After nearly three years of construction, Queens Quay West saw its official re-opening today. After all of the digging, the dust, the new utilities and track, the constantly shifting road lanes, and the construction barricades always somewhere, in the way, the street is now almost complete. A few odds and ends remain for cleanup in the fall, but you need to know what these are to even spot them along the way.
Toronto now has a new type of street – one with generous space for pedestrians, a wide separated pair of cycling lanes, a transit right-of-way and a two-lane road for cars. No longer a speedway (it’s amazing what years of construction can do to “evaporate” traffic), but a space shared among everyone. In these early days, some motorists are confused about where their lanes actually are, especially when turning onto Queens Quay from the north-south streets. Pedestrians have not yet quite figured out where to stand at intersections, and cyclists are getting used to their own sets of traffic signals. But with luck it will all work out.
The street itself is a cut above the usual for Toronto with patterns throughout granite pavers covering not just the public sidewalk but most of the private lands between that narrow strip and surrounding buildings.
Politicians who attended were suitably impressed, although the usual amount of back-patting (“look what my government did”) was inevitable, especially from the federal representative, Finance Minister Joe Oliver. The challenge is to get the same pols on board for the Queens Quay East project now that everyone can see just what the “new Queens Quay” is all about, and to have a more generous attitude to the value of good street design rather than minimalist utilitarianism, beyond the criticism of the most arduous opponents of “fat” in public projects.
One notable transit improvement is that the “transit priority” signals actually work, although I’ve been told there remains a tiny amount of tweaking to be done. For its part, the TTC has still not fixed the switches at Queens Quay & Spadina so that they operate automatically, and they are paying someone to do point duty there. The line has been open for months, but never let it be said that the TTC rushed into anything.
Here is a gallery of photos from the first day with all of the barricades down.
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- Looking east at Lower Simcoe Street.
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- Looking east at Lower Simcoe.
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- Looking east from Simcoe Wave Deck.
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- The pedestrian promenade at Simcoe Wave Deck.
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- Looking east adjacent to Simcoe Wave Deck.
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- Looking west at Simcoe Wave Deck.
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- At Rees Street, a temporary cover for works not quite finished yet.
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- Eastbound at Rees Street
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- Looking east at the “Beer Store” crossing east of Peter Slip.
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- Looking east across Peter Slip Bridge
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- Looking west across Peter Slip Bridge
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- Looking east at Spadina.
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- Looking west at the Music Garden
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- Looking east at the “crossover” at the Music Garden
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- Looking east from Dan Leckie Way
Steve Munro 
It’s looking good but there needs to be more signage as well as a separation of the streetcar tracks and the bike lanes.
I work at Fort York and Spadina and pass along Queens Quay daily. Just last week I had to inform a tourist from Quebec that the streetcar tracks are not for cars. She had turned from Southbound Spadina to Eastbound Queens Quay and ended up driving on the streetcar tracks. She did not realize there was a dedicated automobile lane. There is no signage to indicate that as such and quite honestly at Spadina and Queens Quay is looks almost like there is only Westbound lanes.
As for the separation of the streetcar ROW and bike lanes, I was talking to an operator last week who stated that operators along Queens Quay drive slower because of the new bike lanes among everything else. They are worried that people will inadvertently walk into or bike onto the streetcar tracks so they drive slower than they need to. They would rather be late than go full tilt into someone not paying attention and encroaching into the streetcar tracks.
Thoughts Steve?
Steve: When I was there today, the streetcars were speeding along the street. Given that there is a wide separation from the cycling lane, it’s not as if they are right beside streetcars as they would be on, say, King Street. Yes there is a problem with left turning motorists at Spadina. The traffic engineers are deciding how to fix this.
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It is very disappointing to see TTC once again dropping the ball with switches. I saw the point duty person as well and was shaking my head. We are going to have lots of visitors from across the Americas for the Pan Am games wondering why the Canadians cannot automate a single switch. It’s not that the Queens Quay project was a fast track project. TTC had all the time in the world to get it right.
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I rode my bike from Jarvis to Stadium Road on Thursday, when it was completely open. I really like the new design, especially the lack of curbs. As the trees fill out, it will be exciting to see the renderings come to life. Now let’s get moving on Queens Quay East.
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Woo! Now what chance for Queen’s Quay east?
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What they meant was given the tracks and pedestrian area are at the same grade with no separation some operators were concerned they would end up going full tilt into a wayward pedestrian or cyclist who was not paying attention to where they were going.
By separation I meant a curb and barriers like on Spadina versus the sidewalk that is there now along Queens Quay.
I see what you mean though Steve however it would have been better to at least erect a fence to prevent encroaching on the tracks by pedestrians and cyclists alike?
Steve: The whole idea of the street design is that there be no fences other than those separating the islands at stops from the bike path.
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Great photos, Steve. The first thing I thought is that they actually look quite a bit like architect’s renderings, in that there is plenty of human activity to complement the brand new finishes.
Steve: I was trying to show how the street “works”, not just pretty photos of the streetcars. A huge amount of work went into the design, and it’s great to see how people took to the street the moment it opened.
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Thanks for the article! I live at Queen’s Quay and Bay and I am enjoying being treated like a grown up when it comes to lanes, signage, etc. Most people can rise to expectations by looking and thinking.
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It’s nice for it to finally be done. I really hope that the pedestrians do figure things out – those “mixing zones” at intersections (where the bike path temporarily disappears) are not working terribly well IMO, since pedestrians don’t see anything other than more sidewalk. (Meaning that people waiting for lights just pile up randomly where bikes are trying to cross.)
It would be wonderful/amazing to extend it all the way across to Parliament, but given the Gardiner debacle, I rather suspect that it won’t happen.
As a commuter cyclist, I just wish they’d been able to build something that was actually safer and faster than what was there before they started. (With all the problems that the old Queens Quay had, I only had 1 accident and 3 road-rage encounters in a decade-plus, and very few narrowly-avoided accidents. I’ve already had a couple of close encounters with illegally turning drivers just in the week or so since they’ve started re-opening sections, and I’m not even going to try to list pedestrian issues.)
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Does look nice, however I just watched yet another fire truck trying to travel westbound on Queens Quay. The cars that were in its way drove up on the sidewalk!!!!!! Still early I guess.
It also would have been even nicer if we’d had this along the full waterfront, instead of selling it all off to greedy developers. We’re about the ONLY civilized city in the world that hasn’t left its waterfront for the people instead of development, and greedy government coffers.
Steve: Yes, although there are plans to extend this east to the Don River. The big stumbling blocks today are (a) the funding of the Don River realignment and flood control, and (b) the future of the Gardiner East.
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The heads of those traffic lights are really big and not proportionate to the traffic arms that hold them up. The city should adopt a similar design to what Mississauga has. In addition I always wonder why we use yellow traffic heads; a lot of other jurisdictions use black. I’m saying this all because I think if these minor changes were taken into consideration then the overall design of Queen Quay would have been better.
Steve: Anything to do with the signals gets us into the preserve of the City’s Transportation Department and their standards. Difficult.
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Oh. Well, there goes my comment about how you seem to have a knack for framing the streetcars so beautifully in your photos! Haha.
Steve: There is an artful placement of the streetcars as background elements. It’s certainly not random!
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Yes, Queens Quay looks splendid, all cleaned up, and a joy to behold after the three years. We should ask those who live there whether it was worth it, many were not too sure along the way.
But splendid aside, some serious safety issues seem quickly obvious.
First is the lack of a curb between the pedestrian and bike lanes. A curb, up or down, is a physical restraint to bikes using pedestrian areas, thus protecting pedestrians, while providing a strong visual and physical barrier to pedestrians wandering into bike lanes. The present flat stone/blacktop transition accomplishes neither.
There are scant pedestrian crossings, with up to 300m between crossings. This will encourage mid block crossing. While there is a de facto ‘refuge’ (a place to hold up part way across) between bike path and streetcar tracks, there is no such opportunity between tracks and roadway. This then requires the pedestrian to negotiate a total of four lanes in one go, or get stuck in between as I witnessed several times. A place for accidents to happen!
In the absence of the curb and the refuge, pedestrian safety in my opinion requires attention. Either fencing between bike lanes and tracks, coupled with more pedestrian crossings, or a very substantial reduction in speed by all three modes. Yes, the streetcar must be slower, as must traffic , and bikes too. Start with 30k for traffic and streetcar, and even lower for bikes since they are adjacent to pedestrians without a curb between. Although many cyclists will disagree, this is not a race track or place to work out. Seems the streetcar is already slowing; no operator wants to hit pedestrians no matter who is ‘at fault’.
Two examples are the waterfront LRT in Blackpool England, which operates at no more than 30k for the long length of waterfront; and the Manchester Tram which does little more than twice walking speed in the core (Piccadilly) pedestrian areas.
Unlike Downtown where most people are familiar with getting around; not so at Harbourfront, where many are visitors, often with kids in tow.
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A couple of thoughts from experiences in other cities.
Toronto (i.e. the Ontario Government) needs to use different signal lights for street cars on rights of way, bicycles and automobiles and also red arrows when a right turn is not allowed on red. In the Netherlands they have low signals for bicycles that have red, yellow and green bikes. There is no mistaking what these are for. Almost the entire world uses vertical, slanted and horizontal white, or coloured, bars for transit for go, amber and stop. A lot also use > for transit right turn and < for turns.
So Steve, your next crusade is to get the province and the city to adopt signals and signage that has proven itself in the rest of the world. Surely a small matter for someone of your talent. Perhaps you could sic attack swans onto the grounds of the legislature to speed things up. They are good for many things beside pulling boats.
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I am happy the work is finally done. The work had become a huge eyesore – but now Toronto gets something nice, finally. I have to drop by to see the area (and get a nice streetcar ride on top of that.)
On a side note, based on Anon’s comment above: I thought that the TTC was using automatic switches on the Harbourfront, at least for Spadina and Queen’s Quay as I do not remember from previous trips (pre-renovation) of streetcar drivers having to manually throw switches there. But if there are not automatic switches, there should be – it’s not like they don’t have the service levels to make automatic switches far more convenient.
Steve: The boxes for automated switching were included in the intersection when it was rebuilt, but the TTC seems to be perpetually in limbo about updating its track control system. Always a project for “next year”. I think it was deferred this year as part of the budget cuts (yes there were budget cuts, gentle reader, no matter what that nice Mr. Tory might tell you). This really is a disgrace.
See the following comment for a view of inter-agency problems on this project.
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As with all completely new track SEL switch installations the final hook up rests with Toronto Hydro. A/C power is required for the interrogator and controller (the switch itself is powered by the 600 volt D/C from the overhead). Any “new” installation has to be inspected before power up as per code. The TTC is not on Toronto Hydro’s favourite list and has been known not to do inspections and hook ups for over a year (it took four years for eastbound King/Parliament, and then that was severed by local building construction).
There is currently a “Red Top” notice for operators stating that the maximum speed limit on Queen’s Quay is 30 km/h with a maximum speed at intersections of 10 km/h. There have been far too many streetcar/auto collisions, most notably at Lower Simcoe St. and Rees St.
Queen’s Quay West looks absolutely amazing and is a great example of how modern streetscaping and intermodal transportation work together providing an inviting area. Bring on Queen’s Quay East!
Steve: Toronto Hydro is well known to be a power unto itself, and they were not the easiest of “partners” on the QQ project. All the same, maybe that nice Mayor Tory could do something useful in his move to integrate communication between municipal agencies and light a fire under Hydro’s butt.
As for the speed restrictions, my gut feeling is that if the signal priority can ensure that streetcars don’t spend most of their time sitting at red lights, the speed between the stops won’t be as serious an impediment.
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As a cyclist, the old Queens Quay eastbound was actually a very nice route for getting some exercise. This new incarnation simply can’t accommodate that use any more. During peak periods it is for casual recreation only. In off peak periods, hopefully it will be useful for very casual bike commuting to homes or work in the area. I suspect even at off peak periods, anybody who wants to move quick will still be frustrated by ‘traffic’.
The mixing zones are a mess right now, some redesign is needed–signage, moved/removed/additional lights in some places, etc. Meanwhile, there is a spot just east of Bathurst (immediately on the north east corner of the Spadina Quay Marina) where the bike route plus sidewalk narrows to an absurd ~4′ wide bit of concrete. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Somebody is going into the water at that spot.
Transit priority signaling is very important. Unfortunately, as with all kinds of new signaling ideas in this city–like the pedestrian countdown that turns back into a walk after it reaches zero–the way it is implemented is really problematic. The transit signal should only stop conflicting traffic. Beyond the simple wastefulness of an all way red for the transit phase, if there isn’t any opposing traffic, pedestrians and cyclists are going to ignore the stop signals. I can see the traffic engineers reasoning now.. “we need all way red, otherwise cars will turn across the right of way”.. Which begs the question, why doesn’t this city use the straight through green arrow along streets with transit rights of way?
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My wife and I rode our bikes today starting about 11:30 am, eastward to about the eastern border of GB. [Grand Boulevard]
There was nothing to complain about.
OK.
Some people just like to ” Complain”.
Please STOP.
However between Spadina Avenue and the Redpath Sugar plant it got very crowded, sort of similar to what you would experience if you sailed your sailboat through the TO Inner Harbour on a weekend.
Then again you could walk.
There is some work required east of GB and the new trees are a bit skimpy.
Avoid the weekends in this time slot.
Forget all these trivial complaints.
Steve: Work continues on interim improvements on QQ East. The trees will grow — they are in special pits with adequate room for the root systems to properly develop unlike the typical way so many street trees are installed in Toronto. BTW there is a festival at the waterfront this weekend sponsored by Redpath, and so things are a tad busy there.
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One of the issues, it’s going to take people a while to figure out the street design, polluting it with lots of signs isn’t going to make this easier, because collisions will be caused by people confused by all the signs. What might help the car drivers on turns are to add those dashed pavement markings that show you which lane turns to where…. They have used those elsewhere, and by winter when the pavement markings get scrubbed off, people will have figured it out.
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Needs “a guy with a gun” to direct traffic. Better than standing over a hole in the ground.
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Yesterday afternoon I stood around at the QQ and Spadina intersection and saw many turning vehicles going into (or trying to go into) the streetcar ROW. If the first car of a group headed that way the others followed. One obvious problem is that the signage is terrible. There is a “Streetcars Only” sign on a post but it is about 20 feet above ground and certainly not in the line of vision of most drivers. I suspect that locations like Spadina are always going to be a problem but a few more better-placed signs would certainly help, as would lots more road marking. (I also suggest that a few bicycle symbols painted on the bike path might help educate pedestrians about what it is!)
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This morning, I ran with a group of runners mostly on the bike path. I cycle a lot, and feel grumpy when I feel pedestrians / runners are in my way. So I fully expected someone to ask us to stay on the sidewalk. No one did. To me, the Martin Goodman Trail is just that – a trail, not a cycling road and certainly not a freeway. I like the chaos, and it’s nice even to see drivers politely wait while people cross against the light in front of them. It’s remarkably civilized. Perfect? No. But refreshing, especially contrasted with cycling on Yonge Street north of Sheppard.
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When I added the Oslo page to my LRT site in 2008, I wrote the following for the “Toronto Comparisons” section:
What I see now on Queen’s Quay is more like what I saw back then in Oslo.
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I am in total agreement that transit (and bicycle) signals should look significantly different than automobile signals. Simply mounting them at different heights, installing duplicate side-by-side signals, and posting a “Transit Signal” sign is not sufficient.
I have seen the bicycle-image signals in other places as well, and most use the bars for transit signals. One other method of displaying transit signals is a light with the letter “T”, as is done in Australia, as in this image from Melbourne and this image from Sydney.
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I visited the new Queens Quay on my bike on Sunday to check it out. Bike traffic was heavy and slow-moving. I would expect that many cyclists – like myself – were on Queens Quay to take a look at the new street, so I doubt it will be as crowded in the future.
Regarding bike speed, remember please that the Martin Goodman Trail is a *multi-use* pathway. It is NOT a dedicated bike lane. Even pedestrians can use the trail. Getting stuck behind slower-moving traffic can happen anywhere on the Martin Goodman Trail, not just on Queens Quay. Slow down and wait to pass safely.
I think the concerns about bikes straying onto the streetcar tracks are quite overblown. I felt the bike lanes and tracks were very clearly delineated. You’d have to be an extremely careless rider to wind up on the tracks.
It was also a great place to get squeezed between vehicular traffic and parked tour buses while having to worry about getting “doored”. The new Queens Quay is a huge improvement. There are plenty of other places to get exercise, if that’s your intent.
There will be a bit of a learning curve with the new layout. For example, in Steve’s 8th photograph, “Eastbound at Rees Street”, pedestrians are waiting to cross Queens Quay while standing in the bike lane. (Although that is actually a “mixing zone”.) Pedestrians will have to learn to be more mindful of bicyclists, just as bicyclists will have to be more mindful of pedestrians.
Overall, I think the redesigned Queens Quay is terrific. Yes, some improvements can be made, but on the whole I was quite impressed with the new street, and I think it’s a huge improvement over the old Queens Quay.
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Some enterprising reporter should try to determine how much we have spent on manual switching, and how often it is because hydro can’t get their act together. Seems to me that if the SLA can’t be met that hydro should be paying for the staffing costs.
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Was down there around 5 on Saturday to and fro from BMO field. It was about as packed as its ever going to be on Saturday after the Blue Jays game and with the Waterfront Festival on.
And that was the fastest I’ve ever seen that route go. Transit priority worked.
Blue Jays fans who insist on parking nearby might want to go north instead of south now. But that’s a volume adjustment – some of that traffic will just disappear.
As others have said, adults will figure it all out.
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At risk of feeding the trolls, and asking forgiveness in advance if I get unduly harsh:
The problem is that once there’s a “bike lane” as cars perceive it, then any cyclist on the road becomes a rage-inducing provocation. (“Get in your space, asshole!” is a direct quote from this morning.) So your careless dismissal of anyone who wants to go more than 15km/h as an exercise freak who should go play somewhere else – “There are plenty of other places to get exercise, if that’s your intent” – is pointless and stupid.
Besides, I’m not cycling for exercise; I’m going to work. And I can’t afford to spend an hour and a half each way toodling along behind your brainless Bixi meanderings. I’d be happy to ride on the road, except that being buzzed twice and run at in the space of less than 3 weeks is about my limit for being foolhardy.
So, yeah, share. It goes both ways; I won’t run you over, and you don’t ride 3 abreast at a jogging speed. But some of us need to go places, and we have limits to the amount of time we can waste en route.
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In the case of the areas where there is a trail and sidewalk – why would there not be an exclusive bike lane, especially given there is a sidewalk directly beside. Also, there is a large cycle painted at the openings of these areas. Yes, by and large the trail is meant to be multi-use, but I am under the impression that it would make a great deal more sense to have the pedestrians stick the area that is both much wider, and clearly designed for them.
I would agree with David Weil, that 15km/h while a fun drift for purposes of meandering, is not a pace that most cyclist would choose to get someplace.
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Note: I am leaving this in the comment thread so that people following the comments will see it.
I checked with the Ministry of Transportation about transit and cycling signals. Here is the response:
In short, bicycle signals are coming. As for transit signals, they prefer to use only the vertical bar as a “clear” indication for all movements.
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Is the MTO brain dead or blind? At the moment there are transit signals, left turn signals and through traffic signals and each has to be in pairs so there are 6 sets of signal facing drivers at each intersection and they all are of the same style except for the turn arrows. Also the words transit signal and left turn signal are not readily visible at night. How is replacing the transit signals with the bars going to cause more confusion? They are so different from traffic signal so they won’t be confused. If a vertical bar allows a transit vehicle to go straight, turn left or turn right then they had better make sure that it only show in one direction at a time. I have seen intersections where it displays in more than one direction at the same time. It used to do this at Queen’s Quay and Spadina but that was before the reconstruction.
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The Ministry of Transportation is off its rocker. The white bar is not an equivalent to what is used elsewhere. How could it be more confusing to have white transit signals versus identical red, amber, and green signals for cars and transit?
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I see that the pointman at Spadina & Queens Quay often performs a useful secondary function: He directs automobiles turning left from Spadina away from using the streetcar right-of-way. I suppose this compensates from the lack of signage advising drivers where not to go.
Perhaps, the concrete between the east/west rails should be painted red with signs saying keep off the red area.
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Perhaps retractable bollards are the answer (see youtube for promo video)
They drop when a streetcar enters or exits and then rises again behind them. A simple transponder would provide entry and exit past the bollards. They are designed to take a truck travelling at around 100 KPH head on. If they rise while a vehicle is rising over them it impales the vehicle.
Sounds like a good time?
Steve: Just what we need, an errant vehicle impaled on the bollard. Don’t forget that with the combined level of service on Queens Quay and Spadina, those bollards will be doing quite a dance. This is not an occasional delivery van. Also, I have one word for this that appears to be missing throughout the video: “winter”.
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I had some time on Monday to head down to QQ in the morning. I checked out a few things and even with the new so-called priority signalling, the operators did their best to screw things up. 509 cars were departing from both ends of the route in pairs and there may have even been a triplet but I was not looking closely enough to confirm. TTC line management is abysmal.
Steve: Non existent is the phrase you are looking for.
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On Sunday, June 21, I went down to the Redpath Waterfront Festival. Ater nearly three years of construction – and the TTC running shuttle buses on its “509 Harbourfront” route for 26 months (end of July 2012 to mid-October 2014) – the new Queens Quay is officially complete and looks great. The many stores along Queens Quay which experienced a drop in business (during the months of construction) will slowy see their customers return, just like on St. Clair West during the months of streetcar track reconstruction a few years earlier.
Motorists may lose (some roadway) but pedestrians benefit from this reconstruction and reconfiguration of Queens Quay. It’s different from other Toronto streets with streetcar tracks. There’s two or three lanes of roadway (with two-way traffic) for motorists on the north side; streetcar tracks running through the middle; and pedestrian walkway and the Martin Goodman Trail on the south side. For motorists, the new layout may not be easy at first (to navigate), eventually, they’ll to get accustomed to it. One example of the confusion is motorists travelling on the streetcar tracks.
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