The Bloor Street Viaduct: could it become a recreational zone?

Farrow Partners rendition of a re-imagined Bloor Street Viaduct.

Could the Bloor Street Viaduct become a relaxing pedestrian walkway?

More formally known as the Prince Edward Viaduct, the structure which spans Toronto’s Don Valley to link Bloor Street and downtown in the west to Danforth in the east was a visionary project when it was opened in 1918. Architect Edmund Burke designed the steel truss viaduct not just to bear the weight of traffic on top, but also a subway below – a subway which didn’t exist until 1966.

In a 2021 twist on extreme vision, Farrow Partners see the viaduct as part of a city recreation system, with its five lanes of car traffic reduced to 3 lanes (one for parking): “Market Bridge at the Prince Edward Viaduct is a practical and farsighted civic idea that hopes to reimagine this much beloved historic infrastructure, through a community-based co-creation process, as a new civic, social, and pedestrian centred destination for Toronto. A generous new pedestrian realm for the city, that could mix public space, plazas with public art, and socially driven market stalls housed in mixed use market-like pavilions,” Farrow writes on its website.

“The length of the new pedestrian promenade will be a mix of squares and promenades of varying size, supporting a range of activities and uses including bicycle racks. The paved squares punctuated with street trees, furniture and urban planters providing a range of textures and scents, would offer a mix of uses.”

Local business operator Ali Shin has managed Alex Farm Cheese near the eastern edge of the viaduct for the past ten years and is a supporter of anything that slows down car traffic in the area:

“When the bike lanes first came, we were worried,” he notes. “But once things settled down, we have seen more customers in the store than ever before in history. So yes, I support anything that brings more pedestrians.”

Career Taxi driver Jafar Mirsalari is less enthusiastic: “Honestly I have seen the Viaduct go through a lot of changes. It’s getting slower all the time: bicycles,  sidewalk patios… they are all adding to unsafe city traffic.”

Could a re-purposing of the Bloor Street viaduct actually happen? In July, columnist Sue Ann Levy wrote for Road Warrior News:

“The cycle-paths at City Hall made no secret of their obsession with bike lanes and road closures in the city reports, if one had the inclination to read them.

“In a report from Sept. 15 of last year, Saad Rafi, who headed up the city’s Recovery and Rebuild Strategy Office for a few months, recommended that initiatives like improved cycling infrastructure and weekend recreational street closures be accelerated.

‘While COVID-19 exacerbated various existing challenges it also created conditions for accelerating good ideas,’” he wrote.

Toronto’s revision of Union Station cost almost $1 billion and ran a decade over its scheduled completion date. Could the neighbourhoods that flank the Bloor Street Viaduct survive a similar project?

“Come and see me,” Ali suggests enthusiastically. “I have LOTS of cheese for you.”