Toronto can’t handle any more cars, mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat says.
“It’s not about not wanting cars about downtown, it’s about the fact that there’s not any more room, there’s no more room, like we’re out of space in the downtown,” Keesmaat said in an interview. “It’s a capacity problem.”
In a recent Q&A with Toronto Life, published Sept. 17, Keesmaat was quoted saying that when she was the city’s chief planner, she sometimes made recommendations that weren’t approved by council.
“And, yes, as a professional, I disagreed — 20 years of planning policy disagreed as well. Like rebuilding a crumbling expressway when we don’t want more cars downtown. But once council voted, I was always silent,” she said.
The Gardiner Expressway was at capacity 10 years after it was built, she said.
The majority of commuters, 68%, come into the downtown on transit compared to 3% on the Gardner Expressway, she said.
“That’s the problem in our city right now is that we’ve been adding more people but we haven’t been adding excellent transit in every corner of the city,” she said. “So that taking transit can be a first choice for everyone.”
Her transit plan includes the LRTs and the Downtown Relief Line, she said.
Keesmaat also wants to bring bike lanes, including to the suburbs, which she says will make streets safer for all users.
When asked if taking out car lanes to accommodate bike lanes, as the city has been doing throughout the downtown, has created self-inflicted gridlock, Keesmaat said that she’s talking about increasing choices for people to get around.
“We have a finite amount of space, we’ve a limited amount of space in the city,” she said. “And the challenge is that people need the best choice to get wherever they’re going. And we know that when we increase those choices that people take us up on them.”
Keerthana Kamalavasan, a spokesperson for Mayor John Tory, said in a statement that cars are still a necessity for many in the city.
“The job of the mayor is not to make life more difficult for drivers and businesses,” she said. “It is to provide more and better options for people and goods and services to move around the city quickly and efficiently.”
Tory has championed a transit plan building multiple projects at the same time, having secured $9 billion in funding, she said.
“We want to encourage people to get out of their cars by giving them better options — and more and safer bike lanes are part of that,” Kamalavasan said. “But forcing them out of their cars by increasing congestion and making life miserable is something the mayor won’t do.”
Tory has launched a crackdown on people parking illegally and blocking traffic lanes in rush hour, sped up construction that takes over lanes of traffic and brought traffic constables to busy intersections, she said.
Raymond Chan, a spokesperson for CAA South Central Ontario, said important issues like gridlock and infrastructure management haven’t had a lot of traction in this mayoral campaign.
The Toronto municipal campaign has been dominated so far by the provincial-city fight over the size of council.
“What we at the CAA would actually really like to see is these conversations being had by the various mayoral candidates in the campaign,” Chan said. “There many commuters that really rely on vehicles to get where they’re going each and every single day.
“Let’s face it: congestion is a reality in Toronto,” he added.
Congestion on the GTA 400-series of highways, which are a provincial responsibility, were at the top of CAA’s list of Canada’s worst bottlenecks in 2015 with Hwy. 401 between Hwy. 427 and Yonge St. at number one.
The DVP/404 between Don Mills Rd. And Finch Ave. was deemed the second worst bottleneck for motorists in the country, while the Gardiner Expressway, between South Kingsway and Bay St. ranked number four. Black Creek Dr. between Weston Rd. And Trethewey Dr. was number 12.
A CAA report makes a number of recommendations to improve the flow of traffic, classifying as “low hanging fruit” the re-timing of traffic lights, better managing the response to breakdowns and collisions, implementing speed limits that adjust to traffic flow, and regulating the volume of traffic entering highways.
“Dollars spent on the worst choke points are dollars best spent,” the report says. “Beyond that, urban congestion can also be combated through investments in ride-sharing, carpooling, bike sharing and bicycle infrastructure.”
The CAA was in favour of keeping the section of the Gardiner Expressway – the link to the DVP – that council at one point in the past term debated tearing down.
A resounding majority of CAA members surveyed agreed that highway infrastructure was vital, he said.
As for bike lanes replacing lanes of car traffic, as happened on Bloor St., Chan said it is definitely an issue for the motoring public.
The CAA is supportive of pilot projects that allow for a data-driven assessment of initiatives like bike lanes, he said.
“It’s really something that needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis… in order to determine if projects like permanent cycle lanes are actually viable for the area that they’re being proposed in,” Chan said.
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