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22 Comments

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PhotoTO: Streetwise

By Miles Storey

Misnamed transit shelter by Miles Storey
Misnamed transit shelter by Miles Storey
Sitting proudly at the intersection of King and York Streets is one of Astral Media’s new transit shelters. The only problem is the street name displayed on the shelter is “University Ave”—which is the previous stop, a block west.
Photos by Miles Storey/Torontoist. Thanks to John Gemmell for the tip.

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Comments

  • EricSmith

    They probably all say “University Ave” on them.
    It looks lovely in those pictures. I can’t decide whether I want the roof to be transparent and pretty or opaque and shady — but once it gets covered in city-grime, I guess it won’t really be either.

  • accozzaglia

    Oh, stop your complaining. These street indicators are intended for use by the Astral street furniture designing team in the unusual event they actually use what they devise. The rest of us know better that York is York and not Uni.

  • james a

    I gotta be honest: despite reading it over a number of times, I can’t make heads or tails of what comment 2 means.

  • paigesix

    So are these going to fill the voids that have been left after existing TTC shelters across the city were removed?
    All too recently, many shelters have become cement platforms with two reflective poles.
    (see: Moore Ave, along the 88 route, or the big hole at Crawford and Dundas that used to be a streetcar stop…)

  • mister j

    um, what? Is this stop officially named “University” (like St. Patrick subway stop is actually on Dundas)? Or, did they really put the wrong name on it!?
    In any case, it looks cool.

  • Gloria

    Maybe this is Astral’s subtle way of telling us that we’re idiots for installing streetcars stops a block from each other.

  • xtremesniper

    Or maybe this is Astral’s way of telling us that we’re idiots for building two subway lines obscenely and pointlessly close to each other?
    Okay so maybe that was a cheap shot, but it’s true.

  • davedave

    Horrible, horrible design – for the thousand reasons we’ve already all brought up.

  • Astin

    Xtremesniper – you’re absolutely right, there should just be one line down Bay St. with double the traffic during rush hour!
    Or perhaps they should be along Spadina and Church where they would be nowhere near the high-density business districts.
    Really? Pointlessly close? Both lines are PACKED south of Bloor in the morning and evening. They spread out north of Bloor to the point where they aren’t anywhere near obscenely close.
    But back on topic — HA! I’ll have to wander by there on my walk home.

  • Gloria

    @7: Not so much cheap as just weirdly off-topic.
    But considering the crazy amounts of people that get off at say, both Dundas Station and St. Patrick (only blocks away from each other!), I’m glad you don’t run the city.
    Since you do say that, you probably have a different experience from what I’ve had, but I’ve never even heard that one before. Sure, people complain that the Sheppard line is a white elephant, that we don’t have *enough* lines, that service sucks, that we’re overcrowded, that people on the TTC smell. But not that one.
    Anyway … uh … glad we’re diversifying.

  • Threnody

    What is the girl in the first photo looking at?

  • xtremesniper

    No need to gang up on me, but I suppose it was my own fault for not being more specific.
    I wasn’t saying two lines weren’t needed. I wasn’t saying that the lines were packed. I was simply saying I can basically walk from one line to another in a matter of minutes. It would have made more sense to put the lines another block away from each other. Don’t look at how that would work in today’s Toronto. Look at how that would have developed Toronto if it had been designed that way from the start.
    You wouldn’t have the uber-dense areas surrounding the subway lines. Those businesses formed there because of the location of the lines over time. Putting the line another block away, for example, would have spread the core out a tiny bit more.
    And I also never said I wanted to run the city. Man, you guys are real uptight, eh? Apologies for offending your fanboyism of a broken transit system.

  • MariaPD

    Miles, this is awesome, ridiculous, but funny.
    Thanks.

  • Gloria

    @12: Uh, where did *I* say you said that? It was a way of expressing how I disagree with your ideas on transit policy. Don’t be so literal, dude!
    And for someone who’s offended by being having assumptions made about him/her (i.e. mayoral ambitions), you sure throw out some big ones yourself. Since when does fanboyism consist of defending *one* aspect of a system? Come on. You never even gave me a chance to rip into everything else that grates on me about the TTC. The truly rabid fanboys (of anything) everywhere are offended.
    And as nice as it is to think of internet denizens “ganging” up on a single hero, I think it’s more likely a collection of random people who just happen to disagree with you.

  • accozzaglia

    @11: she’s looking at the rooftop of 150 King St. W (Sun Life Financial). No idea why, though.

  • rek

    Why is “Ave” a different size?

  • ram101

    is it etched on the glass or just a sticker?

  • bbpsi

    “Why is “Ave” a different size?”
    They’re all like this (the new shelters). Just plain bad typography. It looks like they wanted to hedge their bets between small caps and mixed case and said “screw it, we’ll go with mixed case and choose a point size that sort of matches the x-height of the rest.”

  • james a

    Putting the street type/direction in a smaller fint is totally common.. that doesn’t strike me as unusual at all.

  • james a

    font even

  • rek

    james – The majority that link displays do it the right way: caps, either the same height or superscript treatment. This “Ave” is as opposite as you can get without flipping the letters upside down.

  • EricSmith

    The street name is less than perfect:

    • it’s not on an opaque background, which will hurt contrast in some contexts and probably make it more vulnerable to backlighting
    • the letters are tall, narrow, and pretty tightly spaced, increasing the chance that they’ll run together into a blur when obscured by poor eyesight, distance, or the dirty window of a transit vehicle
    • the print is on the small side, and would be even if the tracking were more generous
    • it doesn’t look like it will be illuminated at night, so whether you can see it or not will depend entirely on ambient light

    You’ll note that “oh my God, it says ‘Ave’ and not ‘AVE,’ that’s so wrong!” is not on my list. But since Astral has very probably not done any serious testing and just picked something that they liked, who knows, maybe it’s a problem. I can’t see how superscript would be superior either functionally or aesthetically, though.