When I was a lot younger and growing up in Toronto, the place to go out at night was in the Entertainment District, centered around Richmond St West and Adelaide St West. This is where all of the bars and clubs were. Thinking back, the concentration of nighttime activities in this area was pretty incredible.

Those of you who are familiar with Toronto will know that this area isn't the same nighttime epicenter that it once was and that it's been this way for many years. The scene shifted westward and down to King St. It also went from larger clubs and venues to smaller bars, restaurants, and lounges. Tastes change, I guess.

So if you had to choose one intersection to be the epicenter of nightlife in Toronto right now, I think you could easily argue that it's King St West and Portland St. (Disagree with this take? Leave a comment below.)

But why this intersection? Why did the nighttime economy land right here?

Part of it was surely development pressures in the Entertainment District, which forced a broader move. I also think that these areas tend to become victims of their own success. Clubs and bars generate a lot of noise and that makes some people grouchy.

But I think you could also argue that the intersection of King and Portland has some very specific urban qualities that lend itself to becoming a kind of heart for nightlife.

It helps that it is the only north-south street that intersects King between Bathurst and Spadina. However, I think the more important point is that both Bathurst and Spadina are fairly broad arterial avenues (certainly that is the case for Spadina). These intersections aren't as hospitable to pedestrians and so they create a natural break in "the strip."

The result is that Portland, which is a much smaller street, became the heart. The intersection feels much more like an urban room. Leave one bar and another one is right in front of you. That's one of the things about cities. Intimate spaces, rather than big ones, are often what attract people.

Earlier this week I was on Adelaide Street (Toronto) for a morning meeting. This is further north than my typical routine.

For those of you not familiar with Toronto, Adelaide is a one-way street with separated bikes lanes. These “cycle tracks” were installed as part of a pilot project that launched back in summer 2014. As I’m sure you can imagine, they were highly controversial at the time. Many heated debates.

But if you stand on Adelaide Street during the morning rush, as I did earlier this week, I think you would be amazed to see just how widely used these lanes actually are. Here’s a video of Adelaide (just east of Spadina) in action. It is by Gil Meslin and was filmed sometime between 840 and 855am on a weekday.

However, I will say that I was far more impressed by the volume of bikes I saw in person. I wish I took a picture. They easily outnumbered the cars when I was there, which speaks to the latent demand for this sort of infrastructure. I can’t imagine a faster way to get across downtown in the morning.

So if you haven’t already, check out Adelaide (or Richmond Street, which is also part of the cycle tracks program).

Yesterday I spoke about why Toronto shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss streetcars and light rail. Today, I’d like to talk about some of the hard decisions we need to face if we really want to get our city moving.

Toronto is a city of neighborhoods and small main streets–at least in the areas where our streetcars live. Streets such as King and Queen are only 4 lanes. And the problem we’re facing is that we’re trying to accommodate every single use case on them: cars, on-street parking, cyclists and streetcars. But in doing so, we’ve made the experience terrible for everybody. Streetcars move at a snail’s pace, drivers are frustrated by the lumbering streetcars, cyclists fear for their life driving by parked cars (doors can swing open at any time), and so on.

And with the rise of downtown shoulder neighborhoods such as Liberty Village, King West, the Distillery District and the soon to be complete West Don Lands, the strain on our east-west corridors is only going to get worse–much worse, in fact. Already the King streetcar is the busiest streetcar route in the city, moving almost 60,000 people per day. That’s more than the (under utilized) Sheppard subway

When I was a lot younger and growing up in Toronto, the place to go out at night was in the Entertainment District, centered around Richmond St West and Adelaide St West. This is where all of the bars and clubs were. Thinking back, the concentration of nighttime activities in this area was pretty incredible.

Those of you who are familiar with Toronto will know that this area isn't the same nighttime epicenter that it once was and that it's been this way for many years. The scene shifted westward and down to King St. It also went from larger clubs and venues to smaller bars, restaurants, and lounges. Tastes change, I guess.

So if you had to choose one intersection to be the epicenter of nightlife in Toronto right now, I think you could easily argue that it's King St West and Portland St. (Disagree with this take? Leave a comment below.)

But why this intersection? Why did the nighttime economy land right here?

Part of it was surely development pressures in the Entertainment District, which forced a broader move. I also think that these areas tend to become victims of their own success. Clubs and bars generate a lot of noise and that makes some people grouchy.

But I think you could also argue that the intersection of King and Portland has some very specific urban qualities that lend itself to becoming a kind of heart for nightlife.

It helps that it is the only north-south street that intersects King between Bathurst and Spadina. However, I think the more important point is that both Bathurst and Spadina are fairly broad arterial avenues (certainly that is the case for Spadina). These intersections aren't as hospitable to pedestrians and so they create a natural break in "the strip."

The result is that Portland, which is a much smaller street, became the heart. The intersection feels much more like an urban room. Leave one bar and another one is right in front of you. That's one of the things about cities. Intimate spaces, rather than big ones, are often what attract people.

Earlier this week I was on Adelaide Street (Toronto) for a morning meeting. This is further north than my typical routine.

For those of you not familiar with Toronto, Adelaide is a one-way street with separated bikes lanes. These “cycle tracks” were installed as part of a pilot project that launched back in summer 2014. As I’m sure you can imagine, they were highly controversial at the time. Many heated debates.

But if you stand on Adelaide Street during the morning rush, as I did earlier this week, I think you would be amazed to see just how widely used these lanes actually are. Here’s a video of Adelaide (just east of Spadina) in action. It is by Gil Meslin and was filmed sometime between 840 and 855am on a weekday.

However, I will say that I was far more impressed by the volume of bikes I saw in person. I wish I took a picture. They easily outnumbered the cars when I was there, which speaks to the latent demand for this sort of infrastructure. I can’t imagine a faster way to get across downtown in the morning.

So if you haven’t already, check out Adelaide (or Richmond Street, which is also part of the cycle tracks program).

Yesterday I spoke about why Toronto shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss streetcars and light rail. Today, I’d like to talk about some of the hard decisions we need to face if we really want to get our city moving.

Toronto is a city of neighborhoods and small main streets–at least in the areas where our streetcars live. Streets such as King and Queen are only 4 lanes. And the problem we’re facing is that we’re trying to accommodate every single use case on them: cars, on-street parking, cyclists and streetcars. But in doing so, we’ve made the experience terrible for everybody. Streetcars move at a snail’s pace, drivers are frustrated by the lumbering streetcars, cyclists fear for their life driving by parked cars (doors can swing open at any time), and so on.

And with the rise of downtown shoulder neighborhoods such as Liberty Village, King West, the Distillery District and the soon to be complete West Don Lands, the strain on our east-west corridors is only going to get worse–much worse, in fact. Already the King streetcar is the busiest streetcar route in the city, moving almost 60,000 people per day. That’s more than the (under utilized) Sheppard subway