By Jonathan Goldsbie

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.