I find that the main thing that makes Yonge Street unpleasant to walk on in NYCC is the fast moving traffic next to you. The lights are clearly prioritized for Yonge Street so most cars are speeding at 70km/h between Sheppard and Finch during the lunch hour. Some traffic calming measures would help a lot, though this would probably be considered a "war against the car". Also, I find that the tree lined median south of North York Centre Station helps a lot. I find the walk between Sheppard and North York Centre a lot more pleasant than the walk between North York Centre and Finch. This median should definitely be extended. Then there's also the aggressive drivers (I almost got turned into yesterday), but I'm not sure what we can do about that.
As more development occurs along Yonge north of Empress/ParkHome to Finch Hydro corridor, the tree lined centre median should be extended northward as well. Along with the system of wide boulevard pedestrian sidewalks. Depending on developmental pressure, there might be opportunities to put in more signalized intersections on this stretch of Yonge Street which would slow down traffic and give pedestrians more opportunities to safely cross Yonge Street. But that's a double edge sword since signalized intersections also have left turns lane in centre median and would take space away from tree lined centre median.
The North Yonge Planning Study also includes wide boulevard sidewalks, protected bike lanes and tree lined centre median between Finch Hydro Corridor and Steeles and generally about 40 storey buildings around subway nodes,... but that won't be implimented until the Yonge subway line gets extended north of Finch - in about 30 years.
It would have been nice to get that tree lined centre median extended south on Yonge in between HullmarkCentre and EmeraldPark (I had to mention HullmarkCentre, otherwise Mods would complain I'm going off topic again). It won't happen because of what I mentioned earlier,.. there's 4 signalized intersections on this 1500 feet stretch of Yonge. The dedicated left turn lanes take up all the centre median space.
To the south, the city have looked at eliminating the left turns lanes on Yonge to Glendora (south of Proctor&Gamble building) and Johnston (south of HeroBurger) since those are dangerous high risk left turns without signalized intersection; and replacing the left turn lanes with tree lined centre median - basically just south of Poyntz/Anndale to Avondale/Florence. Likely to happen after Yonge & Poyntz/Anndale intersection is done sometimes next summer or once that little plaza with HeroBurger south of Shell gas station gets redeveloped.
Those narrow sidewalk on east side of Yonge between Avondale and Glendora are my pet-peeves since it's in between 15 condo towers of Avondale and the south-entrance for Sheppard-Yonge TTC station - it's packed with pedestrians at rush hours and Yonge Street traffic is only inches away with no buffer zone - transit users are constantly getting road spray.
BTW, what would you folks think about bike lane on Yonge Street in NYCC - it may mean more narrow lane width (decrease vehicular traffic capacity) or ripping out tree lined centre median.
BTW, Cuisine of India relocated to a take-out place on Yonge north of Davisville.
