Transit, pedestrians will be given priority with new King Street traffic flow project

Torontosun.com
Feb. 13, 2017
By Shawn Jeffords

Cars may no longer be royalty on King Street.

But according to the Toronto’s new general manager of transportation services, Barbara Gray, they may have always been a bit of a pretender to the throne when it comes to the number of people they shuttle through the key corridor.

Gray said that a new pilot project aimed at increasing transit flow across King Street, from Bathurst to Jarvis Streets, will give transit and pedestrians priority. And the numbers back up the need to make it happen. In terms of use, they both ran higher than cars as the top mode of transport on King Street. But don’t think an outright car ban is coming on King, she said.

“Cars right now are the least significant volume of use on that street in terms of moving people,” he said. “King is a tremendous transit and walking street ... Cars do use it for local access and none of these proposals for this pilot have restricted cars from accessing King Street.”

On Monday night, the city started several months of public consultations about the pilot project on King Street. After those meetings, staff will report to council which will select a preferred option in June or July.

The three scenarios regulate the flow of transit, pedestrians and cars in different ways. Each one creates a priority streetcar lane. Two of the three proposals eliminate left-hand turns from cars and expand the public realm space for cyclists and pedestrians to use.

“King Street ... is the busiest surface transit route in the whole city,” Gray said. “But it doesn’t work particularly well for transit now. It certainly has a huge ridership but the travel times are slow, the head-ways are slow and there is a lot of over-crowding.”

Councillor Joe Cressy, who represents a downtown ward in the pilot area, said at the moment King Street isn’t working for pedestrians, transit riders or drivers. That has to change and this pilot could make it happen, he said.

“None of these options are a streetcar versus a car notion,” he said. “In fact, they’re all about how you do move the most number of people quickly.”

Cressy said that with a day-time population of 900,000 in the downtown core, it’s important traffic corridors flow well.

“We have passed the tipping point on King Street,” he said. “Everybody knows it does not work. If you’re a driver, if you’re a pedestrian or if you’re a transit rider, it’s failing. So, we have to do something.”