I was walking the stretch of Yonge from Adelaide to Yorkville a few days ago after being in Toronto for the first time in a couple months and it reminded me that I still feel this is the worst designed street in the city. Sure there are plenty of more auto-oriented streets in Toronto but none have as much potential to be so much more.
Honestly if there's demand for space other than car lanes, it should be given over to those uses, even if that means limiting Yonge to delivery trucks only. If not that then either 1 lane 1 way or 1 lane each way. It's not just that there needs to be wider sidewalks because the sidewalks are crowded. Downtown Yonge, as Toronto's main street should be a place to linger, and there are several things that need to change for that to happen.
1) Significantly narrower roadbed. This is for traffic calming, because right now I would say traffic is a fair bit faster than on King/Queen/Dundas,etc since there are no streetcars and no on-street parking. This makes walking along Yonge not especially pleasant and I'm worried 2 lanes one way would not be much better (3 lanes one way would probably be worse!). Crossing (jaywalking) across 2 or less lanes is also easier than across 3-4 and crossing slow traffic is much easier and safer than fast traffic since people have a hard time evaluating how much time it takes for cars to move a certain distance when they're travelling faster than human speeds (20-30km/h).
2) More street furniture and more street trees. Flowers wouldn't hurt either. Are there even any benches or street trees at all along Yonge right now? It feels very barren with the 60ft wide unbroken expanse of pavement.
3) More stuff at the sides of the sidewalk that will draw people's interest and encourage them to slow down and pause. This includes outdoor stalls from the businesses along Yonge, as well as restaurant/cafe patios. Think of how many vibrant streets have these, aboard like in Japan or pedestrian streets in Europe, or even in Toronto like in Chinatown or Kensington Market.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.6537...KdT6kepbtZ4dqnR4yg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
When people are walking the street, they typically look forwards, looking sidewalks into the storefront windows is a bit awkward and means the person won't see where they're going while they're looking into the window, plus if they're still walking along they'll only have 1-2 seconds to look inside before they've passed the store. However, if there's goods displayed at the edge of the sidewalk, as well as signs oriented to face pedestrian traffic, you can see those from a distance and continue looking at them for much longer as you're walking along, and don't need to look sideways, away from where you're going.
People also pay attention to what others are doing. If there's other people stopped checking out the goods (or visible eating at a patio) people passing by will wonder "hey maybe this place is worth checking out". It's the same psychology as if you walk into an unknown restaurant and it's completely empty, you're likely to want to back away. Plus it makes for better people watching.
You can also have signs with ads, information and maps to guide visitors, lots of those along many European boulevards for example. You can also have space for street vendors.
4) Bike infrastructure. Yeah, it would be nice, for N-S bike routes, you have some good ones at the outskirts of downtown with Sherbourne and Beverley/St George, but those are pretty far from the heart of Downtown i.e. Yonge. Jarvis, Bay and University are terrible, wide and fast traffic. Church and Yonge are the best option, but Yonge is still not that great. With 4 lanes of traffic, as I said traffic is kind of fast, and ideally you should be taking the lane, but a lot of cyclists aren't confident enough to do that on faster streets so they'll have cars brushing by too close at high speeds as the hug the right side of the right lane. Put in some proper bike infrastructure and I'm sure you'll get loads of cyclists. That could be separated bike lanes, or it could be a shared street concept like the John St plan
http://www.blogto.com/city/2012/02/what_do_you_think_of_the_redesign_plans_for_john_st/
More bike racks and maybe motorcycle parking could be good too.
Am I going over the top with how much space should be taken away from cars (at least 2 lanes)? I don't think so. The sidewalks are already pretty crowded during many parts of the day. Add in all the extra foot traffic from development happening right along Yonge or within walking distance of Yonge. Add in the space taken up by more people lingering. Add in the space from more foot traffic and more bicycle traffic from creating an environment that's friendlier to them. Add in the space taken up by street furniture, patios, display of goods by stores. Nope, not over the top at all.
