As an engineer, I can sometimes have pretty strong opinions about bad design. It grates on me when someone tries to build a better mousetrap when there is nothing wrong with the old one, and the new one turns out to be, if not completely useless in catching mice, less effective at doing so.
In this particular use of the mousetrap metaphor, I’m speaking of the doors that are spread throughout the PATH system between Union Station and pretty much anywhere you want to walk to in downtown Toronto. You know the ones. They don’t pivot on hinges like the rest of the doors on earth, but have some other strange mechanism for opening that makes passing through them at best a challenge, and criminal negligence.
I do understand the purpose. They are placed between areas of differing air pressures to facilitate cracking open the door. And they do accomplish that. But getting them wide enough for a human being to pass through is a herculean task.
I am finding myself scouting my preferred route from Union Station to my office, not based on time, distance or any particular coffee shop, but rather to minimize the number of these human sized mousetraps from hell.
I’d dearly like to meet the engineer who thought these were a good idea and pass on the bruise that one of these doors gave me this morning.
