Downtown and East York councillors have voted unanimously in favour of a proposal to reduce the speed limit on residential streets in the city’s core to 30 kilometres per hour.
“I’m very pleased,” Coun. Mary Fragedakis said following Monday night’s vote.
“I’ve heard nothing but complaints for the last four-and-a-half years about road safety, about the speeding that’s going on through our communities.”
Coun. Joe Cressy called it a good news story.
“This is a wonderful thing because it’s about safety,” he said. “This is about safety – of Toronotians, of residents, of families, of children.
“What this means, I hope, it’s the start of what will grow across the city. I think you’re going to see lots of councillors in North York, and Scarborough, and Etobicoke, say you know what, we want our streets to be safe too in residential neighbourhoods.”
The idea, which will affect 387 kilometres of local roads that fall within the Toronto and East York community council’s jurisdiction, was initially put forward by Coun. Josh Matlow after a seven-year-old girl was struck and killed by a vehicle in Leaside last August.
At the time, the Ward 22 councillor cited a 2012 report from the Chief Medical Officer of Health that suggested that pedestrians have a 20 per cent chance of dying when hit by a vehicle travelling at 50 km/h and only a five per cent chance of death when that vehicle is travelling at 40 km/h.
Discussing the proposal with CP24 on Monday, Ward 14 Parkdale-High Park Coun. Gord Perks said it really boils down to designing safer, more pedestrian-friendly streets.
“The way we design our streets depends on how fast we want traffic to move,” he said. “If we decide that they are 30 km/h that makes it easier to put in speed bumps, to narrow the roadway by widening sidewalks and all that good stuff that over time will make our residential streets safer.”
While a number of councillors and resident have spoken out about the benefits of lower speed limits, others have raised questions about how effective a blanket reduction would really be.
In a staff report released last week General Manager of Transportation Services Stephen Buckley urged the Toronto and East York Community Council to not uniformly lower speed limits and instead use the city’s existing 30 km/h speed limit policy to lower the posted limits in neighbourhoods where there are safety concerns.
“We don’t necessarily feel that such a posting would be adhered to by a lot of drivers,” Buckley said of a city-wide 30 km/h limit in an interview with CP24 last week. “Sometimes the design cues from the streets are going to encourage people to go a little faster, so we don’t want to give people a false sense of security.”
While the Toronto and East York Community Council can decide to lower speed limits, city council as a whole have to approve any expenditures resulting from the move.
The total cost of lowering speed limits on residential streets is believed to be about $1.1 million due to the need for new signage and the retiming of traffic lights.
“From my observations of people driving on local roads it is unnecessary because I think people do carry on at a reasonable speed and 30 km/h is really, really slow,” Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong told CP24 on Monday morning. “Number two, in terms of enforcement, police can’t enforce the 40 km/h and 50 km/h speed limits now.”
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