I love these little “reveals” of “secret architecture”. A lot of cities have them: the Minneapolis Skyway; underground cities in Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago; Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
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.
Your definition of “safely” probably doesn’t match, but I’ve been enjoying Geowizard’s attempt to cross greater London without walking alongside a road or canal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4476uSeTsg8
The takeaway for me is how much parkland there actually is.
London is famously technically a forest. Though for all towns and cities in the UK there is gigantic difference in the leafiness of the "nice" bits and the normal-people bits.
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.
Cities in Europe and Asia that are actually healthy, and have rejected car culture, don't have these tunnel thingies. Instead of moving pedestrian traffic away from streets, they improve their streets to make them friendly to pedestrians. The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike.
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.
I have a slightly different take than others on this: I think the main contributor is the fact Toronto's financial district is extremely dense compared to most if not all European cities, and serviced by a highly trafficked subway line that loops around it. Many of the large office skyscrapers are built right on top of the subway, and so they naturally have a public underground connection, and usually it's a mini-mall with a food court and amenities for the office workers. Because of downtown's density these kind of just merged together into the larger PATH network.
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.
As someone from the Great Lakes region, watching Californians try to speculate about why Great Lakes cities have tunnels or elevated walkways but major Asian or European cities don't is hilarious.
Come visit us in January and learn why for yourself ;)
Rebuttal to your post:
1. Many Asian cities have elevated pedestrian walkway systems.
2. Helsinki has underground pedestrian malls/tunnels.
3. Toronto's first PATH pedestrian tunnel was built before the post WW2 car culture explosion.
4. Toronto's winter cycling volumes are less than 10% that of the summer cycling volumes. Real statistics say that winter weather greatly affects people's decision on transportation mode.
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!
I prefer to have better designed cities and to use of tunnels/walkways when there is no better alternative. In Asia, the walkways usually exist for wide roads that are in themselves not very friendly for the eyes, nor ears.
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.
This is not true in Asia. In particular, major Japanese cities, Seoul, and Hong Kong are quite famous for extensive elevated and underground pedestrian networks. The major difference is that density is so high in these areas that they do not run into the problems encountered when implementing in North America, namely that a second level makes the street level dead.
Indeed! It's as well quite needed here in Asia for still being able to walk even when the temperature is either too high (e.g Hong Kong) or too low (e.g Seoul in winter), without having to use cars all the time.
Downtown LA's elevated pedestrian plazas on Bunker Hill, as depicted in the movie Her, are a great example of this. Office workers drive in, park in an underground garage below a skyscraper, take the elevator up to work, and walk around a multi-block radius to grab lunch, all without ever stepping foot on a city street.
The Shinagawa District (where my company's headquarters were, in Tokyo) has a big raised district, connecting a bunch of skyscrapers, stores, and even a major train station.
I suspect that there are several others (like Shinjuku), but I didn't really spend much time, in those areas (Tokyo is really big).
Shinjuku underground walkways are vast enough to connect to Nishi-Shinjuku, Seibu-Shinjuku and Tochomae stations. Of course the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building can be walked to underground from Shinjuku station.
It regularly gets below zero in Chicago and Toronto. Europe is generally warmer than Canada and the northern U.S. Without these underground tunnels, there would be no pedestrians during months of the year, and no amount of "improving their streets" would change that.
Winters in Chicago and Toronto look about the same as in Helsinki. That's mild enough that the colder days are rarely an issue for pedestrians, assuming that they are willing to dress for the weather.
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.
I'm from Helsinki, where winters are longer and a bit colder than in Chicago, but we get less snow. My main takeaway from that article was that Chicagoans are more willing to tolerate disruptions due to weather. In Finland, people are generally expected to go to work/school even during a blizzard. And some then complain that their morning commute took longer than usual, because snowplows could not be everywhere at once.
It’s taken quite a few public transit infrastructure improvements to make Toronto’s more reliable in snowfall.
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.
> The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike.
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.
>Try going for a walk outside in downtown Toronto on both the hottest and coldest days.
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.
Lived in various spots in downtown TO for nearly a decade.
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.
I don't know if this is the right place to comment but I agree with you and noticed a lot of people are equating "survivable" cold/hot with not needing tunnels.
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.
>The climate alone easily justifies building pedestrian tunnels.
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:
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.
Can you still quantify something as ‘extreme’ weather if more than 50% of the days you are counting are such? Maybe we should instead switch around to quantifying the mild days xD
Here's a comparison of Toronto and a handful of random not-Southern European cities that came to mind. For interest's sake, all these are far north of Toronto, which is in line with Marseille!
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.
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.
Okay, Madrid and Oulu are a lot less temperate in one direction than Montreal. There's nothing particularly scary or extreme about the climate of any major North American city. All weather-related excuses why those cities cannot be made less car-dependent are, to put simply, fucking bullshit excuses and just that.
Various cities in Canada regularly see temperatures way below zero. For example, Edmonton’s mean daily minimum is below zero for seven months a year. It has hit lows of -50°. And let us not speak of Winterpeg, er Winnipeg.
And even those cities have counterparts in Europe where people take transit and bike way more often, apparently unaware of this common excuse that "our weather doesn't allow for it".
It's not that they're extreme or scary. It's that it's shitty to tolerate them and we can so readily afford better to the point where you will be looked at like a weirdo if you want to show up at work drenched in sweat because it was 88degrees freedom when you walked to work in the morning.
You'll likely break a sweat at 31 degrees C (had to look it up), but if you're drenched in sweat you should consider exercising more. But sure, it's not for everyone. It's great to have practical transportation choices though. Most of North America has none, it's car or stay home.
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.
There's nothing particularly scary or extreme about the climate of any major North American city.
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.
Are we using derechos and tornadoes as excuses for car dependence? Well, that's something new if nothing else.
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.
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
Fellow Calgarian here. I like how the term "plus 15" refers to any elevated path in Calgary. For example, the link between the new cancer centre and Foothills Hospital is often referred to as the Plus 15.
More northern cities like Montreal and Winnipeg also have very interesting indoor pedestrian systems. The one in Winnipeg is particularly useful, since there are approximately 72 hours per year that it's comfortable to be outside between the bone-chilling cold and the biblical swarms of mosquitos and flies in the summer.
My wife and I had a great time wandering around the Underground City when we visited Montreal. We were there in the fall, but it sunk in just how cold Montreal winters get when we went to a club that had a coatroom the size of my first apartment.
One thing that I was surprised wasn't mentioned is the impact that I believe weather must have had on the development of the Path. Winters in Toronto get rather cold and snowy. Even with a dense downtown core, walking a few blocks outside can be rather unpleasant.
I've been told the intent of the PATH was to make sure that people from Montreal could take the train to Union, walk to Scotiabank Arena and watch the Habs beat the crap out of the Leafs without getting snowed on.
Toronto Maple Leafs played at Maple Leaf Gardens until Feb 1999. The PATH was created before then.
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. :)
I should clarify I was told this by a guy who lives in Montreal, who apparently was retelling the story he heard from a guy who lives in Toronto with minor editorializing.
The Habs lost their way much earlier than that. They were the cultural identity ~50 years ago. They instigated a revolution. Nowadays they're just a cog in an American empire.
Tbf it said could, not would: the potential for watching the win is what entices; without game fixing it'd be good sportsmanship to not shit on a person's favorite if one wants anything from said person.
Toronto is relatively balmy compared with every other significant Canadian city east of the rockies and it's not in the snow belt.
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.
Expanding on the other comment, it's the mixture of snow, slush, salt, and loads of sand/grit that gets churned up by car tires into a brown and sticky slime. It sticks to boots, gets caked on cars behind the wheels, and gets tracked shockingly far into buildings. It's sort of like a "slushee" consistency but made out of nasty brown goo instead of corn syrup.
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.
Lol, I actually agree on the 'as far as Canada goes'.. but many of us in Toronto aren't Canadian. The winters are pretty bad to me as a foreigner. But to be honest, I'm not as impacted by the cold as I am by the darkness. I get pretty bad seasonal depression during the worst winter months and haven't found a great way to cope yet.
I no longer live in Toronto - instead im somewhere somewhat equatorial. I actually miss the proper 4 seasons and large variation in daylight from june to december.
Embrace the winter! skating, skiing, hiking, etc... Read more, cook more. etc..
Hah! Try living in Scotland. Its gets dark before 5pm and stays dark until about 8:45am in the winter. So you never see daylight on weekdays.
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.
The best way to cope is taking up winter activities that are outside like cross country skiing, but with the way winters are getting milder it's getting harder and harder.
Yah, my partner and I decided to try some winter sports this year. We want to learn snowboarding, but let's see if we actually get to do this in practice.
Many northern cities have the same thing, but it is above the streets not underground. Minneapolis has 15km of skyway (but note that the city mostly uses street level buses so this system isn't the direct connection to transit - it does have direct connections to parking garages though)
I lived in Toronto for several years. Certainly there are much colder places and I personally don't find Toronto winters terribly unpleasant, but I know a lot of people don't share the sentiment.
I live in northern Michigan. 25 F / -4 C is of course "cold", but it's not particularly problematic, you can under dress and it will be a fairly long time before you have problems. Down around 10 F / -12 C, you have to be a lot more aware.
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).
Montréal also has a nice 32km+ of underground network.
It includes :
4000+ shops, restaurants; 20+ museum; Universities, school, libraries, hotels, corporate towers, etc..[1]
Lot's of comments here at the "micro" level: about the comfort of an individual pedestrian. There's also the "macro" view: how best to quickly and safely move a large number of pedestrians in a short window of time. The PATH mostly connects Toronto's financial district full of office towers and 9-5 workers with a transportation hub, Union Station, at its south end. Union Station gets around 300,000[0] passengers a day, most but not all are office commuters. Without the PATH, the sidewalks would be absolutely (and dangerously) jammed between 8-9am and 4:30-6pm.
> Montreal has a similar system, while Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and Houston have systems that resemble the Path in some respects. A few European cities also make considerable use of pedestrian tunnels, including Helsinki, Stockholm and Munich.
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.
We were running late for our train in winter - the Sapporo underground system let us walk to the station so much faster than trying to navigate ice, snow and road crossings
Sapporo's one stretches for a good mile in a straight line. Quite convenient when going from the entertainment district to the train station with a suitcase in heavy snow.
Why aren’t there pedestrian metros in Manhattan...
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.
The PATH is great as Toronto has pretty variable weather and on a snowy or rainy day it sure beats being outside. One thing this article doesn't note is that post-pandemic half of it is empty. So many empty retail storefronts. There's still the assortment of Shoppers and various food courts and a handful of actual store under TD Place. But compared to a decade ago, it's so empty.
The PATH network is great, especially in Toronto's freezing cold and windy winters! The beautiful 'underpass' pictured in this article, with the white marble, is on my commute to work, and it really is breathtaking when you turn the corner.
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).
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?
Those cities seldom, if ever, dip below 0°F in winter.
They would be as effective for cities that go above 90°F as well though. Dallas has some underground tunnels that has shops/food as well as connect multiple buildings, but it's not well known unless you work in those buildings. It's not a walking town anyways, but it's not like it's advertised for avoiding the heat to those on the street.
Good point. In a city with dangerous temperatures, it's easier for neighboring property owners to reach the consensus that they need pedestrian tunnels. That makes sense when the danger is frostbite, but per your comment, also heatstroke.
Startling lack of mentions of Minneapolis and Chicago[1]! Minneapolis has an extensive "Skyway" at the ~third story of a bunch of downtown buildings. It's kinda one extensive mall, but also makes it possible to meander without freezing. I interviewed once many years ago during November-ish and it was quite lovely. It's the closest to cinematic urban cyberpunk vibes I've felt in the "real world", where you've got throngs of people transiting an enclosed space with food vendors and shops and a backdrop of terrible, terrible weather.
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
Key word in the article “cold winters”. This is fairly common for cities with cold winters, it’s just Toronto’s network is one of the largest of its kind.
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.
While not on the same scale as Toronto's underpass, the Université Laval in neighboring Quebec has an underground walkway linking many of the building, including some of the dorms. Once when I was studying there I went to class in slippers from my dorm, without stepping outside. Though even during winter I didn't use them much, I found a bit too depressing to stay cooped up inside all day long, plus a few parts were very crowded.
Carleton university in Ottawa has something like 5km of tunnels connecting every building on campus. What can I say, Canadians have oddly dwarven compulsions to dig underground complexes?
The university of Minnesota has a lot of tunnels. they were put into place because there is a central steam place and maintenance needs to inspect those pipes, but they are also open to anyone to use (or were when I went there year ago). When it was very cold it was nice to be able to get around - but often the tunnels were not very direct so I didn't use them much.
The route they use is pretty good for indoor runs when the weather or slush/ice gets bad. Mix of stairs + flat stretches. The only downside is that parts of the route are gated by doors which you have to open manually, but def a first world problem.
Foot bridges make more sense in Hong Kong where the city pretty quickly goes up a mountainside, so the elevation changes to an elevated system are something you would have to do anyways on the street at some point.
Philadelphia has an underground pedestrian concourse in center city. It is, however, not clean, well lit, nor as actively policed. In some alternate timeline, the stalls would be filled with shops, and it would be a great alternative to walking the streets when it's too hot, too precipitous, too cold. But we struggle to even keep our public transit system funded, let alone something like this, which is a shame.
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.
Interesting piece, but I think the author overlooked one important point. In other cities with better climate, pedestrians actually enjoy being in the outdoors, roaming streets. The only cities mentioned as having a pedestrian underground network all have cold weathers (maybe München is the exception as the winter is pretty mild compared to Canada).
It's my understanding that underground walkways were created for motorists, not for pedestrians. To get pedestrians out of the way of motorists. An important distinction for understanding the effect car lobbies had on much of the world's urban development.
Nothing to do with motorists. When the weather is "bad" (cold, hot, rain...) it is uncomfortable go go outside and so a way to travel that isn't at street level is desired. Since there is an underground subway system why not just go down the the basement of the building you are in to access it instead of walking outside?
It is nice for motorists, but it is useful even if there are no cars.
But "car lobbies" mostly implicitly includes "car drivers", right? So it's completely understandable from the universal "I'm rich (initially required to have a car), so get the fuck out of my way" perspective. So it's kind of a self-own.
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's kind of a different attitude. When these were built there was some consideration that pedestrians needed a place to get where they were going. Whereas now it's "I'm rich please stop existing."
The photo in the article looks to predate the mass adoption of cars. Maybe it was because of new engineering capability + attempting to avoid the elements?
It's probably both. The picture in the article is very early days and was then a proto-PATH that was probably first built to deal with an acute problem (probably crowding on the sidewalks as the streets started to be taken over by vehicular traffic).
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).
Having worked in Toronto and Calgary, I vastly prefer Calgary's +15 system. Daylight in Calgary's +15 second floor retail spaces is the only daylight exposure an office worker gets in the depths of winter.
> The Path is unlike the gloomy and malodorous underpasses with which most of us are familiar. It is expensively decorated and feels like a high-end shopping mall, which in a way it is. It is extremely clean and closely policed by dozens of private security teams
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.
This is an awesome resource for Toronto, and a good depiction of it. But at first glance this looks to be incomplete. For instance the Ritz Carlton actually connects to 200 Wellington West.
Since its extensive there are multiple ways to get somewhere. So I see it as a shortest path algorithm. Some tunnels are smaller, some are larger (but sometimes congested, etc)
Yes. PATH isn't particularly well marked or easy to navigate. It just feels like you are walking through a series of interconnected malls and hotel basements.
cars are indeed a huge problem in Toronto (like most cities), but the tunnels are nice to have even when there are no cars outside. I used to live in a building directly connected to the subway and could, on rainy or very snowy or grossly cold mornings, get to work without ever being exposed to the elements.
While Toronto does have a lot of traffic, and certainly the suburbs are entirely car-centric... Toronto is ridiculously cold, snowy and icy in winter. Reducing cars on Yonge St (for example) wouldn't make winter go away.
They also have terrible winters. Winnipeg, Montreal and Calgary also have underground or overground pedestrian tunnels for the same reason as Toronto. Perhaps Ottawa needs to add them?
Other than during particular cold snaps or storms, Toronto is VERY far from "ridiculously cold, snowy and icy". Perhaps it's ridículosus compared to the tropics, but it's tepid compared to most of canada and much of Europe/Asia.
I also found quite a few of these in Tokyo. Many-block-long ped tunnels that connected nearby subway stations together, but also served as a way to cross town without being out in the blazing heat and humidity.
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.
That ecumenopolis feels of weaving through built environment without ever stepping outside. Big fan of skyways as well, too bad there aren't many examples of cities with enough density with overlapping underground and skyway pedestrian networks. There's a few CBDs with underground commute concourses and elevated skybridges that makes you wonder if you really need to touch grass.
I stayed in TO for a year back in 07. The PATH was my favourite feature of the city. Part of it was under construction and, late at night, entirely free from other pedestrians. Felt like I was alone in a dystopian sci-fi horror film. Wonderful, terrifying memories.
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.
