As part of the reconstruction of the Don Mount Court project, the city is considering closing part of Carroll Street (between Matilda and Thompson) to expand the existing Joel Weeks Park, while extending two other streets (Kintyre and Munroe) . Google Maps provides a good view of the current situation.
The city is inviting public comment, with a deadline of February 13, 2006. Visit the relevant City web page for further information about how to submit comments.
In other news, city staff are considering a new streets by-law which would mandate a clear pedestrian corridor 2.1 meters wide on sidewalks, where the sidewalk is wide enough, so that all street furniture and other encumbrances would be required to be placed outside this corridor. The initiative is inspired by the hard work and constant lobbying of the Harbord Village Residents’ Association, which was responsible for the much-praised revitalization of College Street between Spadina and Bathurst.
This initiative is good news for pedestrians, and especially for pedestrians with disabilities, who will find fewer obstacles and bottlenecks in their paths if this initiative eventually becomes law. If only more sidewalks on Toronto’s main streets were actually wide enough for this initiative to apply …
Finally, there’s another mega-pilot planned for the City of Toronto. An experiment with newspaper mega-boxes, where one uniform box contains dispensers for numerous newspapers, is slated to begin fairly soon, with locations at Bloor and Bay, Bloor and Yonge, and Yonge and Dundas.
