Monday, May 9, 2011

Rescue Bronson Avenue walking tour and posters

Today's Jane's Walk for the Rescue Bronson Avenue initiative went really well. It was right on time and we had about 35-45 people on each of the two parts of the tour (breaking it up into two parts worked really well, and some people joined us at noon for the second part). See yesterday's post promoting this walk here

Here are the volunteers who led the walk, from left to right: Will and Josée, who helped keep order and time; and moi, who gave the tour. We're standing at what the NCC calls "Bronson Park" at the top of Bronson overlooking Lebreton Flats, and across the street from Roper House on the Christ Church site.

Here's a shot I took near the end of the tour of the attendees on the second part of the tour as we ducked in to Florence Street for a respite from all that heavy traffic along Bronson:

I made eight different location-specific posters to illustrate the walk at the following locations, copied below (click on them to see full-size ~1.5MB ea). I left them up so you should be able to still see some of them and compare with what's there in person until they're inevitably taken down.

Here are all eight. I'm just listing the names of the posters, which don't have current pictures of the sites because they're intended to be seen in situ. I could make this post insanely long with additional photos and text, but I need some sleep after a long and successful day at the Jane's Walk and the wrap party at the Lieutenant's Pump (which was recently renovated).

Cathedral Hill/Christ Church (at Sparks/Queen):

The Escarpment area (roughly Bronson/Albert/Slater/Commissioner)

Bronson and Laurier (including the segregated bike lane)

Bronson and Primrose (i.e. the Bronson Centre)

Bronson and Somerset, near the Chinatown Arch

Fake Trees and Wide Lanes (MacLaren/Gilmour)

Bronson and Gladstone

Bronson and Arlington (including bike route options)

Among the things not included on the posters (because it was something you could see on the walk) were how narrow the sidewalks are, especially south of Somerset on the West side (see Eric's post at, appropriately enough, West Side Action).

The tour ended at Arlington, where I want the city to install signals to improve the pedestrian/cycling routes crossing Bronson. Since the Bronson reconstruction project's engineers say that not enough pedestrians cross Bronson at the unsignalized Arlington intersection (no wonder why!), many in the group bravely crossed Bronson to show the engineers that pedestrians really do cross here!

I hope those of you who were on the walk enjoyed it, and those who couldn't make it enjoy the posters here and on site. I encourage you to follow @RescueBronson on Twitter, and to sign our petition at RescueBronson.ca to help make Bronson a healthy street.

3 comments:

  1. Towers in a Park. How very 1972.

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  2. Oo, I was very intrigued by the Bronson walk. Thank you for this peek of what I missed.

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  3. Very impressive work on the posters!

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