On October 3, New York City did something very similar to what Toronto did on King Street. It restricted through traffic on 14th Street to only trucks and buses, and turned the street into the city's first "busway."

Under the new rules, cars, vans, and taxis are restricted every day of the week from 6am to 10pm, unless they're dropping off or picking someone up, or entering into a parking garage (i.e. local traffic only). But after this, they need to make the first available right and turn off the street. Again, it's pretty similar to the way things work here on King.

On the first day of the 18-month pilot program, the buses actually had to slow down in order to keep to their schedule. They were moving too quickly. Previously one of the slowest routes in the city, the M14 bus is now expected to increase its average speed by about 25%.

Not surprisingly, a number of people were concerned that this new busway would hurt businesses along the route. This same concern has been an issue in Toronto. But this is New York. We're talking about the US city with the highest percentage of households without a vehicle.

The reality is that we need to get better at moving people around our cities without a car. This is one way to do it and we know it works. My prediction is that the 14th Street pilot will prove to be a success. It will then get replicated in other parts of Manhattan. Probably on other crosstown streets.

I had dinner tonight on King Street and I was reminded that this week marks the one year anniversary of the King Street Transit Pilot here in Toronto.

The pilot has certainly had its share of controversy, but the improvements to both transit reliability and ridership are clear. Average travel times (in each direction) have increased by as much as 7 minutes on the route.

Here’s the latest data from July and August of this year. Steve Munro can also tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the King streetcar.

As our city continues to grow, many are naturally concerned about the ability of our infrastructure to handle the additional demands. Where will all the cars go?

But the reality is that we will never be able to accommodate everybody driving around in their own car. Which is why we have to rely on transit and solutions like the King Street Transit Pilot.

What’s your opinion of the pilot now that it has been in place for a year? I almost forget what it was like before we had it.

Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading. 

I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years. 

Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.

One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:

Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”

I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation. 

But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.

Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:

The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.

None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that. 

But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.

Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank