Toronto St Lawrence Market North | 25.3m | 5s | City of Toronto | Rogers Stirk Harbour

innsertnamehere said:
Q - in your opinion, is there a single road in the entire City of Toronto which justifies 4-lanes? I feel like every time you comment on any road it's always "single traffic lane" for literally every single road.

I could see a rationalization of dropping Jarvis to 4 through lanes, particularly if centre turn lanes remain at key intersections, but anything less than that is going to cause problems particularly south of Queen St where it's a primary feeder for the Gardiner.
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Sure, University Avenue would be peculiar at one lane in each direction.

I also don't think you could cut Spadina to one lane each way south of Richmond.

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I do drive, and I do like to get where I'm going in a timely way, but I prefer more roads over wide ones.

I prefer single lanes with left turn lanes at every intersection.

I prefer steady flow at 40km/ph in urban areas, with fewer traffic lights and stop signs.

****

Jarvis south of Richmond, with the current structure of Gardiner ramps would be challenging to to drop below 2 lanes each way. Certainly 2 lanes southbound, I'd have to see the the NB flow volume in peak periods to assess that.

I realize you really like highways and roads and want to be able to drive everywhere, all the time, at maximum speed, on this point we will simply have to disagree. I would prefer to toll the Gardiner and cut inbound/outbound traffic accordingly.

I also favour building the Church street underpass to lessen the issues with Jarvis (see, I do like car-friendly infrastructure)
 
We don't actually disagree that much on these kinds of things in many cases - Tolling the Gardiner is an excellent idea to me for example, and I think things like the Bloor St Bike Lanes make a lot of sense as well. I don't think that Jarvis can reasonably be cut to two lanes however.
 
innsertnamehere said:
We don't actually disagree that much on these kinds of things in many cases - Tolling the Gardiner is an excellent idea to me for example, and I think things like the Bloor St Bike Lanes make a lot of sense as well. I don't think that Jarvis can reasonably be cut to two lanes however.
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North of Queen/Richmond is different from south of same.

Lets just take a peak and see what it looks like on Streetview:

1712003305207.png


^^^ that's all parking on the left, so its only 4 lanes in this section now, pretty wide open. (2023)

Lets look at 2019 below:

1712003410296.png


Now 2018:

1712003458441.png


Seems like there's some surplus capacity there to me.

****

It's not in the near-term plans anyway.
 
The 5 lanes can definitely be overkill as you specified, however as a 4-lane facility (especially if you removed centre turn lanes at intersections), it would pretty much be at capacity.

Regardless - it's not the topic of this thread!
 
innsertnamehere said:
We don't actually disagree that much on these kinds of things in many cases - Tolling the Gardiner is an excellent idea to me for example, and I think things like the Bloor St Bike Lanes make a lot of sense as well. I don't think that Jarvis can reasonably be cut to two lanes however.
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Jarvis only justifies its width during rush hour. I live a couple of hundred feet up overlooking the street.

It’s damn near dead most times of the day even though it runs through one of the densest parts of the city. That tells me it only exists as an alternative to the DVP, all to the detriment of lousy/dangerous intersections, painfully narrow sidewalks (<5 feet wide in some areas) and built with a massive incentive to speed.

It should change. It needs to change.

ADDENDUM: I noticed traffic study equipment mounted on a street pole yesterday. Perhaps something's going to be done about it.
 
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DSC said:
Time to drag this thread back on track!
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I might normally agree, but traffic on Jarvis is related to the success of this project. A better streetscape can make a load of difference, and keeping Jarvis like a pseudo-stroad for getting out of the core isn’t going to help anything. It was already a problem for the previous location and it’s farmers market.
 
zang said:
I might normally agree, but traffic on Jarvis is related to the success of this project. A better streetscape can make a load of difference, and keeping Jarvis like a pseudo-stroad for getting out of the core isn’t going to help anything. It was already a problem for the previous location and it’s farmers market.
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Yes, a discussion of Jarvis from King to The Esplanade is certainly on track and, though I realise that if you look at those blocks you also need to look at blocks further north and south and maybe east and west too. From studies made by the Market administration, most Market visitors currently arrive by foot or TTC - the % driving to the Market is surprisingly small so I do not think 'the success of this project' relies on Jarvis traffic - though I agree that it DOES need to be looked at..
 
DSC said:
Yes, a discussion of Jarvis from King to The Esplanade is certainly on track and, though I realise that if you look at those blocks you also need to look at blocks further north and south and maybe east and west too. From studies made by the Market administration, most Market visitors currently arrive by foot or TTC - the % driving to the Market is surprisingly small so I do not think 'the success of this project' relies on Jarvis traffic - though I agree that it DOES need to be looked at..
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On the bolded, I think you're mistaking @zang's point it wasn't that cars were important to the Market it was that a nicer streetscape with a wider sidewalk would be; and that would have to come at the expense of at least one traffic lane.
 
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innsertnamehere said:
The 5 lanes can definitely be overkill as you specified, however as a 4-lane facility (especially if you removed centre turn lanes at intersections), it would pretty much be at capacity.
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That's the wrong way of looking at it though.

It speaks to an auto-centric mindset when we prioritize the needs of cars first, then what ever is left over is devoted to everybody else (cyclists, pedestrians, LRT). It's well established that adding car lanes doesn't reduce congestion. When we add car lanes, they quickly fill up with cars. We're, in essence, encouraging even more car use. What gets lost (but Europe seems to have figured out) is that when you reduce car lanes, drivers find another route but they're also encouraged to drive less.

I'm very familiar with that northern stretch of Jarvis as I live one block from it. Even if one still designs for the capacity needs of cars first, Jarvis is effectively 3 lanes already. People routinely take out an entire lane to park their car. It happens on both sides. Jarvis could be permanently cut to 3 lanes (1 in each direction and a centre lane for turning left) and it wouldn't change congestion on that street. They'd simply go another way or get out of their car altogether .... and that's surely the end goal.

Urbanizing and pedestrianizing is absolutely about prioritizing people, cyclists, and PT over cars. Part of how one does that is by making driving LESS convenient. That so many Canadians prioritize the capacity requirements of cars speaks to how far we still have to go. Most still have a very auto-centric mindset.

And for the record, I LOVE cars and LOVE driving. I own 2 cars. I'm just tired of being denied a beautiful appealing city because we've turned 80% of our public realm to the interests of car drivers. The majority of these drivers congesting downtown don't even live here. Live where you work or take PT like the rest of us. 1940-2010, we ruined our cities just so drivers can get from A to B faster. People 2-3 generations from now will look back at this era and shake their heads. How on earth did we allow this to happen?
 
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jxmith_ said:
I’d just love to see an audit on a project like this to tell us why it’s taken so long… if there’s similar delay issues we can prevent in the future.
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I think I can give the answer: it’s a building. Very few construction projects these days meet the developers own estimates.
 
jxmith_ said:
I’d just love to see an audit on a project like this to tell us why it’s taken so long… if there’s similar delay issues we can prevent in the future.
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Why? It's already been established why it took so long. An audit will unlikely find anything new, let alone anything startling.
 
UtakataNoAnnex said:
Why? It's already been established why it took so long. An audit will unlikely find anything new, let alone anything startling.
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There were explainable delays BEFORE construction, but construction has taken far too long, even allowing for covid. The city's project management has not been good and an auditor general report might find systemic problems.
 
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