The streets in our cities…

The streets in our cities perform multiple functions, and are best able to serve everyone when an appropriate balance of uses is put in place. Historically our city streets have been complex and creative places, accommodating pedestrians, cyclists, motor traffic, transit vehicles, goods movement as well as providing space for utilities and telecommunications. Allocation of space was based on the needs of everyone in the community.

The increases in car traffic from the end of World War Two through the end of the 20th century tipped the scales away from a balance of uses to a car-centric focus whereby other uses and purposes were intentionally made secondary to car traffic in an ultimately futile attempt to "relieve congestion" and "allow drivers to travel without impediment". While these changes allowed our cities to expand and absorb more people and support more jobs, they created an unsustainable burden.

Wider roads and more highways attempted to counter the impacts of greater segregation of uses, expansion of low-density suburban employment, consolidation of retail activity, the move to multi-worker households, and other demographic trends including significant population increases. In cities, particularly in older, larger cities, there was no real space to increase the number of travel lanes, and other modes including streetcars, buses, transitways, subways, commuter trains, walking and cycling allowed growth to continue.

The pressures to use the limited space to move more and more people started to look at historical solutions. Until the middle of the 20th century the majority of transport on our streets was communal or for good movement. Taxis, jitneys, bicycles, wide sidewalks and limited private vehicles shared space with delivery vehicles.

Transit seemed to expand as well, but never matched the pace of change in car travel. As central Toronto grew upwards to accommodate more and more jobs in the core, walking and streetcar travel was augmented by car traffic. That traffic quickly absorbed the capacity freed when goods movement reduced. The next wave of expansion was the subway system, which permitted people to live further from the core, but still travel in and out in a reasonable time. The average commute time increased very little, but the number of commuters increased, as did the average travel distance with longer subway trips increasing the overall average.

The next wave was the joint introduction of GO Transit and the PATH. The two complemented each other, allowing for even longer trips at the same average commute time, and a way to walk to thousands and thousands of jobs from Union Station. GO Transit would not have succeeded without the PATH as the limited sidewalk space would not have accommodated the increase in pedestrian activity. We see this today with both the sidewalks and PATH ways congested during peak hours.

The most recent wave is the increase in downtown residential development coupled with suburban job growth. Some of this growth is accommodated in reverse flows on transit, using the transit system more effectively, but most of it required outbound car travel in the morning as the suburban jobs are so dispersed they cannot be effectively served by transit. Evidence of this is the traffic volumes on the DVP, where AM outbound trips outnumber inbound trips, and along the Gardiner where there is both an inbound and outbound rush in the morning and evening (and for most of the day).

As the city continues to grow and expand, we need to consider a balanced system. Walking is self-limiting as few are willing to walk for more than 30 minutes to and from a job. Cycling was accommodated in the inner city on the well-developed network of local streets, but that too is limited by major physical barriers, including highways, railways and river valleys. There are no viable "local street options" for cycling outside the core of the city that support anything more than local area traffic.

I've heard the point raised that we should not have cycling on Bloor Street, but on local side streets, but I'm not aware of any local street crossing the Humber River from Bloor to the Queensway, or any well-connected local street that crosses the QEW, Etobicoke Creek, Mimico Creek or the two major rail corridors.

To compete with other cities and maintain the quality of life we enjoy, we need to consider how we can best manage the resources we have. Cities have done extensive analysis and consultation in planning and managing both growth and movement. Expanded cycling facilities have attracted large number of users, and will continue to grow exponentially as a large, connected and integrated network is created.

The current legistation, as proposed, attempts to counter the current growth trends, invalidate the good work undertaken by city staff, cater to a minority of people who believe they are entitled to unfettered car access on demand. The focus of traffic studies used to be on the number of vehicles moved. At one time a bus was counted as the equivalent of 3-5 cars, but as they could be carrying 25-50 people, their effectiveness was under represented.

Today most traffic planner recognize that a successful mobility solution focuses on the total number of people moved in a corridor, at how well the system interconnects to provide multi-modal trips and address first and last mile solutions for all trips. To be truly representastive of the needs of Ontario's urban population, the provincial focus needs to move away from mid-20th century measures of success and look for innovative ways to balance mobility, measure success in people movement and appropriately address these factors in any proposed legislation.