Rail deck park can happen, because it happened in Weston: Keenan

Little-known green space shows what can happen when a community rallies.

TheStar.com
Oct. 13, 2016
By Edward Keenan

One sunny day this week, I paid a visit to a planned Toronto rail deck park - a green space that sits on a platform above railway tracks. Not the one proposed to great fanfare downtown that’s gotten so much attention recently. The one that’s already pretty much built, in Weston.

There, between Church and King streets, over the trench in which the Union-Pearson Express, GO train and VIA rail tracks run through the neighbourhood, there is a great, long, lawn just about ready for public use. It doesn’t look like much - 2.3 acres of weedy grassland in a strip 1,000 feet long and 100 feet wide, without trees or equipment or landscaping, its only current defining feature other than a bed of gravel at the south end is a drainage ditch running its length along one edge. But it’s on top of the tracks, that much is clear when you stand on it and feel the shiver in your legs as a train faintly rumbles below.

“We thank Metrolinx for doing something right,” says Mike Sullivan, the local activist and former NDP MP who invited me out to see the space recently. It was news to me that it existed.

It seems interesting that in the wave of coverage and City Hall discussion about Mayor John Tory and Councillor Joe Cressy’s 21-acre rail deck park proposal downtown, reporters, politicians and city staff alike name-checked Chicago’s Millennium Park, New York’s Hudson Yards project and Melbourne’s Federation Square without really taking note that we already have a brand new example right here in northwest Toronto. For such a large and fairly significant project, Weston’s rail deck seems to have more or less flown under the radar - you have to dig pretty hard online to find virtually any reference to it, even in the documents of Metrolinx, the provincial planning agency that built it.

Sullivan explains that when the original plan for a train to the airport was announced back in 2003, it called for tracks running at ground level throughout Weston, which would have cut off most of the east-west streets in the neighbourhood altogether, since the number of tracks required would be too wide for a level crossing. When neighbourhood residents rebelled, the plan was changed: an open trench would be dug through for the tracks, and all the streets except one would cross it on bridges. Residents further lobbied to have the trench covered for a stretch between Church and King, and then to have that “lid” turned into a grass field for parkland. There is evidence that provincial authorities resisted along the way - citing engineering difficulties and cost. But all this time later, here it is: a grassy green space.

“In addition to bringing new stations and access to new services that bring long-term local benefits to communities, we work with residents and the municipalities to improve community spaces created through transit expansion,” Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins says by email. “While building the tunnel we agreed to grass and sod the roof of the tunnel to ensure it was available for future community and school park space. The parks idea is an incredibly great use of the space over the tunnel.”

Sullivan says a Metrolinx representative told a community meeting it cost $400 million to build - but when I express my disbelief (and wonder what that means for the projected $1 billion estimate often attached to the downtown rail deck almost 10 times the size), he clarifies that this cost included all the trenching work throughout Weston, the bridging of the roads, construction of a new station for GO and UPX and a pedestrian bridge over the trench at John Street. Aikins from Metrolinx confirms the accuracy of this. Which means the covered grassy portion cost some fraction of that.

Of course, it isn’t exactly a park yet - and isn’t open to the public. To access it right now, you need to scale a fence that blocks off access on both sides. Now that it’s there as a big lawn, establishing its use as park and community space is a matter of discussion. The lot adjoins a site that once was and will soon be home to a local Catholic School, and the plan is to make part of the green space a part of the schoolyard. The lots on either side of the school, bordering King and Church Streets, will be home to city parkland, including an off-leash dog area, a community garden and a playground. But the transfer of land and responsibility from Metrolinx to the city government and school board is still in negotiations.

“We currently have draft agreements with the school board and City, and we are working through the details now. No update at this point,” Aikens says.

There’s a similar situation with the John Street pedestrian bridge a block south - which is fully constructed, with broad sweeping access ramps and a beautiful, ornate steel-link safety barrier, but remains fenced off from public use. I crossed it. It appears for all the world to be finished.

“What can I say? The bridge is still not open. An agreement between the City and Metrolinx regarding servicing, maintenance, liability, etc. has not yet been reached,” local city Councillor Frances Nunziata was quoted as saying by the local blog WestonWeb this month. “The City has asked Metrolinx to open it for public use while terms of the agreement are being finalized - Metrolinx has refused.”

On the phone, Nunziata told me she has asked the city manager to intervene personally to get the bridge open and is hopeful. “We all agree it should be open.”

About the park, she says she expects the off-leash dog area along King to be open next year - the project already has approval and funding from the city. She says the other end is slightly more complicated, but is planned for 2018. Both pieces combined, she says, are budgeted to cost $600,000, although some additional property acquisition costs will be needed on top of that.

Nunziata says that when the downtown rail deck park proposal was being discussed at city council, she didn’t make a speech. “But I did say to the mayor, ‘You know we have one up in Weston. No one seems to talk about it.’” She acknowledges the downtown project is a bigger, more ambitious idea.

But still, she says Weston’s example shows something. “It’s possible. It happened in Weston. If it can happen in Weston, it can happen in different parts of the city.”