Today, the Toronto Star’s “Fixer” column features a corner of Royal York road where people waiting at a TTC bus stop have been sheltering in the porches of adjacent newly-built townhouses.
The painful part of this article is the proposed solution — moving the bus stop. No one seems to have thought of actually building a shelter on the lawn beside the bus stop. Of course, the owners of the townhouse would probably complain that it took up what little lawn they have. But the fact is, that lawn is almost certainly part of the city’s Right-of-Way. It is probably PUBLIC land. The townhouse developer, in all likelihood, built the porches of the townhouse nearly to the property line. If this is public land, it should be free to be put to a public use — such as building a transit shelter.
This problem reflects a serious problem with public space in Toronto — much of it, the edges of road rights-of-way, has been appropriated by the adjacent property owners. It’s fine if the land is not needed, but the problem is the owners fiercely resist giving it back even if there is a public need for it (building sidewalks missing on local suburban streets would be the most common example).
Of course, it would have been easier if a shelter had been provided before the development began, so that everyone knew where they stood. It goes to show how public space issues need to be considered in the initial stages of even small developments.
