Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels

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.

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

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.

    :-O

  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.

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

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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).

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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

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

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

I use to love exploring Path as a teenager.

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.

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