Yonge Street divides Toronto between east and west. It's an iconic street (though it has its ups and downs). Since 2018, the City has been studying ways to redesign and improve the stretch that cuts through the middle of downtown.
It is a story that we have seen in many other cities around the world, perhaps most famously in NYC. Here is a street where pedestrians outnumber vehicles and yet we allocate more space to the latter (within a fixed ROW). This study hopes to fix that.
They've narrowed things down to four Alternative Designs (downloadable, here). All of them prioritize pedestrians, but in different ways. As of right now the preferred option is Alternative #4. It looks like this:
The section around Dundas Square (from Dundas Sq up to Edward Street) is fully pedestrianized with only emergency vehicles having access during the day. This segment has the highest pedestrian volumes. The other blocks allow for a combination of one-way and two-way vehicular traffic.
Vehicular access is obviously still important for things like loading, but it's pretty clear that the future of Yonge Street is pedestrian priority. We should probably be doing this right now. If you'd like to voice your own opinion, you can do that here until Friday, December 6, 2019.
The below Twitter thread, initiated by Brent Toderian, is a great collection of some of the "best streets in the world." https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1153742040221356032?s=21 I would encourage you to click through and have a scroll. The one thing that you'll likely notice about almost all of the contributions is that the streets tend to be fairly dense/urban and they tend to be oriented around the pedestrian. No surprise there. My only qualm with some, but not all, of these streets is that -- while beautiful from an urban design standpoint -- many of them can feel quite touristy and/or commercially generic. They are the street you go to when you're visiting the place, but they are perhaps lacking in urban authenticity. I don't mean to take anything away from the beautifully designed streets in the above thread. In fact, some of them aren't at all commercial and are simply magical places to be -- period, full stop. See, for example, La Condensa (neighborhood) in Mexico City. My argument is simply that the natural cycle of cities and neighborhoods sometimes means that the best streets for new ideas and small businesses are maybe not the most beautiful ones. Part of this is a function of rents and part of this is function of the fact that the best cities are constantly reinventing themselves.
London is currently running a 12-month pilot on its first ever 3D zebra crossing. The objective is to improve pedestrian safety by making the crossing more visible to drivers. A 3D zebra crossing stands out by appearing to float above the road.
Here's a photo (image credit to Gusti Productions):
Yonge Street divides Toronto between east and west. It's an iconic street (though it has its ups and downs). Since 2018, the City has been studying ways to redesign and improve the stretch that cuts through the middle of downtown.
It is a story that we have seen in many other cities around the world, perhaps most famously in NYC. Here is a street where pedestrians outnumber vehicles and yet we allocate more space to the latter (within a fixed ROW). This study hopes to fix that.
They've narrowed things down to four Alternative Designs (downloadable, here). All of them prioritize pedestrians, but in different ways. As of right now the preferred option is Alternative #4. It looks like this:
The section around Dundas Square (from Dundas Sq up to Edward Street) is fully pedestrianized with only emergency vehicles having access during the day. This segment has the highest pedestrian volumes. The other blocks allow for a combination of one-way and two-way vehicular traffic.
Vehicular access is obviously still important for things like loading, but it's pretty clear that the future of Yonge Street is pedestrian priority. We should probably be doing this right now. If you'd like to voice your own opinion, you can do that here until Friday, December 6, 2019.
The below Twitter thread, initiated by Brent Toderian, is a great collection of some of the "best streets in the world." https://twitter.com/brenttoderian/status/1153742040221356032?s=21 I would encourage you to click through and have a scroll. The one thing that you'll likely notice about almost all of the contributions is that the streets tend to be fairly dense/urban and they tend to be oriented around the pedestrian. No surprise there. My only qualm with some, but not all, of these streets is that -- while beautiful from an urban design standpoint -- many of them can feel quite touristy and/or commercially generic. They are the street you go to when you're visiting the place, but they are perhaps lacking in urban authenticity. I don't mean to take anything away from the beautifully designed streets in the above thread. In fact, some of them aren't at all commercial and are simply magical places to be -- period, full stop. See, for example, La Condensa (neighborhood) in Mexico City. My argument is simply that the natural cycle of cities and neighborhoods sometimes means that the best streets for new ideas and small businesses are maybe not the most beautiful ones. Part of this is a function of rents and part of this is function of the fact that the best cities are constantly reinventing themselves.
London is currently running a 12-month pilot on its first ever 3D zebra crossing. The objective is to improve pedestrian safety by making the crossing more visible to drivers. A 3D zebra crossing stands out by appearing to float above the road.
Here's a photo (image credit to Gusti Productions):
While this is the first of its kind in the UK, similar crossings have already been installed in Iceland, India, Taiwan, and other countries. According to the trials in India, they do appear to have a meaningful impact on vehicular speeds. They also feel like public art.
If this first one proves to be successful, the plan is to roll out these 3D crossings across the entire borough of Westminster. Assuming they do actually work, I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise around them here in Toronto.
A London-based software company is also working to completely rethink the zebra crossing for today's smartphone world. Their system imagines LEDs embedded into the street so that a crosswalk can be triggered basically anywhere.
Perhaps this is something that might work with the street paving that Sidewalk Toronto is piloting.
While this is the first of its kind in the UK, similar crossings have already been installed in Iceland, India, Taiwan, and other countries. According to the trials in India, they do appear to have a meaningful impact on vehicular speeds. They also feel like public art.
If this first one proves to be successful, the plan is to roll out these 3D crossings across the entire borough of Westminster. Assuming they do actually work, I'm surprised there hasn't been more noise around them here in Toronto.
A London-based software company is also working to completely rethink the zebra crossing for today's smartphone world. Their system imagines LEDs embedded into the street so that a crosswalk can be triggered basically anywhere.
Perhaps this is something that might work with the street paving that Sidewalk Toronto is piloting.
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