A new poll suggests an overwhelming majority of Torontonians do not support the long-term closure of sidewalks and traffic lanes in the city due to lengthy construction projects.
A recently released Forum Research poll, which randomly sampled 757 Toronto voters, found that 76 per cent of respondents don’t think contractors and developers should be allowed to close off traffic lanes and sidewalks for long-term projects. Only 15 per cent of those surveyed said they thought the closures were appropriate.
A little more than 50 per cent of respondents said traffic and sidewalk closures should not last for longer than a weekend and of those, about 16 per cent say the closures shouldn’t last for longer than one day. Only about 29 per cent say a week or two is an acceptable length of time for a closure.
“Torontonians are as fed up as Mayor Tory is with these constant lane closures and sidewalk diversions, Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff said in his analysis accompanying the poll.
“One has to ask, will Toronto ever be finished?"
The poll also found that nearly half of Torontonians agreed with the statement that “continuous construction downtown makes it difficult to get around.” Only approximately 23 per cent agreed that continuous downtown construction signals that the city is “thriving.”
A little more than 25 per cent of those surveyed said downtown construction doesn’t impact them at all.
"It does vary where you live in the city," Bozinoff said during an interview with CP24 Monday.
"If you live in Scarborough, you are pretty unaffected by the downtown traffic situation and that is what they also said in the poll. The majority of people in Scarborough are actually OK with blocking those roads... so it’s not a consensus that it is bothering everybody. It is just mainly in the downtown area."
The poll comes after Mayor John Tory vowed to take action against long-term construction closures in the city earlier this month.
In 2015, council voted in favour of hiking fees charged to developers who want to apply to block lanes of traffic or sidewalks but Tory said the increased costs have not had the desired impact.
“I tried the financial carrot and the results just aren’t good enough so now we will have to use the regulatory stick,” Tory told reporters on Oct. 11.
“I want it to be understood very clearly that the council approval of these kind of things going forward is not going to be a rubber stamp.”
The poll, which was conducted on Oct. 24, has a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent, 19 times out of 20.
