Toronto city council finds cash for more road-safety plans
Better street lighting, longer crossing times among potential fixes.

TheStar.com
July, 14, 2016
Ben Spurr

City council has agreed to inject more money into a plan to protect cyclists and pedestrians from traffic collisions.

In unanimous decision Thursday, councillors endorsed the city’s new road-safety strategy and a budget of $80.3 million over five years, up from the $68.1 million transportation staff originally proposed when they released the plan last month.

The $12.2-million funding boost comes after traffic safety advocates slammed the original version of the plan as too weak. The additional money will allow transportation staff to accelerate implementation of the strategy, as well as to undertake some new safety initiatives and enhance some existing ones.

Public works chair Councillor Jaye Robinson, who has championed the road safety plan, admitted that when it was first unveiled, “the scale and the scope . . . simply wasn’t where it needed to be.”

The original plan outlined 40 safety “countermeasures” to be deployed at high-risk locations to reduce serious collisions, including expanded use of “watch your speed” radar signs, street lighting improvements and longer pedestrian crossing times. It would also allow for the creation of “pedestrian safety corridors” — areas notable for serious collisions which would be targeted for safety measures like lower speed limits and no-right-turn-on-red provisions.

The enhanced version adds four new countermeasures, and expands or enhances six previously proposed ones. Staff will double the number of mid-block pedestrian crossings they will install to 10 each year, and quadruple the number of new audible crossing signals to 20 intersections per year.

Robinson said the increased funding would allow the city to significantly enhance its efforts. “The bottom line is this plan is a pivotal step for ensuring road safety for all Torontonians, whether they walk, cycle of drive,” she said.

Daniella Levy-Pinto, a member of Walk Toronto’s steering committee, said she was pleased that councillors increased funding for the plan, but pointed out that the spending was dwarfed by the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to projects like rehabilitating the Gardiner Expressway.

“I feel that, still, driving is being given prominence over other modes of transportation,” said Levy-Pinto, who is blind and walks with a guide dog. She said she had hoped the city would adopt blanket speed-limit reductions, as well as introduce a city-wide prohibition on right turns on red lights.

Councillors passed a string of amendments at the end of the debate, which took up most of Thursday afternoon. They included asking staff to report on compressing the timeline for the strategy’s implementation from five years to two, designating motorcyclists as vulnerable road users, and requesting the province to look at reducing the default speed limits.

In a surprise vote of 26 to 15, they also approved a motion from Councillor Frances Nunziata to ask the province to consider prohibiting pedestrians from “actively using” a handheld phone or electronic entertainment device “while on any travelled portion of a roadway.”

So far this year, 23 pedestrians and one cyclist have died in traffic collisions in Toronto. That’s on track to match or exceed the record single-year total of 40 pedestrian deaths in 2013.

The original version of the safety plan set a target of reducing serious collisions by 20 per cent over 10 years, but after criticism Robinson revised the target to eliminating traffic deaths entirely.