The relationship of the Bay and Front bus platform and Union Station, where disembarked bus passengers have to jaywalk across four lanes of traffic to get to Union - or else walk up to Front and back, which nobody can be bothered to do - is easily the worst piece of small-scale urban design in the city. I defy anybody to come up with a more thoughtless or stupid one.
I’m serious. Legacy situations, like the Queen/Lansdowne/Jameson jog, don’t count. Nor do unavoidably awkward things like the eastbound Danforth bike lane being crossed by the entry lane for the DVP. I mean a piece of design that was approved in its entirety at a single time.
For one person, it’s not a bad place to jaywalk - you can cross two lanes, then pause on the concrete divider to judge your moment to cross the other two - but that’s not a solution for dozens and dozens of people at a time.
People are going to cross there, just as herds of students are going to cross Queen’s Park Circle at St. Michael’s College whether or not there’s a proper pedestrian crossing. GO has promised a pedestrian footbridge, (actually, they said last June that construction would start ‘in a few weeks’).
Some have suggested a barrier forcing pedestrians to go to Front, but that seems inelegant. I’d prefer a wide bridge with a gentle slope up from the bus platform, then another slope curving northward at a right angle.
(Last spring, Christopher Hume suggested that the bus terminal belonged south of the ACC, west of Bay; that area is now a parking lot.)
Posted by Patrick at March 26, 2004 10:42 PM