Advertisement

News

A Quay to sharing the street

After what seemed an interminable wait, the redesigned Queens Quay opened to the public on June 19, introducing a new kind of place in our city: a major artery where pedestrians, cyclists, transit vehicles and cars share the right-of-way. The new Queens Quay has much to say about Toronto’s evolution.

Street design = urban manners

In the decades after WWII, we grew used to spreading out in auto-oriented environments, avoiding friction by using space as a buffer, driving from place to place for specific purposes and rarely overlapping on foot in public spaces. Downtown streets were largely devoid of pedestrians for most hours of the day, and cars had their way. We are now picking up a thread dropped three generations ago in North America, dusting off and reviving an urban culture that had all but disappeared here but is still commonplace in the vertical, compact neighbourhoods found in other parts of the world.

Part of the change has to do with the design of our streets. They’re presently not up to accommodating all their new users, and this has led to frustration and bad behaviour – even to life-threatening conflicts. 

Last year a pedestrian was hit by a car in Toronto every three and a half hours, a cyclist every seven hours and 10 minutes, and these are just the cases reported to the police. It’s all very well to say people should just follow the rules, but what rules? All may be at fault. Impatient drivers who think the roads are theirs alone accelerate to beat the light, ignoring pedestrians and cyclists multi-tasking pedestrians text obliviously while crossing the street kamikaze cyclists weave recklessly through traffic and on and off sidewalks in their own bubbles.

Clearly, we all need to change our behaviour – make eye contact and pay closer attention to each other – and redesign the limited space available in the rights-of-way for the greater good rather than seeing it as a zero-sum game among competing users. The great examples, cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, have developed highly sophisticated designs for shared use that do just that, with separated lanes for cyclists, pedestrian priority crossings, and signals adapted to all road users. 

When you see these solutions in action, it’s obvious that all users tend to be calmer and more considerate when there’s more clarity. Peer pressure and “follow the leader” behaviour kick in, and there’s less of the stress and sense of danger that come from uncertainty. Toronto is in the early stages of making that transition, but Queens Quay represents an important step in tapping into that collective learning and experience.

A new feeling on the water’s edge

Queens Quay has brought the emerging best practices of street design to the waterfront, our new frontier on the harbour. 

The four WaveDecks at the foot of Spadina, Simcoe, Rees and Parliament, first manifestations of the 2006 competition won by Rotterdam firm West 8, are now finally joined by their connecting lifeline, the expanded Martin Goodman Trail, so we can have the full experience of a generous waterfront “greenway.” This newfound breathing space brings access to an expanded horizon at the water’s edge. For many, it’s our in situ “resort.”

Completing this last missing piece of the Martin Goodman Trail, Queens Quay also links together other emerging green networks – streets, trails, squares, indoor and outdoor gathering spaces and parks leading to and across the waterfront. Seeing how quickly the new Queens Quay has been adopted and populated makes it clear how powerfully it connects.

The rule, not the exception

What’s crucial now is that Queens Quay become the new rule, not a one-off exception.

Periodically, all our streets are rebuilt, their surfaces (sidewalks and roadbeds) repaved, their underground services and utilities renewed. Going back to a method I developed in the 1980s when I was Toronto’s director of architecture and urban design, every opportunity should be taken to systematically incorporate the characteristics of “shared,” or “complete,” streets into infrastructure renewal.

New York City’s Street Design Manual has been guiding a similar transition with great success in all five boroughs. An essential element of the approach is the adoption of a standardized common “pattern language” based on international signs and symbols so signage and signals are intuitively and easily recognized by all users. Some of the initial confusion on Queens Quay stemmed from our lack of familiarity with this new coding. But ideally, as the kinks are worked out and it becomes more ubiquitous and consistent across Toronto (as it already is elsewhere), navigation on shared streets will become second nature.

The driver’s paradox

For over 60 years, transportation planners tried to slay the congestion dragon with ever-wider roads, freeways and management systems. Now we know that building more facilities only invites more congestion. The only strategy that works in big, dense cities is getting more people out of their cars.

There are many compelling reasons to do this, from public health to environmental impacts and convenience, and in the end the driving imperative will come from the inexorably rising cost of energy. But even if we focus narrowly on the status quo, all other factors being equal, the best solution for drivers – those who have no choice, or for whatever reason insist – is to provide a range of better alternatives, including transit, walking and, yes, cycling.

It makes perfect sense. Every additional trip we take on foot, on a bicycle or by public transit frees up significant space for drivers, since the “footprints” of these other modes are so much smaller. The cyclist beside you is not the car in front of you. Driver, cyclist and pedestrian are complementary rather than mutually exclusive categories. Most of us are all of the above at different times. What’s crucial is the proportion of time we use each mode, and creating communities where the car is needed but only for certain types of trips, and where, for other trips, we can make more efficient choices. 

Cities around the world are making this adjustment and finding innovative ways to share the road, in the process reducing confusion, frustration and bad behaviour all round. This is the driver’s paradox: innovative street design lets more people feel comfortable operating in mixed traffic, makes safe and comfortable space for cyclists (and pedestrians) in shared rights-of-way, and thus makes room for driving when it is needed. 

The city of Toronto recently reported that the new downtown bike lanes along Simcoe, Richmond and Adelaide have dramatically increased – in some cases tripled – the number of cyclists using those routes without impeding car travel. But even more significantly, the report shows car travel times have generally improved at the same time.

Queens Quay represents an important milestone in the transition to a more sustainable, livable and prosperous future. By reallocating space and putting people at the centre, it demonstrates compellingly how we can think differently about the street spaces we share.

Ken Greenberg is former director of urban design and architecture for the city of Toronto, and principal of Greenberg Consultants.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

Advertisement

Exclusive content and events straight to your inbox

Subscribe to our Newsletter

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

By signing up, I agree to receive emails from Now Toronto and to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.

Recently Posted