Author: Barb Moore

Paris is taking space back from cars. Here’s how.

SLATE.com: Over the past six years, Paris has done more than almost any city in the world to take space back from cars. Mayor Anne Hidalgo has opened linear parks in the old highways along the Seine, phased out diesel cars in the city, opened bus lanes, raised parking meter prices, and plowed bike lanes down hundreds of streets. When COVID hit, Paris eliminated cars from the Rue de Rivoli, its major crosstown thoroughfare. Plans are in the works to pedestrianize the Champs-Elysées and plant thousands of trees to green, clean, and cool the city.

READ MORE HERE

New Linear Park for Avenue Road

trnto.com: The vision comes from Brown + Storey Architects Inc. and is in collaboration with the Avenue Road Safety Coalition (ARSC), a group of residents advocating for Avenue Road to be safer.

READ MORE HERE

Cyclist death renews calls for improved road safety

Toronto.CityNews.ca: Albert Koehl, Avenue Road Safety Coalition, is calling for a redesign of Avenue Road to improve safety. Melissa Nakhavoly speaks to the investments some would like the city to make to prevent deadly incidents from occurring.

READ MORE HERE

Fixing Sam’s Road

Spacing.ca: Council will need to decide if Sam Cass and Fred Gardiner’s 1950s vision should rule the Toronto of today or if it’s time to heed the call of residents who want to reclaim their streets and rebuild them according to 21^st century attitudes and priorities.

READ MORE HERE

Making Avenue Road humane and efficient

The Star: Avenue Road is currently “an urban speedway cutting through the neighbourhood.” It is basically a six-lane highway, and the design encourages fast traffic, speeding. The sidewalk is too narrow, especially for seniors, people with strollers, and people with accessibility issues.

Avenue Road is not safe for anyone now.

This redesign put forward by local residents and the Avenue Road Safety Coalition looks fabulous.
A better road design, with wider sidewalks, more green space, and lower speed limits, will make Avenue Road safer for everyone.

READ MORE HERE

High-speed Avenue Road to become a linear park

Toronto Urbanized: “ …reverse the dramatic road widening of the 1950s that narrowed sidewalks and uprooted trees”

READ MORE HERE

Too Fast. Too Furious.
The Avenue Road Safety Coalition has a solution.

READ MORE HERE

Local group wants city to act now and change Avenue Road

TRNTO.com
85 per cent of drivers speed down the stretch between Bloor and St. Clair

Karen Stintz: “According to a traffic study that was conducted before the pandemic, the 2.1-kilometre stretch of Avenue Road carries 30,000 vehicles per day, and 85 per cent of drivers exceed the 50 km/h speed limit. Compounding the problem is that the sidewalks are less than two metres wide.”

READ MORE HERE

Plan to widen sidewalks on Avenue Road is set for community council

Residents must now tread carefully along narrow sidewalks on the hilly, high-speed stretch between St. Clair West and Bloor.

NowToronto.com

Avenue Road says a lot about our city, even if it’s no longer what we want to hear.
The hilly, six-lane stretch between St. Clair West and Bloor literally roars with speeding motor traffic. In some spots, pedestrians tread cautiously along narrow sidewalks separated from the road by one-metre high corrugated steel guardrails.

READ MORE HERE

Toronto’s photo radar cameras are catching thousands of speeders, so why doesn’t the city add more?

CBC.ca

By all accounts Toronto’s 50 photo-radar cameras are doing their job — issuing 22,000 tickets in just one month this summer. But the city says there are currently no plans to acquire more, and that has road safety advocates wondering why.

‘Cars go fast, governments go slow’

“Cars go fast, governments go slow,” said Albert Koehl, coordinator with the Avenue Road Safety Coalition. He points out that 50 cameras for the entire city is just one camera for approximately every 100 kilometres of road.

“When it comes to making roads safe, governments take an extremely cautious approach to ensure that speeders have a generous amount of time to adjust, and yet the roads are dangerous today, people are dying and being seriously injured today,” said Koehl.

READ MORE HERE