These Toronto residents have tried to make streets safer. It hasn’t worked

Thestar.com
June 17, 2018
David Rider

Amid calls for roadway redesign and red-light cameras, some Torontonians’ efforts to use simpler and more immediate ways to help save cyclist and pedestrian lives have been stymied.

A Star story about calls for solutions following the fourth cyclist death this year -- a woman in a protected Bloor St. bike lane -- triggered emails from Torontonians citing bureaucracy, budgets and an apparent lack of urgency thwarting their attempts to make streets safer.

Their stories raise questions about how the current city council and staff will plan, fund and most importantly implement, major new initiatives when tools and rules already on the books are not being used.

Leigh Pilgrim and her husband, Ian Warren, parents of a 5-year-old girl, tired of watching cars race up and down their straight, wide residential East York street.

“Everything from people using us as a cut-through to a guy with a sporty car who will boot it at 60 or 70 km/h at least,” Pilgrim says.

At the very least they wanted a speed limit sign, like the ones on most of the streets around Fairside Ave., which offers motorists a straight shot north from Michael Garron Hospital to Cosburn Ave.

Without a sign, they learned, the default limit is 50 km/h -- 20 km/h faster than similar side streets and even 10 km/h per hour faster than Cosburn and busy Coxwell Ave., just east of them.

They reached out to their city councillor’s office in December 2015 and have since circled back, and talked to city transportation staff, and 311, and the Toronto Police Service.

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They have received assurances, target dates, a traffic study, and a lesson in city budget restraint. But no speed limit sign.

“I just feel kind of ignored,” Pilgrim told the Star on her porch as cars sped by on a recent evening.

Warren added: “It’s great to have these grand visions and plans, but when you want to execute something pretty simple to make the street safer, it’s like pulling teeth.”

Councillor Janet Davis noted many limit signs have to be replaced since community council voted in 2015, with her enthusiastic support, to drop the default speed for Toronto and East York residential streets from 40 km/h to 30 km/h.

“The city’s roll out (of new signs) has taken three years — a year longer than expected,” despite the “best efforts” of residents and her office, Davis wrote in an email.

“Apparently it has been delayed because there was not enough budget. I was told the money was there. I am disappointed and surprised that they have not all been installed considering the recent events. We have once again requested that the sign be installed.”

City staff said 900 40 km/h signs have been replaced, while 50 km/h streets without signs are taking longer because there are “no posts” to put them on. Fairside, however, already has wooden poles with “No parking” signs on them.

“Fairside Ave. and the surrounding area will be retrofitted with new signs and posts this summer,” Cheryl San Juan, speaking for the transportation department, told the Star.

Pilgrim says city staff should have prioritized her small street because no sign gives motorists permission to bomb up a street full of families with kids and seniors visiting the nearby hospital.

As for assurances of a speed limit sign this summer, Warren says: “I think this is the second or third time we’ve heard something like that.”

While riding his bike down Front St. near Union Station in March, Brandon Driscoll was clipped by a driver trying to merge into his lane. The driver’s mirror collided with his elbow.

After the driver fled the scene, Driscoll believed he was doing the right thing when he reported the incident and car’s licence plate number to police.

“I thought it was important police knew it had happened. I’d assume for every death there’s 100 near misses to be learned from,” said Driscoll, who for the past year has cycled to and from Union Station to work at a hospital near College St. and University Ave.

Three weeks after he filed the report, he said he got a call from an officer who told him police wouldn’t pursue the matter. Toronto police confirmed to the Star the matter is closed and no further action will be taken.

“I was surprised,” Driscoll said, of how police dealt with his complaint. “There’s this push to get to zero casualties, but I see all these accidents and the city’s main enforcement agency doesn’t seem to care, or at least that’s how it felt to me.”

Read more: Walk, ride, drive for your life: A pedestrian, a cyclist and a driver share their views of the crisis on Toronto’s streets

When asked how many charges are laid or calls police respond to involving incidents between cyclists and drivers, Const. Clinton Stibbe said the Star would have to file a freedom of information request.

“I do not have the capability of performing such a search,” said the traffic operations constable.

Toronto police’s open data provides statistics for cyclist fatalities and serious injuries, but not for incidents that don’t result in injuries, or if injuries are minor, Stibbe said.

According to the data set, there were 14 collisions involving cyclists in 2017 and 23 in 2016 that resulted in non-fatal injuries. The Star has counted four cyclist deaths this year; police have counted three, excluding the March 20 death of a cyclist who hit a parked car in North York.

The city and police can learn from hospitals where “an enormous amount of effort is put into reporting every “near miss,” for incidents as trivial as tripping over a cord in a hallway, Driscoll said. The hospital looks at all the small incidents and determines if there’s a larger systemic issue that could lead to serious injuries or death.

“Every one of them is a learning experience,” Driscoll said. “If the police let people get away with minor offences like mine, it’s only a matter of time before they have a major one.”

Traffic death numbers compiled by the Star are higher than the official police count. That’s in part because Toronto police figures for traffic fatalities don’t include deadly collisions that happen on private property, such as in the parking lots of apartment buildings or malls, or on provincial 400-series highways within Toronto, which are the jurisdiction of the Ontario Provincial Police.

Neither tally includes victims of homicide, such as those killed in the Yonge St. van rampage.

Lynn Francis doesn’t let her 11-year-old twins walk to school unaccompanied down the streets of their peaceful, tree-lined Lawrence Park neighbourhood.

With no sidewalks, she said she’s “terrified” they’ll be hit by a car if there’s no adult to pull them over to the side of the road.

To improve the safety of her neighbourhood, Francis said she has pushed the city to install sidewalks in the area since 2013, speaking out at public meetings and sending letters to committees, councillors and Mayor John Tory.

Last year, council had the chance to make this change through the Lawrence Park road reconstruction plan. Instead, councillors, including ward Councillor Jaye Robinson, approved a version that will add sidewalks to only five streets, leaving about 20 without pedestrian infrastructure. Tory was absent for the vote.

Robinson, who is also the ward councillor and public works and infrastructure chair, was unavailable for comment.

Mayor Tory announced Vision Zero two years ago Wednesday. 93 pedestrians or cyclists have died on Toronto streets since that date

The approved Lawrence Park reconstruction plan’s lack of sidewalks contradicts Toronto’s Vision Zero, Francis said.

Under Vision Zero, the city has said it will, “install sidewalks in areas that have no sidewalks or sidewalks on only one side of the road during road reconstruction. Connected and continuous sidewalks provide a safer and more accessible walking environment.”

Right now the city is faced with a total of 1,216 kilometres of streets that don’t have adequate sidewalks. Through road reconstruction plans, it says it will address this gap and add, a “critical piece of infrastructure, which provides accessibility and safety for all, including our most vulnerable road users,” according to a staff report presented to North York community council in December 2016.

To install sidewalks in Lawrence Park, the city suggested it would have to cut down hundreds of trees, which sparked outrage with some residents, the Star reported in 2015. Protecting trees was part of the city’s decision not to install sidewalks on most streets.

“I want my neighbourhood to have beautiful trees, but the protection of trees doesn’t come before the protection of children,” Francis said. “We are waiting for a death to happen and it feels like esthetics won.”

She has filed an appeal with the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, which has received five such requests between February and March. It is now reviewing the city’s reconstruction plan.