Whatever happened to Vision Zero?
City Hall Watcher #320: Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher on the bright side of slower-moving traffic, plus a contractor ban, Don Valley West donors, and coyotes.
Hey there!
This week, for the milestone 320th issue of City Hall Watcher, I’ve got a special guest. Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher has written an insightful piece — with charts! — about “Complete Streets” projects, like the one on Bloor West. Yes, they slowed down traffic. But, uh, that was the point, because fast traffic is dangerous. Doesn’t anyone remember that whole Vision Zero thing?
I’ve also got a look at a busy City Hall calendar, with looming debates about building more bike lanes, banning a construction company, and genetically engineering a woolly mammoth to keep at the zoo. And if that’s still not enough, I’ve also got a quick peek at the donors in the recent Don Valley West by-election — and a quick take on a Toronto Region Board of Trade report on congestion.
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Where’s Vision Zero? Road safety was a motivating factor behind Complete Streets with bike lanes — but then people stopped talking about it
By Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher
Tucked into the City’s interim report on the Bloor West Complete Street Extension is this: the average 85th percentile speed on Bloor West between Runnymede Road and Aberfoyle Crescent decreased by about 17%, from over 60 km/h before the bike lane to just over 50 km/h after the bike lane was installed. (The 85th percentile speed is traffic engineers’ standard measurement of the “typical” speed on a road: 85% of people are driving slower than this speed.) The speed limit was also reduced from 50 km/h to 40 km/h as part of that project.
The bottom line is that the road redesign worked as intended: car speeds dropped by 10 km/h.
Much of the discussion around Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 212, which blocks new bike lanes that remove motor vehicle travel lanes and targets the Bloor, Yonge, and University cycle tracks for removal, has focused on two things: the (supposedly) low number of people cycling, and increased congestion and travel times for drivers because of bike lanes. While it’s true that vehicle travel times usually go up after Complete Street projects, the increases are usually small — and they get smaller after signal timing adjustments.
But something is being lost in the travel time discussion. Lately, everyone seems to agree, even the City of Toronto’s transportation division, that travel time increases are something to be avoided. But it’s important to remember that travel time is related to speed — and high vehicle speeds are dangerous.
As such, reducing vehicle speeds is an under-appreciated but quite often explicit component of Complete Street projects. As Oshawa MPP Jennifer French noted at a meeting of a provincial government committee to discuss Bill 212, “Bike lanes are sometimes installed as traffic-calming measures, with the specific goal of increasing safety by reducing vehicle volumes and speeds.”
After all, Vision Zero is still a thing.
Is there another side to the travel time story? With a focus on low travel times being good, have we lost sight of another public good: lower vehicle speeds?
Last month, the City of Toronto released a whole lot of traffic data that was previously not public, including vehicle volume and speed counts and bicycle counts. I wondered if there was more to the story of vehicle travel times and Complete Streets, so I dug into the data on vehicle speeds for Yonge and Bloor West.
Let’s start with Yonge Street and the Midtown Complete Street Project. Cycling and pedestrian volumes more or less doubled after the installation, and car travel times went up a little. Oh no! (For context, the drive time was about 8 minutes before the complete street, so we’re talking about a 5-10% increase in travel time.)
As part of the project, the speed limit on Yonge north of Bloor was lowered from 50 km/h to 40 km/h. Subsequently, the overall speeds went down — by a lot.
Before the Complete Street, a whopping 62% of drivers were going faster than 50 km/h north of St. Clair. (For context, a person hit by a car going 50 km/h has an 85% chance of dying.)
After the Complete Street, just 15% of drivers north of St. Clair were going faster than 50 km/h. And we’re not talking about car-dominated suburbia: I refer you to Matt’s interactive traffic count database, where you can find many, many traffic counts at Yonge and St. Clair where bikes and pedestrians outnumber vehicles.
As I said at the top, it also worked for the controversial Bloor West Complete Street Extension. The City’s reporting on the project includes detailed data showing that the 85th percentile speeds dropped all along the corridor, and similar to Yonge, the fraction of people driving at deadly speeds decreased.
What this data also shows is that it’s not enough to lower the posted speed limit. If it were, the speeds at all of these count sites would look a lot more similar to each other. You wouldn’t have people at Yonge and Bloor driving 50 and people at Yonge and Davisville driving 70. Instead, the design of the roadway environment — the lane width, the presence or absence of objects near the road, the smoothness and straightness of the road — is telling drivers how fast they can safely drive. Changing the street design by adding features that make the road look and feel narrower — like cycle tracks — is essential to get people to drive slower, and on Yonge Street and Bloor Street West, it worked.
In Complete Street projects, much ink has been spilled pitting travel time increases for cars against the number of people biking. But road safety for everyone has also been a major motivating factor behind these projects. If the demonstrated increase in cycling’s popularity in Toronto won’t convince skeptics, perhaps a safer street environment for everyone — not just people biking — should.
Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto studying how safe cycling networks influence the destinations people can access by bicycle in Canadian cities. You can find her on Bluesky at @mbonsma.bsky.social or riding around Toronto with her family on her beloved cargo bikes.
In other news
The Toronto Region Board of Trade released a report last week making several recommendations to reduce traffic congestion, including fewer construction lane closures, more enforcement and getting bike lanes off major roads. Over at Spacing, Lanrick Bennett argues there are things missing. The supplemental report on downtown congestion by engineering firm Parsons attached to the TRBOT report is worth a special look, both because it includes useful charts like the one above — putting the Gardiner’s traffic volumes in proper context — and because it seems to point to different conclusions that the main document. “Prioritizing more efficient transportation modes — such as cycling, walking, and transit — within these constrained spaces often necessitates reallocating road space from private vehicles. While this trade-off may reduce private vehicle capacity, it ensures the street network can handle higher volumes of people more efficiently,” the Parsons report says.
Donor information from last fall’s by-election in Ward 15 Don Valley West is now posted. Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin coasted to victory after raising more than $82,000, with notable donations coming from MP Rob Oliphant, MPP Stephanie Bowman, former premier Kathleen Wynne and Wynne’s wife Jane Rounthwaite For second-place Anthony Furey, who outraised Chernos Lin with an $84,000 haul, notable donors included members of the Baruch family associated with Paradise Developments, members of the Eisenberger family associated with Fieldgate Homes, former Canadian Senator Linda Frum and husband Howard Sokolowski, 1Password founder Roustem Karimov and former CreateTO CEO Steven Trumper.
More from Matt: on Doug Ford, and Doug Ford (and a snow plowing wayback playback)
📰 For the Toronto Star last week, I wrote about Premier Doug Ford’s willingness to spend money on all kinds of stuff, but not — for some reason — the very real problem of homelessness. It’s a choice.
🗞️ For the Star this week, I cap off this sad, strange election with a look at how Ford has faced a lot of criticism for his big ideas, but not enough criticism for his bungling of basic services like Ontario Works and provincial tribunals.
Look for it in your favourite newspaper.
⏪ REWIND: With the snow lately, a lot of people are wondering what’s going on with Toronto’s snow contracts. I wrote about the many issues with the contracts and the service levels in December 2023. Not much has changed since.
The week at Toronto City Hall
MONDAY: 🚇 The TTC Board is meeting today — and is still meeting as of press time. I’ll have updates on their decisions in a future issue.
Interim TTC CEO Greg Percy’s monthly report confirms that a test project will begin in 2026 where cameras will be installed on four streetcars to catch drivers who blow past open doors at stops. The initial test phase will last nine months, and no tickets will be issued. BC-Based Gatekeeper Systems will be providing the tech.
TTC staff are also recommending against doing any further work to provide customers with Wi-Fi access. An analysis concludes that installing Wi-Fi on all bus and streetcar platforms would cost about $2.8 million from the capital budget and $3.3 million annually from the operating budget. For the same amount of operating funds, the report says, the TTC could provide 500 extra hours of transit service.
While we wait — and wait and wait and wait — for someone to step up and fund the Waterfront East LRT, the TTC Board is also dealing with a recommendation to install temporary bus lanes on Queens Quay East. A report notes bus service in the area has gotten significantly slower — with ten-minute increases in westbound travel times — as the population has grown. If approved, the bus lanes would go into effect in May.
Just before the meeting, board members added a couple of new items. Councillor Josh Matlow is asking for a report on improving the TTC’s response to snowy weather, while TTC commissioner Julie Osborne is asking for more prioritization of buses and streetcars. Specifically, she’d like an evaluation of “the impact of dedicating scarce arterial road infrastructure to vehicles that are not moving, i.e. street parking.”
Lastly, the new Richard Scarry-inspired TTC Ride Guide cover is pretty neat.
It’s fun to live in a busy town.
📚 The Library Board meets tonight. They’ll review a report on library fundraising in 2024, with notable donations from the estate of mandolin player Salvatore Brancaccio, CIBC CEO Victor Dodig & wife Maureen Dodig, and Phil Cowperwaithe & Sue Hunter.
TUESDAY: 🗂️ The General Government Committee meets.
The committee will consider a recommendation to suspend Duron Ontario, a construction company, for five years, making them ineligible to bid on any City contracts. A third-party investigation found “multiple anomalies” in Duron’s past business dealings with the City, including multiple instances of overbilling and falsified quotes and invoices.
Duron, for its part, says the suspension should be reduced because the amount of overbilling is small relative to the total value of Duron’s work for the City, and that they’ve already taken action to correct the issues that led to the overbilling. The City, however, seems especially concerned that only one of the two employees deemed responsible for the overbilling was fired. Duron says firing the other employee, named as “Ali” in their correspondence with the City, would have “negatively impacted project completion and City operations.”
Labour group LiUNA is also calling for leniency. After the committee weighs in, Council will have final say on whether the suspension is implemented at their March meeting.
Speaking of contrast, the committee will also consider some big ones, including $97.8 million for a new paramedic station on Progress Avenue, $128 million for a new rec centre in North York and $34 million for basement flooding protection in Councillor Brad Bradford’s ward.
Councillor Paul Ainslie, meanwhile, has noticed the online 311 system continues to ask residents to provide a fax number. He thinks that should be removed, as technology marches on.
WEDNESDAY: 📉 The Economic & Community Development Committee meets.
In response to news stories last year about a coffee trailer that was forced to shut down due to City bylaws, staff are proposing a pilot project in Ward 11 (University-Rosedale) that would permit “non-motorized refreshment vehicles” to serve food and drinks. A full review of the rules for street vending is due by the end of 2025.
Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik, meanwhile, is calling for the development of a Downtown Coyote Action Plan, with an initial report due in May on ways to manage the city’s coyote population. I suggest importing a bunch of roadrunners to distract them.
🚌 The City-School Boards Advisory Committee meets. They’ll talk about Mayor Olivia Chow’s push for a universal school food program, and ways to get kids to play more cricket.
🏆 Bid Award Panel contract award of the week: up to $1.5 million for waste pickup of diapers and menstrual products.
THURSDAY: ✅ The Compliance Audit Committee meets. Deborah Lechter, a co-founder of a company that sells booties for dogs, is alleging that advocacy group Progress Toronto was in violation of the Municipal Elections Act for its campaign against Anthony Furey in last fall’s Don Valley West by-election. Progress Toronto has fired back with a 14-page response.
🚧 The Infrastructure & Environment Committee meets. They’ll consider a package of bike lane installations spanning 12.5 kilometres.
The most significant projects will be “Complete Street” makeovers on Bathurst Street, between just south of Sheppard and Steeles, and Ellesmere Road in Scarborough.
In both cases, bike lanes will be built with no loss of car lanes — and presumably no chance of running afoul of the province’s Bill 212.
On the section of Bathurst Street, the report notes there were 107 pedestrians hit by vehicles between 2012 and 2022 and 36 cyclist collisions. Drivers typically travel between 66 and 73 km/h on the 50 km/h speed limit road.
The report also sneaks in a recommendation to approve a $168,000 staff position to look at ways to make the Eglinton & Allen Road intersection work better.
A report on the King Street Transit Priority corridor is light on new information but does mention that the City received a “record number of applications” from companies who say their tech can automate enforcement of “block-the-box” violations. Deployment of technology may start as early as Q2, but it will just be a test — no tickets will be issued.
Speaking of tickets, a report on the City’s anti-idling bylaw for vehicles suggests that the City has not issued a ticket to the driver of an idling vehicle since 2019. “Transportation Services’ experience continues to show that issuing warnings is the best method to obtain compliance,” the report says.
Transportation staff are recommending a design with two traffic lanes for a new street that’ll serve the massive development at Park Lawn and Lake Shore.
A new bylaw requiring buildings to report annually on energy and water use achieved a 64% compliance rate in the first phase. Staff are recommending some tweaks to the roll-out plan.
Buying a new “HTO TO Go” water trailer to provide cool, refreshing Toronto water to event attendees and during emergencies would cost $88,000, plus $118,000 in ongoing annual operating expenses, a report says. Short on funds, the water department is instead recommending that the City stick with the current fleet of two water trailers and make some deals with third parties to provide extra water trailers when needed.
🎭 The TO Live Board meets. Nowhere else will you find a CEO report that opens with an Ernest Hemingway quote about why circuses are neat.
FRIDAY: 🎖️ The Service Excellence Committee meets. They’ll review 311 data for 2024, showing that broken garage bin lids topped the chart for the most service requests with 22,647, beating out Dead Wildlife Pickup (19,791) and Injured Wildlife (19,119). Calls to 311 were answered on average within 47 seconds and handled in less than five minutes.
🐺 The Zoo Board meets. They’ll discuss… whether it’d be cool to genetically engineer a woolly mammoth?! Sure, why not?
The board will also review an attendance report noting that the 1.36 million guests that visited the zoo in 2024 represented the highest number since 2013, when the zoo welcomed a pair of Giant Pandas.
NEXT WEEK: A quiet week. CreateTO meets Monday. The Toronto Parking Authority meets Tuesday. Then everyone presumably gets away a couple of days early for March Break.
City Hall Watcher #320
Thanks for reading! And thanks to Madeleine for her work this week. I’m always on the hunt for great articles and analysis — if you’ve got a pitch, please reach out.
I’ll be back next week to usher in March like a lion with a brand new edition of LOBBYIST WATCH, looking back on the shortest and snowiest month.