ICONIC PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT

"Traffic engineers have much to say about streets and transportation; about cars, trucks, parking and public transportation - BUT - little about the streets as people places. Bigger buildings are being built; an ever-increasing population is being housed above the high streets - resulting in less street space per person."

 -  These were my words back in 2000.

It's now a decade after Yonge Eglinton was designed a principal Growth Centre where intensification is targeted to occur,  

I've seen a lot development proposals and their traffic studies.  None of these traffic studies have modeled, assessed or made recommendations about pedestrian circulation, nor for that matter bicycles.  Meanwhile, this designation presumes a highly pedestrianised context, where mobility is substantially reliant upon public transit and other non-automotive movement modes.

I've talked about an "iconic" quality for the future configuration of the Yonge Eglinton crossroad and its transit station, meaning a form reflecting its purpose.  As an example: the traditional town square is an iconic structure whose characteristics have evolved over centuries to the point where its fundamentals are practically taken for granted.  Its overall framework consists of a few brief strokes within which it is presumed over time a plug-and-play development process will unfold.  Each development configuring a subordinate parcel, to take up its place within the established framework.  

One envisions the town square panorama with its spaces (some hard others soft and green), its building structures, and its receding streetscapes where pedestrian movements are simply shouldered alongside the vehicular flow paths. As pedestrian population increase, dense pedestrian conditions arise which surpass the simple "sidewalk" protocol.  

Where one fails to address the intensity of pedestrian circulation, the results are readily observable in the piecemeal network that exists at Yonge Eglinton today with its disjoint stretches, halts, spooling areas, ramps, stairs, and crossings.

The Yonge Eglinton Growth Centre will soon see its population doubled - compounding the pedestrian flow, meanwhile a full 200m will be redeveloped along both sides of Eglinton Avenue and including underneath the street itself throughout this length.  This fortuitous cluster of development activity provides the opportunity to establish an iconic pedestrian dispersal network by just describing a few new lines representing a comprehensive pedestrian network.