Hey guys, welcome back to the channel! Today, we’re heading to midtown Toronto, and checking
out Lawrence station on the Yonge subway line. Located near the neighbourhoods of Bedford
Park and Lawrence Park, this station isn’t used all that much sitting at around 22000
passengers daily, but it’s still a charming little station in a neighbourhood that’s
nice to walk through. Let’s hop on to a line 1 train, and go check it out!
[Intro]
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Alright, time to get back to the main content of the day.
Commencing service in 1973, Lawrence station has been an intermediate station throughout
its history, and it has been serving the nearby community diligently for almost 50 years.
The station is one of the deepest in the system, and it was the first station to receive an
underground bus terminal, with other stations following suit soon after. Unfortunately,
the station is not accessible just yet, but with the TTC’s Easier Access Program steadily
converting all stations to be accessible, we will see elevators being installed here
in the near future, with a scheduled completion date of 2023.
We arrive at the station via a northbound Yonge line subway train onto the center platform,
where we’ll begin our journey today. The center island platform shares the same aesthetic
as York Mills station as they were constructed at the same time, although in a more muted
yellow and red colour palette than the sister station’s minty green. The platform has
plenty of space for passengers to wait on, and it features the same round benches at
the columns as York mills. Other amenities on the platform are the standard TTC set,
including Designated Waiting Areas, TV and departure screens, plenty of signage, as well
as telephones. And since the layout is exactly the same as York Mills, we find the exits
of the platform at either end, where staircases and escalators lead up to two separate concourses.
We’ll first check out the south concourse of the station that’s the closest to the
intersection of Yonge Street and Lawrence Avenue, and the main concourse of the station.
As this is the primary concourse of the station, most of the important tidbits are located
right here. The lower concourse here is where you’ll find the entrance to the bus terminal,
nestled in between staircases leading further up. The bus terminal is a long corridor that’s
right next to the bus loop, with buses picking up passengers on either side. We don’t particularly
love the design of this bus terminal with it being so narrow and hard to walk through,
but it serves its purpose well, with 4 regular routes, 1 express route, and 2 night routes
coming in here. This station has also often been the endpoint of track maintenance shutdowns,
which means that you’ll often be using this terminal for shuttle buses as well.
Heading up another level via one of these matching staircases, we arrive at the upper
concourse of the station, where you’ll be able to access the two entrances on the south
side. The layout of the concourse is quite simple especially compared to other stations
like St.Clair, with a row of fare gates separating the fare paid area and the entrances, and
it’s spacious enough to handle lots of passenger flow. All of the usual suspects in terms of
concourse amenities are all here, including a collector’s booth, presto machines, as
well as benches to sit on.
The first entrance we’ll go check out is located at the northeast corner of the intersection,
and it’s got the largest external structure of them all, so we’ll call it the main entrance
of the station. The entrance building is a rectangular box acting as a cover for the
staircase and escalator heading down, with not much else inside, as space is already
precious enough in this busy midtown neighbourhood. Surrounding the building are some benches
for people to wait on, as well as numerous bike racks, and even an old-timey map of the
surrounding area.
Across Lawrence Avenue on the south side is the Locke branch of the Toronto Public Library
system, named after the chief librarian George Locke from the early 20th century, and it's
been around for more than 70 years providing quality programs and of course, literature,
to the surrounding community.
Walking further south from the library, we arrive at some refreshing green scenery, with
the aptly named Lawrence Park right here providing some desperately needed greenery and a nice
spot to relax and chill out at, especially for the younglings.
At the northwest corner of the intersection is a large grocery store and mall, as well
as the second entrance to the station, but unfortunately it was closed when we were there.
The store does look nice and new though, really giving this older neighborhood a refreshed look.
And besides stores and subway entrances, each corner also has a few bus stands as well,
serving even more buses on Lawrence.
Walking just a bit north along Yonge Street from here, we pass by some more interesting
local stores. We personally love this little shopping high street and find
it incredibly charming! We then arrive at the two side entrances of the station. These
are small entrances on Ranleigh Avenue and Bedford Park, and they lead down to a concourse
that is a smaller replica of the southern one,
albeit with this weird glass door on the side.
[Music]
Enjoy some more railfanning footage on platform level as we wrap up this tour.
[Music]
Alright guys, hope you enjoyed this video tour of Lawrence Station, and learned a bit
more about the neighbourhood it’s in. Like, subscribe, and comment down below to tell
us what your favourite part of this station is. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and
support us on Patreon if you would like to help us keep making great videos for you.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next one!
[Music]