Transit Design Guidelines Aim to Beautify Public Transit in Toronto | UrbanToronto
Public transit is a hot topic in Toronto these days, with gridlocked highways, packed buses, and over-capacity subways constantly grabbing headlines. On the positive side of things, the city is currently undergoing the largest transit expansion initiative in North America, with six new higher order transit lines either under construction or in the planning stages; a comprehensive expansion of regional rail service underway; and several more transit lines being proposed for future expansions. It’s an exciting time for transit buffs, and the political drama surrounding it all makes for a good substitute to reality television.
When it comes to transit planning, the public is often just shown some lines and dots on a map, with perhaps some schematic renderings thrown in illustrating a station or two. But the bulk of the work is happening behind the scenes trying to make this huge feat of engineering a reality, as engineers and planners work out the function, form, construction, operations, and efficiencies of the system while keeping an eye on the often ballooning budget. But there is one question in this whole process that is often overlooked or ultimately value engineered out of the project — how do we make public transit beautiful?
New LRT vehicle being tested on the Eglinton LRT line, image courtesy of Metrolinx.
It is no secret that the vast majority of Toronto’s transit system is nothing to write home about aesthetically, our subway stations (with some exceptions) being functional but showing their age, our GO stations tucked away and nondescript. That perception changed, however, in 2017, when the Vaughan extension of Line 1 opened to the public, and suddenly Toronto had some rather spectacular subway stations that garnered international attention. (The original Spadina extension stations had attracted similar interest in 1978 when they opened, too.) The extension to Vaughan reminded people that transit could only be functional, and gave some excellent examples of what transit infrastructure could be if only the will was there to make it happen.
Building on this recent success, City Planners are hoping to tackle this question of beauty in transit with a new document: the Transit Design Guidelines (TDG). Put together by Access Planning with Perkins+Will, a draft of the document was presented to the Toronto Design Review Panel in November, 2021. The objective of the TDG is “to safeguard the public interest by establishing guidelines, requirements, and strategies to achieve consistent and high quality outcomes for the design of transit infrastructure in the City of Toronto”.
York University subway station, image by Craig White.
The document focuses on the urban design, planning, architecture, and landscape architecture components of transit projects, and is not intended to apply to any issues related to engineering, construction, or operations. There is an overlap between these disciplines, of course, but the approach of the TDG is to provide strategies to mitigate any conflicts through integrated design to ensure that both functionality and quality design are achieved.
It is important to note that the TDG is intended to fill in the gaps not covered by existing planning documents. While the principles of the TDG apply to all transit projects, it does not replicate what is already said in other documents, instead going into more detail on those that were missed. For example, the design of bus shelters, streetcar stops, and streetcar right-of-ways is covered in the Complete Streets Guidelines, along with other documents such as design manuals from both TTC and Metrolinx, and so the TDG would not repeat what is already stated in these.
There are five overarching principles in the TDG that apply to each transit element:
Urban integration, which focuses on ensuring a seamless connection with the surroundings through public realm design, integration within buildings or developments, and architectural expression.
User experience, which incorporates high-quality architectural design while also emphasizing universal accessibility and barrier-free design, wayfinding strategies, and general user comfort.
Sustainability and resiliency, which emphasizes the need to build energy-efficient and environmentally-conscious infrastructure.
Intermodal operations, which focuses on strategies for connecting different modes of transportation, and also accounting for the appropriate integration of necessary utility, staff, and service spaces in a way that does not detract from the overall design.
Accountability, which provides strategies on dealing with overlapping jurisdictions and their often disparate needs as a way to ensure that differences in priorities between the City of Toronto, Province of Ontario, TTC, Metrolinx, development partners, and any other interested parties do not result in a sub-par design.
Fairbank Station on the Eglinton LRT, image by Forum contributor Johnny Au.
For the first iteration of the TDG, the City has selected five priority transit elements to include that are relevant to upcoming transit projects and which were lacking in guidance from other planning documents. The document is formatted so that future chapters can be added to address various components of transit infrastructure as required, with the same objectives and overarching principles applied to each. To start with, the five pieces of infrastructure that the TDG includes are: elevated guideways, such as the existing Scarborough RT or portions of the future Ontario Line; elevated stations; portals and retaining walls, where transit lines transition from above grade to underground; ancillary structures, referring to all the individual power stations, emergency exit shafts, or other stand-alone buildings that crop up along the path of the transit lines; and bus terminals.
For each of these five transit components, guidelines are provided that correspond to the five overarching principles that together aim to create inviting and attractive transit infrastructure. As an example, when designing an elevated guideway, the TDG suggests minimizing fencing and barriers at grade to maximize visibility and access below the structure as a way to achieve urban integration, and recommends integrating lighting with architectural design to make the guideway cohesive and identifiable as a way to enhance user experience, among other guidelines.
Bus terminal at Pioneer Village subway station, image by Jack Landau.
The Design Review Panel was very supportive of the draft TDG, giving a collective expression of relief that a coherent document for transit design has finally arrived. They did, however, express the desire to include more in the document. They pointed out a lack of reference to bike infrastructure, pick-up and drop-off areas, or other personal mobility devices, and also wanted to see a wider range of scales included, from bus shelters to maintenance and storage facilities. Though it is likely that guidelines for these are included in other planning documents or may be added in the future, the Panel hinted that they would love to see everything in one place. Beyond that, the only major concern the Panel had was fostering collaboration between different transit agencies, drawing on past experience to express frustration about how difficult it is to balance the demands of different parties who have different priorities on joint transit projects. They urged the City to really focus on developing robust strategies to mitigate these issues and ensure that high-quality design is not lost in the process.
The final Transit Design Guidelines should be completed in early 2022, ready in time for the design and construction of the many transit expansion projects ahead. At this point in time, it remains to be seen what these new transit lines will actually look like, but it is clear from the Vaughan subway expansion and from this guideline initiative that the City is doing its best to ensure that any transit infrastructure built in Toronto is not only functional, but attractive as well.
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