Street sign could lead drivers to dead end
Sign alerting drivers that they’re on Park Home Ave. is misleading, reader says
If you’re looking to turn onto Park Home Ave. from Yonge St., some street signs pointing to it are more reliable than others.
At a time when many drivers are so dependent on global positioning systems for directions that they’ll follow them off a cliff, the idea of finding your way by looking for old-fashioned street signs seems quaint.
A lot of drivers still do it that way, underscoring the value of good signage. Street signs also confirm to GPS-reliant drivers that they’re headed in the right direction.
But when a new road is built right under a sign alerting drivers to a street that’s almost a block away, drivers without GPS could end up turning into a dead end.
The enchantingly named Stella Magic emailed to say a sign alerting southbound drivers on Yonge St. that they’re coming up on Park Home Ave. could inadvertently give some a bum steer. The sign for Park Home (and Empress Ave., which runs east from Yonge) is right next to a laneway running between two condo towers, she said, which may appear to some drivers to be Park Home.
“If you turn onto this street, you soon find it is not an actual street but more of a driveway into complexes that are occupied by stores and condos that exist on Park Home (like a rear entrance).
“But Park Home is actually one block south, where there are stoplights.
“I have lived on Park Home for 30 years, so I am not new to the area and this problem has existed for about two years now.
“That misleading sign should be re- moved. Anyone unfamiliar with the area would be hard pressed to find my address. You can’t have two Park Homes within a block of each other without confusing people.”
We went there and saw that the sign is mounted to a pole right beside a lane that looks somewhat like a street and runs between a recently built condo tower and another still under construction.
Scrolling back to 2007 on Google Street View, we could see the Park Home and Empress signs on the same pole, but there was a parking lot next to it, when the condos (and the lane) were only a gleam in a developer’s eye.
Status: Allen Pinkerton, who’s in charge of city street signs, said the sign was put up a block north of Park Home to give drivers notice that they’re coming up on it. But after the towers were built, along with the lane between them, he agreed that the sign could cause confusion. Pinkerton said his staff will look at relocating it closer to Park Home, or possibly take it down, since there are signs on all four corners and traffic signals at the intersection. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.