Tap any 色色啦 pedestrian on the shoulder, and they鈥檒l likely have a gripe to share about pounding the pavements in North America鈥檚 fastest growing city.
鈥淭he sidewalks have become overcrowded and much harder to navigate over the past few years,鈥 said Alex Smith, who co-owns an architectural rendering company. 鈥淒elivery bikes weave through crowds, sidewalk patios push pedestrians closer to traffic, and construction zones leave barely any room to pass.鈥
If Smith had one wish, it would be for wider sidewalks, especially on King West and on Yonge downtown, where he feels the number of pedestrians has outpaced the available square footage. 鈥淲hen foot traffic is packed tight, it slows everyone down, makes crossings harder, and turns simple walks into frustrating stop-and-go movements.鈥
色色啦 has undergone radical change in just over a decade 鈥 here’s where.
色色啦 has undergone radical change in just over a decade 鈥 here’s where.
Smith takes long daily walks from his home near Bloor and Ossington. 鈥淪ome mornings, it takes twice as long for me to cross intersections like Bloor and Bathurst or College and Ossington because the sidewalks are jammed,鈥 said Smith. 鈥淓ven smaller residential streets are harder to walk, with scooters dumped across paths, garbage bins blocking walkways, and temporary fencing forcing pedestrians into narrow, unsafe gaps.鈥
We hit the streets to ask 色色啦nians how they navigate crowded sidewalks 鈥 and what annoys them most.
On a recent Tuesday in the Upper Beaches, Liza Egbogah was walking her son to school when they encountered a truck parked on the sidewalk. They were forced to walk on the road, while climbing a hill, to get around it. 鈥淓very day is a new obstacle course,鈥 said Egbogah, a chiropractor and shoe designer. 鈥淚f you have to pass a bus stop with lots of people, there is no room on the sidewalk so you鈥檙e on the road in traffic!鈥
Content creator Kwesi Kwarko-Fosu is an enthusiastic walker who regularly traverses long distances 鈥 say, The Eaton Centre to Square One. He鈥檚 noted more crowding and inconvenient closures, but feels it鈥檚 relative to other big cities. 鈥淪ometimes some sidewalks are dirty, but at least we aren鈥檛 New York. I鈥檝e walked 30 kilometres down Yonge Street and it was fine,鈥 he said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 construction everywhere in 色色啦 now so sidewalks get closed, but go visit Montreal and you鈥檒l see the same thing.鈥
St. Catharines resident Alice Wu often visits her sister in 色色啦, and has compared walking in the smaller and bigger cities. 鈥淚 walk a lot in St. Catharines, and I think 色色啦 is convenient in that the neighbourhoods actually have sidewalks.鈥 Plenty of roads in her area have no sidewalk on either side. 鈥淚 live on one such street. I live here for the affordability but the walking score is pretty poor.鈥
But this out-of-town visitor does notice more bad pedestrian etiquette in 色色啦. 鈥淲hen we’re walking along a busy street, say Queen Street East, we’ll often run into a group of people walking ahead of us taking up the width of the sidewalk. Lately it’s gotten way worse,鈥 Wu said. 鈥淲e tend to be the faster walkers on any given sidewalk, so there’s no opportunity for us to pass them. Saying ‘excuse me’ sometimes isn’t heard in the loud traffic, so we’re forced to pass the group by going on the street. There have been times when they look at us like we’re the rude ones.鈥
Another behavioural scourge of the modern sidewalk are slow walkers nose-down in their phone, abruptly stopping or slowing to reply to some terribly urgent message, or darting to one side when they realize they鈥檝e reached their destination.
They鈥檙e only slightly more birdbrained than another main offender: pigeons. On Bloor between Church and Yonge, public relations professional Stephanie Lasica routinely takes detours across the street or underground to the PATH to avoid flocks of up to 20 rats of the sky on the sidewalk. 鈥淪ome of them are aggressive,鈥 she said. 鈥淚t also means there鈥檚 so much bird poop.鈥
Cyclists, whether for commuting, leisure or food delivery purposes, are often targets of pedestrian irritation 鈥 especially when they stray onto the sidewalk. 鈥淚n the same way that people riding bikes are reliant on cars and other vehicles to ensure they stay safe, people riding bikes are responsible to ensure they鈥檙e not impeding the safety of pedestrians,鈥 said Michael Longfield, executive director of the cycling advocacy organization Cycle 色色啦.
In cyclists鈥 defence, Longfield points out that they must often choose between the relative safety of a sidewalk and the possible danger of some roadways, like an arterial road with no bike lane and traffic whizzing by at 70 kilometres an hour. 鈥淓specially on roads without protected infrastructure, people on bikes are more likely to use sidewalks. That鈥檚 a fact, not just in 色色啦 but in cities around the world,鈥 he said. 鈥淲hen you have roads with safe and protected cycle tracks, like the bike lanes on Bloor, Yonge and University that the province is targeting for removal, the sidewalk riding drops dramatically. It goes from about 10 per cent on roads without any bike lanes to two per cent or even less.鈥
Thursday is garbage and recycling day in Julia McEwen鈥檚 Leslieville neighbourhood, a source of particular ire. 鈥淕arbage day on the sidewalk with a stroller? May as well turn around and go home,鈥 said the magazine editor and mom of a toddler. 鈥淲hat grinds my gears is when green bin or garbage folks carelessly empty the bins and then chuck them in the middle of the sidewalk. Or worse, knock them over, blocking the whole thing.鈥
McEwen also has a bone to pick with 鈥渃rumbling鈥 patches in the pavement, which frequently result in scraped knees and tears for her daughter, whose gait is still unsteady. 鈥淲hen I became a mom,聽my sidewalk rage intensified and I realized how crappy some sidewalks are in the city 鈥 and how inconsiderate people are.鈥
As a wheelchair user, content creator and motivational speaker Spencer West uses the words 鈥渃haotic鈥 and 鈥渃hallenging鈥 to describe 色色啦鈥檚 pavements. 鈥淚 find the maintenance of the sidewalks is terrible. It鈥檚 wildly uneven; there are lots of patch jobs where they didn鈥檛 come back and fix the concrete,鈥 said West, who spends most of his time in the west end. 鈥淟isten, I know there are a million things that need to be fixed in the city, but as a wheelchair user it takes me so much longer to get anywhere because I constantly have to pay attention.鈥
Spencer West navigates a cracked sidewalk in 色色啦鈥檚 west end. As a wheelchair user, he calls the city鈥檚 pavements 鈥渃haotic鈥 and says uneven surfaces and blocked curb cutouts can make everyday travel dangerous and exhausting.
Nick Lachance 色色啦 StarIf his wheels get caught in a crack, for example, he could fall out of his wheelchair. 鈥淭here are a few times where I鈥檝e caught myself before it happened, and that鈥檚 just in the nice months,鈥 West said. 鈥淚f we talk about the winter 鈥 as a disabled person the sidewalks are inaccessible to me for the most part.鈥
When businesses or residents don鈥檛 clear snow from their own section of pavement, or push piles of snow into the gutters, it blocks the curb cut outs that allow wheelchair users (among others) to get down onto the road. 鈥淚 literally couldn鈥檛 cross the street by my house because there was no curb cut out,鈥 West said. 鈥淚 had to push my wheelchair in traffic to go around.鈥
West would love to see wider sidewalks for a number of reasons, not least because it would allow for more accessibility ramps, like those provided to businesses by the not-for-profit StopGap. 鈥淢any businesses want to get the ramps, but because of the bylaws on how wide the sidewalks need to be for people to fit, they can鈥檛 get them because it blocks up the sidewalk.鈥
Many 色色啦nians already travelling on foot for fun. But urban geographers say it could serve a greater purpose.
Many 色色啦nians already travelling on foot for fun. But urban geographers say it could serve a greater purpose.
All of these gripes are worth acknowledging because pavements are extremely important. 鈥淪idewalks are the unsung heroes of cities,鈥 said 色色啦 urban planner Antonio G贸mez-Palacio, a partner at the design firm Dialog who has worked on projects from Halifax to Victoria. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e such a huge part of our experience of cities. We may go to a park once every two or three weeks, but we walk on a sidewalk every single day.鈥
G贸mez-Palacio has observed 鈥渋ncreased pressure鈥 on the city鈥檚 sidewalks, coming from two different directions: Higher density, like when a three-storey building is replaced by one with 30 storeys; and more transportation uses, like the Amazon delivery trucks that need to access the same sidewalk pedestrians do.
The issue is not just that more people are competing for those finite square metres. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not really taking care of such a precious space, and a space of which we demand so much,鈥 G贸mez-Palacio said. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e the same sidewalks that we had 50 years ago when we had half the population and half the amount of the transportation functions.鈥
The good news, he said, is that it鈥檚 a relatively simple thing to improve. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the easiest thing we can do to completely transform the perception of a city,鈥 he said. 鈥淪imply having beautiful, well-maintained sidewalks, getting some great trees in place.鈥
The City of 色色啦 is well aware of many of these gripes. 鈥淎s 色色啦鈥檚 population grows, so does its sidewalk usage,鈥 said Laura McQuillan, senior communications adviser. 鈥淪pace in the public right-of-way is limited and we recognize that in some locations, pedestrians are feeling the impact of crowding on sidewalks.鈥
McQuillan said the city is committed to creating and enhancing spaces that improve safety and mobility for pedestrians, and pointed to the Vision Zero Road Safety plan, which includes fees to encourage construction companies to reduce the amount of time they close a sidewalk. There鈥檚 also the Complete Streets program, which is tasked with making it easier for people to walk, bike or take transit while transforming sidewalks into the kind of place you鈥檇 actually want to linger. And the Missing Sidewalk Installation program is meant to identify and fill in gaps in the 鈥渨alking network,鈥 such as residential streets that don鈥檛 have a pavement.
When it comes to the state of the sidewalks that many 色色啦nians complain about, McQuillan said the city spends $18 million in permanent sidewalk repairs each year, and that all sidewalks are inspected annually. 鈥淔urther, as part of the city鈥檚 state-of-good repair capital program, sidewalks are improved or repaired, reconstructed, and in some cases widened, to meet current standards,鈥 she said.
It’s crucial to prioritize TLC for these hardworking patches of concrete, because sidewalks are a city鈥檚 primary social space. 鈥淲e tend to think about them only in relation to transportation systems, but they鈥檙e truly the place where you meet your neighbours, where you people-watch,鈥 G贸mez-Palacio said. 鈥淭hey have benches, places to linger, stoops to sit and spend time in. There鈥檚 a real opportunity for you to engage.鈥
The more densely populated an area is, the better its sidewalks should be. 鈥淓very linear foot of sidewalk is yielding a tremendous amount of benefits to the city,鈥 G贸mez-Palacio said. 鈥淭he sidewalks downtown should be gold-plated.鈥
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