Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels
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I think that’s a secret to continued, healthy city development, especially in an era increasingly marked by climate change and a rejection of car culture: how far can a pedestrian safely go within a controlled environment (climate controlled or controlled access, like a park system) in a city? Whenever I look at rankings of cities, I notice a consistent trend where cities with these sorts of features consistently rank higher than those without, because to build and maintain them requires cooperation between stakeholders rather than competition, and cooperation is at the heart of a healthy community.
This is in fact a classic, 80s-90s North American car-infested big city band-aid. Leave the streets for the cars, leave the tiny sidewalks for the homeless and the trash, connect office buildings and plazas with pathways so the nine-to-fives can drive or subway in, go for their lunch or whatever, then drive/subway out without meeting the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway?) Et voila! Who needs to make downtowns actually liveable after all.
Montreal is a lot less temperate (in both directions!) than Barcelona and Helsinki. Having a way to get out of ±35º weather really does make the city more livable.
Except for sub-zero temperatures. And regular 100+ degree temperatures. And tornadoes. And derechos. And hurricanes. And a bunch of other weather phenomena that doesn't happen regularly in Europe.
All weather-related excuses why those cities cannot be made less car-dependent are, to put simply, fucking bullshit excuses and just that.
Spoken like someone who doesn't understand how weather, people, or cities work.
There are dozens and dozens of cities, big medium and even small, all over Europe, which have some combination of sub-zero temperatures, regular 100+ degree temperatures, lots of snow, lots of rain, lots of hills, and every other imaginable geography-related carbrains excuse in existence in North America. They bike, walk and take transit all the same. All bullshit excuses, all demonstrably so. The reason North America is car dependent is by conscious choice and by design, and absolutely nothing else whatsoever.
Once again, this is false.
Trains don't go everywhere because America is large. Geographically, the "center" of America is larger than the entirety of continental Europe. You can fit the rich part of Europe in the American desert and still have room to spare. A U.S. train network as dense as what Europe has would cost hundreds of billions.
Trains of course used to go everywhere in North America, and were economically viable just fine, until cars were artificially made more economically viable.
This was never true. Trains have always been primarily about cargo in the U.S.
Cars were pushed because for several decades, cars were the cheapest and best option for a country as geographically large as the U.S.
Name even one. You won't be able to, because unless the Atlantic currents change, the European climate simply doesn't have the same extremes as the U.S. does. To put it bluntly: if any European city had extremes from sub-zero to plus-100 on a regular basis, it would be global news. OTOH, Most of the U.S. Northeast and Midwest experiences this every year.
You're also overstating the degree to which people walk in Europe, by a lot. Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car. And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit.
What possible difference does it make that Toronto might have both weather extremes if there are so many examples of better-designed and better-run cities successfully dealing with any of them? Just intellectually lazy excuses.
>Yes, people walk and take public transit. But that's because they can't afford a car.
No, they very often do it by choice. You'd see people making that choice in the US too, but they can't. Their choice is car or stay the fuck home. Millions of Americans also can't afford a car, but they buy one anyway because they can't get to work in any other way. They are forced to pay through the nose (relative to their income) for one, whereas in Europe they'd be far more likely to have a viable public transit option. By viable I mean frequent, convenient and comfortable. There are probably a dozen such systems in North America, if not fewer, and even those systems don't reach most of the population of their city. NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America.
>And their economic counterparts in the U.S. similarly bike, walk, or take public transit.
You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs. Much worse in the US, but true of Canada as well. Downtowns are every bit as bad. As soon as you hit a stroad [0], you start re-evaluating your life choices.
Madrid's "heat waves" don't compare to anything in the American South or Southwest. It gets warmer in San Jose than it does in Madrid. The Midwest gets colder than Oulu; you have to go to the northern remote reaches of Europe to get comparable temperatures or snow.
So basically, what it boils down to is that you're comparing cities with temperate weather to cities with extreme weather and not understanding that weather makes a huge difference.
NY, Montreal and Toronto are the partial exceptions, and Toronto only because of the best bus system in North America.
This is false, and betrays a fundamentally poor knowledge of America's public transportation systems. LA, SF Bay Area, Chicago, and DC also have good bus systems; LA's bus system has the most geographic coverage of any metropolitan bus network in the world.
You'd need a moderate to severe death wish to routinely walk or bike outside your little bubble of a subdivision in the majority of North American suburbs
This is false. You appear to have formed your understanding of American geography based on movies and television. Millions of people routinely walk and bike in North America. Most of us don't live in suburbs.
The ones in Montreal (and Kobe, Toronto, etc) don't seem to replace surface streets or transit; they complement it. The Réso in Montreal overlaps with some of the most walkable parts of the city and a half-dozen metro stops, plus train stations and bus depots.
I also don't think many people "thru-hike" it either. A lot of it is short trips (e.g., grabbing lunch) that would be doable, but a bit more annoying, if you had to re-dress for the weather on each end.
Can we really? All the reporting on climate change definitely has me thinking otherwise. There are options more respectful to our planet than digging tunnels like for example planting trees to help mediate temperatures.
Toronto != Canada
I suspect that there are several others (like Shinjuku), but I didn't really spend much time, in those areas (Tokyo is really big).
Try going for a walk outside in downtown Toronto on both the hottest and coldest days.
If you're not in good health and appropriately dressed, you could suffer heatstroke on the hot day and simply die on the cold day.
> the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway?
You should talk about what you know instead of trying to come up with ways to hate something more than you already do.
I've done so many times on both the hottest and the coldest days, in Toronto. I've also been poor in Toronto and lived downtown, so you're right! Let's stick to what I know.
It's always funny to read these wild exaggerations about our climate, and I suspect it's the same in other parts of the world. Yes, you could very occasionally suffer heatstroke or die of cold if you venture outside. Such are the generally defined, weather-related dangers of leaving your house. Somehow the millions of people who live in Toronto and move about downtown without patronizing the half-deserted and confusing PATH maze manage just fine. I encourage you to actually visit downtown Toronto or talk to someone who lives there to see just how they somehow manage to barely eke out a subsistence living for the 9 months of the year that the Damocles' sword of Extreme Weather sort of hangs menacingly over them.
The climate alone easily justifies building pedestrian tunnels.
You come across as one of those car-hating fanatics who'll zero in on literally anything about North American cities, blaming everything you don't like on Evil Car Culture.
I've lived in Europe and in North America, in both places with and without a car.
Car + N.A. is the most convenient and comfortable combination, by a very long way, even if you're stuck in a condo in the gridlocked downtown Toronto as I was.
In a city, most people are working in office towers and not outfitting themselves for anything but the most moderate weather, so it's nice to have tunnels that you can comfortably navigate to go to lunch and meetings and whatnot without bundling up. Nobody disagrees it's possible to walk around outside in Toronto winter and it's not that cold, but it's a hell of a lot nicer getting to stay inside when possible.
Then why are they so deserted most of the time?
>You come across as one of those car-hating fanatics who'll zero in on literally anything about North American cities, blaming everything you don't like on Evil Car Culture.
Cool story, not sure who it applies to. I live in mid-size Canadian city in suburbia now, and drive a car quite often (though I do commute to work by bike).
>Car + N.A. is the most convenient and comfortable combination, by a very long way, even if you're stuck in a condo in the gridlocked downtown Toronto as I was.
That's great that you have this highly subjective opinion, and you should have the option of living that lifestyle. Those who don't want to should not be treated as second class citizens and should have the freedom to choose a comfortable, car-free or car-lite lifestyle too. That's not possible or logistically very difficult in almost all North American cities.
The walkways like PATH are absolutely a byproduct of the way our downtowns (used to, and to some extent still do) cater to the drive-in nine-to-fivers, and don't put nearly enough thought or money into making streets more pleasant and walkable in all seasons. You can think of it as good or bad, but I see little reason to exaggerate so comically about the deadly dangers of Scary Toronto Winters, and how they necessitate separating oneself from the outdoors at all costs. The reason our downtowns suck so much to walk through in wintertime is not the weather per se, but choices and priorities we make about infrastructure and maintenance. If you really have lived in Europe, particularly parts of Europe that have actual winters with snow, you'll know exactly what I mean.
What general age range are you? I ask because before COVID, The PATH in Toronto was absolutely packed and incredibly busy. Nowadays it's true that the PATH has far fewer pedestrians but that's because of people working from home, a situation which is likely to come to an end by the end of next year with most of the financial district mandating a return to office.
>You can think of it as good or bad, but I see little reason to exaggerate so comically about the deadly dangers of Scary Toronto Winters, and how they necessitate separating oneself from the outdoors at all costs.
There are quantifiable metrics about extreme weather conditions in Toronto that are tracked by the City of Toronto's Public Health Unit, so we don't need to speculate about this issue:
https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/data-research-maps/re...
For various reasons, the number of extreme cold weather alerts, defined as periods where the temperature drops to below 30 degrees Celcius, has increased quite significantly in the past 20 years with 2022 having a record of 49 days. Considering winter is only 90 days a year, having more than half of those days resulting in extreme weather alerts absolutely qualifies as unsuitable for outdoor pedestrian travel.
https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/19863~75981~45062~47913~5...
Toronto is up there in summer, and lowest in winter, and at high humidity. Add in high winds coming in over an icy Lake Ontario and I'd rather buy my groceries fully indoors.
I agree about the lack of snow, but there's still just enough to make that brown slush, which is worse for walking in.
My original point - perhaps overly aggressively stated - comes down to this: the people who vote and pay taxes also like their cars, and this is OK. Building a pedestrian tunnel in Toronto should be very uncontroversial. Infrastructure decisions have to be made, and there are many upsides to widespread car ownership.
- no crazies yelling at you, or at least not within stabbing range of you
- you pick your soundscape
- you pick your temperature
- lower average transit time (I don't have a stat for this one, but I started off taking the TTC (Toronto Transit) and then bought a car. Despite heavy traffic, my travel time literally halved.
- suddenly big box stores like Costco make more sense, which makes the entire economy more efficient
Of course there are downsides. But everything is a tradeoff.
One interesting but unfortunate second order impact of car dependence is people forgetting en masse (or never learning!) how to dress appropriately for the city they live in.
The warmer winter days, with temperatures oscillating around freezing, are a bigger issue. Sidewalks can become dangerous without constant maintenance, as melting and freezing snow creates slippery surfaces and snow and ice fall off roofs.
https://therealfitz.medium.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worryin...
(I don't do even 1/4 of this, but then, I would almost never walk any real distance during a Chicago winter.)
Trams used relatively unreliable trolley poles instead of pantographs until ~10 years ago.
Most of the tram network “street runs”, so slow automobile traffic slows them down.
Bicycle lanes become snow dumps when it snows a lot. There has at least been a more recent push to clear them of snow somewhat regularly at least instead of abandoning them entirely for maintenance.
The metro/subway still runs largely above-ground.
Lots of gas/electric train switch heaters installed on the regional train network but it can still fall apart in a snowstorm.
I've been one of them many times.
I have used a couple pedestrian tunnel/bridge networks extensively in frosty Canadian winter climates, I really appreciate them plus I think they are a fun way to get from place to place - being able to travel at a different layer than street-level feels refreshing/novel!
The newest parts of Shenzhen are bare deserts with wide roads with cars and emptied of people. Their tunnels are full of restaurants, shopping malls and young people enjoying themselves. But all that is illuminated by artificial light. Not the worst kind of city, but so much worse than to have all people and activity at surface level like Paris or London.
I agree, thou, that to have tunnels is an advantage during winter for cold countries. But as soon as the sun shines, I want to be outside getting as much sun and light as possible. Tunnels should not be a substitute to walkable cities but they can be a great addition.
The weather is of course also a factor. It's just incredibly convenient in the winter, or even in the summer when it's muggy out, for office workers. You just hop onto the elevator during your lunch or coffee break, wearing your office clothes, no need to throw on a jacket or bring an umbrella or anything. It's just an extension of your office building basically.
Toronto ALSO has healthy commercial streets all over the place that you access from street level and that DON'T connect to these tunnels. It's a very large city. The PATH tunnels are just one district.
Come visit us in January and learn why for yourself ;)
The takeaway for me is how much parkland there actually is.
Which is a shame because trees are a huge uplift to pretty much every measure of urban goodness except for long-term pavement maintenance costs.
10 miles/16 km.
I've actually never been, but saw it featured in a CanCon movie, waydowntown, where a group of office workers wage a month's salary as to who can stay inside the longest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown
Called the +15 because it's 15 feet above ground
A full map is available here: https://portail-m4s.s3.montreal.ca/pdf/vm_16722_00_planreso_...
Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
[1] https://montreal.ca/articles/reso-le-reseau-souterrain-de-mo...
If you look at a map of Europe, Toronto's latitude is similar to Milan's. So most of Europe has more darkness in winter than Toronto.
I would argue the darkness in winter in Toronto is pretty average compared to most places in "the West". Its the winters that are nasty, although by Canadian standards not too bad. That tells you a lot of about Canada regarding winter weather.
Embrace the winter! skating, skiing, hiking, etc... Read more, cook more. etc..
I dont know how people ever settled there.
Some years they vacillate between -10C and 4C causing ice to melt to water and then refreeze, nature's jackhammer to any surface cracks in the asphalt road resulting in a city budget line item for "springtime pothole fixing".
Once in awhile, the temps will drop to below -20C for several days/weeks. Not as bad as midwest USA/Canadian prairies winters requiring a heater for your car engine block, but going outside is laborious and painful for long periods.
What it does get is vast seas of road snot a pedestrian has to wade through at every intersection. That alone is reason to stick to PATH between October and May.
:-O
Perhaps they were talking about Maple Leaf Gardens? It is a more substantial walk.
The portion of the PATH connecting Union Station to the ACC is a few hundred metres at most.
I can't see how anyone in Toronto would help people from Montreal enjoy a Habs win over the Leafs. :)
Torontonians call it the "ACC", (short for Air Canada Centre, before its current rebranding to Scotiabank Arena - Google Maps knows both). Also, it's "Skydome", not Rogers Centre. :)
Not sure how the Habs have lost their way in the past few years. First-pick of Quebec's hockey players helped a lot I guess.
I lived there, I took the path in the summer because it's super hot and humid in the summer. The winters were mild and not snowy at all.
And then if the regional/municipal governments have the equipment for it, a foot or two of snow a month really doesn't impact travel all that much (maybe for a few hours if there is a big storm).
Snowfall near the lake can be lower because of the mediated temperature. (Unlike south of the lake like in Buffalo were you can get high lake-effect snow). In a dense core, you can have very different patterns of accumulation due to road and building layout.
Winters can be sporadic. Last year's was bad. Year before was light.
This is last year: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/weather/severe/his...
What years were you there? I don't see how less than 'foot of snow total' is possible.
edit: These are the yearly totals (if the site's stats are to be believed). https://toronto.weatherstats.ca/charts/snow-yearly.html
Eyeball average puts it at like 100cm+
[0]https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/venues-facilities-b...
Japan's northernmost major city, Sapporo, has a very extensive one -- of those I've seen, it's the one that's most comparable to Toronto's.
The other Japanese tunnel/undercity complexes are mostly subterranean malls around subway stations. (This also applies to all of the ones in Hong Kong.) But Sapporo's is seriously huge.
I think the common denominator is that people would rather walk in a heated underground space when it gets cold.
In the Financial District, the various bank towers can be told apart by the colour of the marble and other stones they build with. For an underground walkway, some parts of it are really beautiful, other parts are just what you'd expect for an underground passage in a big city (especially those parts connected to the subway transit system).
Chicago also has an underground system ("the Pedway") that's also mall-ish, but it's in fairly crap condition. It's got incredible liminal vibes, but is not the most pleasant to exist in.
[1]: To be fair, a commenter did mention Minneapolis
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/
Waydowntown (2000)
A group of young employees bet a month's salary, winner takes all, on who can last the longest without going outside.
It’s a big selling point for you to have a condo that can take you to the metro without needing to be in the cold.
He lived in a condo with a direct connection to the subway station, which he used to commute to his downtown job.
He was able to do all his errands at the businesses located in the PATH.
While there is nothing nearly as extensive as the Path, there are a few isolated underground plazas that each connect to a handful of adjacent high-rise buildings. The ones that immediately spring to mind are the Penn Station complex under Madison Square Garden (and Penn Plaza office building among others), and Grand Central Terminal. I think i've seen others, but I can't remember details.
I don't think they're as commonly thought of as a "I'll use this to walk from point A to point B while avoiding traffic/weather" option, but for people in the connected office buildings, they provide (somewhat overpriced) options for lunch/shopping as well as public-transit access without the need to go outdoors.
In the winter the tunnels are amazing for commute.
[1] https://www.bougebouge.com/en/shop/events/5km-bougebouge-tor...
Plus, like any other person using the PATH, the runners got lost along the way.
see https://runningmagazine.ca/the-scene/torontos-underground-5k...
Overall, though, the list of pedestrian metros is short. It would be interesting to investigate why this is. Why aren’t there pedestrian metros in Manhattan, Boston, Shanghai, Vancouver, Paris and the City of London?
It's been a long time (about 50 years), since I've been there, but it was one of the better memories, as a kid.
I hear that Montréal has a similar setup.
The skyway in Minneapolis was maybe my first experience with this type of infrastructure, and it was a merciful respite from the winter cold at the time.
In the modern world, I have to believe these pedestrian thoroughfares will increasingly serve in avoiding the summer heat.
I hope I live to see Philadelphia's infrastructure get rehydrated with some of that GDP it generates for the rest of the state, and region.
Toronto's PATH doesn't have a central control or planning system. It is literally a series of 1-1 agreements between buildings that build tunnels under streets to connect themselves. The main benefit to each building is that they can charge retail rents in their basements for through traffic. The system map was terrible and even had a planned route prematurely showing a way to the Eaton centre from the south for a building that was left uncompleted for almost 30 years (work stopped in the early 1990s recession and was only finished right before COVID hit).
Avoiding the weather for commuters coming in on the subway and GO train (suburban commuter rail) was a nice benefit, though only very recently was Union station fully separated from the elements. The one problem with PATH is that the shops are completely targeted to 9-5 work commuters, particularly to finance workers; think coffee/business suits/lunch/etc. Though portrayed as a giant mall, almost all the shops are closed on weekends and don't stay open much into the evenings (Montreal's is more dynamic comparatively). COVID of course upended the business climate of the shops, too. Some newer condo towers have been connected and there is some very early signs of something more dynamic, but the towers seem to still be holding on to the idea they can charge pre-COVID rents. My personal opinion is they should be seeing this as a loss leader to convince people to want to come in 5 days a week (cheap, good lunches, etc).
Anyways, we'll see how it continues to evolve.
I am originally from California, and spent some time in Los Angeles as a student. The insane parking-lot wastelands and 8-lane gridlock eventually destroyed the livabilty of that city for everybody — even for people with cars (which, out of necessity, became mostly everybody).
It is nice for motorists, but it is useful even if there are no cars.
The +15s are usually clean, warm, and sunny
I love the commercial spaces in Tokyo’s underground subway/train network, which similarly are privately owned. It’s such a huge upgrade from the concourses in subway systems in the U.S.
https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2022-07-02/kansas-city-underg...
Going overground is usually faster and easier to navigate, buts impressive how far you can go underground.
One of these days I’ll need to try an extreme point hike.
The +15 network is reasonably good but it seems to have stalled out 20-30 years ago.
I was recently in Toronto and can see where I was on the map, but I had no idea there was anything underground nor any obvious big accesses to it etc.
Maybe if people can’t walk around your city efficiently because there are too many cars, it’s the cars themselves which are the problem.
Perhaps Ottawa should get one?
I forgot about Halifax's, and I lived there for a while long ago!
Though someone else has a solution, see https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/07/you-can-finally-navigate...
I had a solution that involved using scanning nearby WiFi APs as a kind of hash for your location (since GPS doesn't work for most of the PATH).
But Android has been locking down the WiFi scanning APIs, so that idea is a no-go. Plus the additional rules for developing Android apps in recent years isn't dev friendly.