Sean Marshall

Category: Roads

  • From lake to lake: the story of Hurontario Street

    Looking north from Lake Ontario up Hurontario Street in Port Credit

    Ontario’s first roads were trade routes established by First Nations, including the Toronto Carrying Place, which linked Lake Ontario, Lake Simcoe, and Lake Huron. These routes followed the topology and existing water courses, making navigation simple and avoiding steep hills. Many modern streets, such as Toronto’s Davenport Road, follow these old trails.

    With the establishment of the British colony of Upper Canada, new roads were established that took straight lines, instead of following existing trails or the lay of the land. Governor John Graves Simcoe named two of these routes — Yonge Street and Dundas Street — after British officials. Though Yonge and Dundas Streets were established for military purposes, they soon became used for settlement.

    Hurontario Street — a portmanteau of “Huron” and “Ontario” — was among the first of a new wave of roads laid out by colonial officials, established for settlement purposes. These colonization roads were built across southwestern and south-central Ontario and became the basis for the concession land grant system that forms the grid of country roads and arterial avenues throughout Southern Ontario.

    Other roads surveyed and built in this period included Simcoe Street, which connected Lake Ontario (at Oshawa) with Lake Scugog (at today’s Port Perry); Brock Road, which ran between Hamilton Harbour and Guelph with branches towards Lake Huron near modern-day Port Elgin (Elora Road) and towards Owen Sound (Garafraxa Road). Huron Road led west from Guelph towards Goderich through lands held by the Canada Company.

    Hurontario Street followed a nearly straight line north from Lake Ontario, perpendicular to the shoreline, with only a slight bend near present-day Orangeville to reach Georgian Bay at a perpendicular angle. Together with the Toronto-Sydenham Road, which branched off northwest towards Owen Sound, it quickly became an important route.

    Taverns, villages, and towns were established along the way, including Cooksville, Buffy’s Corners (which incorporated as the Village of Brampton in 1853) and Collingwood. Collingwood proved to be an excellent harbour and became famous for its shipbuilding industry.

    Looking south from Georgian Bay up Hurontario Street in Downtown Collingwood

    But Hurontario’s straight trajectory was a problem. For the first 57 kilometres, the straight line was sufficient, as it followed a mostly flat route through present-day Mississauga and Brampton and climbed the Niagara Escarpment on a relatively gentle incline in Caledon. But through Dufferin and Simcoe Counties, the surveyed route went up and down several steep hills on the edge of the escarpment, including Hockley Valley and Boyne Valley. The final descent down the Niagara Escarpment towards Collingwood was very steep.

    Early settlers were granted low-cost or free land grants in exchange for clearing and improving their land and maintaining the new settlement roads being drawn across southern Ontario. They rerouted troublesome segments of the surveyed roadways and either abandoned the surveyed road allotments or designated new survey lines for through traffic. In Dufferin County, traffic switched to the first concession line to the west, which offered an easier path towards Owen Sound. The Town of Orangeville was established where the route deviated.

    Hurontario Street on the eastern outskirts of Orangeville, crossing the old alignment of Highway 9. Highway 10 curves on a bypass around Downtown Orangeville in the background.

    Like many early roads, Hurontario Street’s importance declined with the growing network of railways in Ontario. In 1855, the Ontario, Simcoe and Huron Railway reached Collingwood and the Great Western Railway opened between Toronto and Hamilton. The next year, the Grand Truck Railway opened its line through Brampton; the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&B) reached Orangeville 15 years later. Soon the TG&B built all the way to Owen Sound, closely following the Toronto-Sydenham Road.

    Hurontario Street is a discontinuous dirt road north of Island Lake at Orangeville.

    With the rise of motor vehicles in the 1920s, the Province of Ontario began establishing a highway network; the historical settlement roads became the foundation of this new system of roadways. Highway 10, one of the first 16 routes established by the province, followed the Toronto-Sydenham Road and Hurontario Street between Owen Sound and Port Credit, though it used the well-travelled First Line West through Mono Township, rather than the old, partially abandoned Hurontario Street alignment.

    Highway 10 increased in importance through the 20th century, especially when Toronto’s postwar growth reached Mississauga and Brampton. Highway 410 was built to relieve congestion on Highway 10 and other nearby routes; by 2019, the new highway connected with the old route north of Brampton, and Highway 10 through Mississauga and Brampton was no more, once-again simply known as Hurontario Street except in the older part of Brampton, where it remains Main Street.

    Meanwhile, the railways have fallen to the modern highway. The old TG&B, later acquired by Canadian Pacific, abandoned the Orangeville-Owen Sound line and its connecting branches by 1995. In 2021, the last train from Orangeville made its departure.

    As Mississauga and Brampton continue to grow, a new light rail transit line is being built on Hurontario Street. In a deviation from Metrolinx norms, instead of honouring the road on which this line is built, the PC-led government decided to name the LRT after Hazel McCallion, the former Mississauga mayor who, despite leaving some challenging legacies, has had many publicly funded spaces named for her. Time will tell whether residents will adopt the new name or, instead, favour a name that reflects the historical and contemporary importance of Hurontario Street. My hope is that transit users will continue to use the 200-year old name they’re most familiar with.

    What does First Line West or 2nd Line EHS mean?

    In Mono Township, the concession lines are numbered sequentially from how far east or west they are from Hurontario Street, which was the original basis for the land surveys. For example, 2nd Line EHS can be found two roads east of Hurontario Street. Highway 10 follows the first line west of Hurontario Street, a much gentler route than the original surveyed line. In the north half of Toronto Township (now the City of Mississauga), and in Chinguacousy and Caledon Townships (now Brampton and Caledon), these roads were similarly numbered before acquiring names. McLaughlin Road used to be known as First Line West, while Dixie Road used to go by Third Line East.

    As the centre line of several townships, Hurontario Street was often known as Centre Road, especially in Toronto Township (Mississauga) and Mulmur Township. In Mississauga, where Highway 10, Hurontario Street and Centre Road were once used interchangeably, it now goes exclusively by Hurontario Street.

    In Mono Township, north of Orangeville, 2nd Line E. H. S. can be found two survey lines east of Hurontario Street. Highway 10 follows 1st Line W. H. S. in Mono.

    Hurontario Street and other settlement roads

    As mentioned above, Hurontario Street was one of many early settlement and colonization roads established across the new colony, and later by the province. The first few roads, including Yonge and Dundas Streets, were surveyed and cleared by the colonial military as defensive routes first, but they quickly became important settlement roads. Roads such as Hurontario Street, established in the 1820s, had little military purpose, but became the basis for land surveys, which led to the establishment of townships and counties. Brock Road, Elora Road, and Durham Road are examples of these colonial settlement roads.

    In some cases, private companies or individuals who were given large land grants established their own roads to attract settlers and trade; Huron Road and Talbot Road are examples of these.

    Starting in the 1870s, the provincial government built new roads into less hospitable lands on the Canadian Shield, hoping to draw settlement further north as the supply of quality farming land was exhausted. In some cases, farmers were able to make a go of the marginal farmlands in northern Victoria, Hastings, and Lanark Counties, in other cases, the roads quickly fell into disuse. The Muskoka Road, built to Lake Nipissing, was a rare success: though there was little viable farmland along the route, it helped open up Northern Ontario for resource exploitation, tourism, and settlement. The Muskoka Road was upgraded in the 1920s and 1930s as the Ferguson Highway, before becoming part of Highway 11.

    The map below shows the routes of Hurontario Street and many other settlement and colonization roads in Southern and Central Ontario, along with the township system that followed these corridors.

    Map of settlement roads and townships in Ontario
  • The tragedy of East Buffalo

    The tragedy of East Buffalo

    Kensington Expressway, Buffalo

    Just two blocks away from the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket is Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway.

    The high-speed roadway, built with New York State funding, was built in the late 1950s to connect Downtown Buffalo with the New York State Thruway and the airport. The highway went through Buffalo’s East Side, historically Polish-American neighbourhoods that were becoming home to working-class and middle-class African-American families.

    Ironically, a parkway system planned by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted beginning in the 1860s helped highway planners 90 years later route their new highway. Olmsted had planned large park spaces throughout the city, with wide, treed parkways connecting the spaces together. Delaware Park, to the north, was the largest of these green spaces. In 1901, it was the site for the Pan-American Exposition (which became infamous as the location of the assassination of President William McKinley), while Humboldt Park, on the city’s east side, became a popular neighbourhood gathering place. Humboldt Parkway connected these two parks with a wide, gentle curve.

    Part of the Olmsted Parks and Parkways plan, Buffalo. Humboldt Parkway curves southeast from Delaware Park near the top of the map.

    Of course, city planners of the day, who were guided by the “City Beautiful” movement, never conceived of a time when automobiles would present a new challenge to urban places. From the opening of the Erie Canal in the 1830s to the exploitation of cheap, renewable hydro-electric power at nearby Niagara Falls in the 1890s and early 1900s, Buffalo was going to be a jewel of the Great Lakes, and it needed skyscrapers and public spaces to match its optimism and ambition.

    Humboldt Parkway in 1953, with a wide, treed median on the right (The Buffalo History Museum)

    By the 1950s, Buffalo’s growth had plateaued, and the city started losing population to the suburbs, as white middle class families took advantage of generous federal mortgage incentives, and the automobile made suburban living easy. Redlining — a practice in which banks and federal mortgage underwriters graded neighbourhoods based on their physical and socioeconomic statuses — made mortgages in “declining” or “hazardous” areas difficult or impossible to get. These resulting grades discouraged investment in the housing stock and made it especially difficult for Black families to purchase homes. Racism and xenophobia was embedded in the system: areas that Eastern European immigrants were seen to be “infiltrating” were typically marked as “definitely declining” and areas settled by Black households were marked as “hazardous.”

    In Buffalo, a 1937 redlining map reflected the segregation that would define the city to this day: most of the city east of Main Street was classified as “definitely declining” or “hazardous.” Houses facing Humboldt Parkway were marked as “still desirable” as it is “a small area which maintains its desirability because of location on both sides of an attractive parkway.” That parkway would disappear 20 years later.

    Though the Niagara branch of the New York State Thruway connected Downtown Buffalo to Niagara Falls, the main Thruway, and Canadian border crossings, mostly following rail corridors, city leaders felt that without additional urban highways, Buffalo would lose investment and that more residents and employers would leave the city for the suburbs.

    In 1954, City Planning Director Russell Tryon declared that the new ring highway “would be a major step forward in alleviating the traffic blight that has diseased our neighborhood communities” while believing that highway construction might help keep people in the city, rather than literally drive them to suburbia. “If we make Buffalo a better place in which to live, the people will stay and not move out.”

    The Scajaquada Expressway through Delaware Park

    To build the new highway, planners looked for the paths of least resistance: Olmsted’s parkway system and redlined neighbourhoods where properties could be bought up cheap. None of the parkways on Buffalo’s West Side (which was, and remains, mostly white and middle class) would be sacrificed, but the Humboldt Parkway, on the East Side, would be. The Scajaquada Expressway, across the city’s north side, ran right through the signature Delaware Park. The Kensington Expressway — New York State Route 33 — required the demolition of hundreds of homes. Many displaced residents moved into public housing towers on Fillmore Avenue — which were later abandoned and demolished.

    The abandoned Kensington Heights public housing buildings on Fillmore Avenue in 2010

    The highway only helped to destroy Buffalo’s urban fabric and contributed to the economic and population decline in the East End.

    Buffalo was not alone. In Detroit, Interstates 75 and 375 were routed right along Hastings Street, the commercial and cultural hub for the Motor City’s Black community. In Baltimore, Interstate 70 was to go right downtown through the city’s West Side. The section through a Black neighborhood was built, but the western extension through Baltimore’s western suburbs was never completed, leaving behind a scar known as the “Highway to Nowhere.”

    Baltimore’s Highway to Nowhere

    In Buffalo, the East Side community struggled for decades to get a full-service supermarket after A&P left in the 1960s after the new highway was built. It finally landed Tops Friendly Markets on the A&P site in 2003. This grocery store — the only one serving over 100,000 residents in Buffalo’s East End — became the site of Buffalo’s worst mass shooting, in which a white teenager targeted Black shoppers. The closure of that store only compounds the tragedy as fresh and affordable food has become, once again, even harder to access.

    Now, New York State is planning for the removal of several urban highways built through Black neighbourhoods, including Interstate 81 through Syracuse, the remainder of Rochester’s Inner Belt, and Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway. Reconnecting Buffalo’s East Side and investing in great public spaces could be a positive first step to living up to being “The City of Good Neighbors.”

  • Do I stay, or do I go now?

    Pedestrian crossing at Victoria Park, Cobourg

    At the corner of King Street (former Highway 2) and College Street in Cobourg, adjacent to Victoria Park on the eastern edge of Downtown Cobourg, there’s a marked pedestrian crossing, with clear “zebra” road markings on the pavement.

    The sign, in bright fluorescent yellow, reads “PEDESTRIAN X.” Below, a second sign, also in bright yellow, reads “STOP FOR PEDESTRIANS.” The message is clear enough.

    However, a smaller white sign below, facing the sidewalk, reads “CAUTION – VEHICLES NOT REQUIRED TO STOP.”

    So which is it?

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  • A welcome revision at Major Mackenize

    Earlier this year, I wrote about a major malfunction at a new Viva Rapidway station near Downtown Richmond Hill. The Major Mackenzie station on Yonge Street was built one block south of the busy east-west arterial road; passengers taking Viva buses were forced to walk from Major Mackenzie Drive south to the intersection of at the intersection of Elmwood Avenue and Hopkins Street, push a “beg button” and wait to cross to the bus platforms in the middle of Yonge.

    The reason for this unusual situation was that the Yonge Street right-of-way narrows through Downtown Richmond Hill. At Major Mackenzie Drive, northbound Viva buses must enter mixed traffic for approximately two kilometres before returning to a median busway. (The northbound traffic signal at Major Mackenzie has a dedicated transit phase that allows Viva buses to exit the median ahead of general traffic.) This required the median Viva bus stop (called a VivaStation) to be located considerably south of the intersection of Yonge Street and Major Mackenzie Drive.

    Back in February, temporary barriers and YRT transit enforcement officers were used to dissuade transit customers from Back in February, temporary barriers and YRT transit enforcement officers were used to dissuade transit customers from taking the faster and direct, yet more dangerous, route to Major Mackenzie Drive and connecting east-west buses by crossing midblock north of the platform, the faster and direct, yet more dangerous, route to Major Mackenzie Drive and connecting east-west buses.

    The Major Mackenzie VivaStation and layout, February 2021

    To my pleasant surprise, York Region fixed its mistake. Though the revised station is not ideal (it is still a long walk from Major Mackenzie Drive itself), a new walkway alongside the east side of the bus right-of-way from the VivaStation to the Major Mackenzie intersection makes the transfer to and from buses on Major Mackenzie much simpler.

    Looking south from Major Mackenzie Drive

    Just north of the bus platforms, a signed crosswalk allows passengers to go from the walkway and northbound platform to the southbound platform on the west side of the bus right-of-way.

    Looking north towards Major Mackenzie Drive at the new crosswalk, which allows passengers to go between the southbound bus platform to a new walkway connecting the Major Mackenzie VivaStation to its namesake street.

    Permanent metal rails prevent passengers from crossing Yonge Street until they get to the signalized intersection at Major Mackenzie. But transit enforcement officers were nowhere to be seen on this visit, on a Friday afternoon.

    Metal barricades deter pedestrian crossings outside of signalized crosswalks.

    Unfortunately, to make room for the walkway between the station and Major Mackenzie Drive, the northbound bicycle lane was cut, and replaced with “sharrows.” Though the new bicycle lanes on Yonge ended at Major Mackenzie (not enough room if you have to maintain four through traffic lanes through a historic town centre), this diminishes the gains cyclists made with the reconstruction of Yonge Street for the BRT lanes.

    When surface transit projects — like the Viva Rapidways — are designed to fit into existing suburban roadways, compromises to the passenger experience are made. At Richmond Hill, this meant maintaining two traffic lanes in each direction while trying to squeeze a bus rapid transit station into the roadway. This resulted in the original blunder, which should have been thought though earlier in the planning stages.

    The fix is not perfect, but it at least addresses the problems with the Major Mackenzie BRT station. Perhaps, one day, we will plan for transit, walking, and cycling first in places like Downtown Richmond Hill, rather than planning for private motor traffic first.

  • Shining a light on Toronto’s streetlamps

    Shining a light on Toronto’s streetlamps

    Replacement high pressure sodium lamp on left, the white glow of Toronto’s classic “acorn” lamp on right.

    Street lighting is an important, yet overlooked, part of any city’s standard infrastructure. For over seventy years, Toronto’s streets were lit with an elegant and increasingly unique streetlamp design. But modern standards and a desire for standardization will see this change, just as Toronto’s streetcars and street signs have.

    Toronto Hydro, which is responsible for Toronto’s street lighting, is replacing the older “acorn” lamps with high pressure sodium (HPS) cobra head lamps (so-called due to their shape when seen from the top or bottom). While surrounding municipalities are switching to white-burning LED lights, Toronto Hydro is installing the older beige-orange glowing lamps.

    I asked Toronto Hydro what their long-term plans were for the city’s street lighting infrastructure. Read more on Spacing’s website.

  • Signs of recognition

    Signs of recognition

    New “No Exit- Pedestrians Excepted” sign in Moore Park

    Back in January, inspired by a Twitter thread that expressed the frustration of getting around the city by foot, my Walk Toronto colleague Dylan Reid suggested that we could create an inventory of all instances in the city where “No Exit” signs do not apply to all road users.

    As part of this project, I created a map of all streets where “no exit” signs betrayed an exit for pedestrians and/or cyclists, with suggestions coming in from all over Toronto. Over 450 locations were identified.

    On April 8, Toronto City Council approved a motion brought forward by Councillor Paula Fletcher to change that. Councillor Fletcher’s motion was titled “I’m Walking Here.” Only two months later, new signs are already appearing across Toronto — in Scarborough, Monarch Park, and Swansea. For a city that often takes years to adopt what may seem like simple, easy solutions, this was implemented impressively quickly. The new signs look like standard yellow “no exit” signs, but with a “pedestrians excepted” note at the bottom.

    My hope is that these signs will entice Torontonians to get outside, go for a walk, and check out some new streets and parks, enticed by these signs inviting through passage.

    In related news, this week Toronto Council approved the expansion of sidewalk slow clearance to all of Toronto’s streets, a service that was previously provided only to suburban areas, where unobstructed sidewalks made municipal slow clearance easy to do. With new snow equipment able to navigate narrow urban sidewalks, Toronto is now finally able to provide universal snow clearance services, a boon for full accessibility.

    As public health restrictions ease and stores and restaurant patios reopen this Friday (supported by the city’s willingness to reallocate road space on streets like Yonge and Danforth), there’s never been a better time to for a walk.

  • No exit? I’m walking here!

    No exit? I’m walking here!

    Misleading “no exit” signs, like these on Maitland Place at Jarvis Street, will soon be changed by the City of Toronto to indicate that indeed, pedestrians can continue through

    Back in January, inspired by a Twitter thread that expressed the frustration of getting around the city by foot, my Walk Toronto colleague Dylan Reid suggested that we could create an inventory of all instances in the city where “No Exit” signs do not apply to all road users.

    Though these signs are required under traffic codes and regulations, they do not reflect that in many cases, there is an exit for pedestrians. 

    I quickly created a Google map of all locations in the City of Toronto marking such locations. Through a social media campaign led by Walk Toronto, we were quickly able to map over 450 locations where a pathway, sidewalk, or staircase allows a pedestrian to continue their way where motor vehicles are forced to turn around.

    Happily, this is about to change.

    Yesterday, by a simple show of hands, Toronto City Council approved a motion brought forward by Councillor Paula Fletcher to change that. Councillor Fletcher’s motion was titled “I’m Walking Here.”

    The motion, which was amended to strengthen the wording, requests city staff to develop a new signage standard to indicate where “no exit” signage betrays a pedestrian passage, and to begin installing these new signs this year.

    The map that I created based on Dylan’s initial suggestion will be used to help identify these locations.

    Given the ongoing pandemic, where we are all subjected to yet another lockdown, walking is one of the few permitted ways for each of us to get outside, enjoy the fresh spring air, and get much needed exercise. Knowing where one can walk, especially away from heavy traffic or busy sidewalks and paths, will only help unlock the city for more Torontonians.

    I want to thank everyone who submitted locations for the map to Walk Toronto or to myself via Twitter or directly to me on this website. This couldn’t have happened without the help of fellow Torontonians.

  • Why pedestrian safety is a matter of justice for essential workers

    The new YYZ9 Fulfillment Centre in Northeast Scarborough, looking across Steeles Avenue

    In August 2020, in the midst of an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon opened its sixth fulfillment centre in the Greater Toronto Area near Steeles and Tapscott Road in northeast Scarborough. Upon opening, the new warehouse, where consumer orders are packed for delivery, employed 700 workers, 100 more than Amazon initially planned due to high order volumes.

    The starting wage for an Amazon fulfillment centre employee is $17.00 an hour, despite notoriously tough working conditions. With most professional and office workers at home, and with ongoing pandemic restrictions, Amazon has enjoyed significant sales increases. But those workers picking and packing orders are not able to work from home – and workplace spread has been a significant factor in COVID-19 transmission in Ontario.

    Brampton, home to two of the GTA’s fulfilment centres, and close to Amazon’s Mississauga, Milton and Bolton warehouses, has been a COVID-19 hotspot. Like Toronto, Peel Region has been under lockdown and stay-at-home orders since November.

    Like most new logistics facilities, the new Scarborough warehouse, like the other five GTA Amazon fulfillment centres, is in an industrial area on the city’s outskirts, where land is plentiful, but transit and pedestrian access is lacking. East of Tapscott Road, Steeles Avenue narrows from four lanes to two, and there are no designated pedestrian crossings at the intersection with Eastvale Drive. The eastbound TTC stop at Eastvale Avenue was removed in 2018 after a passenger was struck and killed trying to cross the street after disembarking from a 53 Steeles East bus. The next nearest stop, at Tapscott Road, is 300 metres west.

    Steeles Avenue, looking west towards Eastvale Drive and the signalized intersection beyond, at Tapscott Road

    The sidewalk on the south side of Steeles Avenue ends at Tapscott, a few hundred metres west of the Amazon fulfilment centre. On the north side, the sidewalk ends at Ferncliffe Crescent in Markham. Despite a new residential area in Morningside Heights, to the east, there is no sidewalk along Steeles to connect to it. Pedestrians heading to Amazon or towards Staines Road must choose whether to walk in the mud, or on the busy roadway. Though the posted speed limit is 50 km/h, motorists regularly travel at 60 km/h or faster.

    Looking east on Steeles from Tapscott Road – despite the sign advising motorists of pedestrian activity, there are no sidewalks leading east towards the new Amazon fulfillment centre (Sonali Praharaj)

    A stairway and ramp were built on the north end of the Amazon property, likely with the expectation that a sidewalk on the south side of Streeles Avenue would soon be installed. This would provide improved pedestrian access to the fulfillment centre. But without a safe and logical way to get to it from the street, it remains largely unused.

    Passmore Avenue, on the south side of the fulfillment centre, was rebuilt with a sidewalk in the late fall of 2020, months after Amazon opened. However, it requires a lengthy walk north to Steeles Avenue up Tapscott, and there are no sidewalks on Tapscott from Passmore south, towards McNicoll Avenue. The intersection of Passmore and Tapscott itself – controlled by an all-way stop – still does not feature proper crosswalks.  

    Looking east on Steeles from Tapscott Road – despite the sign advising motorists of pedestrian activity, there are no sidewalks leading east towards the new Amazon fulfillment centre (Sonali Praharaj)

    Though there are two TTC bus routes that operate to the corner of Tapscott Road and Passmore Avenue – 53B/953B Steeles East and 102B/C Markham Road – for months, workers had to walk on the roadway, through a construction site to access those buses. Anyone looking to go east, towards Morningside Heights, or southeast, towards Malvern, still face a long, dangerous walk or a lengthy bus commute.

    The corner of Tapscott Road and Passmore Avenue

    The TTC, starting January 11, 2021, began diverting the 53B Steeles East bus to directly serve the Amazon fulfillment centre, finally serving a major industrial trip generator and reducing essential workers’ travel times. Even still, the new sidewalk on Passmore ends at the warehouse entrance – anyone waiting for a bus must still walk and wait in the snow or mud.

    Eventually, Steeles Avenue will be widened, with new sidewalks and bike lanes, and Morningside Avenue will be extended north to Steeles Avenue. However, these improvements have been planned for years and completion is still several years away. Though new warehouses have opened here, civic infrastructure has not caught up.

    New TTC bus stop serving the Amazon Fulfillment Centre on Passmore Road (Sonali Praharaj)

    The TTC’s service change, adding a new bus stop on Passmore Avenue, was a welcome – yet overdue – acknowledgement that essential workers, especially racialized and lower-paid workers, deserve better. It is inexcusable that new employment uses are planned, approved, and constructed before the appropriate pedestrian infrastructure and transit services are in place. It is also inexcusable that after a TTC customer was killed that a nearby bus stop was removed, rather than safety improvements added instead. This is not just a matter of ensuring a basic level of safety for pedestrians – this is a matter of justice for those we consider essential workers.

  • A major malfunction at Major Mackenzie Drive

    A major malfunction at Major Mackenzie Drive

    Viva Blue buses on the new Yonge Street Rapidway, February 2021

    On December 20, 2020, the newest section of York Region’s Viva Rapidways opened for service on Yonge Street between Highway 7 and Major Mackenzie Drive. I have been critical of York Region’s rapid transit projects for several reasons: they are underutilized, they are poorly designed for pedestrians, and without frequent service and convenient connecting routes, the money spent on fancy new infrastructure ends up becoming a questionable investment.

    At least the new Yonge Street Rapidway would serve York Region’s busiest transit corridor, supporting new high-density development in Richmond Hill. Unlike on Highway 7 or in Newmarket, there are no two-phase pedestrian crossings on this part of Yonge. Unfortunately, a botched connection between the new Rapidway at Major Mackenzie Drive created a new problem for the YRT/Viva transit network.

    This issue — along with the other problems with York Region’s Rapidways that I discussed previously — should be held up as lessons on what not to do when building new transit rights-of-way in street medians, be it on Hurontario Street in Mississauga and Brampton, planned BRT lines on Dundas Street in Mississauga, or Queen Street in Brampton.

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  • No exit? Yes, walk this way!

    No exit? Yes, walk this way!

    Earl Place, where “No Exit” signs betray through access for pedestrians and cyclists

    Last week, Dylan Reid and I, both co-founders of Walk Toronto, decided to create an inventory of all instances in the city where “No Exit” signs do not apply to all road users. Though these signs are required under traffic codes and regulations, they do not reflect that in many cases, there is an exit for pedestrians. Some of those offer through passage for cyclists as well. We were inspired by a Twitter thread that expressed the frustration of getting around the city by foot, where signage is designed entirely for motorists.

    Instances where pedestrians or cyclists may continue past a “No Exit” sign include traffic calming measures meant to keep out through motor vehicles on once-continuous roads. The intersection of Earl Place, Earl Street, and Huntley Street is just one example: curbs and bollards restrict motorists from continuing through, though a narrow passage allows cyclists to continue past; sidewalks also allow through pedestrian movement.

    Earl Place and Huntley Street

    In many other cases, suburban street designs, such as cul-de-sacs, limit vehicular movement though residential subdivisions, but narrow public walkways allow pedestrians access to parklands and neighbouring streets. In other cases, changes in grade between streets allow for a staircase, but not a through roadway down a steep hill. These are common in the Swansea, Baby Point, Silverthorn, and East Toronto neighbourhoods.

    As of January 30, 2021, I have mapped over 250 misleading “No Exit” signs throughout the City of Toronto, though I know there are many more. Please send them to me via Twitter or via a direct message, and I will be sure to add your submission.

    Our goal is to convince the City of Toronto to add signage recognizing where pedestrians and cyclists do have an exit. Perhaps too, this might inspire you to get outside, and walk around the neighbourhood, checking out passageways you might have not known about.