Back in 2016, the City of Toronto announced plans to run a transit-priority pilot on King Street in the downtown core. What this meant was that cars would be restricted to only certain movements and that streetcars would be given priority. This pilot was ultimately implemented in 2017 and, eventually, it was made permanent. Presumably because it was doing some good for transit flows. But just this week, new data was revealed showing that, in some cases, travel times today are worse (i.e. longer) than they were before the pilot:
CityNews has learned that eastbound travel times from Bathurst to Jarvis during the evening rush hours averaged 19 to 26 minutes before the pilot program in 2017. The latest times show it is now worse with an average of 22 to 29 minutes.
One way to look at this data would be to say, "okay, clearly this transit corridor thing isn't working. Streetcar travel times have gotten worse. So why bother?" But I think the real answer is this: King Street hasn't remained a transit corridor since the pilot. Many/most motorists continue to use it, even though some 22,000 tickets have apparently been issued since the pilot began. Here's a random photo of King Street West taken from my office window one afternoon:
I have about 15 minutes before I need to head out for dinner, so I’m afraid that there won’t be much of an ATC post today. It has been a busy week.
But given that this week was Bjarke Ingels’ talk in Toronto and many of us are pretty excited about his King West project, I thought I would share a video where he sketches and talks about architecture. Click here if you can’t see it below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIsIKv1lFZw?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
I love the idea that architecture is about imagining how things could be. That’s how I feel about both architecture and real estate development.
