The vice chair of the TTC is calling for a full review of the design of Queens Quay, after criticizing the recently reconfigured lakefront street as confusing to road users, including himself.The transit agency announced a week ago it would erect a gate at the streetcar tunnel at Queens Quay and Bay St. after yet another driver entered it illegally and became stuck. The TTC says that since 2014 roughly 25 drivers have entered the tunnel, and the problem persists despite measures aimed to prevent it.But at a meeting of the agency’s board on Tuesday, TTC Vice Chair Alan Heisey said the tunnel isn’t the only part of Queens Quay that’s causing trouble. Drivers also regularly encroach on the streetcar right-of-way elsewhere on the street, he said. The right-of-way is supposed to be reserved for transit vehicles.Heisey even admitted to making the mistake himself.“At night I have entered, unintentionally, the (streetcar right-of-way) westbound at Bathurst,” he said, jokingly reassuring his colleagues he was “stone cold sober” at the time. Heisey argued that installing a gate at the tunnel isn’t enough to cure the problems on the street, and said Queens Quay needed to be redesigned “for its whole length.”“The question is the overall design of Queens Quay. It is not clear. It is not understandable,” he said. Read more:Opinion | Shawn Micallef: Is Queens Quay tunnel Toronto’s Bermuda Triangle?Opinion | Christopher Hume: Pedestrian deaths are the price we`re willing to pay to keep traffic movingTTC vice-chair wants review of Queens Quay“This is what happens when planners design places, but don’t design workable places.” The stretch of Queens Quay between Bathurst and Yonge Sts. was the subject of a $128.9-million overhaul that was completed in 2015. The project went over budget by $35.7 million. Waterfront Toronto, the government agency that led the project, said the redesign wa ...
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