Monday’s headlines

15 comments

1. Regarding the Dundas/Spadina bridge: “A wheelchair lift would be available on one of the four entrances”

   Ummm…yeah, that would be useful.

   A bridge system would penalize those who are least able to make the crossing (elderly, people with physical disabilities, etc.). And the “most able” people would probably just continue to cross at-grade or jaywalk anyway.

   Might be nice to stand up there and watch the world go by, or take photos.

   Some combination of pedestrian scrambles, timed turning prohibitions, and transit signal priority (both streets!) might work better.

2. That Dundas/Spadina pedestrian bridge thing is a terrible idea.
   At an intersection where most traffic is foot traffic, it both inconveniences pedestrians and teaches drivers to not pay attention. In addition it consumes valuable sidewalk space (and an elevator would logically be needed at all 4 corners, not just the proposed 1) while impairing drivers’ sight-lines.

   Far more effective than forcing pedestrians to climb a set of stairs and take a circuitous route, would be to reduce the corner curb radius, repaint the crosswalk and either outlaw, or install protected signals for, left/right turns.

3. Well, with all the wheelchair inaccessible pedestrian bridges I saw in Beijing, the location seems apt.

4. if dundas and spadina is the busiest pedestrian intersection in toronto, then why doesn’t it have a scramble like yonge and dundas or bay and bloor?

   i agree with john duncan – if the problem is the safety of right turns then why not ban right turns?

5. Banning the turns is virtually useless. Most afternoons you can sit at the intersection and there will be bike cops ticketing right turners.

6. The bridge proposal is a terrible idea. It proves once again that technical possibilities do not necessarily have any positive connection to user interface, design, aesthetics, cost, long-term feasibility, public and political appeal, or just plain good sense. I’ve used similar bridges in Kathmandu and they were a big pain for everyone (regardless of ones mobility), plus they just encouraged motorists to drive more recklessly below. It’s a shame this short-sighted proposal is being encouraged by some people, even hypothetically.

7. Happy to see people thinking but this is a terrible idea. I was standing there a day ago thinking about how narrow the sidewalks are there and then I see this story. The stairs will make the corners more crowded and frankly nobody will use them.

8. It’s unanimous – a ped bridge is a horribly wrong-headed idea! It sounds like an April Fools joke (1 out of 4 corners wheelchair accessible?!) And China is the last place we should be looking for urban design cues (with the possible exception of public rail transport). The illustration is The Star makes it painfully apparent it is designed by (student) engineers – it’s utterly artless.

   The article notes Spadina/Dundas is the busiest pedestrian intersection in the city. THEN WHY THE HECK DOESN’T IT ALREADY HAVE A SCRAMBLE CROSSING?

9. I wholeheartedly agree that the ped bridge is horrible. While crossing Spadina a pedestrian has two islands to stop at if necessary. There are also large bulb-outs at the corners. Ped bridges at these kinds of intersections ruin the pedestrian experience and often make intersections looks unnecessarily ugly.

   While the students seemed to think its easy to fix cuz of reconstruction in 2011, they should have looked at the pedestrian collision stats to see that this intersection has a very very low rate of incidents between vehicles and pedestrians. In fact, a partially finished St Michael’s Hospital report presented to the Pedestrian Committee in March showed that Spadina and Dundas was one of the city’s top 20 SAFEST intersections.

   Luckily, it is a student project idea and nothing else. But this one misguided idea shouldn’t diminish the other great ideas that have sprung up from the same student showcase.

   As for turning Spadina and Dundas into a scramble intersection: it wouldn’t work with the frequency of the Spadina streetcar. And if they ever decide to truly give signal priority to streetcars it would function even worse.

10. Streetcars have to stop for regular red lights. Why would a scramble red light be so impossible for them?

11. Lets see,

    A bad idea: Check
    Does not really offer any benefit: Check
    Expensive: Check
    Introduces its own problems: Check
    Ugly: Check

    It sounds like it has all the necessary attributes for Toronto to go ahead with it.

12. Rather than reduce sidewalk space, an inter-building walkway connecting both northside corners might work via the redevelopment of both corner buildings, which, in Streetview at least, don’t seem all that interesting.

    This would be similar to the Eaton Centre-Bay walkway on Queen St. W, but perhaps a bit less utilitarian and optionally connecting across Dundas to Dragon City.

    Underground is an option but given its distance from the rest of the PATH it seems like the less practical option to me.

13. Why are you linking your blog that hasn’t been updated since ’08, Mark? Am I missing something?

14. “The alternative Toronto election” argues an interesting point that I have not heard made before — that Toronto is seeing the beginnings of the Detroit-style “hole in the donut”, but in reverse (a prosperous centre surrounded by a ring of declining income). I think reading this would shock a lot of Torontonians — we pride ourselves on having avoided the hollowing out of our centre like any number of American cities, only to be warned of the reverse happening.

15. Brent,

    That is the point I make all the time here. Toronto cannot price itself (tax rates) so that only class ‘A’ offices are viable. Yet that is what it has done. The inner suburbs are the most vulnerable. The only error that the article makes is that taxes (for residents) are not lower in the 905.