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Speed camera over road

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

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,” 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.

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Avenue Road sidewalks on garbage day

Avenue Road needs wider sidewalks and lower speeds

Avenue Road, a six-lane, high-speed motorway running through the heart of Toronto, no longer fits with contemporary ideas about road safety or with the schools, parks, residential towers and seniors’ residences in its path.

Avenue Road, a six-lane, high-speed motorway running through the heart of Toronto, no longer fits with contemporary ideas about road safety or with the schools, parks, residential towers and seniors’ residences in its path.

The 2.1-kilometre stretch between Bloor Street West and St. Clair Avenue West was widened in 1959 by the old Metro government by chopping down trees and pilfering space from sidewalks.

Metro’s priority, to move as many cars as quickly as possible, was clear. “I would cut five or six feet off many sidewalks, shove the poles back and create two new lanes for traffic,” Metro chair Fred Gardiner told the Toronto Star in 1953.

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Fixing Avenue Road

SpacingTORONTO: The car wins on Avenue Road. It always does. The pattern of valuing the convenience of drivers over everything else has been fixed since 1959, when the city chopped …

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Avenue Rd. and Dupont

Walking on a tightrope next to a highway

Avenue Road is known for high-end shopping, posh hotels, and multiple private schools. It’s also known, some residents say, for having dangerously-narrow sidewalks alongside heavy traffic.

“It’s unsafe right now,” said Albert Koehl, a member of the Avenue Road Safety Coalition. “This street is no longer consistent with a modern downtown area.” Koehl, a 25-year resident of midtown Toronto, is among those calling on the city to consider widening the sidewalks alongside the busy six-lane arterial road.

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