[URBAN NOTE] "A St. Clair Journey"
Lately, wanting to enjoy a different walking route home, I've been disembarking from the subway at the St. Clair station and walking home on St. Clair Avenue, a west-east street that's the first of the major midtown streets. Daren Foster's Torontoist post explores the consequences of the construction of a controversial streetcar right-of-way on St. Clair West, something criticized by local businesses and neighbourhood organizations for the overlong period of time spent on construction. His conclusion? It was worth it, in the end.
On a dreary Monday morning-yesterday, in fact-and in the wake of the recent provincial-municipal agreement to favour underground transit over the surface, light rail-based Transit City plan, we ventured up to travel the full loop of the St. Clair streetcar line. Heading east toward Yonge Street from Bathurst, what we first noticed was the severe lack of congestion. Wasn’t that the spectre being dangled before us by those bent on burying our public transit? Streetcars getting in the way, causing massive gridlock? Certainly on this particular morning commute, both streetcars and private vehicles flowed smoothly. From Bathurst to St. Clair station at Yonge Street: a brisk 10 minutes.
The time for the entire one-way trip from the route's easternmost point at Yonge Street to its western terminus at Gunns Loop, just west of Keele/Weston Street, just after rush hour, was 29 minutes. It is a fascinating tour from the northern reaches of the downtown urban core to the outskirts of the western inner suburbs-a sequence that would get lost if traveled underground, a connection between people and communities
not made.
Much has been made, justifiably, of the havoc wreaked on businesses during the right-of-way construction. Some 200 businesses apparently closed because of it. It is a situation not uncommon to any area of a city undergoing substantial redevelopment, and there are no easy answers or ways to avoid these effects.
[. . .]
Now, more than a year into the new St. Clair streetcar’s run, it looks, to a guy riding along observing the scenery, that the decimation did not take hold. While there are certainly empty storefronts and "for lease" signs in windows along the way, there are no more than the same trip taken along a stretch of Bloor Street, for instance, might reveal.
[. . .]
This kind of variety promises only to mushroom as the area undergoes increased densification. Between and around the two subway stops on St. Clair along the Yonge-University line, condo developments continue to spring up (including an especially interesting one in the old Imperial Oil building just east of Avenue Road). Towers are even spreading west from this more traditional area of concentration, out past Bathurst Street into what was once considered purely low and medium rise territory. Yes, proximity to a subway has much to do with that, but the fact that this is happening now would suggest that the St. Clair right of way has enhanced rather than diminished the street's desirability.
Go, read.
On a dreary Monday morning-yesterday, in fact-and in the wake of the recent provincial-municipal agreement to favour underground transit over the surface, light rail-based Transit City plan, we ventured up to travel the full loop of the St. Clair streetcar line. Heading east toward Yonge Street from Bathurst, what we first noticed was the severe lack of congestion. Wasn’t that the spectre being dangled before us by those bent on burying our public transit? Streetcars getting in the way, causing massive gridlock? Certainly on this particular morning commute, both streetcars and private vehicles flowed smoothly. From Bathurst to St. Clair station at Yonge Street: a brisk 10 minutes.
The time for the entire one-way trip from the route's easternmost point at Yonge Street to its western terminus at Gunns Loop, just west of Keele/Weston Street, just after rush hour, was 29 minutes. It is a fascinating tour from the northern reaches of the downtown urban core to the outskirts of the western inner suburbs-a sequence that would get lost if traveled underground, a connection between people and communities
not made.
Much has been made, justifiably, of the havoc wreaked on businesses during the right-of-way construction. Some 200 businesses apparently closed because of it. It is a situation not uncommon to any area of a city undergoing substantial redevelopment, and there are no easy answers or ways to avoid these effects.
[. . .]
Now, more than a year into the new St. Clair streetcar’s run, it looks, to a guy riding along observing the scenery, that the decimation did not take hold. While there are certainly empty storefronts and "for lease" signs in windows along the way, there are no more than the same trip taken along a stretch of Bloor Street, for instance, might reveal.
[. . .]
This kind of variety promises only to mushroom as the area undergoes increased densification. Between and around the two subway stops on St. Clair along the Yonge-University line, condo developments continue to spring up (including an especially interesting one in the old Imperial Oil building just east of Avenue Road). Towers are even spreading west from this more traditional area of concentration, out past Bathurst Street into what was once considered purely low and medium rise territory. Yes, proximity to a subway has much to do with that, but the fact that this is happening now would suggest that the St. Clair right of way has enhanced rather than diminished the street's desirability.
Go, read.