The October TTC agenda includes a report on the Subway Station Appearance Improvement program.
Things are proceeding, but slowly. One major change will come in stations that have/had ceiling slats over the track areas. These are hard to clean, and it is simpler to remove them and spray paint the ceiling black. A similar approach was taken on the walls of Union Station.
There is some irony in this tactic. Originally, the ceilings were bare plaster, but this made for noisy stations. Next came sound-absorbing foam, but it quickly turned dark thanks to the ever-present dust in the subway environment. What to do? Cover the foam with slats. Now we have come almost full circle.
Where slats covered station ceilings, they will be removed to provide easy access to all of the conduits hiding underneath. This will bring on a minimalist look in many locations. Probably we could paint all of those conduits beautiful colours, but a few millions would be needed (via charitable donations of course) to grease the wheels, hire a prominent architect to select the paint chips, and then give us a half-finished project. Nobody would think much about maintenance, but there would be a nice photo op.
Speaking of Museum Station, a similar tactic for the outside walls will be installed as a trial at St. Andrew. An ilustration within the report (page 10) shows the process of removing the old slats. What do we have underneath? The original vitrolite tiles! Catch them while you can!
Lest I appear to be unfairly carping about the TTC’s ability to look good while saving money, I must applaud the basic housecleaning practices they are using and hope that they will remain and improve, not fall victim to budget cuts. However, we seem to be moving in the direction of dulling already functional, but not beautiful, stations down to a level of poverty. As a temporary measure, this may do, but for the future, especially for new and rebuilt stations, we need to do better.
Steve Munro 
So I’m not the only one who thinks the ceiling at Museum station is unfinished. Good!
Our stations are disgusting; we can do better.
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So are all the wall slats being removed from St Andrew or just the one section that is currently taken down?
Steve: All. They have just started, and the photo in the report is more or less what it looked like this evening (Friday).
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yea but its going to look so bad, and cracked. I mean wow.
Steve: I didn’t say it was beautiful, only that the tiles are visible.
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For once, it’s nice to see the TTC actually doing something about the cleanliness issue.
On the Bloor-Danforth line at least, I’ve noticed a lot of painting, and brigher lighting over the last few months.
We are all good at criticizing the TTC, but for once they deserve some praise.
(and really, when you look at what has happened to bus frequencies in cities like Montreal in the last quarter-century, the TTC deserves a lot of praise!)
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In my mind this issue of station maintenance and cleanliness is directly connected to Station Modernization. Many of the system’s hard-to-maintain finishes, such as ceiling slats, miniature decorative tiles, etc., were installed during previous renovation efforts in a bid to “modernize” the system. As is normal, most of these finishes went out of style years ago, and their hard-to-clean nature has resulted in a current state of disrepair which I do not fully fault the TTC for.
So, while I’m happy to see the TTC spending money to renovate its stations (such as Pape), I truly would prefer to see those same funds used to preserve/restore the minimalist state (ie. cleaning and replacing tiles, repairing leaks, consolidating various service conduits, and relamping light fixtures) in a form that will be more resilient to wear, tear, and fashion. People appreciate a clean, well-maintained, but minimalist system over one with interesting finishes that are dirty, broken, and outmoded.
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I still see no progress on installing platform-level trash bins on the YUS, despite an item in the September Commission meeting agenda calling for it. This one action alone will help enormously in improving the litter situation (and TTC, *please* place them by the benches, where people leave most of the litter I see on the platforms and where they may, just may, actually use them, and not randomly space them such that they’ll be totally useless).
In addition, the build-up of debris under the “lips” of platforms and on trackbeds continues to be unaddressed. Osgoode, for example, on the northbound side, has had its trackbed littered for some time now. And Davisville is also becoming increasingly worse in that regard (as is the yard itself and parts of the outdoor sections of track). ROW maintenance is truly an endangered species at the TTC.
There also seems to be a real hit-or-miss approach to cleaning as a whole, as sometimes one station at one particular time of day looks presentable, then another day, at the same time, looks like a shambles (again, see Davisville).
In short, I’ll believe this “progress” when I see it.
Steve: Speaking of right-of-way maintenance, if things keep up the way they were this year, we could give wildflower tours on the line between Victoria Park and Warden Station. I know that the City has an anti-pesticide policy, but there’s a good reason for killing off the plants here — you have to redo the ballast more often if you let plants take over.
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As an ex-pat living in New York, let me tell you that the New York subway stations are beyond decrepit. There have been some lovely renovations far in excess of what the TTC can pull off (mosaic tile, granite pavers, glass headhouses, historic restoration), but they too tend to quickly succumb to the general level of filth, vandalism, litter and defecation that is widely tolerated system-wide here. Be happy for your clean if dull stations, if the TTC can at least get them back to some level of cleanliness.
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Things are proceeding, but slowly. One major change will come in stations that have/had ceiling slats over the track areas. These are hard to clean, and it is simpler to remove them and spray paint the ceiling black.
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