When I was in Toronto, I also explored a much smaller project: the renovation of Queens Quay.
Queens Quay is a short (3.3 km) street along Toronto’s “Harbourfront.” Over the last forty or so years most of its western 2 km has been transformed from an industrial thoroughfare into a street of expensive high-rise apartment buildings on its north, inland side and recreational facilities on its south, lakefront side.
Until well into the 21st century, most of the space on Queens Quay was devoted to automobile (and truck) traffic, although the street did gain a light rail line in 1989.
Map of Queens Quay and vicinity. GIS data from Geofabrik version of OpenStreetMap, modified a great deal.
In recent years part of Queens Quay West (from Bay Street to Spadina Avenue, approximately 1.3 km) has been converted into a much less traffic-oriented place. Automobiles have generally been limited to only two lanes. Most of the rest of the thoroughfare has been divided into three similarly sized corridors, one each for the light-rail line, cyclists, and pedestrians. Pedestrians get the south side along the Lake, which varies in width tremendously depending on what’s built there. There is also a narrow sidewalk on the north side of the street. The Queens Quay renovation occurred over many years but has been considered more or less finished since 2015.
The symbolism of this transformation is pretty clear. Cars are being relegated to a minor role on Queens Quay.
The renovation of Queens Quay has been thoroughly documented in various places, for example, at the Complete Streets for Canada Website. The only thing I can add is to point out how special this change is. I don’t know of any other street in North America that has so clearly been subdivided into four more or less equal-sized spaces for pedestrians, cyclists, streetcars, and automobiles. This is, I’ll admit, chiefly because there are so few cities with streetcar lines in North America. Automobile lanes have been shrunk to make room for pedestrians and cyclists in a number of places, for example along Broadway in Midtown Manhattan.
The 1.3-km-long renovated section of Queens Quay is of course just a drop in the bucket in an urban area with thousands of kilometers of roads where automobiles come first. The Queens Quay bicycle and pedestrian trails do continue west to Mississauga and beyond but are not always separated and run awfully close to major highways in places. The bike trail also continues east but quite quickly becomes uncomfortable for pedestrians. And just to the north of the renovated part of Queens Quay is the Gardiner Expressway, one of North America’s most egregious urban freeways, a hulking structure that makes walking to Queens Quay a bit of a chore and that brings truly massive amounts of traffic through and into Toronto’s central business district. The Queens Quay renovation is a wonderful model that, so far, is pretty exceptional.