A transit shelter that provides no protection leaves shivering TTC riders to wonder why it was ever installed.

And when a shelter with four walls was taken away and replaced by another with only one wall and a roof, people who relied on it feel deprived and frustrated.

Of all the complaints we get about transit infrastructure, one-walled shelters top the list. Not only do they offer zero protection from weather, they look to be nothing more than an advertising billboard.

We reported in December on a shelter that was taken away and not replaced, and got lots of complaints about others. The city’s street furniture division has since put back some and is working on resolving the others.

But full-sized shelters that were replaced by one-walled models are the source of the most outrage, especially when the weather is relentlessly frigid.

A reader complained on SeeClickFix that a one-walled model was put up in place of a full-sized shelter on the north side of Kingston Rd., just west of Midland Ave.

“I now notice many people are shivering from the south-only protection,” said the reader, adding he believes the old shelter was taken away at the request of a nearby business.

“I think someone forgot to put the sides on the streetcar shelter at Queen (St.) and Broadview (Ave.),” said another reader, noting it also needs a front panel.

“It’s the most silly piece of architecture and is useless as the snow and rain blows in.”

The one-sided shelters are universally despised, even by advertisers (ads are more visible to drivers when mounted to end panels) — among the reasons why a decision was made a year ago to stop putting them up.

The city consulted with Bell Media, which holds a contract to provide it with street furniture, in exchange for the rights to sell advertising on them, and concluded the “canopy” models weren’t any good to anyone.

They were used to replace larger ones in places where less than 1.7 metres of sidewalk is available to pedestrians, as prescribed in the city’s accessibility guidelines, which were not in place when the full-sized shelters were installed.

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For those who hate them, it is no doubt good news that the city has stopped installing one-walled shelters. But the ones already in place are there to stay, and as useless as they seem, there are days when they’re better than nothing.