In Toronto, it’s difficult for seniors to cross the street both slowly and safely

theglobeandmail.com
By Oliver Moore
Jan. 20, 2017

It took an unexpected injury for me really to grasp how much Toronto demands of its pedestrians.

For many in Toronto, walking is the best way to go a short distance. In the city’s core, about one-third of people use walking or cycling as their main method of getting around. But it’s also common outside the downtown, with about 10 per cent relying on active transportation.

Some walk by necessity, but a larger group does so by choice. It’s often faster than surface transit. And it’s a nicer way to inhabit the city. Officially, the city wants to encourage walking.

But to a large extent, Toronto is designed for the healthy pedestrian. Many sidewalks are cracked or uneven, and they aren’t normally plowed outside the core. The timing of traffic lights favours those who can walk quickly. Vehicles regularly block the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians off the curb.

I’m generally fit and this doesn’t normally slow me down. But on Monday, an ankle problem flared up and by the evening I was hobbling. For much of the week, walking ceased to be a joy. It was slow, awkward and uncomfortable.

After nearly four years on the transportation beat, and having written tens of thousands of words about pedestrian safety, I had a new appreciation of the concerns older pedestrians faced. The parallels with vulnerable seniors are admittedly limited. I do not suffer dementia, as do an increasing number of older Torontonians, and didn’t acquire a weak hip or lose the ability to turn my head easily. But I had lost part of my mobility.

Their limited mobility helps explain why seniors face the biggest risk walking in Toronto. Because they move more slowly, they need extra time to cross the road and more places to do so. This is more than a courtesy to be extended them. Faced with the prospect of walking far out of their way to a traffic signal, seniors may be more inclined simply to cross where they are. But if they do so, their slow progress puts them at greater risk.

I had understood this on a philosophical level. But now, I was living a version of this reality.

Where once I could dart across the road when the situation allowed - what traffic researchers call “gap-seeking behaviour” and the police refer to as “jaywalking” - I found myself having to go out of my way to the nearest intersection and wait to cross. Instead of having plenty of time to trot across even the widest avenue, suddenly the signal wasn’t necessarily long enough.

What does this show? The city, ignoring human nature, has set up a system that makes it pretty inconvenient for a slow-moving pedestrian who follows the rules strictly.

Take University Avenue. To make it faster for motorists, the lights are deliberately timed such that the average pedestrian can’t cross east-west in one go. Although this week wasn’t particularly wintry, there’s nothing fun about hanging around in the cold rain for a light cycle that’s explicitly programmed to make you wait. So people ignore the pedestrian countdown and keep crossing.

Or consider the southern end of Kensington Market. A destination for heavy foot traffic, it is across Dundas Street from a social-housing complex. But that’s a long stretch there without a traffic signal. Walking to either of the closest lights means a detour in the range of about 250-350 metres. Not far, maybe, but that’d add four to six minutes of walking at the average senior’s pace, plus the time waiting for the light. Result? People just walk across Dundas.

Toronto is trying to address some of the issues facing senior pedestrians, including retiming the signals at intersections. Staff, who used to assume an average walking pace of 1.2 metres a second (about 4.3 kilometres a hour), are shifting to one metre a second (3.6 kilometres a hour), in recognition of the aging population. The latest road-safety plan includes “senior safety zones,” which could include reduced speed limits. And there are also indications the city might loosen the criteria by which they decide whether a crosswalk or traffic signal is needed.

It’s a start. But after a year in which two-thirds of the pedestrian deaths were people over 65 - a group that makes up only 14 per cent of the population - there is much more to do.

Gil Penalosa, founder of the urbanist non-profit 8 80 Cities, argues a city designed to work well and be safe for children and seniors has the corollary benefit of being good for everyone else. A dose of limited mobility showed just how far Toronto is from that goal. If you have to break the rules to make walking a convenient way to get around, it’s no surprise so many people do.