Billboard pushes people off the sidewalk
Entertainment district ad nearly forces pedestrians to step into street traffic
Everybody needs to know who’ll be their Trusted Partner in Wealth, or that a TV show about a policeman can be seen on Tuesday at 10 p.m.
It is far more important than providing enough sidewalk space for a person who uses a wheelchair or motorized scooter, or two people that selfishly choose to walk side-by-side. Think not? You are so wrong. A big ad- vertising billboard was put up by the city’s street furniture partner, Astral Out of Home, in the middle of the sidewalk in the King St. Entertainment District.
There’s barely room for a person to squeeze past it without stepping off the curb, despite Toronto’s accessibility guidelines, which call for a minimum of 1.67 metres of clear sidewalk space.
We’ve long believed street furniture is valued more for its usefulness as an advertising platform than its benefit to the public. This proves our point as well as anything we’ve seen.
Jane Janigan emailed to say she was working in the area of King St. W. and Portland St. earlier this week, where “it was impossible to miss this sign, as it’s clogging up almost the entire sidewalk.
“Anyone with a stroller or wheelchair is basically forced onto the street to get around it.
We went there and found the sign affixed to a pole in the sidewalk on the north side of King St., just west of Portland, St., close to a fence that cuts off access to a nearby building that’s under construction.
One side of the sign touts investments, while the other has an ad for CTV programming on it.
There’s a raised piece of plywood on the other side of the curb, which looks like it was put there by the construction people so that pedestrians have an even surface to walk on when they step off the curb.
If it wasn’t for the fence, there’d be enough sidewalk space to meet the accessibility guidelines.
But the sign should never have been put in the middle of the sidewalk in the first place. Status: Ryan Lanyon, who’s in charge of street furniture, sent us a note saying “this situation was not approved by our street furniture team. A transportation standards officer has been sent this morning to investigate.”