This is clearly going to sail through City Council. Even Denzil MW voted to make it permanent without any amendments.
Bearing that in mind, we can start thinking about what form King Street is going to take. We have a lot of time to decide because a full King Street rebuild won’t happen until 2023 when the TTC is planning to replace the tracks.
In the interim, staff have recommended that some permanent fixtures and infrastructure be put in place this Summer:
- Transit shelters are moving to their proper places at the new far side stops. This will finally end the confusion where a transit shelter isn’t actually a transit stop.
- Concrete jersey barriers will be replaced with sidewalk bumpouts and transit stops will either be built out as extended sidewalks or modular sidewalk extensions will be put in.
- Permanent street furniture will replace the temporary chairs and other street furniture that was initially designed to be easily moved around and removable.
- New patios going in for this Spring/Summer (over 60 licenses were granted) will be built to last.
- Wherever a developer is building a tower, the sidewalk adjacent to it will be rebuilt according to the new layout. We'll probably see this first at King and Peter where King Blue condos are nearing completion and are adjacent to a transit stop. KING condos will be another opportunity to transform nearly an entire city block.
- Other things like transit priority and traffic light timing adjustments are happening this Summer without the restriction of the possibility of having to revert it back.