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21 Comments

news

Possible Solutions for Toronto’s Gridlock?

By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

2006_10_25streets.jpg
Toronto isn’t New York, anyone can tell you that. But like New York and other big cities, Toronto has an addiction to the automobile. The city has avoided major disasters like the Spadina Expressway and downtown ghettoes, but slow-burning issues like smog and congestion means that the city has to find a way to wean itself off its dependence on cars.

Contested Streets: Breaking New York City’s Gridlock is a film that premiered earlier this year. The film looks at how cities like London, Copenhagen, and Paris have implemented a variety of creative solutions to return streets to people and can work as a model for more auto-dependent cities like New York.
The film is making its Canadian premiere tomorrow night, 7pm at the Bloor as part of the Toronto Public Space Committee’s Streets to Screens Series. $9. A panel discussion will follow.

Comments

  • http://www.newmindspace.com kevin bracken

    Forgive me, here, but does Toronto have gridlock? I mean, I hear about it all the time but I never see it. I guess it’s because I live and work downtown and never drive? My bus is fast (albeit unreliable) and there is only one time of day when my streetcar slows down (around 3 PM going east). I can always bike, though.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca/sidewalksale.htm Jonathan

    I hate to say it, but the Canadian premiere of this film actually occurred last Sunday afternoon. Ward 21 candidate (and former mayor) John Sewell and Ward 14 candidate David White held a screening of this film at the Dragonfly in Parkdale as a fundraiser for the Parkdale-High Park Residents Waterfront Group and Front & Centre, a group dedicated to fighting the Front Street Extension. According to Sewell, “David White can take most of the credit for the fact that the Front Street Extension has been put on hold.”
    http://my.insidetoronto.com/decisiontoronto2006/node/301

  • Greg

    I tend to be of the opinion that traffic problems are not located in any one area in this city, which limits the use of congestion zones and other solutions that target specific areas that are larger than the localized problem. I’ve experienced heavy traffic on Bathhurst north of Bloor, on Steeles, on Queen West West, on Yonge north of Sheppard, at Dundas and Spadina and so forth. None of these, other than Dundas and Spadina, are proposed to be subject to congestion charges. I used to work at the top of a downtown tower, looking east. Other than rush hour traffic on the Gardiner, the streets generally looked pretty clear in that direction. The problems exist at particular times, in quite specific areas. Further, if congestion zones change traffic patterns more than they change driving intensity, they benefit that area at the expense of all others.
    I also think that slower traffic, when it occurs, is also partially the result of the fact that there now seem to be traffic lights every couple of blocks. How many other mundane reasons for traffic problems might there be?
    Miller’s plan for more bus and streetcar priority sounds nice, but do we really know whether these modes of mass transit are appealing enough to get people out of cars? Subways are faster and smoother. Subways are cooler in the summer. Subway stations are generally protected from the vagaries of the weather. I suspect that buses and streetcars that have dedicated lanes etc are not going to attract many drivers away from their cars for that reason. If drivers don’t change, it might make traffic (and pollution) worse as it reduces the effective capacity of the roads.
    We really need to stop looking at what other cities have done and determine what the sources of Toronto’s transportation problems are. Others can be an inspiration, but we should resist the temptation to blindly adopt what others have done.

  • rek

    Try driving east or west on Bloor/Danforth around noon. Suckers.

  • Patrick

    How about synchronized lights on major streets? It seems traffic lights have zero integration with the lights around them.
    Traffic just bunches up when you keep hitting red lights.
    I’m sure a bit of logic and connecting the lights to a centralized system would help quite a bit.

  • rek

    There are only two ways I can see to get people out of their cars (downtown):
    1) Make it just as convenient to take public transit, bike, or walk — which may also be done by making driving there frustrating;
    2) Make it so you just can’t drive there (or through) anymore, period.

  • http://bikelanediary.blogspot.com tino

    For Toronto’s sake: ride a bike!

  • andrew

    My favourite traffic crawl is Dufferin to Keele along Finch Ave at 5:40pm on a weekday. It’s amazing; hot in the summer, cold in the winter, boring, stressful, hazardous, and it takes forever. Eglinton between the Allen and Keele ain’t the greatest either.
    There is some sort of traffic light control, if I’m not mistaken.
    Subways are just expensive. I love subways, and I will always always always be angry that the bloody York extension wasn’t in place during the 14 years I spent on that campus, but not at the expense of the rest of the city. We need more buses, at least, to improve our service. And I’d really like better blue night service. But that’s just me.

  • Pylon

    Downtown has no ghettoes ? You should venture out to the downtown eastside sometime. Maybe stop and walk around the Sherbourne and Queen area, or have a stroll through Regent Park.

  • http://416style.blogspot.com sookie

    Hi Ron,
    Glad you covered this. I’ve been thinking of going. Hope you don’t mind me pointing out a little spelling thing – Copenhagen is spelled with just one P – the place is dear to me so I can’t help but notice.
    Sookie

  • Gloria

    I’d echo the Sherbourne point … it might not be as sprawled out as some ghettos in other cities, but my mother has made a point of never going by that area again, after she was hit in the head with a BILLARDS BALL, in broad daylight. Luckily an officer was by, and she got the attention she needed right away.

  • Gary

    Hey! The entire downtown east side is far from a ghetto. I live near there. Sure there are some areas that are a little grimier than others, but to call them ghettos like I’ve seen in the US is very extreme. Gentrification is creeping in quickly on the downtown east, too. Before you slag an entire area of the city remember that many people call it home, and reputations linger for years after reality has changed, mostly through offhand comments like this.

  • Pylon

    I live adjacent to Regent Park. I know what I speak of.
    It’s time the city took some responsibilty for it’s urban blunders.
    There are disproportionately more shelters, social services and assisted housing in east downtown area than any other sector of the city. This has created an imbalance to the the social fabric of certain east downtown pockets. You think gentrification in the midst of all this will solve the problem?
    Just compare the vitality and commerce of Queen st. west vs. Queen st. east on a Friday night, the difference is quite stark.
    I hope the newly elected city officials will put partisanship aside and have the balls to deal with this inequity.

  • http://www.spacing.ca/wire Shawn Micallef

    Er, “Pylon,” you haven’t noticed anything happening in Regent Park? Do you not know what you see of?

  • http://www.torontoist.com Boy Reporter

    Ok… my “no ghettoes” statement seems to be taken out of context. There are depressed neighbourhoods in Downtown Toronto but many of these were caused by the creation of housing projects (ie. Regent Park) or other factors.
    This isn’t like urban centres in the US, where highway construction helped spur the flight of the largely white middle class out of city centres into the suburbs. See some of you at the film, I hope.

  • http://brokenengine.blogspot.com brokenengine

    “Downtown has no ghettoes ? You should venture out to the downtown eastside sometime. Maybe stop and walk around the Sherbourne and Queen area, or have a stroll through Regent Park.”
    I used to live right there.
    You won’t dig it.

  • Pylon

    Shawn, do you mean the Regent Park revitalization plan ?
    The 12 year project costing $1 billion funded by all 3 levels of government, covering 69 acres ? A mixed income community, both with market homes and TCHC housing?
    Well we will find out if this grande experiment works, in about 12 years.
    Boy Reporter, Toronto did not need huge concrete expressways to help facilitate the exodus of middle class white families.
    It happened in spite of this.
    But now many are coming back. Just too avoid the gridlock they encounter commuting into the downtown core from suburbia.

  • andrew

    I’d say that compared to other Canadian cities, our low-income areas are probably grittier than most and could be described as “ghettoes”, even though Vancouver’s lower eastside and Pigeon Park are worse, and Winnipeg apparently has some downright alarming parts.
    However, compared to American cities, and cities in places like India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, we’re probably doing alright.

  • tom

    83 percent of traffic signals in Toronto are connected to a central system. 15 percent of the signals are connected to a demand-responsive controller that can change signal timings based on traffic volumes.
    The reason that many adjacent signals don’t seem coordinated during peak periods is congestion due to things that you can’t design for, like illegally parked and broken down cars, high pedestrian volumes limiting turning traffic, etc.
    Adelaide Street is a perfect example of this. During the PM peak period, Adelaide queues up west of University, usually to a point between Simcoe and Duncan. It takes forever to get to Yonge, even though the signals are coordinated. But once past Yonge, you can see the coordination as traffic starts to thin out. If you drive the speed limit of 50km/h, you’ll see the effects as you go east past Church and Jarvis, e.g. if you go through a yellow signal at one intersection, the next one should turn yellow when you get there.

  • Sam

    Back to the original topic: the movie “Contested Streets: Breaking New York City’s Gridlock.” Jonathan, that’s rich, Sewell actually premiered that film in Toronto?!! This is the same guy who has been telling us that the world will come to end if cars don’t continue to have access to all six lanes on St. Clair — oh, and that _has_ to include curbside parking, both sides of the street, 24/7, or doom is nigh. Sorry, his extra few square feet of concrete sidewalk just don’t cut it. And bike lanes? They would be very convenient double parking strips for his SOS and Corso Italia buddies. I hope somebody called him on that last Sunday?
    On a less sarcastic note, another problem with synchronizing signals: in a grid network of two-way streets, it’s hard to synchronize all the different directions. Streetcars with curbside loading don’t help, as they shut down the intersection while people are getting on & off. (Oh, by the way, Sewell wants more of that, by getting rid of the streetcar platforms all along St. Clair. It doesn’t just slow down cars, it also slows the following streetcars. But I digress…)

  • Ben

    I’m one of the few that happens to live north of the city. One thing I find is that driving in York Region is MUCH less stressful than in Toronto, at least outside of rush hour. Granted it is less populated, but I find the lights are much better designed and you can go extremely long distances before hitting a red, even in urban areas. Once you hit Toronto, the lights are all against you and you spend more time waiting for the light to turn green than actually driving.
    With that out of the way, I think it is time to realize that suburban expressways will not answer everything, and neither will public transit. Only together can they truly make a difference. Unfortunately, over the years we’ve had levels of government try and shape the city to their own liking without taking any consideration to long term planning. We’ve had liberal commies axe plans for a much needed second expressway into downtown and replace it with a subway line, and we’ve had neo-nazi conservatives axe plans for a midtown subway and instead build a toll expressway around the outskirts of the city. The reality is that we need our cake and the ability to eat it too: We need expressways to enter and surround our city, and we need new transit lines to support our city as well.
    Unfortunately, we have a mayor in charge who thinks he can solve Toronto’s traffic by stuffing as many people into overcrowded trains and buses as possible by “punishing” drivers. As utopian as it might be to envision a world where everyone uses transit, the fact is that there will always be people who need to drive, and adding new driving taxes is not going to change this. I’m not saying to stop supporting transit growth, I’m saying support better roads and support enhancing transit to encourage those people using the roads to take the bus once and awhile.