Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels

https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/torontos-underground-labyrinth

by bensouthwood • 11 months ago

225 173 11 months ago

mikrl• 11 months ago

Once on a lunch break I walked from St Andrew to King (parallel stations on the horns of line 1) in the tunnels and took the TTC back.

Going overground is usually faster and easier to navigate, buts impressive how far you can go underground.

One of these days I’ll need to try an extreme point hike.

michaelmior2• 11 months ago

One thing that I was surprised wasn't mentioned is the impact that I believe weather must have had on the development of the Path. Winters in Toronto get rather cold and snowy. Even with a dense downtown core, walking a few blocks outside can be rather unpleasant.

nchmy7• 11 months ago

as far as Canada goes, Toronto's winters are pretty mild. Still, it is, indeed, nice to be able to stay inside, as well as avoid traffic.

Insanity3• 11 months ago

Lol, I actually agree on the 'as far as Canada goes'.. but many of us in Toronto aren't Canadian. The winters are pretty bad to me as a foreigner. But to be honest, I'm not as impacted by the cold as I am by the darkness. I get pretty bad seasonal depression during the worst winter months and haven't found a great way to cope yet.

zikduruqe• 11 months ago

I used to do business in Winnipeg. Those underground tunnels, especially when it is -40C/F outside, surely are nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_Walkway

canucker20168• 11 months ago

The winters are variable.

Some years they vacillate between -10C and 4C causing ice to melt to water and then refreeze, nature's jackhammer to any surface cracks in the asphalt road resulting in a city budget line item for "springtime pothole fixing".

Once in awhile, the temps will drop to below -20C for several days/weeks. Not as bad as midwest USA/Canadian prairies winters requiring a heater for your car engine block, but going outside is laborious and painful for long periods.

bregma• 11 months ago

Toronto is relatively balmy compared with every other significant Canadian city east of the rockies and it's not in the snow belt.

What it does get is vast seas of road snot a pedestrian has to wade through at every intersection. That alone is reason to stick to PATH between October and May.

veidr3• 11 months ago

the fuck is "road snot"?

wmoxam• 11 months ago

There's rarely any slush on the streets before Christmas. Back when I lived in Toronto I used the PATH between January and March

bluGill5• 11 months ago

Many northern cities have the same thing, but it is above the streets not underground. Minneapolis has 15km of skyway (but note that the city mostly uses street level buses so this system isn't the direct connection to transit - it does have direct connections to parking garages though)

yifanl2• 11 months ago

I've been told the intent of the PATH was to make sure that people from Montreal could take the train to Union, walk to Scotiabank Arena and watch the Habs beat the crap out of the Leafs without getting snowed on.

voisin• 11 months ago

Top notch Canadian lore right here!

PlatinumHarp• 11 months ago

There must have been something lost in translaction as the Soctiabank Arena is right beside Union station.

Perhaps they were talking about Maple Leaf Gardens? It is a more substantial walk.

canucker20168• 11 months ago

Toronto Maple Leafs played at Maple Leaf Gardens until Feb 1999. The PATH was created before then.

The portion of the PATH connecting Union Station to the ACC is a few hundred metres at most.

I can't see how anyone in Toronto would help people from Montreal enjoy a Habs win over the Leafs. :)

Torontonians call it the "ACC", (short for Air Canada Centre, before its current rebranding to Scotiabank Arena - Google Maps knows both). Also, it's "Skydome", not Rogers Centre. :)

blindriver• 11 months ago

You should indicate that this is a joke. There’s no team more hated in Toronto than Montreal.

soperj3• 11 months ago

Have you been to Toronto? my experience is that it is not cold nor snowy.

kurtis_reed• 11 months ago

Honestly I have no idea what people get out of trolling like this

michaelmior2• 11 months ago

I lived in Toronto for several years. Certainly there are much colder places and I personally don't find Toronto winters terribly unpleasant, but I know a lot of people don't share the sentiment.

LurkandComment• 11 months ago

I use to love exploring Path as a teenager.

yabones2• 11 months ago

More northern cities like Montreal and Winnipeg also have very interesting indoor pedestrian systems. The one in Winnipeg is particularly useful, since there are approximately 72 hours per year that it's comfortable to be outside between the bone-chilling cold and the biblical swarms of mosquitos and flies in the summer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnipeg_Walkway

yelling_cat• 11 months ago

My wife and I had a great time wandering around the Underground City when we visited Montreal. We were there in the fall, but it sunk in just how cold Montreal winters get when we went to a club that had a coatroom the size of my first apartment.

fzwang2• 11 months ago

We also have a 5K race in the PATH! [1]

In the winter the tunnels are amazing for commute.

[1] https://www.bougebouge.com/en/shop/events/5km-bougebouge-tor...

Insanity3• 11 months ago

Had no idea! And been living here for some time. That's actually cool, might have to try that :)

fzwang2• 11 months ago

The route they use is pretty good for indoor runs when the weather or slush/ice gets bad. Mix of stairs + flat stretches. The only downside is that parts of the route are gated by doors which you have to open manually, but def a first world problem.

canucker20168• 11 months ago

It's the first year that they had the 5K run.

A_D_E_P_T• 11 months ago

Montreal has a similar system, while Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Hong Kong, Singapore and Houston have systems that resemble the Path in some respects. A few European cities also make considerable use of pedestrian tunnels, including Helsinki, Stockholm and Munich.

Japan's northernmost major city, Sapporo, has a very extensive one -- of those I've seen, it's the one that's most comparable to Toronto's.

The other Japanese tunnel/undercity complexes are mostly subterranean malls around subway stations. (This also applies to all of the ones in Hong Kong.) But Sapporo's is seriously huge.

I think the common denominator is that people would rather walk in a heated underground space when it gets cold.

derr1• 11 months ago

Sapporo's one stretches for a good mile in a straight line. Quite convenient when going from the entertainment district to the train station with a suitcase in heavy snow.

elthran• 11 months ago

We were running late for our train in winter - the Sapporo underground system let us walk to the station so much faster than trying to navigate ice, snow and road crossings

hypertele-Xii• 11 months ago

Helsinki's underground spaces exist for one reason: Russian bombs.

nick_2• 11 months ago

It's my understanding that underground walkways were created for motorists, not for pedestrians. To get pedestrians out of the way of motorists. An important distinction for understanding the effect car lobbies had on much of the world's urban development.

tylerflick• 11 months ago

The photo in the article looks to predate the mass adoption of cars. Maybe it was because of new engineering capability + attempting to avoid the elements?

hylaride• 11 months ago

It's probably both. The picture in the article is very early days and was then a proto-PATH that was probably first built to deal with an acute problem (probably crowding on the sidewalks as the streets started to be taken over by vehicular traffic).

Toronto's PATH doesn't have a central control or planning system. It is literally a series of 1-1 agreements between buildings that build tunnels under streets to connect themselves. The main benefit to each building is that they can charge retail rents in their basements for through traffic. The system map was terrible and even had a planned route prematurely showing a way to the Eaton centre from the south for a building that was left uncompleted for almost 30 years (work stopped in the early 1990s recession and was only finished right before COVID hit).

Avoiding the weather for commuters coming in on the subway and GO train (suburban commuter rail) was a nice benefit, though only very recently was Union station fully separated from the elements. The one problem with PATH is that the shops are completely targeted to 9-5 work commuters, particularly to finance workers; think coffee/business suits/lunch/etc. Though portrayed as a giant mall, almost all the shops are closed on weekends and don't stay open much into the evenings (Montreal's is more dynamic comparatively). COVID of course upended the business climate of the shops, too. Some newer condo towers have been connected and there is some very early signs of something more dynamic, but the towers seem to still be holding on to the idea they can charge pre-COVID rents. My personal opinion is they should be seeing this as a loss leader to convince people to want to come in 5 days a week (cheap, good lunches, etc).

Anyways, we'll see how it continues to evolve.

nick_2• 11 months ago

The first one was built to connect two of the same company's department stores (Eaton's, now defuct, but once an iconic Canadian chain).

veidr3• 11 months ago

But "car lobbies" mostly implicitly includes "car drivers", right? So it's completely understandable from the universal "I'm rich (initially required to have a car), so get the fuck out of my way" perspective. So it's kind of a self-own.

I am originally from California, and spent some time in Los Angeles as a student. The insane parking-lot wastelands and 8-lane gridlock eventually destroyed the livabilty of that city for everybody — even for people with cars (which, out of necessity, became mostly everybody).

throwway120385• 11 months ago

It's kind of a different attitude. When these were built there was some consideration that pedestrians needed a place to get where they were going. Whereas now it's "I'm rich please stop existing."

bluGill5• 11 months ago

Nothing to do with motorists. When the weather is "bad" (cold, hot, rain...) it is uncomfortable go go outside and so a way to travel that isn't at street level is desired. Since there is an underground subway system why not just go down the the basement of the building you are in to access it instead of walking outside?

It is nice for motorists, but it is useful even if there are no cars.

baud147258• 11 months ago

While not on the same scale as Toronto's underpass, the Université Laval in neighboring Quebec has an underground walkway linking many of the building, including some of the dorms. Once when I was studying there I went to class in slippers from my dorm, without stepping outside. Though even during winter I didn't use them much, I found a bit too depressing to stay cooped up inside all day long, plus a few parts were very crowded.

morkalork2• 11 months ago

Carleton university in Ottawa has something like 5km of tunnels connecting every building on campus. What can I say, Canadians have oddly dwarven compulsions to dig underground complexes?

bluGill5• 11 months ago

The university of Minnesota has a lot of tunnels. they were put into place because there is a central steam place and maintenance needs to inspect those pipes, but they are also open to anyone to use (or were when I went there year ago). When it was very cold it was nice to be able to get around - but often the tunnels were not very direct so I didn't use them much.

willvarfar• 11 months ago

Are they open in the summer too?

I was recently in Toronto and can see where I was on the map, but I had no idea there was anything underground nor any obvious big accesses to it etc.

bparsons• 11 months ago

Yes. PATH isn't particularly well marked or easy to navigate. It just feels like you are walking through a series of interconnected malls and hotel basements.

canucker20168• 11 months ago

It's also useful during the summer if it gets unbearably hot outside (for me, over 25C). The PATH is typically much cooler than that.

err4nt• 11 months ago

The PATH network is great, especially in Toronto's freezing cold and windy winters! The beautiful 'underpass' pictured in this article, with the white marble, is on my commute to work, and it really is breathtaking when you turn the corner.

In the Financial District, the various bank towers can be told apart by the colour of the marble and other stones they build with. For an underground walkway, some parts of it are really beautiful, other parts are just what you'd expect for an underground passage in a big city (especially those parts connected to the subway transit system).

FuriouslyAdrift• 11 months ago

Chicago also has a fairly extensive underground tunnel system open year round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pedway

bushbaba• 11 months ago

Key word in the article “cold winters”. This is fairly common for cities with cold winters, it’s just Toronto’s network is one of the largest of its kind.

It’s a big selling point for you to have a condo that can take you to the metro without needing to be in the cold.

canucker20168• 11 months ago

One of the local newspapers had a story about one condo dweller who never had to go outside during the winter.

He lived in a condo with a direct connection to the subway station, which he used to commute to his downtown job.

He was able to do all his errands at the businesses located in the PATH.

ww5202• 11 months ago

Is there a way to use Google Map to navigate the Path from one place to another?

canucker20168• 11 months ago

No.

Though someone else has a solution, see https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/07/you-can-finally-navigate...

I had a solution that involved using scanning nearby WiFi APs as a kind of hash for your location (since GPS doesn't work for most of the PATH).

But Android has been locking down the WiFi scanning APIs, so that idea is a no-go. Plus the additional rules for developing Android apps in recent years isn't dev friendly.

alkh• 11 months ago

There's an app called "toronto path"[1] for iphone, it's pretty good.

[1]https://apps.apple.com/us/app/toronto-path/id6739152194

tenacious_tuna• 11 months ago

Startling lack of mentions of Minneapolis and Chicago[1]! Minneapolis has an extensive "Skyway" at the ~third story of a bunch of downtown buildings. It's kinda one extensive mall, but also makes it possible to meander without freezing. I interviewed once many years ago during November-ish and it was quite lovely. It's the closest to cinematic urban cyberpunk vibes I've felt in the "real world", where you've got throngs of people transiting an enclosed space with food vendors and shops and a backdrop of terrible, terrible weather.

Chicago also has an underground system ("the Pedway") that's also mall-ish, but it's in fairly crap condition. It's got incredible liminal vibes, but is not the most pleasant to exist in.

[1]: To be fair, a commenter did mention Minneapolis

gdbsjjdn• 11 months ago

Calgary also has a pretty extensive Skyway designed to avoid going outside during the frigid winters.

b112• 11 months ago

There's even a movie about it.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0219405/

Waydowntown (2000)

A group of young employees bet a month's salary, winner takes all, on who can last the longest without going outside.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 11 months ago

I love the Toronto underground.

It's been a long time (about 50 years), since I've been there, but it was one of the better memories, as a kid.

I hear that Montréal has a similar setup.

ape4• 11 months ago

Since its extensive there are multiple ways to get somewhere. So I see it as a shortest path algorithm. Some tunnels are smaller, some are larger (but sometimes congested, etc)

voidmain0001• 11 months ago

Don't forget Calgary, AB and this film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown

mmastrac• 11 months ago

Ha. I live in Calgary and had never heard about this one.

The +15 network is reasonably good but it seems to have stalled out 20-30 years ago.

danslaboudoir• 11 months ago

I stayed in TO for a year back in 07. The PATH was my favourite feature of the city. Part of it was under construction and, late at night, entirely free from other pedestrians. Felt like I was alone in a dystopian sci-fi horror film. Wonderful, terrifying memories.

stego-tech• 11 months ago

I love these little “reveals” of “secret architecture”. A lot of cities have them: the Minneapolis Skyway; underground cities in Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Chicago; Boston’s Emerald Necklace.

I think that’s a secret to continued, healthy city development, especially in an era increasingly marked by climate change and a rejection of car culture: how far can a pedestrian safely go within a controlled environment (climate controlled or controlled access, like a park system) in a city? Whenever I look at rankings of cities, I notice a consistent trend where cities with these sorts of features consistently rank higher than those without, because to build and maintain them requires cooperation between stakeholders rather than competition, and cooperation is at the heart of a healthy community.

kspacewalk210• 11 months ago

Cities in Europe and Asia that are actually healthy, and have rejected car culture, don't have these tunnel thingies. Instead of moving pedestrian traffic away from streets, they improve their streets to make them friendly to pedestrians. The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike.

This is in fact a classic, 80s-90s North American car-infested big city band-aid. Leave the streets for the cars, leave the tiny sidewalks for the homeless and the trash, connect office buildings and plazas with pathways so the nine-to-fives can drive or subway in, go for their lunch or whatever, then drive/subway out without meeting the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway?) Et voila! Who needs to make downtowns actually liveable after all.

mattkrause2• 11 months ago

Eh...

Montreal is a lot less temperate (in both directions!) than Barcelona and Helsinki. Having a way to get out of ±35º weather really does make the city more livable.

tomjakubowski• 11 months ago

Downtown LA's elevated pedestrian plazas on Bunker Hill, as depicted in the movie Her, are a great example of this. Office workers drive in, park in an underground garage below a skyscraper, take the elevator up to work, and walk around a multi-block radius to grab lunch, all without ever stepping foot on a city street.

FredPret3• 11 months ago

The idea that climate issues necessitate this kind of divorce from the outdoors would be a strange concept indeed to people in Barcelona and Helsinki alike.

Try going for a walk outside in downtown Toronto on both the hottest and coldest days.

If you're not in good health and appropriately dressed, you could suffer heatstroke on the hot day and simply die on the cold day.

the poors (because who else lives downtown anyway?

You should talk about what you know instead of trying to come up with ways to hate something more than you already do.

gamblor9565• 11 months ago

It regularly gets below zero in Chicago and Toronto. Europe is generally warmer than Canada and the northern U.S. Without these underground tunnels, there would be no pedestrians during months of the year, and no amount of "improving their streets" would change that.

binsbins• 11 months ago

Rebuttal to your post: 1. Many Asian cities have elevated pedestrian walkway systems. 2. Helsinki has underground pedestrian malls/tunnels. 3. Toronto's first PATH pedestrian tunnel was built before the post WW2 car culture explosion. 4. Toronto's winter cycling volumes are less than 10% that of the summer cycling volumes. Real statistics say that winter weather greatly affects people's decision on transportation mode.

I have used a couple pedestrian tunnel/bridge networks extensively in frosty Canadian winter climates, I really appreciate them plus I think they are a fun way to get from place to place - being able to travel at a different layer than street-level feels refreshing/novel!

minwcnt5• 11 months ago

I have a slightly different take than others on this: I think the main contributor is the fact Toronto's financial district is extremely dense compared to most if not all European cities, and serviced by a highly trafficked subway line that loops around it. Many of the large office skyscrapers are built right on top of the subway, and so they naturally have a public underground connection, and usually it's a mini-mall with a food court and amenities for the office workers. Because of downtown's density these kind of just merged together into the larger PATH network.

The weather is of course also a factor. It's just incredibly convenient in the winter, or even in the summer when it's muggy out, for office workers. You just hop onto the elevator during your lunch or coffee break, wearing your office clothes, no need to throw on a jacket or bring an umbrella or anything. It's just an extension of your office building basically.

Toronto ALSO has healthy commercial streets all over the place that you access from street level and that DON'T connect to these tunnels. It's a very large city. The PATH tunnels are just one district.

bobthepanda3• 11 months ago

This is not true in Asia. In particular, major Japanese cities, Seoul, and Hong Kong are quite famous for extensive elevated and underground pedestrian networks. The major difference is that density is so high in these areas that they do not run into the problems encountered when implementing in North America, namely that a second level makes the street level dead.

Bratmon• 11 months ago

As someone from the Great Lakes region, watching Californians try to speculate about why Great Lakes cities have tunnels or elevated walkways but major Asian or European cities don't is hilarious.

Come visit us in January and learn why for yourself ;)

robin_reala• 11 months ago

Your definition of “safely” probably doesn’t match, but I’ve been enjoying Geowizard’s attempt to cross greater London without walking alongside a road or canal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4476uSeTsg8

The takeaway for me is how much parkland there actually is.

grues-dinner• 11 months ago

London is famously technically a forest. Though for all towns and cities in the UK there is gigantic difference in the leafiness of the "nice" bits and the normal-people bits.

Which is a shame because trees are a huge uplift to pretty much every measure of urban goodness except for long-term pavement maintenance costs.

raudette• 11 months ago

No one has mentioned Calgary's inter-office skyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_15

10 miles/16 km.

I've actually never been, but saw it featured in a CanCon movie, waydowntown, where a group of office workers wage a month's salary as to who can stay inside the longest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown

bluefirebrand2• 11 months ago

It's very cool. I live in Calgary and you can go pretty far in the +15 network

Called the +15 because it's 15 feet above ground

giarc• 11 months ago

Fellow Calgarian here. I like how the term "plus 15" refers to any elevated path in Calgary. For example, the link between the new cancer centre and Foothills Hospital is often referred to as the Plus 15.

cootsnuck• 11 months ago

Makes me think of all the abandoned mines turned into commercial space and the like in Kansas City:

https://www.kcur.org/arts-life/2022-07-02/kansas-city-underg...

leviathant• 11 months ago

Philadelphia has an underground pedestrian concourse in center city. It is, however, not clean, well lit, nor as actively policed. In some alternate timeline, the stalls would be filled with shops, and it would be a great alternative to walking the streets when it's too hot, too precipitous, too cold. But we struggle to even keep our public transit system funded, let alone something like this, which is a shame.

I hope I live to see Philadelphia's infrastructure get rehydrated with some of that GDP it generates for the rest of the state, and region.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 11 months ago

Having worked in Toronto and Calgary, I vastly prefer Calgary's +15 system. Daylight in Calgary's +15 second floor retail spaces is the only daylight exposure an office worker gets in the depths of winter.

bluefirebrand2• 11 months ago

Yeah, the few times I've been to Toronto, the PATH seems cold, kinda damp and sort of depressing

The +15s are usually clean, warm, and sunny

rayiner• 11 months ago

The Path is unlike the gloomy and malodorous underpasses with which most of us are familiar. It is expensively decorated and feels like a high-end shopping mall, which in a way it is. It is extremely clean and closely policed by dozens of private security teams

I love the commercial spaces in Tokyo’s underground subway/train network, which similarly are privately owned. It’s such a huge upgrade from the concourses in subway systems in the U.S.

tom_vidal• 11 months ago

Just to get this straight… they built tunnels for people walking so they could continue to jam the streets aboveground full of cars?

Maybe if people can’t walk around your city efficiently because there are too many cars, it’s the cars themselves which are the problem.

amiga3862• 11 months ago

While Toronto does have a lot of traffic, and certainly the suburbs are entirely car-centric... Toronto is ridiculously cold, snowy and icy in winter. Reducing cars on Yonge St (for example) wouldn't make winter go away.

nchmy7• 11 months ago

I see you havent been to Winnipeg, montreal, calgary, ottawa etc...

bluGill5• 11 months ago

No. They build tunnels so you can get to the subway without going outside when the weather is nasty. The first tunnels were built in the age horse.

footy• 11 months ago

cars are indeed a huge problem in Toronto (like most cities), but the tunnels are nice to have even when there are no cars outside. I used to live in a building directly connected to the subway and could, on rainy or very snowy or grossly cold mornings, get to work without ever being exposed to the elements.

maxglute• 11 months ago

That ecumenopolis feels of weaving through built environment without ever stepping outside. Big fan of skyways as well, too bad there aren't many examples of cities with enough density with overlapping underground and skyway pedestrian networks. There's a few CBDs with underground commute concourses and elevated skybridges that makes you wonder if you really need to touch grass.

johnea• 11 months ago

I also found quite a few of these in Tokyo. Many-block-long ped tunnels that connected nearby subway stations together, but also served as a way to cross town without being out in the blazing heat and humidity.

The skyway in Minneapolis was maybe my first experience with this type of infrastructure, and it was a merciful respite from the winter cold at the time.

In the modern world, I have to believe these pedestrian thoroughfares will increasingly serve in avoiding the summer heat.

vuldin• 11 months ago

This is an awesome resource for Toronto, and a good depiction of it. But at first glance this looks to be incomplete. For instance the Ritz Carlton actually connects to 200 Wellington West.

guyzero• 11 months ago

The PATH is great as Toronto has pretty variable weather and on a snowy or rainy day it sure beats being outside. One thing this article doesn't note is that post-pandemic half of it is empty. So many empty retail storefronts. There's still the assortment of Shoppers and various food courts and a handful of actual store under TD Place. But compared to a decade ago, it's so empty.

thomassmith652• 11 months ago

  Overall, though, the list of pedestrian metros is short. It would be interesting to investigate why this is. Why aren’t there pedestrian metros in Manhattan, Boston, Shanghai, Vancouver, Paris and the City of London?

Those cities seldom, if ever, dip below 0°F in winter.

dylan604• 11 months ago

They would be as effective for cities that go above 90°F as well though. Dallas has some underground tunnels that has shops/food as well as connect multiple buildings, but it's not well known unless you work in those buildings. It's not a walking town anyways, but it's not like it's advertised for avoiding the heat to those on the street.

thomassmith652• 11 months ago

Good point. In a city with dangerous temperatures, it's easier for neighboring property owners to reach the consensus that they need pedestrian tunnels. That makes sense when the danger is frostbite, but per your comment, also heatstroke.

ww5202• 11 months ago

I’m just visiting Toronto now. The Path is amazing. This is one of the entrances across from the Meridian Hall.

https://imgur.com/a/Y4S40JC

bsammon• 11 months ago

Why aren’t there pedestrian metros in Manhattan...

While there is nothing nearly as extensive as the Path, there are a few isolated underground plazas that each connect to a handful of adjacent high-rise buildings. The ones that immediately spring to mind are the Penn Station complex under Madison Square Garden (and Penn Plaza office building among others), and Grand Central Terminal. I think i've seen others, but I can't remember details.

I don't think they're as commonly thought of as a "I'll use this to walk from point A to point B while avoiding traffic/weather" option, but for people in the connected office buildings, they provide (somewhat overpriced) options for lunch/shopping as well as public-transit access without the need to go outdoors.

rnotaro• 11 months ago

Montréal also has a nice 32km+ of underground network. It includes : 4000+ shops, restaurants; 20+ museum; Universities, school, libraries, hotels, corporate towers, etc..[1]

A full map is available here: https://portail-m4s.s3.montreal.ca/pdf/vm_16722_00_planreso_...

Wikipedia article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal

[1] https://montreal.ca/articles/reso-le-reseau-souterrain-de-mo...

dkga• 11 months ago

Interesting piece, but I think the author overlooked one important point. In other cities with better climate, pedestrians actually enjoy being in the outdoors, roaming streets. The only cities mentioned as having a pedestrian underground network all have cold weathers (maybe München is the exception as the winter is pretty mild compared to Canada).

FartinMowler• 11 months ago

Lot's of comments here at the "micro" level: about the comfort of an individual pedestrian. There's also the "macro" view: how best to quickly and safely move a large number of pedestrians in a short window of time. The PATH mostly connects Toronto's financial district full of office towers and 9-5 workers with a transportation hub, Union Station, at its south end. Union Station gets around 300,000[0] passengers a day, most but not all are office commuters. Without the PATH, the sidewalks would be absolutely (and dangerously) jammed between 8-9am and 4:30-6pm.

[0]https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/venues-facilities-b...

phantomathkg• 11 months ago

Hong Kong has a similar system in the CBD area, but instead of going underground. They built foot bridges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Elevated_Walkway

bobthepanda3• 11 months ago

Foot bridges make more sense in Hong Kong where the city pretty quickly goes up a mountainside, so the elevation changes to an elevated system are something you would have to do anyways on the street at some point.

ygouzerh2• 11 months ago

In Tsim Sha Shui we have a lot of undergrounds too! I would love that it would be more full of shops like the ones in Seoul for example.

theyknowitsxmas• 11 months ago

The bicycles should be there instead of road barriers and 1 lane of traffic.

vismit2000• 11 months ago

Related: "Why Ancient Ruins Are Underground" by Primal Space - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyTOYEk_Z2Y

PeterStuer• 11 months ago

Many more nordic cities have undeground infra as it gets really cold ouside in winter.

Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels

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