The railway underpasses at Queen and Dufferin Sts. are like Jekyll and Hyde: One is bright and friendly, the other, dark and frightening.

Nervous pedestrians scurry through the dungeon-like Queen underpass, glancing warily over their shoulders while choking back an ominous sense of dread.

If they make it to Dufferin and round the corner, a wave of relief washes over them as they enter an underpass suffused with light and travelled by kindly strangers.

OK, that’s a stretch, but it’s safe to say that walking through the dark and gloomy one on Queen is scarier than the new and well-lit underpass right next to it, on Dufferin.

Ian Newbould emailed to say the Queen underpass “is very poorly lit. Many of the few lights that it does have are not working. It is dark, dirty and dingy.

“As a result, it is not some place that female pedestrians can walk through safely. It needs to have the broken lights replaced, at a minimum.

“If you compare it to the new extension northward on Dufferin, at the same intersection, you wonder how the city could have left it the way it is.”

We went there and found that most of the overhead lights in the middle of the Queen underpass — its darkest point — weren’t working, leaving it nearly dark in the middle of a December afternoon.

It’s a stark contrast to the one on Dufferin, built a few years ago to eliminate the jog in the street, north of Queen. A continuous row of lights run above the length of both sidewalks, allowing people to see and be seen, which adds to their sense of security.

The same railway tracks cut diagonally across the intersection of Queen and Dufferin and have been there since the Queen underpass was built in 1897, according to an original carved stone at its northeast corner.

At nearly 118 years old, it is definitely the poor (old) cousin, when compared to the Dufferin underpass, but that’s no excuse for not fixing the lights, or maybe even hooking up a few more.

STATUS: Toronto Hydro and transportation services are both checking to see who’s responsible for maintaining the lights. We’ve also asked both to consider adding some new ones.

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