New transportation boss says car is no longer king
Toronto’s queen of the road, freshly arrived from Seattle, seen as ally to cyclists, urbanists

Thestar.com
By Ben Spurr
Dec. 9, 2016

Toronto has a new ruler of the roads.

Barbara Gray started her job as Toronto’s new general manager of transportation on Thursday, and is the first woman to ever hold the post.

In her new role, Gray will lead a department with a $400-million operating budget and a host of challenging files, including the city’s well-documented congestion problem, an aging expressway in urgent need of repair, and a mounting pedestrian death count that some are calling a public health crisis.

It’s a daunting task, but one that Gray predicts will be exciting. “Not straightforward or easy perhaps, but exciting.”

A 50-year-old Manhattan native, Gray comes to Toronto by way of Seattle, where she has worked in the public sector for 17 years, for the past two as deputy director ofthe department of transportation. She replaces another American, Steve Buckley, who returned to Philadelphia in July after nearly four years in the Toronto job.

A pro-cycling, pedestrian-minded mother of two who holds a graduate degree in urban planning from the University of Washington, Gray seems certain to steer Toronto transportation policy in a direction that rejects the supremacy of the car and gives equal consideration to all road users.

“I think you design the streets and the city to support people being able to move,” she said, “whether you want to walk, bike, take transit or drive your car.”

She acknowledges that in a city like Toronto that has a dense urban core surrounded by sprawling suburban neighbourhoods, some residents will always have to rely on their cars. “So what I’ve said in Seattle — and I assume a similar approach would apply here — is that the more people we can get walking, biking and taking transit, (the better the chance) that when you have to drive a car to get somewhere it will be a better experience for you.”

In her time on the west coast Gray was at the forefront of progressive transportation policies, including authoring one of the first “complete streets” guidelines to be adopted in the U.S. She also drafted master plans to make the city more accommodating for cyclists and pedestrians.

On many important transportation matters, her positions appear to overlap with Toronto council’s liberal, urbanist faction. She calls separated bike lanes “a great idea.” Ditto lowering the city’s default speed limits. She’s also a self-declared “streetcar aficionado.”

Asked what she thinks the city’s most important transportation challenges are, she cites congestion and pedestrian safety as top priorities.

The city is experiencing its worst year for pedestrian fatalities in decades, with more than 40 people killed so far this year. Gray has looked at the road safety plan that was passed by council in July and describes the document as “a good start.”

“It seems with safety you always want to do more faster,” Gray said.

Gray says it’s difficult to judge what lessons she can bring to Toronto from her time in Seattle, a city a quarter the size of Ontario’s capital. “All solutions are local” is among her favourite phrases.

But one difference between the two cities could be how their residents think about paying for transportation. Last year Gray was on the front lines of a successful campaign launched by Seattle’s mayor to raise $930 million for road maintenance, transit projects and other transportation infrastructure through a 10-year property tax levy.

“I don’t even know the number of meetings and coffees and happy hours and all sorts of things that we did to work with people and bring them along,” Gray said.

The “Move Seattle” levy was approved by residents last year with 56 per cent of the vote, according to the Seattle Times. Given the controversy over issues such as road tolls and property tax hikes in Toronto, it’s unclear, at best, whether a similar measure would gain support here.

“It seems like taxes are a huge issue here. People are very opposed to anything new,” Gray said. “In Seattle people are willing to pay for investments in transportation, in libraries, in affordable housing.”

Gray said she is still learning about the major issues facing Toronto, but she already knows enough to avoid stepping on potential political landmines. She declines to weigh in on the hot topic of road tolls.

Mayor John Tory and his council allies support spending $3.6 billion to rebuild the Gardiner Expressway, a cost which last month unexpectedly jumped by $1 billion. All Gray will say on the topic is: “I think that many, many cities are looking at other alternatives” to elevated expressways, but there is no one-size-fits-all answer.

Gray was happy in her job in Seattle, but when she learned of the opening in Toronto she decided to throw her hat in the ring. She was influenced by a vacation she and her husband took to the city about a decade ago that she said “made a huge impression on me.”

She was particularly drawn by neighbourhoods such as Little Portugal and Little Italy. “It felt like a city that was accepting, and it felt like a city that was certainly beautiful and big and exciting and had a great public realm even at the time.”