The TTC is holding an open house tomorrow night for the public to speak with TTC staff about the modernization of Dufferin station. Have your say and let staff know your opinions.
When: Wednesday, October 22 4 p.m.- 7 p.m.
Where: St. Wenceslaus Church, 496 Gladstone Avenue
Who: TTC Project Staff
The TTC states that improvements to the station will include: upgraded and modernized station finishes, including an integrated art component; Enlarged waiting area at the main entrance on the east side of Dufferin Street; New sidewalk canopies on both sides of Dufferin Street; Two new second exits from platform on Russett Avenue; and new elevators to provide full accessibility from street to platforms.
photo by Craig James White
10 comments
May someone please stand up for the tiles and original signage. It’s difficult for this student to make it with an exam the next day and several papers due in the coming days.
I don’t care what they do as long as they promise to keep it incredibly clean and show, through case studies or proven materials, that this will be possible. No taped signs, no litter, no graffiti, no burned out lights, everything shined to a polish.
Toronto may have an embarrassingly small subway network (just read “Transit Maps of the World”, sheesh) but if it is spotlessly clean there will at least be some pride remaining. That theory worked in the 80s…
There is nothing sacred about a look that was adopted in the 1950’s as a cheap, way of building stations, the problem then and now, is that nobody thought of how it would end up having to be maintained. So many of the designs were designed with cheap building as primary rather then cheap maintenance. The problem is that you build it once, you maintain it forever.
The other issue, cleaning is not critical to operation, so if you need to cut costs, this is where you do it, it’s sad to say, but at least the dirty stations match the dirty buses and trains….
If I could take an escalator to the southbound bus stop, that would change my life. I am leaving town tomorrow, but I’m sure somebody else feels the same way.
Think 29 Dufferin will ever be converted to a streetcar? I don’t really think they would be able to maintain the same vehicle frequency, but I heard it was on the list of possible conversions.
There may have not been much money spent on aesthetics originally, but the tiles and sign designs are worth saving, because they’re highly functional and have some appeal that time has afforded them. Rebuild the station completely if possible, but keep those elements. Unfortunately, the plan seems to be the opposite. Do no major changes beyond accessibility, but install generic signs and cheap new tiles that are supposed to look like stone.
These tiles have been easy to maintain. It’s forty years later and they don’t look too bad. What maintenance have they received in that time? The TTC learned from the mistake that was Vitrolite in the 1950s. The tiles could be remade cheaply. They’re a very basic design, after all.
I hope this discussion (the open house) will be about the utility of the station and not hijacked by font/tiling aesthetes who probably never use Dufferin. I like the fonts & tiling myself, but Dufferin Station has bigger problems! Someone once told me that the dufferin bus line carries more people every day than the whole of Mississauga Transit.
Elevators are sorely needed there… the number of people hauling strollers up the staircase on the west side is huge. I’m surprised there aren’t accidents every day. I wonder if they considered having an exit on the South side of Bloor? It might reduce the number of people taking the bus from the station to the Dufferin Mall.
RF has a very good idea – an exit leading to the SW corner, and its cost might be equivalent to the re-do.
And I’m dismayed at the potential trashing of the old tiles as they are well-glazed and holding up pretty well in contrast to a non-glazed finish that offers many pores for that microscopic oily grunge mixed with bits of asbestos maybe that sullies stations all over the place.
And yes, there should be a better transit service – maybe there’s a way of splitting some near-express bus service from a local service? but that might be asking too much of our TTC.
Thanks for this info/post. At least they seem to have timed it to avoid a direct clash with the Metrolinx
“consult”.
“Modernization” implies new elevators, since the TTC has a goal of making every station accessible.
TTC is quite capable to deal with every issue from accessibility to aesthetics in its schemes.
“There is nothing sacred about a look that was adopted in the 1950’s as a cheap, way of building stations, the problem then and now, is that nobody thought of how it would end up having to be maintained. So many of the designs were designed with cheap building as primary rather then cheap maintenance. The problem is that you build it once, you maintain it forever.”
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The trouble with this “cheap” argument, though, is that it conflates “cheapness” with non-aesthetic. In fact, the postwar popularity of modernism was predicated upon its combination of aesthetics and economy–to simply bandy around the dismissive term “cheap” is cynical, like assuming the TTC designed its stations this way because they couldn’t fork over the dough for something Moscow-like. No, there were conscious aesthetic decisions here.
And of course, the present maintenance problems scarcely have anything to do with the design, which *was* designed to be efficient to maintain–at least when it comes to the B-D line (Vitrolite’s fragility, though, doomed the original Yonge line claddings).
Leave the “cheap” accusations to the kinds of clods who’d sweep away an unaltered 50s-contemporary Don Mills home for a gross monster home w/all accoutrements.
Improving accessibility on dufferin station is important… given the high traffic… the style and decor is up to the ttc… its better to save money and focus on making more accessible stations as well as extending the subway lines in the GTA rather than making the subway staion look pretty.. also, i’ll be just a few feet from the new russett entrance so i can’t complain… ps.. if they had the money, a tunnel from dufferin mall to the station wouldn’t be too bad… put a few stores there, and build a condo where the tennis courts are.. hahaha