A few months ago when I wrote about “Toronto’s great streets” I mentioned that Queens Quay West - while magnificent – has had its share of issues. Cyclists and pedestrians often find themselves battling for space. And drivers are consistently driving in the wrong places.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the turning radii (among other things) are a bit atypical and unusual compared to the rest of the city. And so if you’re at all in mental autopilot, it can be fairly easy to make a wrong turn. You really have to be paying attention.
Below is a screenshot from Google Street View showing the foot of Lower Spadina, looking east on Queens Quay West. If you’re making a left turn from the former onto the latter, you need to end up on the left (north) of the streetcar tracks (even though the tracks themselves might be directing you elsewhere).
There’s lots of signage telling you not to drive onto the tracks, but that hasn’t really been working. So the tracks were recently painted in bright red. You can see what that looks like here. Some people are still getting mixed up, but it’s certainly more noticeable.
What I am wondering today is whether all of this signage and paint should be considered a symptom of poor design. In other words: Should good design require few instructions? Or, is this simply a normal part of iterative city building?
What do you think?
There’s a significant amount of downward pressure on parking supply in most major cities. Part of this has to do with the push toward more sustainable forms of transport, which is, of course, a good thing. But it also has to do with rising construction costs, the fear of obsolescence in the wake of autonomous vehicles, and probably many other factors.
Developers, ourselves included, have responded by being cautious about the amount of parking being provided and by considering alternative future uses for the parking that is being built. I think it is also obvious that we will continue to see more, rather than less, parking stackers and other more efficient parking solutions.
So far the cost of parking in dense urban centers has continued to rise. A new parking spot in the core of Toronto priced at $100,000 would not surprise me. And Hong Kong recently set a record for what is allegedly
Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.)
I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.
Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.
A few months ago when I wrote about “Toronto’s great streets” I mentioned that Queens Quay West - while magnificent – has had its share of issues. Cyclists and pedestrians often find themselves battling for space. And drivers are consistently driving in the wrong places.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the turning radii (among other things) are a bit atypical and unusual compared to the rest of the city. And so if you’re at all in mental autopilot, it can be fairly easy to make a wrong turn. You really have to be paying attention.
Below is a screenshot from Google Street View showing the foot of Lower Spadina, looking east on Queens Quay West. If you’re making a left turn from the former onto the latter, you need to end up on the left (north) of the streetcar tracks (even though the tracks themselves might be directing you elsewhere).
There’s lots of signage telling you not to drive onto the tracks, but that hasn’t really been working. So the tracks were recently painted in bright red. You can see what that looks like here. Some people are still getting mixed up, but it’s certainly more noticeable.
What I am wondering today is whether all of this signage and paint should be considered a symptom of poor design. In other words: Should good design require few instructions? Or, is this simply a normal part of iterative city building?
What do you think?
There’s a significant amount of downward pressure on parking supply in most major cities. Part of this has to do with the push toward more sustainable forms of transport, which is, of course, a good thing. But it also has to do with rising construction costs, the fear of obsolescence in the wake of autonomous vehicles, and probably many other factors.
Developers, ourselves included, have responded by being cautious about the amount of parking being provided and by considering alternative future uses for the parking that is being built. I think it is also obvious that we will continue to see more, rather than less, parking stackers and other more efficient parking solutions.
So far the cost of parking in dense urban centers has continued to rise. A new parking spot in the core of Toronto priced at $100,000 would not surprise me. And Hong Kong recently set a record for what is allegedly
Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.)
I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.
Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.
But what is going to happen going forward?
Researchers at the Singapore - MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and MIT Senseable City Lab, along with Allianz, have recently tried to quantify what the impact of autonomous vehicles will mean on required parking, and on traffic, in Singapore. The study is called Unparking.
Today, they estimate the total number of parking spots in Singapore to be around 1,370,000. This is based on minimum parking requirements from the Housing Development Board and on the idea that home-work commuting consumes two parking spots: one at home and one at the office.
They model four different scenarios, but the last one is based on fully autonomous vehicles and on shared parking spaces. Holding current mobility demands and traffic volumes constant, the demand for parking in this scenario drops by 70%.
It is possible to reduce the number of parking spaces even further to 85%, but this has a negative impact on traffic congestion in their model. Fewer parking spaces means the autonomous vehicles have to drive around more picking people up.
I also don’t know if there was any consideration given to induced demand as a result of the more affordable autonomous vehicles. Demand for transportation services is generally thought to be fairly elastic.
Whatever the case may be, numbers are made to be questioned. And Singapore is a unique city-state. But ¼ the amount of parking does not seem that far fetched to me.
Photo by Tobias Jussen on Unsplash
Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.
One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.
They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.
There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.
This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.
Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.
I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.
But what is going to happen going forward?
Researchers at the Singapore - MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and MIT Senseable City Lab, along with Allianz, have recently tried to quantify what the impact of autonomous vehicles will mean on required parking, and on traffic, in Singapore. The study is called Unparking.
Today, they estimate the total number of parking spots in Singapore to be around 1,370,000. This is based on minimum parking requirements from the Housing Development Board and on the idea that home-work commuting consumes two parking spots: one at home and one at the office.
They model four different scenarios, but the last one is based on fully autonomous vehicles and on shared parking spaces. Holding current mobility demands and traffic volumes constant, the demand for parking in this scenario drops by 70%.
It is possible to reduce the number of parking spaces even further to 85%, but this has a negative impact on traffic congestion in their model. Fewer parking spaces means the autonomous vehicles have to drive around more picking people up.
I also don’t know if there was any consideration given to induced demand as a result of the more affordable autonomous vehicles. Demand for transportation services is generally thought to be fairly elastic.
Whatever the case may be, numbers are made to be questioned. And Singapore is a unique city-state. But ¼ the amount of parking does not seem that far fetched to me.
Photo by Tobias Jussen on Unsplash
Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.
One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.
They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.
There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.
This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.
Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.
I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
