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the PATH : : : : : : : The two women looked bewildered, and slightly frantic. They were in the desolate belowground world of Toronto's PATH system, somewhere in the bowels of the TD Centre, and they were lost. "Um, excuse me," one starts, looking toward me. It's Sunday afternoon, I'm on my way to work, and the only one in sight. "Do you know how to get to the underground parking?" Her friend is peering down hallways, looking for anything familiar. "Yeah," I say, pointing over my shoulder about 10 feet away. "The elevator is right there." "Oh," she giggles and scampers away with her laughing friend. "Thanks." If she had asked me in any other building, I would have been as lost as they were. But I walk this route all the time: from Union Station where the fast food outlets are open on weekends, through the Royal Bank tower, to the TD Centre, over to the building I work at, the Standard Life Centre. I can tell you where the parking garage is, but until I started working in downtown Toronto's financial district last fall, I was petrified of the PATH, the massive underground shopping complex that connects buildings through the downtown core. One night after a concert a few years ago, a friend and I were utterly lost in some ghost-like food court late on a Friday night. We freaked ourselves out, each distant noise playing into our over-active imaginings about being massacred in a spooky subterranean world far below the city streets. Desperate to find our way to the surface, we burst through a fire exit and breathed fresh air somewhere around City Hall as we listened for a squealing fire alarm that never came. Even now, beyond my set route and a few diversions over to the St. Andrew subway station and the nearest Tim Hortons, it's still so easy to get lost in the depths of the PATH. And that, apparently, is not just because I can't read a map. The winding trail of officially private yet overwhelmingly public space traces through 27 kilometres, which gives the PATH a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest underground shopping complex. Each section is owned and controlled by the building above it, one of the dozens of financial towers, theatres, hotels, shopping malls and public transit stations that link it together. According to Toronto's records, there are 1,200 shops down there, employing some 5,000 people. The first underground path in Toronto linked the Yonge Street T. Eaton Co. store to its other nearby shops in 1900. When Union Station opened in 1927, a path was constructed from it across the street to the Royal York. Now, there are 60 so-called decision points where the pedestrian doubtless a rather confused pedestrian at this point has to choose between going left, right, or straight ahead. Just to confuse you further, each letter and colour in the PATH stands for a direction: The red letter P is for south, the orange A is west, the blue T is north and the yellow H is east. For all its commercialized shelter from the frigid winters and smoggy summers, the PATH has taken a somewhat bumpy road into existence, through years of conflicted city councils and profit-driven downtown corporations. There have been plenty of collisions of interest in a space that is privately controlled, but exists to serve the convenience of thousands of members of the general public. One of the biggest problems has been signage. For years, buildings posted their own signs that guided pedestrians to services within their own buildings, but didn't give any clue how to get to the rest of the system. So the city took control of developing PATH-wide signage. Some city councilors wanted signs to be blatant, calling for street signs like the type seen high aboveground. But many owners of the PATH loudly objected, saying street signs might fool people into thinking the PATH was public space. Moreover, proprietors weren't eager to direct consumers out of their building and away from their shops and services. It seemed keeping people lost in the underground made good corporate sense. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city debated with businesses, hiring consultants and architects to help out, until the current system was installed. And even then, everything, right down to the usage of different typeface on each letter, was criticized. "The PATH logo is slow and fussy," wrote Christopher Hume in the Toronto Star in December 1991. Colour-coded arrows are positioned overhead, often out of the line of sight, and the maps themselves seem to be little more than rudimentary sketches of the downtown buildings. Also serving to add to the confusion is the design of the system itself. Since the pattern of the PATH doesn't reflect the grid of the streets above, buildings that are a mere block or two away from each other can take several twists and turns to get to underground. And if you happen to overlook one of those overhead arrow directions (and that's easy to do, especially during the busy rush hour when it's hard to stop and stare at a map in the midst of the hoards), you could be taken far, far away from your destination. But if you're not rushing to catch a train, walk a little slower next time and you might see the journey through the underground maze become an interesting lesson about the culture of the city. Stay away from the PATH on a Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. The crowd sweeping south to Union Station is like a rip tide, their determined gazes, hollow click of business heels and cellphone chatter say the same thing. Weekend. Let no one stand in the way. On cold winter nights, it doesn't take long to realize the handful of people down here don't really have anywhere else to go to. On hockey night in Toronto, it's easy to tell if the Leafs won their game. The groups of blue and white clad fans stream north from the Air Canada Centre, through Union Station and out into the underground city. With names like Sundin and Domi on their backs they are either giddy or moping, whooping and waving their flags or letting the souvenirs drag along behind them. The crowd after a Raptors game is a little more corporate, more well-dressed. You don't see as many hoops fans decked out in jerseys and toting flags as their hockey brethren. And late at night, rushing to catch the last subway, the eerie echo of disembodied voices rings through the empty hallways. It's hard to tell where they're coming from; they could be security guards on patrol, late night workers, or just about anybody. But at one in the morning, I'm certainly not eager to find out. Sometimes, I'm that nervous teenager after the concert, lost with my friend and looking for the nearest exit. On those nights, the PATH is just plain spooky. In the decade since the debates over signs,
the collision between public users of private space seems to have settled
into a stalemate. Many commuters may know their route by heart, but getting
around can still be a daunting task for the unfamiliar. Still, exploring
the PATH can be as interesting as exploring other unfamiliar neighbourhoods
in this city, if only for the fun of people-watching. But it should be done
just like one explores other neighbourhoods: with plenty of time and an
open mind. And give yourself a pat on the back when you manage to make it
back to where you started from on purpose. Emily Bowers is a Toronto-based writer who doesn't see much of the Sun |
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