Toronto councillor showcases city’s progress on road safety plan
Councillor Jaye Robinson held a news conference at Dundas and River to highlight changes underway there to protect pedestrians.

thestar.com
By Ben Spurr
Oct. 27, 2016

As Toronto enters a dangerous season for traffic collisions, the city is touting the progress it’s made on its new road safety plan.

Public works chair Councillor Jaye Robinson (Ward 25, Don Valley West) held a news conference at Dundas St. E. and River St. on Thursday morning to highlight changes that are underway at the intersection to protect pedestrians.

They include removing the intersection’s northbound right-turn channel, enhancing pedestrian crossing markings, lowering speed limits on Dundas from 50 km/h to 40 km/h, installing a red light camera, and retiming traffic signals.

“This intersection is only one example of the work city engineers and city crews have been doing across Toronto since we approved the road safety plan,” Robinson said.

“I can’t stress enough that making our roads safer is one of the most important priorities in this city.”

Council endorsed the $80.3-million road safety strategy in July. Not all of the work at Dundas and River was a result of the plan, however - removing the right-turn channel was approved before council adopted the strategy.

So far this year, 65 people have died in traffic collisions in Toronto. Thirty-five of the victims were pedestrians and one was a cyclist. There were 65 traffic fatalities all of last year, an 11-year high.

There are fears that this year’s total will continue to rise. According to police, pedestrian collisions spike between mid-November and mid-December. Paramedics say shorter days lead to more people being hit in the autumn.

The road safety plan was originally supposed to be implemented between 2017 and 2022, but some work was moved forward to this year after advocates criticized the strategy as too timid.

Work slated for 2016 includes reducing speed limits at 14 high-risk corridors. The city is also adding accessible pedestrian signals at dozens of locations and making physical alterations to 14 intersections, but those projects were in the works before the road safety strategy was approved.

Other initiatives planned for 2016 - including buying additional “watch your speed” radar signs and erecting them at five school zones, launching a motorcycle safety campaign, and installing red light cameras at 79 sites - also predated the safety plan, but have either been accelerated or renewed.

Parallel to the road safety initiative, the city has launched an anti-congestion campaign, which includes efforts to get cars moving through intersections faster.

Robinson said she saw no conflict between the two plans.

“No, I don’t think congestion and safety are at odds with each other,” she said. “It’s better to keep things moving smoothly, slowly, and keep pedestrians safe.”

Maureen Coyle, a member of the steering committee for pedestrian-advocacy group Walk Toronto, disagreed. “There is an insoluble tension between the two narratives of keeping traffic flowing and pedestrian safety,” she said. “Some of the strategies for one are going to be in conflict with the other.”

Coyle said she didn’t believe Robinson’s assertion that the city is committed to Vision Zero, a widely-lauded approach to road safety that aims to completely eliminate traffic deaths. Coyle argued that if the city was serious about the idea, it would introduce an “immediate, across the board reduction” in speed limits.

At its meeting in July, council voted to ask staff to report back next month on the possibility of asking the province to implement blanket speed limit reductions.

Robinson said Thursday she was open to the idea. The approach outlined in the road safety plan is to lower speeds only on streets where there have been a high number of collisions.