I imagine most people living or working in Toronto have mixed thoughts on Yonge Street.
It’s the spine of the city — providing structure to the grid system, defining what is east and what is west, and connecting north with south. The “longest street in the world” is an icon for Canada, Ontario, and Toronto, with tourists flocking to the red busses often seen driving up and down this city-defining corridor. Even locals can’t resist the pull of Yonge, as it’s the site of the county’s highest ridership transit line, by a significant margin. No other corridor in the city carries more people on any given day, yet many try their hardest to avoid the surface of the street that’s as emblematic of Toronto as the CN tower and overpriced real estate.
Walking south of Bloor Street, the unofficial border to downtown, it’s clear why most prefer to minimize their time here. It’s a disaster. All it takes is one scan to the ground and to either side to see so many things wrong with the densest and most easily reachable street in the city.
Looking down it’s clear this street is hardly designed for people. Considering how accessible it is for those without a car, it’s no less than a shock to me how this part of the city remains a two-lane arterial road. What’s even more shocking is that when you compare traffic on Yonge to two parallel car-friendly streets, traffic on Yonge is strikingly low.
Using the City of Toronto’s traffic count data, we can find the 8-peak-hour traffic and pedestrian volumes at major intersections across the city. This measures the busiest 8-hour window at each intersection, essentially a full day’s worth of traffic. At Queen street, the 8-peak-hour car volume on Jarvis and University, two parallel streets, is 14,487 and 23,078 respectively. For pedestrians, the values in the same order are 3,368 and 10,824. Clearly the volumes on these streets reflect their geometries.
On Yonge, the relationship is the exact opposite. At the same cross street, Yonge is measured to have 10,956 cars and 21,936 pedestrians. On the day this count was taken, twice as many people crossed the street on foot than in a car. It’s time the design of the street reflected this use better.
Some parts of the street are ghost town, like in the image below. Based on my experiences, it’s largely due to a sidewalk that is too narrow, leading to an environment that’s hostile to pedestrians.
Looking across we see a diverse set of shops and restaurants that have little or no relationship to the street they are on. One can find just about any type of store or restaurant on Yonge, but the street design is not at all conducive to experiencing these places as part of a collective area. Each shop or restaurant feels more like an island in the ocean rather than part of a single commercial district. Attempts to connect businesses can be woeful, as in the image below. The street favours through traffic, which results in a curb-side experience that is unattractive at best, and unsafe at worst.
All is not lost for Yonge, however. The subway is not going anywhere, and ridership will eventually return. The corridor is densifying at an alarming rate, with high-rise buildings popping up around all subway stations. With all these people set to join the downtown Yonge community, I find myself asking how can this place be transformed to one that is more of a destination rather than just a way to get to other parts of the city?
I find myself coming back to the simplest answer — close the street to cars, at least during the summer. I see prohibiting vehicular traffic as the easiest way to achieve so many of the city’s objectives. Safety, Equity, and Sustainability are at the top of the list.
The street’s current configuration is unsafe. There are large stretches of uninterrupted road where drivers are able to accelerate to unsafe speeds well over the legal limit. When combined with the uneven pavement, lack of bike lanes, and narrow sidewalks, there is a tragedy waiting to happen. While not captured in any official data sets, from my experience living nearby, the rate of near-misses on Yonge is higher than anywhere else downtown. A simple fix is to remove cars from the equation. No cars, no safety issues.
Yonge street is unique in Toronto in that it’s the location where people of all walks of life converge. Every imaginable group is represented, and it really is a thing of beauty. I remember in a previous job, when asking a newly minted director who transferred from Philadelphia what surprised them about Toronto, the biggest shock to them was their first day at work walking down Yonge and taking in the diversity. From a transportation perspective, the current street configuration is best suited for only a subset of the population — those that own cars, can walk without assistance, and those responsible for moving only themselves. Removing cars would provide more space for pedestrians, and those who need the space will benefit the most.
Traffic congestion in Toronto can be painful. Especially in the COVID-19 era, when travelers may feel less inclined to take the subway to mitigate contagion risk, travelling during peak times can be sluggish. It’s no secret that a simple solution to traffic is to make other modes more attractive, rather than increasing the road network’s auto capacity. By closing the street to cars, walking and cycling become significantly more attractive, and the businesses fronting the streets will have a larger customer base to engage with.
Toronto doesn’t have to look far to see what a successful summer street closure program looks like. In Montreal, rue Ste. Catherine and twelve others are closed to vehicles in the summer months. At a cost of under $4M per year, Montreal transforms streets across the city from throughways to spaces that draw residents and travelers in. Ste. Catherine is the commercial artery of Montreal, just like Yonge St in Toronto.
It’s clear there is a need to act on Yonge Street as the current configuration doesn’t meet the needs of the streets primary users. The resulting situation is one that hinders advancements in safety, equity, and sustainability.
A shorter term solution is a temporary configuration that closes the street to vehicular traffic, which could take inspiration from Montreal. Montreal has shown that the cost to implement such a program is minimal when compared with the potential benefits. The City of Toronto loves pilot projects, and revitalizing downtown Yonge for next summer could be the highest profile transportation pilot project the City has ever undertaken. North of Bloor St has already been reconfigured in record time, the same could happen south.
In the longer term, the yongeTOmorrow project promises to reconfigure the section of Yonge between College and Queen into a pedestrian oriented environment. The proposed configuration is below.
While the reconfiguration is certainly an upgrade, the overly complicated circulation design is a disaster waiting to happen. A confused driver is a dangerous driver, and this design is asking for unnecessary confusion and conflicts. Recognizing the logistics needs of businesses, an improved version could allow for full auto access in a specified window, with the remaining time spent entirely closed to cars.
Instead of thinking too much about yongeTOmorrow, a more pressing issue is acting today. A summer street closure would allow the City to test different configurations at a low cost, which would ultimately inform the final design of a future permanent installation, leading to a final product that is more refined and evidence based.
