Skip to Content
Streetsblog USA home
Streetsblog USA home
Log In
Boston

Parking Madness: Toronto vs. Medford, Massachusetts

2:17 PM EDT on March 20, 2017

It's Parking Madness season at Streetsblog, and if you're just joining us, this year's competition is all about how we sabotage transit by surrounding stations with huge fields of parking.

On Friday, we kicked things off with a match between transit station areas in St. Louis and Sacramento, with St. Louis advancing.

Today, first round action continues as Toronto takes on the Boston suburb of Medford.

Toronto -- Kennedy Station

Screen Shot 2017-03-13 at 1.37.18 PM

Reader Ian Wood submitted the parking lots around Kennedy Station, which is the fifth busiest subway station in Toronto, according to Wikipedia.

The city has spent the last 25 years infilling parking lots like mad, and even its inner suburbs have seen wave after wave of densification.  (No city outside Asia has built more condos this century).

But Toronto is a young city, with a postwar rail system. While Toronto's GO Transit is one of North America's larger commuter rail stations, from the beginning it was designed as a car-to-train model, and most stations are surrounded by enormous parking lots, usually in the middle of highways and industrial areas.

This area is already surrounded by schools, housing, and job centres -- and more is coming. But the subway station remains an odd crater in the middle of it.

Definitely the kind of space that would make Donald Shoup cry.

Medford, Massachusetts -- Wellington T Station

Malden Parking Crater


An anonymous reader submitted this site outside Boston. Despite the picturesque setting by the Malden and Mystic rivers, the Wellington T station is hemmed in on all sides:

The station is sandwiched between a massive parking lot, a major highway and a train maintenance yard. There is also a parking garage just west of the station. I am not sure how anyone from the neighborhoods north get to this station on foot/bike.

The polls are open until Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.

parking_madness_2017

Correction: This post originally said that Wellington T stop was in Malden, Mass. It's in Medford. 

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog USA

Why We Care About Some Transportation Tragedies More Than Others

Why do we respond to major transportation disasters with so much urgency — and why don't we count our collective car crash epidemic among them?

March 28, 2024

The Toll of History: MTA Board Approves $15 Congestion Pricing Fee

New York City's first-in-the-nation congestion pricing tolls are one historic step closer to reality after Wednesday's 11-1 MTA board vote. Next step: all those pesky lawsuits.

March 28, 2024

Take Thursday’s Headlines Home, Country Roads

Heat Map reports on why rural Americans are resisting electric vehicles, and why it might not matter much for the climate.

March 28, 2024

Guest Commentary: Traffic Engineers Must Put Safety Over Driver Throughput

No other field would tolerate this level of death and destruction. The tragedy of West Portal is more evidence that the traffic engineering profession is fundamentally broken.

March 27, 2024
See all posts