Toronto Union Subway Station: Second Platform and Concourse Improvements | ?m | ?s | TTC | IBI Group
Me in the last picture far left.
salsa
Senior Member
Downsview is my favorite station design so far. It was actually the very first station I walked into when I first moved to Toronto. So when I saw the other, older stations, it felt kind of depressing and regressive.
I love how open it is. Tons of space to walk around, at the bus level and the main concourse. And being able to see down into the subway level from the concourse is really nice too. It feels so much more modern and cohesive. Also, to newbies, very easy to navigate.
I feel the same way, and I'm fortunate that Downsview is right where I live. The subway line it's on is also way less crowded in rush hour than the Yonge line. The new subway stations on the Spadina extension will be just as good if not better. They will all be very spacious, and some stations will even have natural light all the way down to the platform.
ttk77
Senior Member
Looks like they got a lot of work done on the University platform over the weekend. My train was coming so I didn't get a chance to take pics this morning, but most of the construction barricades are down now and it feels a lot more open.
AlbertHWagstaff
Senior Member
The large barricades around the new escalators are mostly gone, and the new turnstiles and collector booth facing out to Royal Bank Plaza are now in use. The area at the far west of the mezzanine where the temporary lift was located still has some construction barricades up. The narrow stairwell down to the platform at the far west end is still in place and still has its old tan coloured tiles, it may be closed off for emergency use only since it's now outside the fare-paid area. It looks like they're very close to finishing the subway station work.
Komiksulo
Active Member
Great! I passed through there yesterday afternoon and saw that they were doing floor-tile work on the Spadina-bound platform.
MisterF
Senior Member
Ribbed for York Region's pleasure!
HA!
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
The one thing that bothered me about the rebuild is how low the ceiling now gets - and it wasn't generous to start off with.
AoD
AoD
Agreed completely. I'm a tall guy (My clearance on the subway train doors is only a couple of inches, so I instinctively duck), and I found the roof quite uncomfortably low in some places. I understand the confines of the space, but I agree that it definitely is lower than the previous design of Union (and most other stations).
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
It was certainly unnnecessarily low at some locations - and you do have to wonder what they're thinking routing pipes through such a confined ceiling as well.
AoD
W. K. Lis
Superstar
Better than the much older London Underground.
Don't forget that Union Station was built in the 1940/1950's. Different building codes.
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mdrejhon
Senior Member
A good blast from the past: TTC Yonge Subway, under construction, year 1949.
Massive number of streetcars really clogging Yonge street to a standstill (photos abound of 10 streetcars stuck in a single city block!).
We were fresh from the World War II victory, with a big boom beginning, the unbearable Yonge strain pressed Toronto to finally afford to build Canada's first-ever subway, a status symbol formerly reserved for cities such as New York and London in this historical era.
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Transportfan
Senior Member
44 North
Senior Member
Yep. But even two decades prior to '49, things were booming and the area was almost as dynamic as it is now (or more?). Underground subway was the only logical next step for a downtown bursting at the seams. It's definitely hard to take some subway advocates seriously when they try to draw direct parallels between the reasoning for building subways below 1950 downtown Yonge St and present-day 8-lane highways (alongside mammoth parking lots, vacant fields, and low-density auto-centric tract housing).
1929 Yonge at Queen
And agreed with others. Rebuilt Union is still a pretty tight squeeze - even in terms of height.
