The Star‘s “Fixer” had an interesting story recently about curb cuts along St. George St. in the University of Toronto campus. During the current resurfacing of the road, the City eliminated curb cuts outside designated crossings — and then put them back in. It’s a reflection of the City’s ambiguous attitude towards pedestrians crossing mid-block.
In the 1990s, this part of St. George was completely rebuilt in a pedestrian-friendly manner that encouraged students to cross the street at a variety of locations, not just at designated crossings. It was part of a fairly successful strategy of “psychological traffic calming” whereby cars slow down when they realize that they are sharing the street space with others. When the city first resurfaced the street this year, it removed the curb cuts that had been introduced as part of this plan, because its policy is to discourage mid-block crossings (although they’re legal); then, once they realized that the extra curb cuts were in fact part of a deliberate plan, they had to re-introduce them.
It’s a good example of how the city government needs to change its attitudes towards making streets, from a unthinkingly formal approach that is oriented towards moving traffic, to a flexible approach that treats a street as a complex system that can take a variety of treatments and knits together the surrounding urban fabric. More on this later.
17 comments
I was a U of T student during the time they redid the road and my view is that the extra curb cuts were only a partial success. I remember being reminded, through newspaper articles and the like, that the curb cuts were not “legitimate” pedestrian crossings and that cars were under no obligation to stop. This quickly caused the pseudo-crossings to degenerate into a game of chicken between students and cars. A couple of near misses eventually led to the installation of the pedestrian crossing signal between Galbraith and Bahen near the intersection of College and St. George.
Maybe part of the problem with St. George is that there’s no physical incentive, like the cobblestones on the repaved part of King’s College Circle, for cars to slow down.
we tried to pedestrianize st. george for car free day, which failed unfortunately.
however, the new resurfacing blends in seamlessly with the sidewalk from up to harbord, which makes the entire street seem like a sidewalk. i like.
Sorry, but I’ve driven down this Spacer-favourite and distinctly overrated street on innumerable occasions, and students grinning nervously as they dart inches in front of the car are unnerving and unsafe. This is the wrong populace to induce to cross the street any which way. Sure, streets aren’t just for cars. Sure. But streets need to be safe, and this street isn’t.
Oh, and by the way, why aren’t you talking about the elimination of wheelchair access that removing the curb cuts causes? Accessibility is one of the many Spacer blind spots, as it were.
I hope that they happened to resurface the bike lanes as well as the car lanes, because despite it being a university campus those lanes were poorly maintained and a horror to ride down.
I’ve always found St. George perfectly safe, although of course, I NEVER dart “inches” in front of a car.
Frankly, I think they should just seal it off and permanently designate it a pedestrian-only area.
St. George has some real problem with the bikes lanes these days (as does Beverley). There are problems from Grange up to Bloor.
I understand that there will be construction, but they didn’t repaint the lines or resurface the road well. This is really quite unacceptable on what is a main north south bike route.
Joe,
Maybe you should stop driving down St. George. It sounds like you have trouble sharing the road with other people.
Since the primary purpose of curb cuts is accessibility, I assumed I didn’t have to spell it out. But yes, that is the point of the curb cuts (see the Star article I link to).
I agree with the comments that the St. George experiment is not entirely successful — some car drivers don’t register that they are meant to drive more carefully, and in the end pedestrians mostly cross at designated intersections and crosswalks. But it’s a welcome start towards a new approach to street-making.
Confidential to Jonathan:
I ride my bike year-round and have done so continuously for 13 years. I am often in a car that drives up or down St. George. This gives me the right to criticize. I want the street to be safe, and I don’t want students or anyone else sacrificed to some Spacer delusion that inducing people to cross the street anywhere at all is a true solution to traffic gridlock, which in any event never existed on St. George in the first place.
But, you know, thanks for sharing. See you on the Beach trail in February.
Well this spacer holds the delusion and hope that some day St. George will have nobody, including Mr. Clark, driving down it.
I don’t drive.
If Spacers were truly concerned about traffic calming and pedestrian safety, they’d quit worrying about pampered local fave St. George St. and look at, say, Eastern Ave., a traffic sewer known to be dangerous and frightening. (Oddly, city surveys do not show that average traffic is speeding, but that is not the lived experience.) I’m sure Spacers will recall why the intersection of Leslie and Eastern is infamous.
Were Spacers actually concerned with attractive redesign of neglected streets, they would focus not on St. George, which was never neglected, but on streets like Lansdowne or Coxwell.
Were Spacers genuinely committed to making streets amenable to easy crossing, they’d look at Church St. between Wellesley St. and College St., where another traffic light was added at Alexander St. to make “dartingâ€Â across the street actually safe. But on St. George, Spacers implicitly back the usage of misleading and dangerous cobblestoned “crosswalks.â€Â
A posting like this underscores the limited spectrum of topics that Spacers are willing to discuss.
Joe,
Have you ever thought that if you didn’t ridicule and demean people that maybe your ideas would be better received?
Congrats, Spacing. Welcome the poison that is Joe Clark!
Actually, there is at least one “Spacer” in this discussion — me — who is intimately familiar with the troublesome intersection of Leslie and Eastern, since I’ve lived exactly one block from there, all my life.
But I also study at U of T, through which St. George St. runs. Unlike some though, I do care about both.
I state explicitly at the end of my post that the city needs to change the way it approaches streets *in general* in Toronto. This includes, obviously, each of the streets enumerated by Joe Clark in his third comment, which seem to be ones of which he has personal experience. It also includes those experienced by everyone else in Toronto.
There’s nothing unsafe about the design on St. George. I spent nearly ten years on that campus. People always crossed mid street. And given the foot traffic (which is extraordinary at certain times of the day and quite high most of the time) the redesign was a good thing. Plus it’s attractive. Considering the number of people that use that area in a given weekday and that at least three residences (not to mention the frat houses) are located on that street – it’s a good thing.
It’s not unsafe. It was never unsafe to cross midstreet on St. George. It’s not a major street by any means. And people always darted out anyway. But the redesign I think made drivers more cautious and less angry. They seem to expect it now and I noticed the began to slow at the faux crosswalks.
I hate that people are always worried about that crossing will be dangerous. I’ve never heard of anyone getting hit on St. George between Bloor and College. Traffic was always slow due to the parking on both sides and nature of the area.
“The poison that is Joe Clarkâ€Â is merely someone who disagrees with Spacer orthodoxy. St. George never needed fixing; other streets still do. Work on those.