What a joke - and completely preventable and predictable too. It's like the designers didn't spend 5 seconds actually sitting in the old park to see how it was actually used.
It is.............I agree.
But ya know........I was curious, so I went back and looked at the old aerial photos, before the last re-do.............and I can see it............... that's exactly what the designers here did......
The desire line really isn't there........but the reason for that is very apparent.........and when they modified the design, they should have been conscious of that.
You can see the NW to SE angle isn't there...........but duh..............there's a big round rink/summer-time water feature blocking the route. Additionally the washroom/mechanical building is sited at the north end of the feature, further obstructing that path.
Compare to the post re-do layout:
They shrunk the building and moved it to the east side of the rink/water feature; they also modified the shape of the water feature, and they removed the water in the summer.
So they created the very desire line we're talking about by removing the 2 most significant obstacles to it forming.
I previously showed and costed the solution here (a paved path bisecting the lawns in the north-west roughly down the middle, with landscape design features forcing traffic onto the paved space.)
But its worth saying here, while I would not recommend it, you can clearly see how some small strategic design choices would have cut down the issue of cross-traffic substantially:
There is partial obstruction at the south end, but there is no ornamental fence protecting the planting bed, which oddly ends right at the most desirable point for a cross-path.
There is no obstruction at the north end at all.
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This is not the only place in the park with this problem, just the most conspicuous by far.
Have at look at the south-east side of the rink/skate trail:
You can't see it well here, but area between the benches and the Yonge Street access has been trodden, there's no plant material left.
Now I understand what they were doing here........this is a space for you to get off the skate trail and sit, out of the way. I disagree w/all the seating turning its back to Yonge....but I
digress.
But this is an obvious desire route, people coming in from Yonge want to get to/from the skate trail, and/or use that route to get to the desire line to the north.
If you wanted people not to use that route, then you make this a long, curved bench that fully obstructed the route in question. (not the right choice in my estimation, but would work
better than the status quo).
