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Once, years ago, I interviewed the designer Bruce Mau about how he might approach the customer-service challenges of the TTC. Making a point about the comfort and convenience levels of commuting options, he talked about driving along in his van on a cold, snowy day and passing a bunch of people huddled at a bus stop. “My minivan has 18 cupholders, and that TTC bus shelter doesn’t even have a door on it,” he said.
Well, now there’s a Toronto transit shelter that doesn’t even have an entrance on it. All sides of the shelter on the southwest corner of King and Bathurst Sts. are walled in by glass, with the poster inside reading “Feeling left out?”
Its existence is an attempt by the city government to make a point about accessibility. According to a news release, it’s meant “to bring attention to the inequality that exists for people with disabilities and to encourage Torontonians to take action to do more to create an inclusive city for everyone.”
I agree with the message, though I’m skeptical this is really the best way to accomplish the goal. And I think the installation may also unintentionally make some other points the city and its transit agency may usually prefer not to emphasize.
Like that the city’s transit shelters, even under normal circumstances, are far more effective as billboards than they are at providing shelter. The city gave a long-term contract to an advertising company to build and maintain all of its transit shelters (as well as other “street furniture” such as garbage bins, benches, and public toilets). That company gets all of its payment for the contract in the form of being allowed to sell ads on the things it installs.
Possibly as a result of that incentive structure, the street infrastructure seems designed, above any other purpose, to showcase advertising.
Read more:
A look at TTC accessibility through the eyes of a rider who uses two canes
They sure don’t provide much shelter from the elements. Many have only a single wall panel and are open on the other three sides. Most have open spaces at the bottom and near the top to ensure the wind can get in and any heat inside can get out. The walls are clear, ensuring a good view of any ads inside but also ensuring only minimal shade is offered from the blazing sun.
Good for spreading a message, not so good at sheltering anyone.
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(In this case, the specific shelter really doesn’t serve any other particular purpose, since the streetcar stop it was erected to serve moved to the east side of the street when the King Street Transit Pilot began. By choosing one that is out of service anyway, the city at least showed it doesn’t think the shelters it has serving actual stops are so completely worthless they can be closed off to make a point.)
Ironically, one good thing you can say about Toronto’s transit shelters under normal circumstances is that they are accessible to people who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids. Unlike way too much of the TTC’s infrastructure.
Thirty of the TTC’s 75 subway stations still have no elevators in them — something the transit agency is addressing gradually, but slowly. Many of the elevators that do exist are too frequently out of service, and if you have taken a moment to read the suggestions that are posted on them for roundabout alternate accessible routes that would often take riders hours out of their way, you’ll have realized just how left out some of the population is. That is, if you aren’t among the population that is left out, who need no reminder that navigating their daily life on the TTC is incredibly difficult.
As my colleague Francine Kopun reported in March, a recent report tabled in the provincial legislature described the barriers that still remain to people with disabilities on the system as “soul crushing,” and noted the TTC may be in danger of falling behind on its legal obligation to make the entire system completely accessible by 2025 (two decades after the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act was passed in 2005).
Mayor John Tory and TTC chair Jaye Robinson, among other officials, said then that they remain committed to meeting that goal, still six years away. In the meantime, many riders report having to go a long way out of their way, or struggling with stairs and escalators, or both.
So, if someone feels “left out” by Toronto’s transit infrastructure, it’s unlikely to be because they cannot gain access to our virtually shelter-free transit shelters, unless someone in power has made one inaccessible to make a point. Instead, people face significant barriers trying to access the transit system owned by the same city government making the point.
I don’t oppose the message at all — all of us ought to be aware of how far we have to go to making the city a place where everyone can travel freely and participate meaningfully, and we ought to be working to fix that system.
It’s just weird to see the government expending dollars and energy to spread that message in a way that underlines how purely ornamental the shelters it is supposed to be providing are, and doing so when those most in a position to act on their awareness are those who own and operate the currently inaccessible system that is running the ad campaign.
There is a clear message in the city making an accessible but ineffective shelter inaccessible and unusable in order to make a more effective advertisement. I’m just not sure it’s entirely the message that was intended.