A massive new residential development is taking shape in the railway lands on the west side of Spadina, just north of Lake Shore Boulevard and the Gardiner. You might imagine that some of these thousands of new residents will want to step out and make the short walk along the western side of Spadina to the waterfront, where they will find the charming Music Garden and other pleasant harbour sights. If they do, they will find themselves in something like a lobster trap — easy to walk into, but no way out.
The first challenge on their route is the on-ramp to the Gardiner from southbound Spadina. Two lanes of cars whip quickly and dangerously around onto the expressway on-ramp. You can see the waiting pedestrians are not going to try to cross into this traffic flow.
However, there are curb cuts, even paved with pretty bricks, which clearly indicate that pedestrians are expected and allowed to cross southwards here. (Note also that there’s no way a pedestrian could cross safely to the east side here – there are three lanes of rapid traffic each way, plus the streetcar lines). Fortunately, because of the new lights farther to the north on the new Bremner Boulevard, there are occasional interruptions in traffic that allow pedestrians to cross to the south.
Once they get there, they can then proceed southwards under the Gardiner to the Gardiner off-ramp onto Spadina and the eastbound branch of Lake Shore. And here, they are suddenly trapped. They’re not allowed to cross southwards — a big sign says “Pedestrians Cross at East Side”.
But there is no way a pedestrian could cross safely to the east side at this point — there are always multiple lanes traffic, either turning from the off-ramp north on Spadina, or heading north and south on Spadina.
So, the west sidewalk on Spadina and the on-ramp crossing has simply allowed pedestrians to get to an isolated island under the Gardiner whose only allowed exit is to turn around and go back. In fact, having come this far, in order to safely cross to the east side, a pedestrian would have to walk all the way back the way they came, back across the on-ramp and uphill to Bremner Boulevard.
Fortunately, there is a convenient and reasonably safe — although illegal — solution. The off-ramp from the Gardiner and eastbound Lake Shore share a traffic light at this point, with a nice long signal. Pedestrians can simply wait for the traffic light and cross in front of the stopped cars.
Which leads me to wonder, why is there a sign telling pedestrians not to cross here? Why not simply set up a pedestrian crossing signal? Thanks to the traffic light, it’s probably actually safer than crossing the on-ramp just to the north, where, as noted above, the city has put curb cuts for pedestrians to indicate crossing is allowed.
It’s an example of how the city does not think of pedestrian traffic flows with the same amount of attention it gives to vehicle traffic flows (you can imagine there would never be a road system that led drivers on into this kind of dead end without warning).
11 comments
It’s fun trying to get a bike through here too.
But imagine if we thought of providing better transit for those car drivers – many of whom perhaps are going west? The WWLRT isn’t the answer either – it’s too much of a milk run in the core, and to get to Etobicoke, do we need to bypass Parkdale?
Who’d have the efFrontery to suggest better transit?
Another fix may well be to get a longer ped/bike bridge soaring over the east-west cartillery but under the Gardiner. Yes, it’d cost money. Maybe we could sell off some land – hmm, how much are those exitramps worth…?
I’ll bet that sign is there from when there was nothing on the west side of Spadina north of the Gardiner, not even sidewalks. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago. The same was true if you were coming down the west side of Spadina south from Front. You got to the cut-out for Bremner and that was as far as you could go. I don’t think it’s the usual anti-pedestrian conspiracy at work here. Nobody has come back to re-evaluate this situation now that the west side of Spadina since it has been developed. You know the nice people from the City have been busy working on the Yonge-Dundas intersection and other things. It would be nice if they stayed on top of every sign like those of us who can walk around and check out every sign and point out when it’s obsolete as things change. Cut them a break here. Send a note to the City, call the Fixer, whatever. I’m sure it will be changed once they’re aware of it. The west side of Spadina has been a no-pedestrian zone for a long time. We know how long the lead time is for these things to get caught up.
Thanks for posting–I’ve been caught in this Bermuda triangle before. Who designs this stuff?
This situation puts the lie to Kyle Rae’s claim reported from Yonge & Dundas yesterday that the city’s priorities are Pedestrians, Transit, Bikes and Cars in that order.
This who area has been a mess for delays to transit thanks to signals who purpose is to avoid backlogs of traffic on the Gardiner ramps while pedestrians and transit riders sit and wait and wait and wait for their turn to cross.
I really don’t care if we create gridlock on the Gardiner — there is only so much green time for everyone, and more of it has to be given to non-car users. Service quality (in the engineering sense) is artificially maintained at as high a level as possible for motorists.
A similar situation: a couple of weeks ago I was walking north on the west side of Cherry Street from Cherry Beach. As I reached Lake Shore Blvd East my plan was to continue to walk north on Cherry Street to the Distillery District. Hah! There are NO traffic or pedestrian lights. In fact there is NO safe way for a pedestrian to cross Lake Shore Blvd East from the west side of Cherry Street! I eventually took my life in my hands and dashed across.
The other posters have proven that our good friends at the City have not been paying attention to a lot of similar situations … so what exactly are they being paid for? I hate to take on the mantra of the usual city worker bashers, but if they’ve missed other things like this, what the h*ll are they doing at work every day?
I walk down the west side of Spadina every day to the waterfront to take my dog for a walk and actually prefer the west side of the road to the east. There’s an offramp from the Gardiner that spits cars out at a really high speed and the angle makes it a bit difficult to time (I believe it’s one of those “yield to cars” crosswalks). The west side, although technically illegal, seems much safer…
I agree that some of these “Pedestrians cross at other side” signs probably pre-date development. Another one is on the west side of Jarvis at Lakeshore which makes getting to Loblaws a problem. If anyone from the Toronto Pedestrian Committee reads this, I suggest they should try to get a full list of all these locations from the City and then see if all of them are really necessary.
Hey folks just wait until the proposed Gardiner tear down happens and see how easy it will be crossing the roads then.
If you want a current demonstration just try crossing Yonge St. north of Sheppard.
So much for planning with anyone in mind.
Steve:
Rae said that? Great. That guy SERIOUSLY doesn’t get it. Transportation routes need to be planned to accommodate many modes of transportation simultaneously. Prioritizing pedestrians over all other forms of transit results in stupid plans like blindly widening the sidewalks on Bloor St. for pedestrians while ignoring the plight of cyclists. Continuing to prioritize one form over another is going to perpetuate ridiculous situations like the one described here.
Alan:
That dash across Lakeshore inspired this photo rant of mine: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissagoldstein/sets/72157604495222983/
Someday I’ll have to add documentation of the ridiculousness north of beach…I thought I had, but I guess I didn’t.
I have, in fact, submitted this problem as an agenda item to the Toronto Pedestrian Committee. I also added the Cherry street issue commenters brought up, and Ireland Park (which I wrote about earlier). We’ll see what happens.