This opinion piece from the Toronto Star, by ARSC members Arlene Desjardins and Albert Koehl, was originally published almost 4 years ago – but little has changed in the interim.
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.
Today, we have the Avenue Road that Gardiner wanted. The sidewalks are so narrow — even before further reduction by bins or snow windrows — that people struggle to get by each other, especially if pushing strollers or using mobility devices. Some of the poles that Gardiner shoved back are in the middle of the sidewalk. Avenue also has 30,000 motor vehicles per day, with 85 per cent of them exceeding the posted speed limit, according to a pre-pandemic study.
