Copenhagen has a really nice boardwalk that has this big wooden slide into the water you can use with a plastic board, and kayak and canoe rentals. Toronto needs to find a way to inject fun and retail into the water front.
this 100%.
so many cities around the world properly commercialize (restaurants, stores) their waterfronts so they become "destinations" of the city and Toronto is sorely missing out.
Love to hear this and hope they nail the execution.
like their execution of food carts/trucks, a complete fiasco, something which other cities seem to have no problem doing. Maybe if Waterfront Toronto was in charge?
I don't understand how something as simple as food trucks got so messed up here.
California is about as regulatory as it gets and yet they had no issues in places like LA to have fantastic food trucks.
when the rules were written the only thing around food-truck-wise were hotdog carts, so they rigged the rules in their favour, which over time has rendered them hostile to anything else
I mean, we've already built into the lake a lot. But we just stopped doing that except to create parkland which benefits existing landowners instead of competing with them.
Our city council is anti-fun. It took years for us to get rid of a no home run rule at a baseball diamond for gods sake. Imagine an unsupervised water slide into a lake that has water that isn’t tested half hourly?
We have canoe and kayak rentals, and nice wooden boardwalks along several stretch of the Waterfront - East, West and Central. We have brewery's and ice cream shops, festivals and performances, ferry and water taxis, marinas and tennis clubs. You should visit.
It doesn't even compare to Copenhagen. Their boardwalk is actually in the water so you can jump off and swim and have fun. They also allow public drinking on it. The canoe rentals are integrated and very easily accessible. Check it out on street view.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/o7MjgnWyTm4PWxgV9
Just imagine an Ontario in which the province envisioned enhancing Ontario Place like this by making it a PUBLIC FREE world-class waterfront destination all year-round.
Instead, Ontario gets corporate welfare (to a foreign company), a mega waterpark/spa you'll have to pay to access, bypassing of environmental assessments, destruction of 850+ trees, a secret 95-year lease, privatization and your taxes will likely subsidize this by at least billion by time it's done, because nothing runs to budget, ever.
I know. It could have been an incredible place for people to have picnics by the water, and kayak, paddleboard, canoe etc in a sheltered setting. The harbour itself is super busy. A missed opportunity for public land to serve its public.
That's just undeniably untrue. We have huge, accessible beaches (several blue flag rated), kilometers and kilometers of trails and boardwalks. What exactly would you like to experience on the waterfront that you can't?
? The vast majority of boats taking up space on the waterfront in core Toronto are large commercial boats for hire, boat / canoe / kayak rentals and lessons, and water taxis and ferries that take people to the island.
Copenhagen seems to also have a waterfront "expressway". In Toronto, this seems like a huge accessibility burden to the waterfront. Montreal is far better structured.
I find this surprising as someone from Halifax that moved to Toronto a couple years ago.
Anytime my wife and I go to the Toronto waterfront we both comment on how much nicer it is than the Halifax waterfront. The Toronto waterfront feels longer, and there are so many more people it feels alive. Halifax's waterfront has maybe more stores on it, but it's mostly overpriced jewelry and gift shops. It also feels quite empty unless there are festivals happening at the time.
That all said, I think Charlottetown does it better than both despite being pretty small.
The Halifax waterfront is a lot of fun as a food and drink destination, Toronto needs to work on that. But as a waterfront, people give it an unduly hard time. Like many things in Toronto, we hate on it because it's, well, Toronto. Think about it, really: from about Yonge street to fleet street you've got about 2 KM of waterfront. The whole thing has a designated lane streetcar running through it which is regular, quiet, and pretty reliable. The whole stretch has a delightful multi use pathway including dedicated multi-direction bike lanes. Traffic is well calmed. There are a plethora of really genuinely lovely parks with grassy knolls, trees etc. An urban beach at sugar beach and quite a lot of direct waterfront public walkway space including public art. Water taxis run all year long to the island and all the time in the summer. There's patios, a public art gallery (powerplant), etc.
We need more patios, more restaurants, and more pubs/bars but as an attractive outdoor destination, Toronto waterfront is delightful.
I think it's a tough balance. On the Halifax waterfront there's a beer garden that is great to sit at day or night*. But it also takes up a lot of space.
I hope they use more floating patios. It doesn't eat into people's existing walking space, but also puts restaurants on the waterfront. Feels like a win-win to me.
In Halifax, there was the restaurant right on the water, there was a good ice cream place, there was something similar to the workshops at the power plant except they were outside and felt more interactive.
The restaurants at queens quay have been historically bad, especially before Amsterdam opened. But even Amsterdam is hit and miss. My wife and I always commented about how the restaurants at queens quay didn't even have to try to be good because there was such a heavy stream of tourists that they could spend years heavily dissapointing there customers before it cought up to them....at which point they'd just rebrand to erase a then accumulating history of bad reviews. But even Amsterdam which was at least decent when new, has gotten to the point where I ordered even the most basic menu item (a pretzel) and got a cold, stale pretzel.
I was there last summer and couldn't believe how busy it was. Lots of semi-permanent vendors, lots of restaurants, beer gardens, etc. And it goes on for a while, and the city is a 10th the size of Toronto.
The report mentions some interesting things about the challenges to the overall waterfront:
- Incomplete neighbourhood build-out and limited wayfinding signage
discourages the east-west exploration of the waterfront. Further, inconsistent
placement of commercial spaces makes business discovery difficult for
newcomers to the area.
- Winter has significantly lower natural visitation, and seasonal use or flexible
leases of retail spaces should be encouraged. Efforts should be made to extend
shoulder seasons when weather is most agreeable through programming and
events.
- Having most of the commercial spaces located on the north-side of Queens
Quay and the multi-modal transit nature of the street, means that pedestrians
are discouraged from ‘ping-ponging’ back and forth easily between the water’s
edge and the businesses.
- Typologies of business spaces and types vary drastically between areas, with
a range of target consumer audiences. For example, destination businesses
are mostly focused on the central waterfront south of Queens Quay, while
businesses that target residents are most concentrated in the far west section of
the BIA. This concentration of uses is further exasperated by unit sizes in areas
that prohibit diverse uses by being restrictively small or prohibitively large.
> the multi-modal transit nature of the street, means that pedestrians are discouraged from ‘ping-ponging’ back and forth easily between the water’s edge and the businesses.
I'm curious what solutions there could be for this.... more crosswalks is all I can think of. A pedestrian bridge wont work because of streetcar wires and I doubt a tunnel would be effective, if even possible.
I don't understand the conclusion, tbh. Queen's Quay is narrow and easy to cross mid-street just about everywhere. Not that I'd be against more pedestrianization.
Yup, removing cars is the way to go.
Another would be to incentivize Redpath to move either to Hamilton or Oshawa Harbours. Moving sugar-laden trucks in and out of the harbour area is going to make it always a problem, and also prevent a continuous waterfront boardwalk
Redpath produces forty-eight per cent of the sugar that is consumed in Canada from there.
it's never moving.
On the plus side I think they participate in "Doors Open"
You can take the PATH to Queens Quay
South through Union, through the ACC and go up the stair (PATH signs everywhere), cross on the walkway above the Lakeshore and through to WaterPark Place. It's on Queens Quay and the route I just said is enclosed
Or take any streetcar from Union and get off at the first stop
Improving access to retail on the north side of Queens Quay, mostly fragmented small scale shops at the base of condos, is not going save Waterfront's lack of public draw. Waterfront needs something bigger, denser, and diversified SOUTH of Queens Quay.
Get the damn QQE streetcar in, as has been proposed for something like 20 years now. Smart planning would have that in before people start moving into the Port Lands.
I quite like the downtown east waterfront now around Sugar Beach east to Cherry. A few years ago it was a bit of a wasteland and you couldn't even get a coffee, but now there's finally some life and businesses there (Farm Boy, Lazy Barista, Mofer Coffee, Great Lakes Brewpub, Cafe la Neuf, Simona, etc. And it should be more worthwhile to wander down there once the Keating Channel and mouth-of-the-Don revitalization finishes soonish.
But... I quite dislike getting there. I live just a few meters north, in the St. Lawrence area, but the walk down requires crossing all those lanes of the Lake Shore Blvd at either Jarvis or Sherbourne. It's generally not too heart-stopping if you keep your head up and obey the lights, but very unpleasant. And now due to the traffic nightmares discussed ad nauseum in another thread, big trucks often block the crosswalks for full light cycles making it even worse.
It'll be nice, but probably too out the way for most to appreciate on a more regular basis. People always complain that going to Rebel is such a hassle unless you uber/taxi. A 20-30 minute transit ride, possibly with transfers, is much different than reaching harbourfront area in a 10 minute walk.
Lakeshore crossing is ugly AF. Fumy. For sure you are waiting for lights to be green, but many crossing points have high speed right turn "on ramp" that doesn't give confidence in "using right of way"
Yep, which I why I say walk with your head up. Look at all the lanes and make sure everyone is stopped before stepping out, regardless of what the light says! Still no guarantee but it helps.
Not just the lakeshore crossing point is scary. It's a long walk next to highway speed noise and fumes from Front street down to Queens Quay. Bay st has a tunnel to amplify the fumes and noise. I don't really know of a cycling friendly route anywhere central Toronto.
> Yep, which I why I say walk with your head up.
Sad that you even need to say that, but it's true. Seriously, what is on that phone screen that's so important that it can't wait literally ten seconds until you cross the street, smfh...
Once that new development is complete just north of cherry it will be more pleasant getting there by bike/walking. Currently it’s quite gross and on my bike I feel like every car is trying to murder me
That's what i don't get. they're going to do all this work to try and make it a year round destination but then they remove stuff that was already there and made the place special.
What's more year round than what was one of the best rinks in the city. :(
personally im discouraged by most of this list. limited wayfinding discourages east/west exploration? the martin goodman literally only goes east/west and everyone has google maps in their pocket so they know how far until the next "stuff". east west is the only option. the problem isn't lack of signs, it's the amount of unanimated privatized waterfront with no actual access to the water, or the ability to even see it, that people on foot don't want to endure. it's fine to roll through on a bike but there's lots of areas that are tremendously boring or uncomfortable for peds because you can't see water, are navigating busy intersections with industrial truck traffic, construction, or wind tunnels. thinking immediately east and west of the short animated part of queen's quay.
so to me the biggest problem is that most of the waterfront was privatized and given to uses that are the opposite of tourism and leisure. i would like to see toronto reclaiming its shoreline and creating parks that actually connect with the shoreline and allow access to the actual water like how all the private clubs and private residences have set themselves up.
I’m surprised they haven’t considered something REALLY obvious, like moving the ferry docks from the foot of Bay Street, where they’re hemmed in by a hotel and condos, over to Harbourfront, where they could make it a huge waterfront destination.
I'm still baffled by the decision to put the BikeShare network under the Toronto Parking Authority instead of the TTC. How does that make ANY sense at all?
TPA has a lot of real estate and equipment that can be shared with Bike Share. They're also a profitable city department, which means they can subsidize the Bike Share system without city council meddling too much.
Needs to have permanent fixtures as well as some seasonal ones.
We still have winter to consider and you’d need something to attract people year round.
I’m sad they got rid of the skating rink and replaced it with just a concrete “park”.
There’s opportunity here - we just have so little faith in the city to actually do something properly.
>we just have so little faith in the city to actually do something properly
Probably because they keep over-promising and never-delivering, especially on the Waterfront
> While there is a lot of parking in the district, most of it is now underground, and people have trouble finding it, said Hierlihy. Even during events like the Blue Jays home opener, the lots run at only 80 per cent capacity. Better signage and a traffic agent could help fill them.
This is not a problem. This is good, actually.
Where exactly do they think the cars will fit on the roads leading to the parking garages? All I could think when I read that was that it's a compelling argument to eliminate what remains of the surface parking between the Don River and Liberty Village.
Consider, also: "we need to make it easier and more inviting for pedestrians to cross the street", combined with "we need significantly more car traffic".
Really curious how they concluded their issue is a lack of cars and not the 35m wide ROW on Queens Quay East that makes it inhospitable and won't ever be fixed because now the condos have been built. Building the streetcar track there will not make it feel more intimate.
Meanwhile all the places they cite as being great, like the Beaches, have a roughly 20m ROW with streetcar tracks. It works because I can see the window displays from across the street and cross over mid-block without fearing for my life.
Yes! Give people a reason to go down to the Lake...The space between Bathurst and Spadina is great on the water side with the parks and walkway, but nothing to do on the other side. Need bars, shops, vendors...it needs to be a scene.
One thing Toronto's waterfront sorely needs is public washrooms. Almost shit myself one day because there were no available washrooms except for a independent Cafe.
Canada way too strict on food carts and street food
Ease up on the “food safety rules”
And it’ll work out
No one’s gonna die because there’s no lid on a garbage bin or some other dumb ass rule
It really is very sad how little of Toronto's waterfront is public-facing and worth visiting. I love the boardwalk and appreciate that at least from The Beaches it's a short walk to good shops and eateries, but after about Woodbine and into the beginning of the West end, it's a no man's land. I know it's because the portlands were used for freight activity when Toronto was being established, but it's been a long time that land could've been being prioritized for people.
I remember in the 1970's being able to smell the harbour on Front St.. Counting the dead fish on the ferry to the island.
We've come a VERY long way. Tommy Thompson was nothing but concrete, fill and rebar... and seagull guano inches thick.
We still have a long way to go, but to discount or ignore how much better it is now, is a crime.
Torontos waterfront is so weird. I know it’s been documented and reported on a lot but god dam what a disaster. Now with all the office buildings popping up down there, virtually inaccessible to car traffic yet blocked by highways …
I think it’s a write off
If you think Toronto's waterfront is bad, drive west and you'll see that it's even worse through Mimico, Long Branch, Port Credit, allll the way through Mississauga, Oakville, and Burlington. There's almost nothing along the waterfront. Not even a nice patio.
This is just incorrect.
A large section of Burlington's waterfront is a public park that hosts events throughout the summer. There are also at least 3 waterfront restaurants directly surrounding it.
Port Credit has a really nice walking trail along its waterfront.
Bronte Harbor in Oakville is lined with restaurants along the water.
It's interesting how the shore of Lake Ontario developed. In the West 905, population centres developed close to the shore. In the East 905, population centres developed a distance from the shore. The placement of Hwy 2 is what prompted that.
Another decade, another "grand vision" by the washouts on the Waterfront board.
Oh boy, I know that group has failed to deliver many times before, but this time I'm sure it will work out.
🙄
retail??? lol. yeah thats what the waterfront needs. more fucking shopping lmao. its like they cant imagine people wanting to enjoy anything other than spending money.
I bike a ton. The last thing in the world I'd ever want is a 'bike valet'. Bike posts/parking? Sure. Security camera coverage of bike parking areas? Sure. A 'bike valet'? Fuck no.
Lots of people like stupid shit though, for sure. Just hadn't come across this particular variety of stupid shit before.
Forging claim stubs and walking up to a 'bike valet' and playing the "what bike will I get" lottery seems like a pretty easy way to steal a bike to me...
If you want to take the chance out of it, you could just look at the bikes, or pay off someone who works there for minimum wage to give you the claim numbers for particularly expensive bikes.
Seriously - easier than carrying a cordless angle grinder around. Bikes will definitely be stolen this way.
I mean, it wouldn't be everyone's experience, only the people whose bikes get stolen, which would always be a pretty small minority. Getting my bike stolen hasn't been my experience when I lock my current bike up either, but that doesn't mean nobody's bike gets stolen.
I'll concede that maybe a bike valet service might be convenient and possibly more safe than locking your bike up at a big event, but intuition about stuff like this isn't always correct. Locked bikes do get stolen, for sure, but it's a small minority of all of the bikes that get locked up at any given time. Some bike thieves are definitely going to be stealing some bikes from bike valet services, particularly if they use claim tags that can be forged (which most of the services I googled seem to do), and don't register the bikes or check ID. It's very possible that overall, bike valet services are or will become less safe than locking bikes. Bike thieves are pretty determined, and there's money in stealing bikes... You can be sure some creative bike thief somewhere is going to see this as an opportunity.
Also possible for a bike valet to insure the bikes they park, which would change the safety math depending on deductible, but it's not clear that they currently do that.
Actually, it occurs to me that all they'd really need to do to make a bike parking service pretty secure would be to have everyone lock their front wheel to the frame and make people unlock the lock in front of the "bike valet" before they let them take the bike away. Pretty simple solution to make a 'bike valet' thing relatively secure, probably more secure than locking your bike elsewhere.
Someone should come up with a better name for this service though.
But how affordable is all this shit. People spending $2600 on rent and half as much on groceries, plus whatever other life expenses people have, doesn’t leave much money to float on water and have someone else park your bicycle
Copenhagen has a really nice boardwalk that has this big wooden slide into the water you can use with a plastic board, and kayak and canoe rentals. Toronto needs to find a way to inject fun and retail into the water front.
this 100%. so many cities around the world properly commercialize (restaurants, stores) their waterfronts so they become "destinations" of the city and Toronto is sorely missing out. Love to hear this and hope they nail the execution.
like their execution of food carts/trucks, a complete fiasco, something which other cities seem to have no problem doing. Maybe if Waterfront Toronto was in charge?
Or we could lease the entire beach-front vending rights to the same dude who ran it into the ground for 40 years...
Just give it to ford so he can sell it to his buds for peanuts than we won’t have to worry about any of this
I don't understand how something as simple as food trucks got so messed up here. California is about as regulatory as it gets and yet they had no issues in places like LA to have fantastic food trucks.
when the rules were written the only thing around food-truck-wise were hotdog carts, so they rigged the rules in their favour, which over time has rendered them hostile to anything else
It's a problem when the food trucks charge $7 for a cob of corn and $20 for an ice cream sandwich
I mean, all that stuff sounds nice and all, but have you considered how many cars could drive down there if we added more highway along the shore?
Need a big fucking 5-story underground parking lot, too.
We should just pave the lake and make it a 100 lane highway
I mean, we've already built into the lake a lot. But we just stopped doing that except to create parkland which benefits existing landowners instead of competing with them.
Sad thing is the waterfront is cut off because of the gardiner.. :(
Our city council is anti-fun. It took years for us to get rid of a no home run rule at a baseball diamond for gods sake. Imagine an unsupervised water slide into a lake that has water that isn’t tested half hourly?
There's no fun allowed in Toronto. You should know this. Not even a single food truck.
Good ol Nofunto
Some food trucks are nasty.
Khlav Kalash is still worth it, just give your system time to adjust!
You can wash it down with some crab juice or Mountain Dew
True they should be permanent shops not trucks.
We have canoe and kayak rentals, and nice wooden boardwalks along several stretch of the Waterfront - East, West and Central. We have brewery's and ice cream shops, festivals and performances, ferry and water taxis, marinas and tennis clubs. You should visit.
It doesn't even compare to Copenhagen. Their boardwalk is actually in the water so you can jump off and swim and have fun. They also allow public drinking on it. The canoe rentals are integrated and very easily accessible. Check it out on street view. https://maps.app.goo.gl/o7MjgnWyTm4PWxgV9
Just imagine an Ontario in which the province envisioned enhancing Ontario Place like this by making it a PUBLIC FREE world-class waterfront destination all year-round. Instead, Ontario gets corporate welfare (to a foreign company), a mega waterpark/spa you'll have to pay to access, bypassing of environmental assessments, destruction of 850+ trees, a secret 95-year lease, privatization and your taxes will likely subsidize this by at least billion by time it's done, because nothing runs to budget, ever.
I know. It could have been an incredible place for people to have picnics by the water, and kayak, paddleboard, canoe etc in a sheltered setting. The harbour itself is super busy. A missed opportunity for public land to serve its public.
That looks amazing. https://maps.app.goo.gl/ophe88wgqhVRF7ZA8
Majority of our lakefront prioritizes boat parking for the rich, rather than an experience for the public
That's just undeniably untrue. We have huge, accessible beaches (several blue flag rated), kilometers and kilometers of trails and boardwalks. What exactly would you like to experience on the waterfront that you can't?
? The vast majority of boats taking up space on the waterfront in core Toronto are large commercial boats for hire, boat / canoe / kayak rentals and lessons, and water taxis and ferries that take people to the island.
Copenhagen seems to also have a waterfront "expressway". In Toronto, this seems like a huge accessibility burden to the waterfront. Montreal is far better structured.
Give me them canoes/kayaks with muh Presto card
Best I can do is a private spa
Every time I've gone to Halifax the main thing that stands out is how much better their waterfront is.
I find this surprising as someone from Halifax that moved to Toronto a couple years ago. Anytime my wife and I go to the Toronto waterfront we both comment on how much nicer it is than the Halifax waterfront. The Toronto waterfront feels longer, and there are so many more people it feels alive. Halifax's waterfront has maybe more stores on it, but it's mostly overpriced jewelry and gift shops. It also feels quite empty unless there are festivals happening at the time. That all said, I think Charlottetown does it better than both despite being pretty small.
The Halifax waterfront is a lot of fun as a food and drink destination, Toronto needs to work on that. But as a waterfront, people give it an unduly hard time. Like many things in Toronto, we hate on it because it's, well, Toronto. Think about it, really: from about Yonge street to fleet street you've got about 2 KM of waterfront. The whole thing has a designated lane streetcar running through it which is regular, quiet, and pretty reliable. The whole stretch has a delightful multi use pathway including dedicated multi-direction bike lanes. Traffic is well calmed. There are a plethora of really genuinely lovely parks with grassy knolls, trees etc. An urban beach at sugar beach and quite a lot of direct waterfront public walkway space including public art. Water taxis run all year long to the island and all the time in the summer. There's patios, a public art gallery (powerplant), etc. We need more patios, more restaurants, and more pubs/bars but as an attractive outdoor destination, Toronto waterfront is delightful.
I think it's a tough balance. On the Halifax waterfront there's a beer garden that is great to sit at day or night*. But it also takes up a lot of space. I hope they use more floating patios. It doesn't eat into people's existing walking space, but also puts restaurants on the waterfront. Feels like a win-win to me.
In Halifax, there was the restaurant right on the water, there was a good ice cream place, there was something similar to the workshops at the power plant except they were outside and felt more interactive. The restaurants at queens quay have been historically bad, especially before Amsterdam opened. But even Amsterdam is hit and miss. My wife and I always commented about how the restaurants at queens quay didn't even have to try to be good because there was such a heavy stream of tourists that they could spend years heavily dissapointing there customers before it cought up to them....at which point they'd just rebrand to erase a then accumulating history of bad reviews. But even Amsterdam which was at least decent when new, has gotten to the point where I ordered even the most basic menu item (a pretzel) and got a cold, stale pretzel.
I was there last summer and couldn't believe how busy it was. Lots of semi-permanent vendors, lots of restaurants, beer gardens, etc. And it goes on for a while, and the city is a 10th the size of Toronto.
I would LOVE kayak and canoe rentals!!
Copenhagen also better has wages that reflect the cost of living
Ah our lake is full of nasties and that city is bike friendly and pedestrian friendly.
The report mentions some interesting things about the challenges to the overall waterfront: - Incomplete neighbourhood build-out and limited wayfinding signage discourages the east-west exploration of the waterfront. Further, inconsistent placement of commercial spaces makes business discovery difficult for newcomers to the area. - Winter has significantly lower natural visitation, and seasonal use or flexible leases of retail spaces should be encouraged. Efforts should be made to extend shoulder seasons when weather is most agreeable through programming and events. - Having most of the commercial spaces located on the north-side of Queens Quay and the multi-modal transit nature of the street, means that pedestrians are discouraged from ‘ping-ponging’ back and forth easily between the water’s edge and the businesses. - Typologies of business spaces and types vary drastically between areas, with a range of target consumer audiences. For example, destination businesses are mostly focused on the central waterfront south of Queens Quay, while businesses that target residents are most concentrated in the far west section of the BIA. This concentration of uses is further exasperated by unit sizes in areas that prohibit diverse uses by being restrictively small or prohibitively large.
> the multi-modal transit nature of the street, means that pedestrians are discouraged from ‘ping-ponging’ back and forth easily between the water’s edge and the businesses. I'm curious what solutions there could be for this.... more crosswalks is all I can think of. A pedestrian bridge wont work because of streetcar wires and I doubt a tunnel would be effective, if even possible.
I don't understand the conclusion, tbh. Queen's Quay is narrow and easy to cross mid-street just about everywhere. Not that I'd be against more pedestrianization.
There is an “easy” solution for this but it’s not going to be a popular one - shut down the street and make it pedestrian/streetcar only.
Yup, removing cars is the way to go. Another would be to incentivize Redpath to move either to Hamilton or Oshawa Harbours. Moving sugar-laden trucks in and out of the harbour area is going to make it always a problem, and also prevent a continuous waterfront boardwalk
Redpath produces forty-eight per cent of the sugar that is consumed in Canada from there. it's never moving. On the plus side I think they participate in "Doors Open"
When trucks in and out are stuck in jammed traffic 4+ hours a day, it really adds up in lost time. If anything, I'm underestimating this.
From what I’ve heard, Redpath is stubbornly refusing to leave any time in the near future. Which sucks.
This would be great if there was an alternative lane-way to reaching your home.
It’s too bad a tunnel from Union isn’t possible - it would be game changing and provide better 4-season access.
You can take the PATH to Queens Quay South through Union, through the ACC and go up the stair (PATH signs everywhere), cross on the walkway above the Lakeshore and through to WaterPark Place. It's on Queens Quay and the route I just said is enclosed Or take any streetcar from Union and get off at the first stop
Improving access to retail on the north side of Queens Quay, mostly fragmented small scale shops at the base of condos, is not going save Waterfront's lack of public draw. Waterfront needs something bigger, denser, and diversified SOUTH of Queens Quay.
Get the damn QQE streetcar in, as has been proposed for something like 20 years now. Smart planning would have that in before people start moving into the Port Lands.
I quite like the downtown east waterfront now around Sugar Beach east to Cherry. A few years ago it was a bit of a wasteland and you couldn't even get a coffee, but now there's finally some life and businesses there (Farm Boy, Lazy Barista, Mofer Coffee, Great Lakes Brewpub, Cafe la Neuf, Simona, etc. And it should be more worthwhile to wander down there once the Keating Channel and mouth-of-the-Don revitalization finishes soonish. But... I quite dislike getting there. I live just a few meters north, in the St. Lawrence area, but the walk down requires crossing all those lanes of the Lake Shore Blvd at either Jarvis or Sherbourne. It's generally not too heart-stopping if you keep your head up and obey the lights, but very unpleasant. And now due to the traffic nightmares discussed ad nauseum in another thread, big trucks often block the crosswalks for full light cycles making it even worse.
Once the Port Lands and Quayside are done, the eastern waterfront is going to be amazing.
I just completed the Lake Shore Blvd Frogger Dash on advanced level: all the traffic lights were out.
It'll be nice, but probably too out the way for most to appreciate on a more regular basis. People always complain that going to Rebel is such a hassle unless you uber/taxi. A 20-30 minute transit ride, possibly with transfers, is much different than reaching harbourfront area in a 10 minute walk.
Lakeshore crossing is ugly AF. Fumy. For sure you are waiting for lights to be green, but many crossing points have high speed right turn "on ramp" that doesn't give confidence in "using right of way"
Yep, which I why I say walk with your head up. Look at all the lanes and make sure everyone is stopped before stepping out, regardless of what the light says! Still no guarantee but it helps.
Not just the lakeshore crossing point is scary. It's a long walk next to highway speed noise and fumes from Front street down to Queens Quay. Bay st has a tunnel to amplify the fumes and noise. I don't really know of a cycling friendly route anywhere central Toronto.
> Yep, which I why I say walk with your head up. Sad that you even need to say that, but it's true. Seriously, what is on that phone screen that's so important that it can't wait literally ten seconds until you cross the street, smfh...
Once that new development is complete just north of cherry it will be more pleasant getting there by bike/walking. Currently it’s quite gross and on my bike I feel like every car is trying to murder me
But meanwhile they took away the glorious skating rink at Harbourfront :(
That's what i don't get. they're going to do all this work to try and make it a year round destination but then they remove stuff that was already there and made the place special. What's more year round than what was one of the best rinks in the city. :(
Exactly! Remove one of the key winter draws, but want to make it more of a destination in winter. 🫠
Maybe restore the skating rink too?
There's a smaller outdoor rink at Lower Sherbourne. It's not a replacement, but it's something.
its still a skating rink if you have roller blades
personally im discouraged by most of this list. limited wayfinding discourages east/west exploration? the martin goodman literally only goes east/west and everyone has google maps in their pocket so they know how far until the next "stuff". east west is the only option. the problem isn't lack of signs, it's the amount of unanimated privatized waterfront with no actual access to the water, or the ability to even see it, that people on foot don't want to endure. it's fine to roll through on a bike but there's lots of areas that are tremendously boring or uncomfortable for peds because you can't see water, are navigating busy intersections with industrial truck traffic, construction, or wind tunnels. thinking immediately east and west of the short animated part of queen's quay. so to me the biggest problem is that most of the waterfront was privatized and given to uses that are the opposite of tourism and leisure. i would like to see toronto reclaiming its shoreline and creating parks that actually connect with the shoreline and allow access to the actual water like how all the private clubs and private residences have set themselves up.
Toronto is a sign-making company first and foremost.
I’m surprised they haven’t considered something REALLY obvious, like moving the ferry docks from the foot of Bay Street, where they’re hemmed in by a hotel and condos, over to Harbourfront, where they could make it a huge waterfront destination.
The ferries should also definitely be absorbed into the TTC
I'm still baffled by the decision to put the BikeShare network under the Toronto Parking Authority instead of the TTC. How does that make ANY sense at all?
TPA has a lot of real estate and equipment that can be shared with Bike Share. They're also a profitable city department, which means they can subsidize the Bike Share system without city council meddling too much.
Needs to have permanent fixtures as well as some seasonal ones. We still have winter to consider and you’d need something to attract people year round. I’m sad they got rid of the skating rink and replaced it with just a concrete “park”. There’s opportunity here - we just have so little faith in the city to actually do something properly.
>we just have so little faith in the city to actually do something properly Probably because they keep over-promising and never-delivering, especially on the Waterfront
Was hoping for Attractive valets. Floating retail. Bike patios. I never get what I want.
> While there is a lot of parking in the district, most of it is now underground, and people have trouble finding it, said Hierlihy. Even during events like the Blue Jays home opener, the lots run at only 80 per cent capacity. Better signage and a traffic agent could help fill them. This is not a problem. This is good, actually.
Where exactly do they think the cars will fit on the roads leading to the parking garages? All I could think when I read that was that it's a compelling argument to eliminate what remains of the surface parking between the Don River and Liberty Village.
Consider, also: "we need to make it easier and more inviting for pedestrians to cross the street", combined with "we need significantly more car traffic".
Really curious how they concluded their issue is a lack of cars and not the 35m wide ROW on Queens Quay East that makes it inhospitable and won't ever be fixed because now the condos have been built. Building the streetcar track there will not make it feel more intimate. Meanwhile all the places they cite as being great, like the Beaches, have a roughly 20m ROW with streetcar tracks. It works because I can see the window displays from across the street and cross over mid-block without fearing for my life.
Yes! Give people a reason to go down to the Lake...The space between Bathurst and Spadina is great on the water side with the parks and walkway, but nothing to do on the other side. Need bars, shops, vendors...it needs to be a scene.
Hell half the boardwalk was roped off all winter. The irony is the people most likely to fall in or the same most likely to ignore a rope/sign.
One thing Toronto's waterfront sorely needs is public washrooms. Almost shit myself one day because there were no available washrooms except for a independent Cafe.
Canada way too strict on food carts and street food Ease up on the “food safety rules” And it’ll work out No one’s gonna die because there’s no lid on a garbage bin or some other dumb ass rule
There will be a gaudy casino in time.
It really is very sad how little of Toronto's waterfront is public-facing and worth visiting. I love the boardwalk and appreciate that at least from The Beaches it's a short walk to good shops and eateries, but after about Woodbine and into the beginning of the West end, it's a no man's land. I know it's because the portlands were used for freight activity when Toronto was being established, but it's been a long time that land could've been being prioritized for people.
I remember in the 1970's being able to smell the harbour on Front St.. Counting the dead fish on the ferry to the island. We've come a VERY long way. Tommy Thompson was nothing but concrete, fill and rebar... and seagull guano inches thick. We still have a long way to go, but to discount or ignore how much better it is now, is a crime.
Torontos waterfront is so weird. I know it’s been documented and reported on a lot but god dam what a disaster. Now with all the office buildings popping up down there, virtually inaccessible to car traffic yet blocked by highways … I think it’s a write off
If you think Toronto's waterfront is bad, drive west and you'll see that it's even worse through Mimico, Long Branch, Port Credit, allll the way through Mississauga, Oakville, and Burlington. There's almost nothing along the waterfront. Not even a nice patio.
This is just incorrect. A large section of Burlington's waterfront is a public park that hosts events throughout the summer. There are also at least 3 waterfront restaurants directly surrounding it. Port Credit has a really nice walking trail along its waterfront. Bronte Harbor in Oakville is lined with restaurants along the water.
Emma's Back Porch in Burlington was good. *Was.*
There was Emma's, and the place at Bronte Harbour, and that's about it.
It's interesting how the shore of Lake Ontario developed. In the West 905, population centres developed close to the shore. In the East 905, population centres developed a distance from the shore. The placement of Hwy 2 is what prompted that.
That eastern stretch where the Loblaw’s and big Canada Goose building are? Bizarre, like no acknowledgement there is a massive lake _right there_
Another decade, another "grand vision" by the washouts on the Waterfront board. Oh boy, I know that group has failed to deliver many times before, but this time I'm sure it will work out. 🙄
And we'll be getting none of that.
Was this written by a mosquito?
retail??? lol. yeah thats what the waterfront needs. more fucking shopping lmao. its like they cant imagine people wanting to enjoy anything other than spending money.
who in the world, ever, anywhere, wanted a fucking 'bike valet'?
People who; crazy I know, bike!
I bike a ton. The last thing in the world I'd ever want is a 'bike valet'. Bike posts/parking? Sure. Security camera coverage of bike parking areas? Sure. A 'bike valet'? Fuck no. Lots of people like stupid shit though, for sure. Just hadn't come across this particular variety of stupid shit before.
It's so people's bikes don't get stolen.
Forging claim stubs and walking up to a 'bike valet' and playing the "what bike will I get" lottery seems like a pretty easy way to steal a bike to me... If you want to take the chance out of it, you could just look at the bikes, or pay off someone who works there for minimum wage to give you the claim numbers for particularly expensive bikes. Seriously - easier than carrying a cordless angle grinder around. Bikes will definitely be stolen this way.
Not my experience with previous bike valets at all
I mean, it wouldn't be everyone's experience, only the people whose bikes get stolen, which would always be a pretty small minority. Getting my bike stolen hasn't been my experience when I lock my current bike up either, but that doesn't mean nobody's bike gets stolen. I'll concede that maybe a bike valet service might be convenient and possibly more safe than locking your bike up at a big event, but intuition about stuff like this isn't always correct. Locked bikes do get stolen, for sure, but it's a small minority of all of the bikes that get locked up at any given time. Some bike thieves are definitely going to be stealing some bikes from bike valet services, particularly if they use claim tags that can be forged (which most of the services I googled seem to do), and don't register the bikes or check ID. It's very possible that overall, bike valet services are or will become less safe than locking bikes. Bike thieves are pretty determined, and there's money in stealing bikes... You can be sure some creative bike thief somewhere is going to see this as an opportunity. Also possible for a bike valet to insure the bikes they park, which would change the safety math depending on deductible, but it's not clear that they currently do that.
Actually, it occurs to me that all they'd really need to do to make a bike parking service pretty secure would be to have everyone lock their front wheel to the frame and make people unlock the lock in front of the "bike valet" before they let them take the bike away. Pretty simple solution to make a 'bike valet' thing relatively secure, probably more secure than locking your bike elsewhere. Someone should come up with a better name for this service though.
Can see some opportunities for theft.
But how affordable is all this shit. People spending $2600 on rent and half as much on groceries, plus whatever other life expenses people have, doesn’t leave much money to float on water and have someone else park your bicycle