Toronto 2150 Lake Shore | 215.75m | 67s | First Capital | Allies and Morrison

Humber Bay Shores - The Morning Rush Hour Horror Show
an investigative report by FMJ
(brace yourselves)

All photos were taken between 8:18 and 8:30 am on this fine Wednesday morning

Lake Shore, the entire stretch between Park Lawn and Humber river. Two cars are going westbound, a steady flow going eastbound (note the spacing between the cars on Lake Shore vs. Gardiner):
IMG_20200129_081859.jpg



Much of the traffic problems stem from having to make a left turn onto the Gardiner Westbound from North Park Lawn. This is what causes Park Lawn to be backed up to Lake Shore every morning.
The Left turn onto the Gardiner westbound entrance
Looking north onto Park Lawn in the direction of the left turn onto the westbound Gardiner. One or two cars are headed that way in the distance:
IMG_20200129_082533.jpg


roads are wider than normal (especially the right lane) where there are symbols painted on the road for bikes.
Please refer to the above photo for all the bike lane markings. They must have used invisible paint ?‍♂️

There has been tremendous traffic here for few years now in the morning rush hour, it's very much consistent you might be approaching that intersection after 10:00am in the morning to not see it jammed from Esso to Palace Pier.
Looking east from the Esso station towards Palace Pier. The time is 8:27 am. A bus and less than a dozen cars are waiting for the light.
IMG_20200129_082631.jpg

Just 2 cars are stuck in the right turn lane due to pedestrians the next minute:
IMG_20200129_082703.jpg




Take a drive around Lake Shore/Park Lawn/Queensway in the morning during rush hour and check it out - total gong show
The above mentioned total gong show:
IMG_20200129_082909.jpg

IMG_20200129_082636.jpg


The Left Turn off Parklawn onto Eastbound Lakeshore
~20 cars are stuck in "traffic" (waiting for the light to turn green). About as bad as I've ever seen this intersection:
IMG_20200129_082723.jpg

(in case you were worried, all the cars and the bus made it past the lights once they turned green)


Naturally, with all this congestion on the major thoroughfares, all the local roads are backed up too:
IMG_20200129_082943.jpg


Marine Parade is a bumper-to-bumper all the way from Palace Pier to Park Lawn:
IMG_20200129_083036.jpg

IMG_20200129_083041.jpg



But enough with the pictures. I could have just photoshopped all the cars out of the photos. Right?

I present to you the next line of evidence. I didn't know this until yesterday, but you can actually see the typical average traffic conditions on Google Maps at any given time on any given day of the week. And if you ever used Google Maps for navigation, you know how solid the quality of their traffic metadata is. So I played around with the sliders and it turns out the traffic in Humber Bay Shores is, in fact, at its worst between 8 am and 8:30 am. So let's take a few hypothetical trips around the area using Google's average rush hour traffic data.

The rush hour travel times between Palace Pier and the Gardiner on/off-ramps, going either way. Compared with the traffic-free travel times on a Saturday morning:
1580318446409.png



So what the people of Humber Bay Shores are really complaining about is that during the peak of the rush hour, their travel times increase by anywhere between one/two minutes on the low end and the whopping 4 minutes on the high end! Oh, the hummanity!! :eek:

Humber Bay rush hour traffic vs. the rest of the city:
1580318878775.png



So now you know what sort of traffic nightmare people from this area are complaining about. I would like to argue that Humber Bay Shores does not suffer from a traffic problem, it suffers from the high density of entitled crybabies.

I rest my case.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20200129_082542.jpg
    IMG_20200129_082542.jpg
    205.8 KB · Views: 367
  • 1580316431107.png
    1580316431107.png
    144.7 KB · Views: 375
Last edited:
@W. K. Lis ,Sorry, I’m still unable to get your point. I know the bridge is there and that it passes over the Gardiner. I drive under it several times a week. Are you trying to reinforce my original point that a Legion Rd extension would make it possible to drive from Lake Shore to the Queensway via Legion and Grand Ave, thus potentially relieving traffic on Park Lawn? If so, thank you.
 
Full Metal Junkie - I largely agree. There are only really 3 "pinch points" in traffic operations in the area, northbound left turns onto the Gardiner on Park Lawn, Left turns southbound on Park Lawn to Lake Shore, and Lake Shore approaching Palace Pier as it merges onto the Gardiner off-ramp part of Lake Shore.

The Park Lawn to Lake Shore left turn used to be the worst part, but that was fixed pretty effectively when they installed the double left turn lanes a few years ago, along with the dedicated right turn lane. The intersection went from 2 lanes to 4 lanes in width at the stoplight.. that's a big improvement.

The Park Lawn left turn onto the Gardiner is the other spot that backs up, but as a part of this application they are proposing to construct a double left turn lane there as well which should be more than enough.

The addition of the loop road around this development should take an immense amount of pressure off of Lake Shore approaching Palace Pier too. Plus, it's not like Marine Parade Drive doesn't exist to detour traffic if Lake Shore gets really ugly.
 
The 2150 Lake Shore Project will be a big success and will add great value to all in the area, with the Relief Road, the Double Left Lane for the Gardiner on westbound ramp and GO station.
 
Humber Bay Shores - The Morning Rush Hour Horror Show
an investigative report by FMJ
(brace yourselves)

All photos taken between 8:18 and 8:30 am on this fine Wednesday morning

Lake Shore, the entire stretch between Park Lawn and Humber river. Two cars going westbound, steady flow going eastbound (note the spacing between the cars):
View attachment 228016




Looking north onto Park Lawn in the direction of the left turn onto the westbound Gardiner. Two cars headed that way:
View attachment 228017


Please refer to the above photo for all the bike lane markings. They must have used invisible paint ?‍♂️


Looking west from the Esso station towards palace pier. The time is 8:27 am. A bus and less than a dozen cars waiting for the light.
View attachment 228019
Just 2 cars stuck in the right turn lane due to pedestrians the next minute:
View attachment 228021




The above mentioned gong show:
View attachment 228023
View attachment 228020


20 cars stuck in "traffic" (waiting for the light to go green). About as bad as I've ever seen this intersection:
View attachment 228022

(in case you were wondering, all the cars and the bus made it past the lights once they turned green)


Naturally, with all this congestion on major thoroughfares, all the local roads are backed up too:
View attachment 228024

Marine Parade is congested all the way from Palace Pier to Park Lawn:
View attachment 228025
View attachment 228026


But enough with the pictures. I could have just photoshopped all the cars out of the photos. Right?

I present to you the next line on evidence. I didn't know this until yesterday, but you can actually see typical average traffic conditions on Google Maps at any given time on any given day of the week. And if you ever used Google Maps for navigation, you know how solid the quality of their traffic metadata is. So I played around with the sliders and it turns out the traffic in Humber Bay Shores is, in fact, at its worst between 8 am and 8:30 am. So let's take a few hypothetical trips around the area using Google's average rush hour traffic data.

Rush hour travel times between Palace Pier and Gardiner on/off-ramps, going either way. Compared with traffic-free travel times on a Saturday morning:
View attachment 228037


So what people of Humber Bay Shores are complaining about is that during the peak of the rush hour, their travel times increase by anywhere between two minutes on the low end and whopping 4 minutes on the high end! Oh, the hummanity!! :eek:

Humber Bay rush hour traffic vs. the rest of the city:
View attachment 228039


So now you know what sort of traffic nightmare people from this area are complaining about. I would like to argue that Humber Bay Shores does not suffer from a traffic problem, it suffers from the high density of entitled crybabies.

I rest my case.
Post of the year, so far!

42
 
Humber Bay Shores - The Morning Rush Hour Horror Show
an investigative report by FMJ
(brace yourselves)

All photos taken between 8:18 and 8:30 am on this fine Wednesday morning

Lake Shore, the entire stretch between Park Lawn and Humber river. Two cars going westbound, steady flow going eastbound (note the spacing between the cars):
View attachment 228016




Looking north onto Park Lawn in the direction of the left turn onto the westbound Gardiner. Two cars headed that way:
View attachment 228017


Please refer to the above photo for all the bike lane markings. They must have used invisible paint ?‍♂️


Looking west from the Esso station towards palace pier. The time is 8:27 am. A bus and less than a dozen cars waiting for the light.
View attachment 228019
Just 2 cars stuck in the right turn lane due to pedestrians the next minute:
View attachment 228021




The above mentioned gong show:
View attachment 228023
View attachment 228020


20 cars stuck in "traffic" (waiting for the light to go green). About as bad as I've ever seen this intersection:
View attachment 228022

(in case you were wondering, all the cars and the bus made it past the lights once they turned green)


Naturally, with all this congestion on major thoroughfares, all the local roads are backed up too:
View attachment 228024

Marine Parade is congested all the way from Palace Pier to Park Lawn:
View attachment 228025
View attachment 228026


But enough with the pictures. I could have just photoshopped all the cars out of the photos. Right?

I present to you the next line on evidence. I didn't know this until yesterday, but you can actually see typical average traffic conditions on Google Maps at any given time on any given day of the week. And if you ever used Google Maps for navigation, you know how solid the quality of their traffic metadata is. So I played around with the sliders and it turns out the traffic in Humber Bay Shores is, in fact, at its worst between 8 am and 8:30 am. So let's take a few hypothetical trips around the area using Google's average rush hour traffic data.

Rush hour travel times between Palace Pier and Gardiner on/off-ramps, going either way. Compared with traffic-free travel times on a Saturday morning:
View attachment 228037


So what people of Humber Bay Shores are complaining about is that during the peak of the rush hour, their travel times increase by anywhere between two minutes on the low end and whopping 4 minutes on the high end! Oh, the hummanity!! :eek:

Humber Bay rush hour traffic vs. the rest of the city:
View attachment 228039


So now you know what sort of traffic nightmare people from this area are complaining about. I would like to argue that Humber Bay Shores does not suffer from a traffic problem, it suffers from the high density of entitled crybabies.

I rest my case.

Send your invoice for your services to the city. Since you're doing the job the traffic engineers are alleged to be doing for the city. (And which the city councillors ignore when they ger their reports, when the councillors request a "study".)
 
Send your invoice for your services to the city. Since you're doing the job the traffic engineers are alleged to be doing for the city. (And which the city councillors ignore when they ger their reports, when the councillors request a "study".)
I wish this was a front page story so that I could send it to councilor Grimes. He takes media coverage of his riding very seriously.
 
The public realm couldn't get much uglier. Why is Toronto so astonishingly bad at this? You can tell they simply hired someone (to install utilities and concrete) with absolutely no design sensibility whatsoever. They could solve the traffic but I still wouldn't; want to spend 10 seconds down there. YUCK!

It would be one thing if we'd improved over the garbage Toronto used to install but the new stuff is just as bad. Practically every square inch of our public realm for 50 km in every direction needs a 100% re-do. The Mink Mile is decent but what about the other 100,000+ km of pavement? It just leaves one exasperated and speechless.
 
Last edited:
The public realm couldn't get much uglier. Why is Toronto so astonishingly bad at this? You can tell they simply hired someone (to install utilities and concrete) with absolutely no design sensibility whatsoever. They could solve the traffic but I still wouldn't; want to spend 10 seconds down there. YUCK!

It would be one thing if we'd improvised over the garbage Toronto used to install but the new stuff is just as bad. Practically every square inch of our public realm for 50 km in every direction needs a 100% re-do. We probably only have 2-3 km out of hundreds of thousands of km that is nice.
to be fair this is project is a huuuuuuuuuuge improvement over what is in the area

though i'll have to see how big the alleyways thing is... that's kind of like the japanese micro business concepts which i *love* and would really bring charm if they can pull it off

but the rest of the area is bad. they need to have retail frontages everywhere. my hope is with that area getting stuff like the theatre/concert hall and the galleria that it ends up putting strong demand for retail for southern part of lake shore so we don't get an overabundance of convenience stores, hairdressers, gyms and spas.
 
The public realm couldn't get much uglier. Why is Toronto so astonishingly bad at this? You can tell they simply hired someone (to install utilities and concrete) with absolutely no design sensibility whatsoever. They could solve the traffic but I still wouldn't; want to spend 10 seconds down there. YUCK!

It would be one thing if we'd improved over the garbage Toronto used to install but the new stuff is just as bad. Practically every square inch of our public realm for 50 km in every direction needs a 100% re-do. The Mink Mile is decent but what about the other 100,000+ km of pavement? It just leaves one exasperated and speechless.
I sometimes wonder why we even bother collecting Section 37 funds when they just sit in the City Councillor's coffers waiting for some vanity project instead of being directed to public realm improvements, though I share your pessimism that the City wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. The few nicely paved streetscapes in our city regularly get butchered by utility repairs and plops of asphalt within months of installment.

I wonder if the city could experiment with launching a BIA in this neighbourhood alongside the construction of 2150 Lake Shore. In theory, the City could download the responsibility of designing and maintaining the public realm to the BIA (with the assistance of some local S.37 funds) in the hopes that something interesting happens.
 
the one thing that makes me curious looking through the planning documents... is the building right behind the park

almost the entire building is designated as retail with just the upper part designated as residential

edit: looks like one side is hotel and 2nd is described as entertainment... so that's probably the theatre

like... what are they expecting to go in there? Everything red in this image is retail/employment... blue is just employment (assume offices/services)
Capture.JPG
 
Last edited:
This gave me a good laugh but I'm sorry dead winter and you can't tell me that there hasn't been a lot of fear mongering this month keeping people indoors. Please give me an update April 2020 with your awesome 8:00am reporting. Report Monday/Tues Morning too not a mid-week hump.
 
This gave me a good laugh but I'm sorry dead winter and you can't tell me that there hasn't been a lot of fear mongering this month keeping people indoors. Please give me an update April 2020 with your awesome 8:00am reporting. Report Monday/Tues Morning too not a mid-week hump.
Traffic patterns actually typically get worse as the week proceeds. Monday/Tuesday are actually the lightest days of the week for traffic.
 

Back
Top