The headline recommendation from a new Toronto Public Health Report, Road to Health: Improving Walking and Cycling in Toronto, is reducing speed limits in the City of Toronto: reducing the limit on residential roads from 40 km/hr to 30 km/hr, and reducing the "default" speed limit on other roads (where no specific speed is posted) from 50 km/hr to 40 km/hr. Note: this recommendation has been widely misinterpreted to be that all roads should be 40 km/hr, but in fact it's only for the default non-posted speed. Higher posted speeds (e.g. 60 km/hr) would override it. To be fair, the actual section in the report (p.50) is ambiguous, but the agenda linked to in the first paragraph is clear. (Correction: Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale followed up with the Medical Officer of Health on this question. His position is, in fact, that 60 km/hr limits should be reduced to 40, but there would be exceptions where posted. I find this position ambiguous and politically unfeasible. As well, it is too much in conflict with the speed invited by the infrastructure of these roads. So I would continue to advocate the position I originally thought was indicated in the Board of Health agenda -- that the default speed should be dropped to 40 where no other speed is posted). The recommendation comes at a particularly apt time for me. In addition to the many reasons for this proposal from a pedestrian and cyclist safety perspective, I have just started experiencing our roads from another perspective: that of a driver. I recently started taking driving lessons (a refresher course because I haven't been behind the wheel for 20+ years). One of the first things that I noticed, while driving along a residential road with a theoretical speed limit of 40 km/hr but actually moving at 25 km/hr to get over the regular speed bumps smoothly, was that current speed limits in Toronto don't make a lot of sense.

Ever since City Council absent-mindedly agreed to let Astral Media redesign their information pillars last summer, and then realized how obnoxious they were once they started to be installed in the fall, it has been trying to find a way to rectify or at least alleviate the problem. The Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, to its credit, last fall admitted it made a mistake and asked staff to find ways to at least manage their installation better. At PWIC's meeting this week, staff presented their report and proposed guidelines (PDF). It was pretty clear that the City cannot get the pillars redesigned again (without taking a financial hit, that is), but the report did propose some guidelines to improve their placement.  Deputants such as the Harbord Village Residents' Association and People Plan Toronto, however, argued that the proposed guidelines had some weaknesses.

The new report from Toronto Public Health, The Walkable City: Neighbourhood Design and Preferences, Travel Choices and Health (PDF), provides a crucial statistic that has been missing from many previous reports on people's travel modes to work: how many people walk or bike part of the way to work through getting to their transit stop. It turns out it's almost a third of commuters - 31%. Here's the table listing travel modes (p.28) (consult the report for the survey methodology): Unfortunately they don't break the number up between walking and cycling, but I think, given the minimal amount of bike parking available at most transit stops, the fact bikes can't travel on rail transit during rush hour, and that there's only two bike carrying racks on buses, it's safe to assume most of that is walking. (Which also highlights the need for the TTC to make it easier to bike to transit). So, if you add the number of people who just walk to work and the number that walk to a transit stop, probably over 40% of people in Toronto walk as part of their daily commute.

Yesterday, Toronto's Medical Officer of Health released a new report by Toronto Public Health, The Walkable City: Neighbourhood Design and Preferences, Travel Choices and Health (PDF). It will be discussed at the Board of Health meeting next Monday, April 2 (deputations can be made). The report is fascinating, and I'll be discussing it more in the next issue of Spacing, but here are a few quick thoughts. The map above (p.8) shows Toronto's walkability, with the lighter portions indicating greater walkablity ('utilitarian walkability" being how easy it is to walk to do utilitarian things -- get to work, shop -- as opposed to for pure recreation). It's striking how much high walkability follows the boundaries of the old City of Toronto. There are a couple of additional areas of high walkability in two of the areas designated by the official plan as "centres", in North York and Etobicoke, which reinforces the finding of a recent study that the "centres" concept is working to some extent. The report also confirms the findings of many studies: that people who live in highly walkable areas walk more and are less likely to be in danger of obesity than those in car-oriented areas. More interestingly, it helps to answer the debate about why that is the case: whether neighbourhood walkability encourages people to walk, or people who like walking just self-select into walkable locations.

Walking down Carlaw after I moved to the east end not long ago, I noticed something very strange - just south of Gerrard St. East and Carlaw, you pass ANOTHER Gerrard St. East, this one a little residential road. Digging back in archival maps, it looks like the reason was that, at first, the tunnel under the tracks was at Carlaw, and Gerrard St. diverted slightly to meet the tunnel at Carlaw in a complicated intersection. You can see this in a 1913 map (click on section ...

Mayor Ford's obsession with the Sheppard subway may have inadvertently broken open the political conundrum of sustained long-term funding for transit infrastructure in the GTA and Hamilton. It's easy to forget that the $8.4 billion for new transit infrastructure that Toronto's mayor and council are currently fighting over is intended to be just a downpayment. In Metrolinx's "The Big Move" plan, these funds are merely there to kick-start a much bigger, GTA-wide system of new transit lines that will be funded by the region itself. Metrolinx is supposed to come up with a plan for this funding by 2013, to the tune of at least $2 billion a year (yes, there is that much transit that needs building). There's no doubt this plan will have to involve significantly increased revenue generation -- that is, taxes and fees -- and the prospect of releasing such plans to the public has been a cause of considerable apprehension, to say the least, in political and expert circles. The plan's deadline was, in fact, delayed to 2013 so that it wouldn't be an issue in the provincial election.

Yesterday (PDF), Toronto's Design Review Panel looked at the new "InfoToGo" info/ad pillars installed by Astral Media as part of the city's street furniture contract, which have received a lot of criticism. Josh Fullan of People Plan Toronto attended the review and gave this report to the Walking Toronto Facebook group, which he has allowed us to share here. Good news: the Design Review Panel discussed the info pillars today and agreed that the placement and more importantly ...

Last fall, I went on a community walk in Rivertowne, a new development north-west of Queen E. and Broadview that combines public and market townhouses. The residents have been concerned by cars speeding through the development, especially on the rebuilt Munro St., which provides a clear route for cars, but also on other streets and laneways. Their concern is heightened by the fact that there are many children in the neighbourhood, and at least one has been hit, fortunately without serious injury. There were speedbumps in one laneway, and the residents hoped for others to slow traffic on Munro, but speedbumps are not always easy. Emergency services don't like them, and they require a traffic study that demonstrates certain conditions are met that make them necessary in order for staff to recommend them. The situation got me thinking about the other methods that are available to calm traffic on residential streets, many of which are also more subtle than speed bumps. In some cases, these other methods are also cheaper and easier to implement. Most of them have additional benefits that enhance the street and the community, in a way that speed bumps don't. So here's a list of a few alternative strategies to calm traffic and create a more appealing residential street environment, starting with some that are quick and low-cost to implement.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the potential for Leslie Street from Queen E. to Lake Shore to be turned into a gateway to the Leslie Street Spit and eastern waterfront when the TTC lays down tracks for its new car shed. Last week I attended a community meeting about the project where many community members brought up this issue with the City and TTC staff present. Staff replied to the community's desire to at least investigate bike lane possibilities by stating that it was not part of the original Environmental Assessment or traffic study, whose mandates were restricted to assessing the impact of building the tracks, and as a result there was no analysis of this option. It was frustrating, because without studies no-one had enough information to assess and discuss the viability of bike lanes and what the impact would be (e.g. on parking). Everyone was talking blind. It became clear that the City really needs to change its processes to look at not just the impact, but also the potential, for any street where major work is being planned.

The City of Toronto has an opportunity to transform Leslie Street into a welcoming gateway to the Leslie Street Spit and the eastern waterfront, but is currently on course to ignore this opportunity. Creating attractive new routes to the waterfront is a core element of Waterfront Toronto's plans. In its maps (above), Leslie St. is presented as one of the key routes targeted for such transformation -- the easternmost entrance to the waterfront, and the direct route to one of its jewels, the Leslie Street Spit. Leslie Street becomes all the more significant because the Leslie Street Spit/Tommy Thompson Park is expected to stop being a dumping ground for construction debris, possibly as soon as 2013. While it is currently only open to the public on weekends because of the dumping during the week, once it is no longer a dumping ground it is likely to become a permanent full-time park, used by the public every day. Leslie Street will be a primary route to the park for those on bikes, and those travelling by transit on the Queen streetcar and then walking.