Historicist: Life in Wartime
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Urban Planner: November 9, 2009
For reasons that were surely thoroughly considered, York Mills was not a stop on the recent Type & Tile Tour of the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Nevertheless, due largely to escalator maintenance that has been ongoing for over a year, it is still quite the treasure trove of wacky signage. Here are some recent highlights:
Top left photo: On the collector's level, riders are directed to the buses and subways via laser printouts that fail to even be typographically consistent with each other. There's also a hand-written bit of wayfinding, and, most notably, images of buses clipped out of newspaper ads for the TTC's summer survey. If you look closely, you can see the bubbles in which the TTC is proclaimed to be "the engine that drives the city." (Image at right from the PDF version of the campaign's brochure.)
Top right photo: An interesting suggestion that appeared on a construction hoarding shortly before the latest fare hike came into effect. Since this picture was taken, the graffiti has been removed and destroyed.
A couple more after the jump.
A sign that would make much more sense if it weren't at the bottom of the up-only escalator.
On a column near the south end of the platform are icons representing an elevator and wheelchair accessibility, with no indication of where one might go to take advantage of such things. Indeed, the location of the signs implies that there is an elevator to be found at the station's south exit, which perhaps ironically offers instead the longest escalators in Canada. The new elevator is actually located quite some distance away, down a passage to the left of the escalators that are at the north end of the platform. These symbols do not appear anywhere else on the platform, except on the hoardings at the very north.
All photos (except the "My TTC is:" image) by Jonathan Goldsbie.
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I don't get the newspaper clippings. I mean, did the person want to make sure we knew what buses looked like?
Thank you Jonathan, thank you.
Hahahaha. Sometimes using the TTC makes me feel like I'm Alice in Wonderland. Thanks for this, it gave me a good laugh!
To my favourite bus driver: Compton, wherever you are, the 11 isn't the same without you and your big bag of cough drops! I think you could teach the TTC a thing or two about great customer service.
Nice catch. I'll have to send in some photos sometime of the handwritten stuff that is all over the NYC token booths. Some of them have messages on whiteboards that were put up in 2005.
I must be thick. What does this have to do with Joe Clark?
This Joe Clark; not the ex-Prime Minister Joe Clark.
haha, you should've seen the even older version of those signs... they tried to draw a picture of a train on it instead! Actually, I forget if it's still up or not...
I always thought the addition of the picture of a TTC bus was pretty funny, but the signs just end up being even more confusing. And "it's just not aesthetically pleasing." But that would be expecting a lot from the TTC.