Celebrate Yonge Street

Reimagining Yonge Street with a temporary pilot project 

CONTEXT

Back in 2012, following the success of temporary pedestrianization projects in New York, the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association and Toronto Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam were looking for a way to create more space for people, patios, and community events on Yonge Street.

THE CHALLENGE 

Yonge Street is an important downtown corridor. It has four lanes of traffic. How can the road be reconfigured and traffic be diverted to create pop-up public space out of its right-of-way while still accommodating some traffic, along with deliveries and garbage collection?     

MY ROLE + THE DESIGN PROCESS

As a transportation designer and planner at BA Consulting Group, I worked closely with the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area to develop the concept for the temporary changes to pavement markings, lane configurations, and signage in order to narrow the road and widen the sidewalks.

This plan created new space for patios, along with turn lanes to move traffic off of Yonge Street as well as temporary centralized loading and garbage collection locations.

THE DESIGN

For more on how the design turned out, visit the project's website and read the piece I wrote about it for SamePageTeam.com, a Toronto blog.

The temporary changes to the street allowed for the creation of pop-up patios and parks that were programmed by the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association and neighbourhood business partners.