Hundreds discuss King St. overhaul
A public consultation tackling the fate of busy downtown street attracts a crowd of 300
About 300 people attended a public consultation held Monday night by Toronto city staff involving a proposal to overhaul King St.
With standing room only, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre was packed, with some people being turned away at the door. Among them was Jay Wall, who works nearby at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave.
“King St. has become a huge mess in terms of traffic congestion, and also has so much more potential to be greater as a public space,” he said.
As a cyclist, Wall said that his greatest frustration is riding down King St. next to “cars swerving in and out around street cars,” which made it dangerous.
Wall said he was excited about the possibilities that were being presented in terms of addressing traffic flow, making sure the street was used by vehicles and pedestrians alike.
The east-west spine of the city, King St., is one of the busiest surface transit routes in the city, ferrying 65,000 people on a usual weekday. The streets share space with café seating, benches, pedestrians, cyclists, streetcars and cars.
The three options available are: alternate loops with separated lanes for eastbound and westbound streetcars, and on every other block vehicle access is limited to taxis, delivery vehicles and local traffic with space for pedestrians; separate lanes for streetcars but no additional space for pedestrians; a transit promenade that would double the sidewalk space for pedestrians. Councillor Joe Cressy said that the most preferable options appeared to be the looping and promenade options, but there were concerns about the third option as that would mean maintaining vehicles on north and south side.
“The proposal is to put a ‘transit first’ approach to moving people on King St.” Cressy said.
“King St. isn’t working today. It doesn’t work for drivers, it doesn’t work for people on the streetcar and it certainly doesn’t work for pedestrians,” he said.
The city set up three stations to get feedback from residents. First was the evaluation stage, to find a way to calculate the success of the pilot. The second station was to figure to the geographical parameters of the project and to raise any concerns from locals on specific neighbourhood ideas. The third was a discussion of the three options presented with different models.
“There’s a huge amount of public interest, a lot of people saying ‘when, when!’ ” Ann-Marie Nasr of the city’s planning department said. “It’s interesting and exciting.”
Nasr told the Star they hope to have a pilot project underway by the fall, after another public consultation in April, reporting to the committee in June and meeting with council in July.
“The pilot will give us a lot of feedback, to come back and say we’ve done some more thinking, and here are some further refinements,” she said.