The city is moving ahead with a proposal to build an overpass on Spadina between Bremner and Lakeshore.
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Because of the Gardiner on and off ramps, this area is a pedestrian hostile environment, considering it's in a community of tens of thousands of residents and soon, a school.
If you're heading to the lake on the west side of Spadina, once you reach Lake Shore, there is no cross walk. Instead, you're confronted with a USE CROSSWALK ON EAST SIDE sign but there's no crosswalk to the east side either. That forces you to walk back from where you came from, up hill to Bremner, wait again at the lights, cross Spadina, wait yet again at the lights, walk back down to Lake Shore to the exact spot you were at, but now on the east side. It's easily a 10 minute detour, just to cross the street.
The Lake Shore/Spadina intersection needs to be reconfigured within its new context as a neighbourhood and access to the waterfront. People will continue to dangerously jaywalk across live lanes of highway traffic because nobody is going to do that kind of detour.
I find it concerning that an overpass is the solution being proposed. This will only worsen the highway effect that this portion of Spadina is known for. This is not by any means a pedestrian friendly, neighbourhood focused solution.
Even to a driver, this intersection is poorly laid out. 2 lanes of Spadina traffic merge into one lane onramp to the Gardiner with little warning so cars often jostle to cut in at the last second. Eastbound offramp traffic have a hard left turn from a highway width road to a narrower road on Spadina, cut off by the streetcar ROW's concrete berm which many cars have clipped.
This entire intersection needs a rethink. Adding more overpasses, even if they're for pedestrians is the wrong way to do it.