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:
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:
Yonge Street - Brandon Donnelly - Page 2
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.
On September 8, 1949, Toronto held a groundbreaking ceremony at the intersection of Yonge & Wellington to celebrate the start of construction for its very first subway line. (Formerly known as the Yonge line, now called line 1.)
The scene looked like this:
Some of the buildings in these pictures still remain, but many do not. The first picture is looking north. And the second one is looking south toward the lake. You can see the rail corridor in the background.
There’s something very urban about these images. The storefronts look active and the streets are full, though no one appears to be live tweeting the event and this clearly pre-dates Toronto’s transformation into the most diverse city in the world.
But my favorite bit of these photos is the people hanging out on the exit stair, watching the march toward modernity. It’s an image that no longer correlates to Toronto.
I met Mark Garner, who is the COO and Executive Director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, about five years ago. We met because of our shared passion around Toronto's laneways. At the time, you weren't allowed to do what we now call laneway suites. Housing was not to be built on our rear streets. But thanks to champions like the Yonge BIA, Lanescape, the Laneway Project, a number of local Councillors, and many others, a lot has changed over the last five years.
As luck would have it, Mark and I reconnected at the beginning of this year because of another shared interest: neon. The Downtown Yonge BIA has been working for over five years to establish a permanent home for the neon signs and lights that are slowly (or perhaps quickly) disappearing from Toronto's streets. The goal is to found Neon Museum Toronto. And I am so impressed by their dedication to this cause. You should see what they have collected so far.
Given the obvious connection to Junction House, we decided we were overdue for another fun project. So today the team is excited to announce that -- in collaboration with both the Downtown Yonge BIA and Neon Demon Studio -- the Junction House Sales Gallery (at 2720 Dundas Street West) will be hosting a Neon Popup Gallery from April 12 to 14. blogTO has already covered the event, here.
It is open to the public. And entry is free. But it is coming to you for one weekend only. So get your camera ready and come by between 11AM - 9PM.
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.
On September 8, 1949, Toronto held a groundbreaking ceremony at the intersection of Yonge & Wellington to celebrate the start of construction for its very first subway line. (Formerly known as the Yonge line, now called line 1.)
The scene looked like this:
Some of the buildings in these pictures still remain, but many do not. The first picture is looking north. And the second one is looking south toward the lake. You can see the rail corridor in the background.
There’s something very urban about these images. The storefronts look active and the streets are full, though no one appears to be live tweeting the event and this clearly pre-dates Toronto’s transformation into the most diverse city in the world.
But my favorite bit of these photos is the people hanging out on the exit stair, watching the march toward modernity. It’s an image that no longer correlates to Toronto.
I met Mark Garner, who is the COO and Executive Director of the Downtown Yonge BIA, about five years ago. We met because of our shared passion around Toronto's laneways. At the time, you weren't allowed to do what we now call laneway suites. Housing was not to be built on our rear streets. But thanks to champions like the Yonge BIA, Lanescape, the Laneway Project, a number of local Councillors, and many others, a lot has changed over the last five years.
As luck would have it, Mark and I reconnected at the beginning of this year because of another shared interest: neon. The Downtown Yonge BIA has been working for over five years to establish a permanent home for the neon signs and lights that are slowly (or perhaps quickly) disappearing from Toronto's streets. The goal is to found Neon Museum Toronto. And I am so impressed by their dedication to this cause. You should see what they have collected so far.
Given the obvious connection to Junction House, we decided we were overdue for another fun project. So today the team is excited to announce that -- in collaboration with both the Downtown Yonge BIA and Neon Demon Studio -- the Junction House Sales Gallery (at 2720 Dundas Street West) will be hosting a Neon Popup Gallery from April 12 to 14. blogTO has already covered the event, here.
It is open to the public. And entry is free. But it is coming to you for one weekend only. So get your camera ready and come by between 11AM - 9PM.
