Dear Councillors Mike Colle, Josh Matlow and Jaye Robinson
The EPRA board is very aware of the heavy, and often aggressive, car traffic that the mid-town area has experienced in these past years of LRT construction. Drivers have been using residential streets to avoid choke points on major arteries. As a consequence, many drivers are treating residential streets as if they were arterial roads, speeding, honking, and making pedestrians unsafe.
Such actions are hard on neighbourhoods; they degrade the civility of urban life. They are particularly dangerous in an area that is host to many schools, and is home to high levels of school-related pedestrian traffic.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has shown us the opportunities to use shared streets for pedestrians, cyclists, and people traveling by scooter and skateboard. In a very crowded, park-short part of Toronto, the streets are a precious public space, but one that is contested, and sometimes dangerous.
Clearly, we need devices, changes in street architecture, and in the rules, and their enforcement, to calm and reclaim the streets for residents.
But we cannot do so without a good understanding of the future shape of traffic flow.
At the moment, between the pandemic and the LRT construction, traffic flows are not in a normal state. So long as downtown offices are shut, commuters are shying from transit, and consumers are opting for curbside pick-up, the flows and bottlenecks are different.
What we need for Midtown is a study and plan for what traffic should look like two or three years from now. How can we tame the motorists who pass through this rapidly changing, and fast-growing urban node while serving the city’s transportation needs? We have in mind is a plan covering the mid-town area defined by Avenue Road and Mount Pleasant, from Lawrence to Davisville, And we envision a plan that focuses on the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, as well as transit, trucks and cars, and that looks to the vitality of the main-street businesses.
To our eye, this should be a city project, linked with the goals of Mid-town in Focus, and championed by the three local councillors whose interests converge here.
Best wishes,
Tom Cohen
Chair, EPRA
cc SERRA, RRA, QUORRA, Oriole Park RA, LPRO, SKC, ARECA, and EPRA board
Eglinton Park Residents' Association 
Leave a comment