Working for Safe Sidewalks on Avenue Road between Bloor St. & St. Clair Ave.
PaddyD 
The Avenue Road Safety Coalition (ARSC) is applauding recent efforts by the City of Toronto to improve road safety along Avenue Road, following a series of tragic accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists, including two major incidents — the April 30 cyclist fatality near the Avenue Road construction site and the Oct. 2 pedestrian injury at the intersection of Avenue Road and Davenport Road.
A new report from the City of Toronto shows that by far the most vulnerable road users are pedestrians.
The report says that 29 pedestrians were killed and 134 seriously injured after being struck by vehicles on Toronto’s streets in 2023. Data collected by the City also indicates the riskiest locations for pedestrians – including mid-block (uncontrolled) crossings, and intersections, particularly when drivers are turning left.
The ARSC has been and will continue to be particularly focused on pedestrian safety on Avenue Road, as we work toward implementation of further phases of the Avenue Road safety improvement plan.
Join Friends and Families for Safe Streets at Queen’s Park at 4:30 p.m. for a 5 p.m. start time. This event features speakers personally devastated by road violence, a memorial name-reading ceremony, and a candle-lit march around Queen’s Park.
Join FFSS in demanding that the provincial government not pass Bill 212 and not rip out our safest and most-used complete streets, along with preventing safe streets from being built anywhere else in the province. If our safe streets are ripped out and other municipalities are not allowed to build them, more people will be killed in crashes that would otherwise have been prevented.
Another pedestrian was seriously injured this afternoon on Avenue Road near Davenport. The collision involved a pedestrian, and three cars. One car jumped the curb onto the sidewalk. The pedestrian was transferred to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
Road safety improvements on Avenue Road are scheduled to start soon, which unfortunately was not soon enough to prevent another injury.
Aside from their negligible impact on car travel times, bike lanes get more people onto bikes by providing them a faster, safer option. That makes the lives of those cyclists better, and also means there are fewer cars on the road.
If Ford is actually concerned with moving cars better, he could accomplish that goal much more effectively by leaving bike lanes alone and joining Toronto’s fight to prevent blocking intersections through automatic camera enforcement power, and sharing more dollars for traffic wardens.
Thank you for meeting with the Avenue Road Safety Coalition representatives on July 23 to discuss the City’s installed and planned improvements for Avenue Road between Davenport and Dupont.
The Avenue Road Safety Coalition is pleased with the progress made since May 9 and the news that work is proceeding quickly to complete some of the construction this season. The reduction to 4 lanes, a key ARSC goal to encourage slower speeds, is approved for the first kilometre. Since Council approved the revisions, we have seen tangible progress with the bike lanes, the design for pedestrian improvements between Davenport and Dupont are underway and that the much-needed signalized mid-block pedestrian crosswalk will be completed in sync with the sidewalk improvements over the next few months.
After years of writing about traffic enforcement and pedestrian and cyclist safety, I became convinced that Toronto police either just don’t like or don’t respect policing the roads, and the leadership doesn’t see good reason to change that.
A former police officer told Habibinia much the same. There is a long-standing culture inside the police service where traffic enforcement is not considered “real police work” compared to “sexy” crime-fighting. Yet city hall, which sets the police budget, believes gridlock is a major problem, for people and for the economy.
For too long, society accepted that death was a fact of life on the roads. It was the cost of convenience to move from A to B as fast as possible in a car. We call crashes “accidents,” even when the causes, from driver speed to road design, are deliberate choices. It’s a cultural problem that such incidents are viewed as ordinary.
Cities must redouble their efforts to make change happen.
There’s a certain anxiety that activates when some of us pedestrians push the button to activate one of Toronto’s standalone pedestrian crossovers. You take a deep breath as the overhead …
A researcher has measured how “claustrophobic” New York’s sidewalks are by gathering data on all of the people, benches, trash cans, bus shelters, bicycle racks and clutter in the way.
Any New Yorker who regularly walks around the city quickly learns which sidewalks are a pleasure to navigate and which are more like obstacle courses. Some are wide enough to stroll two, maybe three people across. Some are so narrow and crowded that it’s easier to just walk in the street, despite the danger.
The Avenue Road Safety Coalition (ARSC), established seven years ago, is dedicated to enhancing pedestrian safety on Avenue Road by advocating for reduced speeds and wider, safer, and more accessible sidewalks. We commend Councillor Saxe and City Council members for recognizing the need for site-specific road safety improvements along the 2.1 km stretch of Avenue Road. ARSC fully supports the recommendation to reduce Avenue Road from Davenport to Dupont to four lanes and to install a signalized crosswalk at the entrance to Ramsden Park. This milestone will significantly improve safety for all users.
Raquel won’t ride her bike north on Avenue Rd., from Bloor St., because she says the section of road is too dangerous to navigate.
A May 13 report from City Hall said that stretch of roadway will have its six-lanes reduced to four and see the implementation of bike lanes to help prevent future cyclist fatalities, of which there have been three since 2015.