Toronto Union Station Revitalization | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto | NORR

Dan416 said:
It’s a train station. Food is one thing that I think works.

My huge pet peeve is the lack of departure boards in the food court(s). It is a train station! More GO boards. More VIA boards. More bus boards.
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The first thing they should do is move the departure displays away from the landing of escalators - where everyone congregate and create blockage for people who know when and where they are going. They should also put some of them in the lower concourse as well - especially the food court area).

AoD
 
lead82 said:
I find the departure boards to be pretty useless at Union. The GO boards have little value until a few minutes to boarding as they don’t show the platforms. The fact GO and Via have different boards and areas makes it look like 2 universes. Union is one of the only stations I’ve been two where the services aren’t shown on the same board. Why doesn’t GO show VIA and vice versa. I hope one day the two services will feel more integrated so one can do connections without having to wonder through the station to go from one area to the other. I won’t even speak of the badly placed GO bus terminal which is quite poorly signed that many get confused on how to get there.
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Why would GO and VIA have the same departure boards? If you're looking to catch a GO train, VIA departures are irrelevant to you, and vice versa. Merging the two makes about as much sense as showing GO buses on the train departure board.

The only thing that would be achieved by changing the current system is cluttering up the boards quicker, and seeing less departures that are further off in the future than you currently do. By all means let's have GO departure boards in the VIA area, and VIA departure boards in the GO area, but putting them on the same physical screen would be horrendous.
 
lead82 said:
I find the departure boards to be pretty useless at Union. The GO boards have little value until a few minutes to boarding as they don’t show the platforms.
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If I walk into the station, the first thing I want to know is what my options are. When is the next train coming? Has it been delayed? Then I can choose to take the subway instead, go get some food, etc. I don't find the platform information is particularly useful at that point
 
Metrolinx has absolutely terrible way-finding. I live beside West Harbour in Hamilton and have to help people find their way all the time. I actually went to the station to take pictures and built a spreadsheet of way-finding information that should be depicted at each spot (a bit more reasonable of a size for just me, kind of buzzed on a random Saturday).

We went to Union station for a wedding at Steam whistle and damn is the way-finding terrible. Good way-finding means that every single major location in the station should have some kind of essential signage especially "Front/Bay/York" as it allows people to know they're travelling in the same direction. Especially with all the hallways and such. Even just "north/south/east/west" would be helpful for those of us that can recall directions on a map or within a building for the purpose of locating ourselves. I've looked at the Union map and had no more clear an idea which way to go too, and I'm pretty comfortable with directions and maps, to the point that I can find things on Google maps weeks later that I saw in person from what I think the birds eye view would look like.

For the average person that's a disaster because it means union is a mess of hallways leading to who knows where.
 
nfitz said:
If I walk into the station, the first thing I want to know is what my options are. When is the next train coming? Has it been delayed? Then I can choose to take the subway instead, go get some food, etc. I don't find the platform information is particularly useful at that point
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The station design is clearly geared towards commercial needs. One clear design fault (I am sure it is intentional) is the lack of access to the Bay Concourse immediately by the subway station - that's why we are getting this massive rush of people like it is a racetrack down Bay (and don't get me started about the escalator/staircase - narrow enough that you can't have anyone walking left). Magnificently dumb.

In the meantime, we are in week 2 of the cordoned off door with the broken glass at the Bay concourse to moat - right in the path of everyone trying to get to and from the subway.

And I swear, we need to have no standing zones in the station/concourse - don't wait for people or otherwise doing dumb sh*t in the already crowded and chaotic subway concourse and other areas.

AoD
 
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Jonny5 said:
The new water slide feature is open!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1813253245449740621
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Lets bring a still version of the above video forward for everyone shall we?

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Kind of pretty.....if you're not in the midst of it and ignoring any sanitary issues. - Credit embedded above.
 
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