Coming to a transit stop near you: A shelter designed for use in confined spaces that offers at least some protection from the weather.

Few things anger TTC riders more than having a standard shelter with four walls replaced by another with only a roof and one wall, which happened a couple of years ago at about 50 transit stops.

They didn’t know that the old shelters were installed prior to the creation of Toronto’s accessibility standards, which call for a minimum of 1.7 metres of sidewalk space.

But they were infuriated when their full-sized shelter vanished and another that offered no real protection but complied with the standards went up in its place.

More on transit shelters at thestar.com:

One-walled shelters offer zero protection

Vacant transit shelters should be recycled

Nobody likes new “canopy” shelters

Shelters don’t cost taxpayers anything, but earn money for the city

The backlash prompted the city and its street furniture contractor to decide a year ago to not put up any more, but it created a dilemma: What to do when a full-sized shelter had to go, due to the accessibility standards?

They’ve been working on a compromise ever since, and on Wednesday invited us to the company’s shelter manufacturer, Provincial Sign Systems in Pickering, for a preview of a new shelter developed for tight quarters.

“If we don’t put out something like this, the public gets nothing,” said Carly Hinks, who’s in charge of Toronto’s street furniture division.

The biggest improvement over the “canopy” shelters is side panels, which will be half a metre to one metre wide, depending on the location. The wider panels will be used wherever possible, said Hinks.

They also have a wider roof and a seat big enough for two backsides, an amenity missing from the canopy shelters, and clear glass on all three sides, which will improve sightlines for drivers.

Ron Hutchinson, a vice-president of Astral Media (a division of Bell Media), the city’s street furniture contractor, stressed that no advertising will be posted on any of the smaller shelters.

Some people suspected canopy shelters were just an advertising billboard, said Hutchinson, but even advertisers didn’t like them because there were no side panels on which to post ads where they could be better seen.

The prototype we were shown was inside the manufacturer’s facility, where we couldn’t get a sense of how well it might buffer wind, snow and rain, but looks like it’ll do a lot better job than a canopy shelter.

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The canopy shelters already in place will remain, but 25 to 30 of the new ones will be rolled out as soon as weather permits, in locations where a full-sized shelter was removed due to accessibility issues, said Hinks.

You can expect to see a lot more of the improved models over the next few years, so please let us know what you think of them by emailing us at thefixer@thestar.ca or jlakey@thestar.ca .