‘People are fed up’: Coalition aims to make road safety a major Toronto election issue

Thestar.com
June 19, 2018
Ben Spurr

With public concern over traffic deaths in Toronto seemingly on the rise, a coalition of advocates is hoping to make road safety a major issue in this fall’s municipal election.

In a report scheduled to be released Tuesday at city hall, the advocates set out 15 recommendations they say mayoral and council candidates should adopt to protect pedestrians and cyclists.

The “priority actions” range from proposals to accelerate policies council has already approved to more controversial ideas like banning right turns on red lights and lowering the default speed limit for arterial and collector roads from 50 km/h to 40 km/h.

The coalition plans to send questionnaires to candidates asking which of the 15 proposals they support, and then publish the results before the Oct. 22 vote.

“I think that people are just really fed up. Fed up with the amount of people that are dying in the street, to be frank,” said Amanda O’Rourke, executive director of 8 80 Cities, one of the groups behind the report.

Citing a wave of recent media coverage on the issue, she said Torontonians are increasingly concerned about road safety and want their elected officials to take action.

“All of these deaths are preventable and unacceptable. We know the solutions, we know how to make our streets safer. It’s not rocket science … We just need decision-makers to do it,” she said.

The city introduced new road safety plan in June 2016, but O’Rourke asserted it has yet to make meaningful progress toward its goal of eliminating traffic deaths.

According to police statistics, nearly 100 pedestrians or cyclists have died since Mayor John Tory unveiled the plan, which the city has dubbed “Vision Zero” after the international movement to end traffic fatalities.

Numbers compiled by the Star show 18 pedestrians and four cyclists have died so far this year.

The Star’s numbers are higher than police statistics in part because the force doesn’t count collisions on provincial highways within Toronto, or cyclist deaths that don’t involve a motorist.

In addition to 8 80 Cities, Walk Toronto, Friends and Families for Safe Streets, Cycle Toronto, and the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation contributed to the report, which is titled #BuildTheVisionTO.

As justification for banning right turns on red lights, the report cites city statistics that show 13 per cent of all pedestrian injuries or deaths are a result of right-turning vehicles at intersections. New York and Montreal already have rules prohibiting drivers from making right turns on a red.

O’Rourke said the report’s most important recommendation is likely the call to lower default speed limits to 40 km/h on arterial and collector roads, and 30 km/h on residential streets.

Research cited in a 2012 Toronto Public Health report determined a pedestrian struck by a car travelling 50 km/h has an 85-per-cent chance of death, but the risk drops to less than 5 per cent if the vehicle is travelling slower than 30 km/h.

The idea of lower speed limits has gained traction at city hall before. In 2015, councillors representing the 12 wards in East York and the old city of Toronto voted for a blanket speed limit reduction to 30 km/h on local streets, but their colleagues in other parts of the city haven’t followed suit.

Following the deaths of a pedestrian and a cyclist last week, Tory announced he would move a motion at his executive committee Tuesday to request an additional $13 million for the road safety plan. That would bring council’s spending on the program to about $100 million over five years.