The Avenue Road Safety Coalition (ARSC) represents the concerns of the residents and visitors to Avenue Road who walk and cycle between Bloor Street and St. Clair Avenue. We embody the City’s Planning Objective to “create the right balance of space for pedestrians, cyclists, transit and vehicles.”
This 2.1-kilometre stretch of Avenue Road between St. Clair Avenue and Bloor Street West is a six-lane, high-speed road that is unsafe and hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. The sidewalks are substandard and dangerously narrow, especially when considering the speeding cars and trucks.
September update
Thanks to your efforts and your continued support of the Avenue Road Safety Coalition we are moving steadily towards our goal of making Avenue Road SAFE for all.
Mark your calendars
The City of Toronto will be holding an open house on October 19, 2023, to show their proposals for Avenue Road and to receive your feedback, comments and ideas. In advance of the open house, they will be circulating another survey.
Join our mailing list to get a notification of the time and place for the open house as soon as it is announced. We will provide further updates and information about how you can participate in these important next steps.
Watch our video to learn about our history and goals and help us make Avenue Road safe for all.
We are looking forward to our continued collaboration with you on this important road safety initiative.
Featured
Toronto East York Community Council Video – April 12, 2023
The Avenue Road Study Update
The City’s Avenue Road Study is currently in progress with the goal “to find opportunities to improve the street with emphasis on safety, mobility choices, and enhancing streetscape. Streets are places where everyone should feel safe, comfortable and connected.”
The Phase 1 survey results have been published. The results affirm that safety improvements for all users along the Avenue Road corridor is a top priority.
Toronto cyclist outraged but lucky to be alive after being struck by school bus
Disaster barely averted at Avenue Rd. & Cottingham
A Toronto cyclist is still shaken after narrowly escaping serious injury in a collision with a bus this past summer, and demands changes to the car-centric road conditions in neighbourhoods north of the core.
News
Montreal’s Mayor Reclaims a Famous Road From Cars and Trucks
Camillien-Houde Way, the road that winds up Montreal’s iconic Mount Royal, will be closed to most vehicles, the mayor of Montreal announced Wednesday.
Mayor Valérie Plante presented what she called an “ambitious vision” for the road at a news conference on Wednesday. It will be reserved for pedestrians and cyclists but emergency vehicles will be able to use it when needed, she said.
“We’re taking out the asphalt and we’re putting in trees,” she said.
We’re Taking New York City’s Streets Back — and Then We’re Coming for the Rest of the Country
Over the summer, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority held meetings to discuss how to organize its congestion pricing toll for drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street…
…The fury around congestion pricing is part of a larger debate that has animated a great deal of big city politics of late: Who owns the streets? The public right of way can occupy as much as one-third of the land in big U.S. cities, and various residents have begun to ask if there might be better things to do with all that territory than moving and storing cars.
Wider Sidewalks Now Video
Fixing Sam’s Road: the urban design disaster of Avenue Road
Avenue Road is the enduring legacy of Sam Cass. Very enduring.
Cass was the traffic engineer hired by the new Metro Toronto government created in 1954 to federate the city of Toronto and 12 other local municipalities. His task was to create a network of roads that would bring people efficiently into the downtown core and take them back to their suburban homes at night. That was the post-war vision of the city.
ARSC in the News
‘Our family is shattered’: Relatives mourn death of Sheridan College student at dangerous Toronto intersection
Kartik Saini, 20, died after being struck and dragged by a pickup at St. Clair Avenue and Yonge Street on Wednesday afternoon.
Parveen Saini says his family has “lost everything” after his 20-year-old nephew Kartik Saini, an international student from India, was struck and killed by a pickup truck driver making an apparent illegal right turn on Wednesday in Toronto.
Cyclist death renews calls for improved road safety
Albert Koehl, Avenue Road Safety Coalition, is calling for a redesign of Avenue Road to improve safety.
City News reporter Melissa Nakhavoly speaks to the investments some would like the city to make to prevent deadly incidents from occurring.
New proposal would turn part of high-speed Toronto road into a linear park
A group of concerned citizens and an architecture firm are proposing to create a new linear park along Avenue Road to improve walkability and safety.
The proposal calls for the stretch of Avenue between Bloor Avenue West and St. Clair Avenue West to be reduced from six lanes of traffic down to four, which would allow for sidewalks to be widened 240 per cent from their current width and accommodate 500 new trees.