in CityPlace and in the South Core between the tracks and the water. For a black car it is a district with one street and two problems: Queens Quay's streetcar right-of-way, which took half the road, and the Gardiner and Lake Shore above and behind it, whose closures decide whether the Financial District is ten minutes away or forty. This page is the waterfront's working knowledge: the geography, the hotels and towers, the ferry docks, Billy Bishop next door, the routes out, the festival season and a summer weekend worked through.

Geography: one street, three levels

At ground level, Queens Quay runs east-west along the water from Parliament Street to Bathurst, rebuilt in the 2010s with a streetcar right-of-way and cycle track on its south side that reduced the roadway to one lane each way west of Bay; stopping on Queens Quay is possible in the lay-bys at the hotels and the towers, and impossible at the streetcar stops and the ferry terminal frontage. A block north, Lake Shore Boulevard runs under the Gardiner as a six-lane arterial with no stopping. Above it, the Gardiner Expressway carries the through traffic with ramps at Jarvis, York-Bay-Yonge, Spadina and Bathurst-Lake Shore. The north-south streets — Jarvis, Yonge, Bay, York, Simcoe, Rees, Spadina, Bathurst — connect the levels and are where most waterfront pickups actually happen: a car on Bay Street north of Queens Quay is a minute from the ferry terminal and can leave in any direction; a car on Queens Quay is committed to the lake.

Hotels and towers

• Westin Harbour Castle (1 Harbour Square): the porte-cochère is off Harbour Square, reached from Queens Quay at Bay; a proper lay-by and the easiest hotel pickup on the water. Conference traffic makes it busy mid-morning.
• Radisson Blu Toronto Downtown (249 Queens Quay West): the Queens Quay lay-by at Rees Street.
• Hotel X (111 Princes' Boulevard, Exhibition Place): covered in the Liberty Village guide.
• Delta Toronto and the South Core hotels: Lower Simcoe and Bremner, easy.
• The residential towers — Harbour Square, the Queens Quay condominiums west of Spadina, the CityPlace towers on Fort York Boulevard and Bremner, the South Core buildings on York and Lower Simcoe — each have a lay-by or porte-cochère; the notes field takes the tower and the concierge knows the plate. CityPlace's Fort York Boulevard is the easiest residential pickup downtown.

The luxury hotels guide covers the city's hotels as a set; the waterfront's are the conference and family properties rather than the luxury ones, which are in Yorkville and the Financial District.

The ferry docks

The Jack Layton Ferry Terminal at the foot of Bay Street is the departure point for Centre Island, Ward's Island and Hanlan's Point, and on a summer weekend it handles tens of thousands of passengers through a plaza that is closed to cars. The drop-off is on Bay Street north of Queens Quay or on Queens Quay east of Bay in the lay-by; the pickup after a day on the islands is the same, with a chauffeur who watches the ferry schedule and is on Bay Street when the boat docks. Ferries run every fifteen to thirty minutes in summer and hourly in winter; the last boat back from Centre Island is the one to plan around. The Toronto Islands guide has the schedule and the drop-off map; a family day on the islands with an SUV waiting at the end of it is one of the summer's best bookings.

Billy Bishop, next door

The island airport's mainland terminal is at the western end of Queens Quay, at Eireann Quay by Bathurst, and the Billy Bishop page covers the tunnel, the ferry and the pickup. From anywhere on the waterfront it is five to ten minutes; from a Queens Quay tower a passenger can be at the Porter gate twenty-five minutes after leaving the lobby. This is the district's airport for Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Newark and Chicago, and the waterfront's residents use it as such.

To Pearson

Pearson from the waterfront is the Gardiner west from the Spadina or Bay ramps to the 427: 25 to 35 minutes off-peak, 50 to 70 at the peaks — the same numbers as the Financial District, from which the waterfront is one block. When the Gardiner is closed, Lake Shore Boulevard west to the 427 is the fallback and adds twenty minutes on a good day and forty on a bad one; the Gardiner closures guide lists the weekends and the Pearson page has the timing tables. For a single traveller with one bag, the UP Express from Union Station — a ten-minute walk or a five-minute car from anywhere on the central waterfront — is the honest alternative; see the comparison.

Festival season: when the waterfront closes

From May to September the waterfront hosts something every weekend: Harbourfront Centre's festivals on the Queens Quay lawns, the Redpath Waterfront Festival, Canada Day at the water, the Toronto Waterfront Marathon's route along Lake Shore in October, the CNE's eighteen days at the western end, the Honda Indy's closure of Lake Shore in July and the Caribbean Carnival's grand parade along Lake Shore west of Exhibition Place on the August long weekend Saturday. Each closes Queens Quay, Lake Shore or both in some section, and each is on dispatch's calendar so the chauffeur names a pickup outside the closure with a walking route. The events calendar has the year; the Carnival guide, the Indy guide and the marathon guide have the three that matter most to the waterfront.

Concerts, Ontario Place and the western waterfront

Budweiser Stage at Ontario Place is the summer concert venue, two kilometres west of Bathurst along Lake Shore, and its post-show exit onto Lake Shore's service roads is one of the city's slowest; the concerts guide explains the pickup at the Exhibition Place lots and the encore-watching that puts the car in position before the crowd moves. Ontario Place's redevelopment and the new science centre, the Trillium Park trails and the Martin Goodman Trail make the western waterfront a destination in itself; the Liberty Village and Exhibition Place guide covers the grounds.

The cruise terminal

The Port of Toronto's cruise terminal is at the eastern end of the waterfront, at the foot of Cherry Street in the Port Lands, and Great Lakes cruise passengers arriving at Pearson are delivered to it in thirty minutes with a fixed fare; disembarkation mornings run the reverse to Pearson or to a downtown hotel. The terminal's procedure, the timing and the luggage are covered in the cruise transfer guide. Sugar Beach, the East Bayfront's towers and the Distillery are the eastern waterfront's neighbours; see the Distillery and St. Lawrence guide.

Who books on the waterfront

Residents of the towers (the Pearson run, Billy Bishop, the school run to the downtown private schools, Saturday in Niagara), the Westin's conference delegates (Pearson transfers with meet and greet, hourly days, the group Sprinter to a dinner), families on an island day, festival-goers, concert crowds, cruise passengers and — because the waterfront is ten minutes from everything — anyone downtown who books a car to a Queens Quay restaurant on a summer evening. The visitor guide puts the waterfront in the first afternoon.

A summer Saturday on the water, in cars

9:00 — an SUV collects a family of five from a Leaside home; 9:30 drop on Bay Street north of Queens Quay for the 9:45 ferry to Centre Island; the chauffeur is released. 4:30 p.m. — the same chauffeur is on Bay Street when the 4:15 ferry docks, loads the stroller and the cooler and takes the family home by 5:15. 6:30 — a premium sedan collects a couple from a Yorkville hotel for dinner at a Queens Quay restaurant, drops at the Rees Street lay-by, waits in the Harbourfront garage; 8:45 a text, 8:50 the car is at the door, a slow drive along Queens Quay for the sunset and back to Yorkville by 9:30. Two bookings, one fixed fare and one hourly, on a day the Gardiner was open.

Weather on the lake

The waterfront's weather is the lake's: fog that closes Billy Bishop while Bay Street is in sun, a wind off the water that makes the Queens Quay lay-bys miserable in January, and the lake-effect snow that lands on Lake Shore before it reaches Bloor. Chauffeurs working the waterfront in winter keep the car in the towers' porte-cochères and the hotels' covered entrances rather than on the Quay, and in summer they keep the cabin cool for the walk from the ferry. The winter driving guide covers the buffers.

Waterfront to everywhere

Booking a car on the waterfront

The engine prices any waterfront address; put the tower or hotel and its entrance in the notes. For island days choose "point-to-point" for the drop and book the pickup separately with the ferry time, or an hourly block if the plan is loose; for festivals and concerts, the chauffeur names the pickup outside the closure.

Conferences at the Westin and the waterfront's business

The Westin Harbour Castle's conference centre hosts several thousand delegates a week in season, and their transport is a pattern we run constantly: arrivals from Pearson with meet and greet spread over an afternoon, an evening shuttle to a dinner venue in Sprinters, a morning departure wave to Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 assigned by flight. The hotel's porte-cochère handles a Sprinter without difficulty; the loading is staged with the conference organiser so the group boards in one movement; and the conference transport article's method applies here as it does at the convention centre ten minutes west. Corporate offsites at the Harbourfront Centre's venues and client dinners at the waterfront restaurants are booked the same way on account.

Sailing, the Music Garden and the quiet waterfront

Outside the festival weekends the central waterfront is one of the calmest places downtown, and a slow evening booking that begins with a drink at a Queens Quay patio, continues with a walk through the Toronto Music Garden and ends with dinner at a Harbourfront restaurant is a favourite with our regulars and with visitors on the first 48 hours itinerary. The sailing clubs along the western waterfront — the Royal Canadian Yacht Club's mainland station, the National Yacht Club, the Alexandra — have members who book cars to their docks in summer; the RCYC's island clubhouse is reached by its own launch from the foot of Parliament Street, a pickup our chauffeurs know.

Getting the timing right on the water

Two rules for waterfront bookings. First, the ferry: the last boat back from Centre Island in summer leaves before the sun does, and a pickup timed to it means being on Bay Street ten minutes before it docks, not after; the chauffeur watches the schedule. Second, the Gardiner: on the maintenance weekends the expressway closes between the Humber and the DVP and every waterfront trip to Pearson becomes a Lake Shore trip; dispatch has the dates and the confirmation carries the adjusted pickup time. The closures guide lists the weekends.

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