I was just reading about London's plans to pedestrianize Oxford Circus with two new semi-circular pedestrian piazzas (pictured above). And it reminded of two things.
One, there are silver linings to this pandemic. And one of them is that it has forced us to rethink how we allocate public space and how we engage with it. It is incredible seeing Toronto right now with so many outdoor patios in full swing. Why eat inside when you can eat outside? We should have been doing this all along.
Two, the transformation of Toronto's Yonge Street cannot happen fast enough. We are sorely missing a pedestrianized spine through the middle of our downtown. This portion of Yonge Street currently looks like shit and I know that we can do much better.
Think La Rambla in Barcelona. Grafton Street in Dublin. Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. These are the streets that seem to always draw you in. They are places where public life can play out. I'm pretty sure that I have never once visited any of these cities and not walked these streets.
Thankfully Yonge Street's transformation is underway. So let's make it truly remarkable and one of the most beautiful streets in the world. That should be the bar we set for ourselves.
Image: Westminster City Council
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.