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Star: Toronto Council approves new street signs

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The signs they are a changin'

But not right away, as host of exceptions for older neighbourhoods means many existing street signs are sticking around
Mar 07, 2007 04:30 AM
John Spears
CITY HALL BUREAU

Coming to streets near you – newly designed Toronto street signs.

Unless you live in a heritage conservation district. Or an "older neighbourhood." Or a "historic community." Or you have multilingual street signs.

In a decision that owed much to William Lyon Mackenzie King's famous political sophistry of "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription," Toronto city council approved a new design for the city's street-name signs yesterday.

But it added a raft of exceptions that will allow many existing signs to remain – most of them in the old City of Toronto, with its black and white signs featuring the distinctive "acorn."

The exceptions allowing established neighbourhoods to keep their old signs were added at the prompting of Councillor Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina).

He argued that in a city whose motto is "Diversity our strength," there's room to recognize tradition.

Scrapping elements like the old street signs strips away the city's heritage and history, he said.

"Let's not throw away the past as we try to embrace a bold new future," Vaughan said. "Because I don't want to live in that city."

Under Vaughan's proposal, approved by council, local councillors will control which neighbourhoods get to retain existing signs.

The signs won't spring up overnight.

Gary Welsh, general manager of transportation services, said the city normally has to replace 2,000 to 2,500 signs a year due to damage or deterioration, and the new signs will go up as the old ones need replacing.

Since the city has as many as 70,000 signs, it could take 30 years to replace all the existing signs.

The new signs, by Kramer Design Associates, come in several versions: a large version, 96.5 centimetres (38 inches long) for main roads and a smaller version, 76.2 centimetres long (30 inches) for local streets.

They'll follow the same pattern – a band of dark blue in the middle, bearing the street name in white reflective letters. Top and bottom sections will be unpainted aluminum. The street number closest to the intersection will go on the bottom section.

In Business Improvement Areas and well-known neighbourhoods like Rosedale or Rexdale, the top section can have a distinctive logo and the neighbourhood name.

Main intersections will still carry the existing large, rectangular street-name signs hanging traffic signal arms, or attached to poles on traffic islands. They'll also have new signs on corner poles.

Councillor Janet Davis (Ward 31, Beaches-East York) argued that neighbourhoods should be allowed to retain the names of Toronto's former municipalities, such as East York or Scarborough.

"I'm simply suggesting if a neighbourhood should decide to use a former (municipality's) logo, that they should have the ability to do that," Davis said.

It's inconsistent to allow a neighbourhood to identify itself as "Leaside" but to ban "East York," she said. But her proposal was voted down.

Councillor Shelley Carroll (Ward 33, Don Valley East) said resurrecting the identities of the former municipalities will only reopen the wounds created by the creation of the megacity in 1998.

"We are playing out all our residual resentment of amalgamation," she said.

Carroll noted that even acknowledging neighbourhoods can get tricky. Vaughan's amendment will allow the downtown Chinatown to maintain its Chinese signs, she said. But before the Chinese settled in that area, it was largely Jewish, and before that, Irish.

Davis was the only councillor to vote against the new signs, with Vaughan's amendment permitting retention of the older signs in some neighbourhoods.

*****

Good for Vaughan... I'd hate to see the bilingual Chinatown street signs go.
 
by the time they replace the signs in 30 years, they will come out with new signs and will want to change them again.
 
With Vaughan's amendment signage will not be standardized at all. Every single councillor in the city can decide to keep the signs as they are wherever they want. I like the idea of multilingual signs in Greektown or Chinatown but why can't that occur on signs made to look like the standardized version. The only place keeping the old acorn signs makes sense (if it isn't going to be used everywhere... which I would prefer) is in a historic area where streetscape items should all be made to reflect a specific time period. Having an acorn sign on a 1970s cement post with a 1990s light fixture is pointless.
 
What a mess. Creating a signage hierarchy based on whether your neighbourhood has a BIA, whether it has enough elite pur laine "historic" cachet to get special signage to keep the "bold new future" that Adam Vaughan dreads at bay, whether your multilingual community is multilingual enough to rate a multilingual sign, etc.
 
So... where are the new street name signs?

The only new street name sign I happen to see are the terrible facsimile of the old Toronto signs, but using white lettering on a blue background and missing the address number on the lower portion.

I thought that by now the new design from early 2007 would have appeared by now.

Did someone have a million of the those objectionable signs in their basement and wants to get rid of them first?
 
It's moving along with the "city beautiful" initiatives: really slooowly.
 
I noticed three of the new signs yesterday at Yonge & College -- the northeast corner still had the previous version with the Downtown Yonge BIA logo. I understood that the new signs were going to have BIA/neighbourhood indicators on the top, but the new signs at this corner don't have any reference to the BIA. Maybe it's just a test?
 
thanks for the link. I like the look but I agree with Matt Blackett. It would have been nice to add some colored backgrounds or trim in order to differentiate main city areas. The logos are just too small and not very eye catching.
 
I saw two of the new signs on the Danforth between Pape and Broadview. Yet neither had the little BIA logo on the top. Maybe these are being used as pilots?
 
Ugly

The new street signs were, and still are, ugly.

Now let me be clear. They are an improvement over the various street signs of Etobicoke, Scarborough, and NY, all of which were hideous and plain.

But the loss of the quality street signs of the old City of Toronto, which were elegant, sturdy, and timeless, and had the distinctive Toronto Acorn on them......is beyond contemptible!

To so frivolously discard history for something so transient and uninspired bewilders.

Clearly all of the City would have benefited from having the 'old City' style signs extended to the 'boroughs'.

But the cheap 'Metro' mentality of how can we save money this week (never mind what this will cost down the road) prevailed.

True, the old signs cost $300.00 a pop. But they also lasted several decades.

Where as the new ones are about 1/3 the cost. But have less than 1/2 the life expectancy, which makes the justification for the change, on financial terms, dubious.

And certainly there was no historical or artistic justification to the Wal-Mart (ing) of our street signs.

Sigh.
 
The new street signs were, and still are, ugly.

Now let me be clear. They are an improvement over the various street signs of Etobicoke, Scarborough, and NY, all of which were hideous and plain.

But the loss of the quality street signs of the old City of Toronto, which were elegant, sturdy, and timeless, and had the distinctive Toronto Acorn on them......is beyond contemptible!

To so frivolously discard history for something so transient and uninspired bewilders.

Clearly all of the City would have benefited from having the 'old City' style signs extended to the 'boroughs'.

But the cheap 'Metro' mentality of how can we save money this week (never mind what this will cost down the road) prevailed.

True, the old signs cost $300.00 a pop. But they also lasted several decades.

Where as the new ones are about 1/3 the cost. But have less than 1/2 the life expectancy, which makes the justification for the change, on financial terms, dubious.

And certainly there was no historical or artistic justification to the Wal-Mart (ing) of our street signs.

Sigh.

I totally agree! I like the old Toronto style signs too.
 
I really don't understand the city sometimes. Those old street signs had charm and were distinctive. An updated version of that design would be perfect. These new signs are pretty forgettable.

The city (and the TTC) really need to do a better job in this area.
 

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