[Glen]

From Adam Vaughan in today's NP...


Everyone fears that the cars will go crazy because they won't be able to get into the city quickly," Mr. Vaughan (Trinity Spadina) said yesterday. "The reality is, if you go down there at rush hour, there are no cars on Adelaide whatsoever, so you've got this massive wide street in the downtown that nobody is using. And then when you go to Richmond Street, there are flocks of 20 cars at a time every five minutes but in between ... you can't see a car for 30 or 40 blocks in either direction."

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/story.html?id=2954732#ixzz0mIyD3B82

This is consistent with the Cordon Count and the opinion of Dr. Enid Slack whom said ....

"Let me be clear that I am not recommending a congestion charge along the lines used in London, England. Unlike London, the congestion problem in Toronto is not in the downtown core; the congestion problem in Toronto is on the highways. These tolls should be levied by the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority (GTTA) because it is the regional roads and not the local roads that are congested."

 

[grey]

I take it that this is in response to a question or comment about tearing down the Gardiner?

Adam's correct, of course. Whenever I offer Richmond and Adelaide as substitutions to pro-Gardiner types, they make crazy gridlock claims. These roads have always been under-utilized, even before the laneway bottlenecks were created during Bay Adelaide and Trump Tower construction (which Gardiner advocates love to pretend will be perpetually under construction and ALWAYS blocking two lanes -- the type of people I expect watch Fox News and would be part of the Tea Party movement if they lived in the U.S.).

 

[Glen]

I take it that this is in response to a question or comment about tearing down the Gardiner?

No, it was in regards to the idea of turning both into two way streets. Adam is suggesting that they are lifeless because they are one way presently.

 

[kettal]

Not every street needs to be a 'destination street'...

 

[Urban Shocker]

Indeed, part of the charm of any working city such as ours is the way in which service streets and secondary streets exist in relation to the relentlessly "on" major thoroughfares.

 

[Riverdale Rink Rat]

The key is which part of A&R

They're only talking about west of University, which I can agree are not part of the commuter grid in the same way as the eastern parts of those streets. If you were making them two ways east of Yonge, where they are the de facto extended off & on ramps for the DVP from downtown, you'd be sparking chaos. Bay-Adelaide and TT's building bottlenecks have been bad enough!

 

[js97]

Adam wants to play god and turn richmond/adelaide into college street.

Not even Bloomberg can pull of that type of 'gentrification/investment' in social engineering....

I think his vision is something similiar to that of 'Rush /Division) in chicago... until they get too big and want to become clubs and get shut down by guess who...

I think Vaughns head has gotten way too big for his own good...

 

[grey]

Two directions west of University is a fantastic idea. Those streets cut through the potentially beautiful King/Spadina district full of heritage buildings, which is absolutely begging to become Nolita/Soho-fifteen-years-ago (Entertainment District between Queen and King and Simcoe and a bit west of Spadina).

True, not every street needs to be a shopping destination, but that's not the goal here. Also, I don't know why we're so focused on single retail streets here (I guess some people are limited in experience to this city -- Yonge, Queen, and Bloor). What I'd prefer to see (and I think what Adam is aiming for) is a mix of live/work spaces and studios.

Adam wants to play god and turn richmond/adelaide into college street.

Not even Bloomberg can pull of that type of 'gentrification/investment' in social engineering....

I think his vision is something similiar to that of 'Rush /Division) in chicago... until they get too big and want to become clubs and get shut down by guess who...

I think Vaughns head has gotten way too big for his own good...

I think you have a ridiculous impression of Vaughan and you really need to catch him speaking in person or on the Rogers channel. The anti-Vaughan clubber types are hilariously out of touch and he is honestly way smarter than any of them and could destroy any argument they could possibly come up in a totally educated and rational manner. I think he has a far better head on his shoulders than any of the mayoral candidates, but I wouldn't wish that job upon him.

 

[grey]

Mr. Vaughan said the neighbourhood has changed dramatically in recent years, let alone since the mid 1950s when Richmond and Adelaide were turned into one way streets to facilitate evacuation if the Soviet Union dropped a bomb on Toronto.

“That was the planning rationale,” he said. There was supposed to be an on-ramp to the Gardiner that would have demolished Fort York, and ramps to the Spadina Expressway, he said, but those streets were never built.

Holy crap. Would anyone be left alive to evacuate Toronto if a bomb fell?

 

[TOareaFan]

I just don't know what is wrong with having two one way streets running parallel like they do. In the end we have the same number of lanes they are just grouped differently and that allows traffic to flow much smoother. I use Adelaide eastbound just about every morning and it is a very smooth feeder for the dowtown core from the west end.

If we agree (and I think we do) that not every street has to be a Queen/Yonge/Bloor then what is wrong with an Adelaide that has a pretty eclectic (if old) collection of businesses, some retail, a wee bit of hospitablity and some office while, at the same time, being a bit of a congestion reliever.

Sure, the original purpose of the twin one-way streets seems a bit "daft" now....but the end result is a pretty functional pair of roads.

 

[kettal]

Any traffic engineer will tell you how much better one-way streets are for programming traffic lights for optimum throughput (although I can't speak to whether this is in effect on Richmond or Adelaide).

I would really like to see the parking lane on the left changed into a segregated bike path on these streets, personally. Making them two-way isn't critical for the neighbourhood to be exciting... just look at the lively one-way streets in Montreal or New York.

 

[Chuck]

Two directions west of University is a fantastic idea. Those streets cut through the potentially beautiful King/Spadina district full of heritage buildings, which is absolutely begging to become Nolita/Soho-fifteen-years-ago

These vibrant New York neighbourhoods are exclusively one way streets, many of which are even wider than Adelaide or Richmond...

Have a look at pictures taken 100 years ago and you will see that Richmond and Adelaide never had retail to begin with, especially west of University. Even before the emergence of cars, they were intended to function as a back alley to King and Queen. The fact that Adelaide and Richmond see relatively minor pedestrian activity has absolutely nothing at all to do with the direction of traffic. If other issues are fixed first, such as opening up the ground floor of the warehouse buildings and clubs during the day, you can be sure that there would be far more activity. Ultimately, there are no pedestrians simply because all these streets offer is a solid wall of locked doors between Yonge and Spadina.

If legally possible, the city could also implement a bylaw limiting the depth of any new building between Queen and King to half the lot. This would prevent the current situation where new buildings tend to occupy the entire block south of Queen or North of King, and therefore obviously only have the main entrance on King or Queen.

 

[spider]

Everyone fears that the cars will go crazy because they won't be able to get into the city quickly," Mr. Vaughan (Trinity Spadina) said yesterday. "The reality is, if you go down there at rush hour, there are no cars on Adelaide whatsoever, so you've got this massive wide street in the downtown that nobody is using. And then when you go to Richmond Street, there are flocks of 20 cars at a time every five minutes but in between ... you can't see a car for 30 or 40 blocks in either direction."

Adam can see for 30 or 40 blocks? Wow.

University Avenue is a massive wide street, Adelaide and Richmond are not.

If somehow configuring these streets back into two way traffic will suddenly generate great gobs of vehicle and pedestrian traffic it must be Algebra which I never mastered in High School even though I was assured that it would prove usefull later in life.

 

[nfitz]

Perhaps we should turn things around; keep the Gardiner (and build around and under it), and get rid of the 1-way Adelaide and Richmond expressways. Wandering around the neighbourhood of these streets east of Jarvis - they just feel like such a scar on the landscape.

 

[Hipster Duck]

The whole "one way streets kill life" argument is a misunderstood reading of Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities where she argued that the conversion of major Manhattan thoroughfares to one way operation hampered bus service, because residents had to migrate over to the next block over to catch a bus in the other direction. Beyond that, she never implied that one way streets were somehow bad for pedestrian vitality, particularly in cases like Richmond and Adelaide which never had any significant surface transit routes to begin with.