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Raising the road to meet the sidewalk

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There’s an interesting little piece of infrastructure innovation on the west side of University Ave. at Orde St., just south of College in the hospital district. At the crosswalk, rather than having curb cuts down to the roadbed, the road actually rises up so that it’s flush to the sidewalk (although the sidewalk also dips a little).

I heard a presentation about this idea at the Pedestrian Committee a couple of years ago. Researchers from Toronto Rehab had been observing pedestrians crossing University Avenue during the very snowy winter we were having in 2008, and noticed the trouble they had with the big pools of water and slush that gather at corners after heavy snowfalls. It was a particular problem for their patients, many of whom have mobility difficulties and can’t jump across. They proposed an ingenious solution — raise the roadbed to meet the sidewalk at pedestrian crossings, so that the water would drain off that space automatically and keep it clear for pedestrians. The idea also has additional benefits — it’s easier to use for people with mobility difficulties because they don’t have to go up and down, and possibly it might help make crosswalks more noticeable to drivers.

It’s not necessarily a solution that would work everywhere — for example, it might not be practicable on roads with streetcar lines. But it’s good to see that it’s being tried, appropriately just north of Toronto Rehab’s University Ave. offices. If it becomes routine, it could prove to be one of those simple solutions that helps fix a nagging problem with little cost and effort.

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16 comments

  1. Great idea. Would probably make life easier for sidewalk snowploughs too.

    Ramping up the road at intersections might also cause drivers and cyclists to slow down on the approach, especially if pseudo3D road markings were tried out to trick the driver’s vision into assuming a steeper rise.

    Unlike the usual speed humps which cause emissions through slowing/accelerating, a “hump” at a stop sign (for example) causes minor additional emissions due to people being more likely to obey the stop sign.

  2. Another building that got some consideration
    vis a vis its tenants was Collegeview Apartments
    on Yonge a block south of Carlton Street.

    Because it’s a building for older people, it would
    have been a challenge to get to a traffic light
    without confronting traffic or curbs on Granby
    or McGill Streets.

    Those streets were closed off and joined by a
    short north-south connector and made one way
    also.

    Now seniors can walk safely from the building and
    not have to worry about curbs or cars until they
    reach Gerrard or Carlton.

  3. Thanks for posting this, Dylan. I agree this is a clever way to solve the problem of puddles at crosswalks. Some time ago I heard about ‘porous concrete’ or ‘pervious concrete’ but understood that it has some problems. I’ve heard that the redesign of Nathan Philips Square will feature something like porous concrete, but will use regular concrete with gaps between the slabs to allow drainage. Apparently this is what’s being installed on the new sidewalks on Bloor.

  5. This is a great innovation! But when it comes to infrastructure innovations, we sadly only see a few cases that get us excited, and then we never see any more of it.

    For instance, how many new scrambles have we seen recently?

    “Unlike the usual speed humps which cause emissions through slowing/accelerating, a “hump” at a stop sign (for example) causes minor additional emissions due to people being more likely to obey the stop sign.”

    Speed humps don’t cause extra emissions if people drive the speed limit down the street. The humps are designed to be driven over by regular cars at 30 kilometres an hour. If that’s not how people drive, then it’s the drivers that should be scrutinized. But they’re often self-righteous, breaking the rules of the road for their convenience but saying that it’s cyclists who don’t follow the rules of the road.

  6. I had always wished for this kind of design for crosswalk, and now it is finally there!

    I think this kind of design should be standard for all crosswalks except for on major thoroughfares. It serves as a speed bump as well so it has an automatic traffic calming effect. It is also very symbolic too. In the neighbourhood, the pedestrian’s path should be continuous, when a car enters an intersection, it is the car entering pedestrian’s realm, not the other way around as it is now.

  7. The Fieldston section of Riverdale in the Bronx (similar to Rosedale in Toronto) has speed humps at EVERY stop sign. Great for calming. Can work for drainage but you have to check carefully where the drains are. If the water was supposed to flow to the corner and around it you’ll have to add new drains.

  8. This was done on The Esplanade between Yonge and Lower Jarvis several years ago thanks to the BIA and the Neighbourhood Association – it does work well.

  9. You can do this at major thoroughfares and on streetcar routes. In those cases it’d just be the curb lane that would be raised. The crosswalk would eventually come down to street level in the middle of the intersection. There usually isn’t much snow that accumulates there anyway due to all the traffic passing by. Plus it’d serve as a speed hump for those making right turns to ensure they don’t run someone down.

  10. This is used extensively in London UK, called the “tabletop”. It’s better for pedestrians, and works as a speed bump for cars. They’re everywhere and work brilliantly.

  11. AR – they may be “designed for 30km/h” but I wouldn’t risk my car even at that speed and I can only imagine what it must be like being transported by ambulance over the infernal things. Better to use road narrowings and forms of chicanes.

  12. The intersections on Huron St. between Washington Ave. and
    Glen Morris St. were refurbished in the 1990s and have a
    “tabletop” at each intersection. There are other elements
    such as pinch points in the re-design. It was part of
    a traffic calming exercise.

  13. If this were done at streetcar intersections it would probably require the road to be raised about 30m either side so that the stop would be on the raised portion – at the least on Streetcar Rights of Way. An advantage of raised stops is that the streetcar gets a braking assist coming into the stop and an acceleration assist on the way out.

  14. I am curious to know if there was any formal research done to prompt the implementation of the improved crosswalk, or was it, as you suggest a response to informal observations?