I try not to focus on local Toronto issues this much, but this morning an important initiative was announced and it’s blowing up my Twitter feed.
By spring 2017, the city hopes to have a pilot project in place that will transform King Street – running from Liberty Village in the west to the Distillery District in the east – into a priority-transit and pedestrian corridor.
This isn’t to say the street will be closed to cars. I would imagine that at least 1 lane would remain for cars going each way. Instead it will be redesigned to prioritize transit, pedestrians, and cyclists.
So why is this exciting?
The King streetcar is currently broken. If you’ve ever taken it across downtown during rush hour, you know exactly what I mean. It’s infuriating. You might as well be crawling on your hands and knees. One of the goals of this initiative will be to get it working again. Good.
The shoulders of downtown – along King West and King East – are seeing some of the greatest intensification in the region. So much that it’s common for people in this city to complain that Toronto misplanned it all by allowing this development before the transit was there. Well, this is a quick and inexpensive way to get the transit there. Remember that when the inevitable “war on car” rhetoric ratchets up over the next year.
The project will be deployed, first, as a pilot project. That will allow the project team to test and iterate. It has also become the way you get things approved in cities. You first make them temporary.
But I am certain that we will quickly discover how necessary these changes were.
Those of you from Toronto might be aware that the city is currently assessing the possibility of a “relief subway line” that would connect the downtown core back up to the Bloor-Danforth subway line in the form of a stretched out “U”.
The reason this line is being called a “relief line” is that – in addition to providing local service all across downtown and its “shoulders” – it would also relieve much of the pressure that the Yonge-Bloor interchange is facing today. Instead of always having to connect at that location, passengers coming from the east and west would be able to do so sooner as a result of this new subway line (bypassing Yonge-Bloor).
For those of you who are regular readers of ATC, you might know that I’m a big supporter of this relief line. I believe it should be our number one transit priority. It’s going to cut through areas of the city that have some of the highest population and employment densities, and so it’s an area where I think subway makes sense. The ridership would be there.
Many people at the city also seem to agree:
https://twitter.com/jen_keesmaat/status/571745025941487616
Given that an assessment is currently underway, the city is looking for feedback from the public. One of the ways you can do that is by clicking here. The site will allow you to comment on the potential station locations (shown below using purple circles). I did it this morning and I would encourage you to do the same if you’re from Toronto.
For clarity, this current study is only for the eastern portion of the relief line (study area is outlined in red below).
Once you’ve given this some thought, I’d love to have a discussion in the comments about where you think the relief subway line should go (or if you even think it’s a good idea in the first place).
My initial thought is that it should connect into King station, run along King Street East, merge with Queen Street East near the Don Valley, go through Riverside and Leslieville, and then start making its way north to Danforth Avenue.
My reasons are as follows:
King Street East is the most vibrant pedestrian street on the east side of downtown. There isn’t enough commercial activity further south.
King Street would allow it to eventually cut right through the Financial District when it heads westward.
The connection to Union station (for GO Transit, VIA Rail, and the Union-Pearson Express Train) would be manageable from King Street. Plus, SmartTrack may feed directly into Union.
King Street is roughly the midpoint between Queen Street and Lakeshore Boulevard. And if you place it too far south, it would take away from the proposed Queen’s Quay LRT line.
Having it merge into Queen Street near the Don Valley would allow it to service both Regent Park to the north, as well as the West Don Lands neighborhood to the south. It would also allow for a connection to a Cherry Street LRT line servicing the future Portlands neighborhood.
Queen & Broadview is emerging as a major node with a significant amount of density in the pipeline. And further north, Dundas & Carlaw is similarly seeing a lot of intensification.
But I may have missed a few things. These are just my thoughts. What are yours?
Right now the Toronto International Film Festival is going on in the city. It’s actually one of my favorite times in Toronto. There’s so much going on and the city generally does things that it doesn’t normally allow, but that it should do all throughout the year, such as extending last call at bars and closing down streets to cars.
This year, King Street between University Avenue and Peter Street has been made pedestrian-only. It encompasses an area known as the Entertainment District and includes the Bell Lightbox, which is the TIFF HQ. The street was closed last Thursday and will reopen this Monday. So it’s a 4 day thing, that TIFF is calling “Festival Street.”
Some people – like me – are really excited about this. Here’s s picture I tweeted out on Thursday night. Given the engagement (retweets/favorites), I think there are others who feel the same way I do:
Pedestrian only King Street for #TIFF. Look at this magic! #athiscity pic.twitter.com/KVR7t2Irvs
— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But there are others who are furious that their commute was disrupted last week and that we’re inconveniencing locals for the sake of hosting one of the top film festivals in the world. (King Street typically moves about 60,000 people per day on the streetcar and 20,000 vehicles.)
But when I walked the entire 650 meter stretch on Thursday night, it was completely full of people. There were people playing large-scale chess. There were people eating at picnic benches. And there were lots of people just enjoying a wonderful summer stroll in the city.
And all I could think about is that this is an unmet need in the city. King Street is a wonderful place to be right now and we don’t have an equivalent during the other 361 days of the year here in Toronto. So rather than be upset that we’ve closed down 6 blocks of downtown, I’m only upset that we don’t do more of this and make it permanent during the rest of the year.
I’m not necessarily saying that King Street is the best place to do this. Yonge Street initially strikes me as being a better place to start. But I am saying that if we have to reconfigure things to make our city more awesome for when guests come over, that maybe we should think about how to make it more awesome all the time.