Toronto councillors beef up city’s road-safety program with new emphasis on heavy trucks

Theglobeandmail.com
Oct. 4, 2019
Oliver Moore

Toronto city council has voted to expand its road-safety plan to include an emphasis on heavy trucks, part of a suite of measures approved Thursday.

Three years ago, Toronto formally approved its inaugural Vision Zero plan, which aims to eliminate road deaths and serious injuries. In the face of continuing casualties, the plan has been repeatedly beefed up since.

The issue was again brought into stark relief in recent weeks by a number of people being killed while walking in Scarborough, where wide and fast roads pose a particularly acute risk, and a person being fatally hit by a cement mixer in midtown.

According to a Globe and Mail count, the city is on pace for around 40 pedestrian deaths by the end of 2019. However, the next few months are typically deadlier on the roads, as the weather changes and daylight hours become shorter.

Council unanimously approved five motions related to road safety on Thursday. Although some reiterate old positions or ask other governments to do things, others could have a more immediate impact.

Councillor Jaye Robinson, who was head of the committee that introduced Vision Zero, called for the plan to include tactics aimed specifically at heavy trucks. She noted a study showing Toronto pedestrians hit by trucks were more than twice as likely to be killed as those hit by smaller vehicles.

“When we rolled out Vision Zero last term, we had a number of emphasis areas … trucks were not included,” Ms. Robinson said. “I think it was a miss.”

She pointed to a number of ways to address this danger, including better trucker training, better co-ordination to prevent multiple nearby development sites having trucks visit on the same day and perhaps more rules restricting the size of trucks on certain streets.

“I think we’re going to have to get very heavy-handed about this, which may be unpopular, but I think safety comes first,” Ms. Robinson said. “I understand we’re a developing city but safety comes first. And if that means a few delays here and there, I think that’s what it’s going to have to take.”

Another motion came from fellow midtown Councillor Josh Matlow, who called for stricter rules for developers blocking roads and sidewalks, a look at more extensive traffic enforcement and an audit of the area’s roads to see about redesigning them for safety.

“Many of our streets were designed at a different time for a different purpose, to facilitate cars speeding in and out,” Mr. Matlow said.

“We have a choice to make, we either slow down or more people are going to die. It’s as plain as that and we have to look at how roads are configured to make them safer.”