Toronto 1071 King West | 62.2m | 17s | Hullmark | BDP Quadrangle

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Curious why garage entrances/loading bays will be built on both the King frontage and Douro frontage. I thought city staff tried to limit garages facing onto avenues as much as possible to not break up the pedestrian realm and further congest the arterials. Is this excused here do to the traffic signal? Even with the signal, westbound streetcars will be routinley brought to a stand still by left turning vehicles.
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The driveway access at the intersection appears to be outbound only for the loading space. All vehicles will access off Druro. No left turns from King.

Reason for the second access would be the City's ridiculous rules that loading spaces cannot be designed to require trucks to back onto a public street. It leads to massive turnaround or multiple accesses within buildings which cost absolutely tonnes of money and create terribly inefficient ground floor layouts.
 
innsertnamehere said:
The driveway access at the intersection appears to be outbound only for the loading space. All vehicles will access off Druro. No left turns from King.

Reason for the second access would be the City's ridiculous rules that loading spaces cannot be designed to require trucks to back onto a public street. It leads to massive turnaround or multiple accesses within buildings which cost absolutely tonnes of money and create terribly inefficient ground floor layouts.
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That's good to hear, I thought it was something like that but am still quite bad at reading architectural docs. And yes I've seen a few people talk about the turn around requirements, the results have been really nasty on streets that have seen lots of recent redev. Big chunks of Yonge between Bloor and Dundas now just loading bays or ventilation
 
In respect of loading, I certainly agree there is room to permit trucks backing out, where this can be done safely (sightlines, road width etc.)

However, it is important to note we certainly don't want trucks backing out to major roads during rush hours or high volume travel times, as this could lead to significant additional congestion, including for transit.

Where the access is limited to side streets I'm inclined to support removing the turnaround requirement, though each street does need to examined based on circumstance. (for instance if the side street features a fire hall or EMS facility in the same block, you want to be careful not to delay response times by 90 seconds or more.)

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Worth adding, many of the issues around the turning requirement would be mitigated by reducing the size of waste-hauling trucks. Of course, this would increase the cost of delivering said service (with more trips to transfer stations required); there are always tradeoffs.
 
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Northern Light said:
In respect of loading, I certainly agree there is room to permit trucks backing out, where this can be done safely (sightlines, road width etc.)

However, it is important to note we certainly don't want trucks backing out to major roads during rush hours or high volume travel times, as this could lead to significant additional congestion, including for transit.

Where the access is limited to side streets I'm inclined to support removing the turnaround requirement, though each street does need to examined based on circumstance. (for instance if the side street features a fire hall or EMS facility in the same block, you want to be careful not to delay response times by 90 seconds or more.

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Worth adding, many of the issues around the turning requirement would be mitigated by reducing the size of waste-hauling trucks. Of course, this would increase the cost of delivering said service (with more trips to transfer stations required); there are always tradeoffs.
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Recently saw a video on Tokyo that featured the small fire trucks and garbage trucks that are able to navigate the city's narrow streets. We should really start figuring them out sooner than latter, as the streets aren't getting any wider. Would also be a boon for all road users safety as we should probably make the vehicles routinely speeding the wrong way down streets as small as possible.
 
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