A day at Works Committee

It’s been a while since I sat in on the City of Toronto Public Works and Infrastructure Committee, but I went there last Tuesday to depute in favour of the City of Toronto’s new Walking Strategy.

I had forgotten how surreal city Committees can be. The day featured grandstanding, tangents, diversions, confusion and the periodic appearance of Denzil Minnan-Wong in his role as the Caped Car Crusader (well, he wasn’t actually caped, but he might as well have been).

I arrived as the committee was hearing deputations on the proposals to improve the streetscape of Roncesvalles.  The city is proposing to take advantage of the fact that the street needs to be torn up for water projects and streetcar track rebuilding to create more room for pedestrians and sidewalk amenities by creating “bump-outs” at some corners and widening sidewalks in one or two places, which they can achieve by turning the current curb lanes used mainly for parking into parking bays. Very few parking spots will be lost — but despite the fact that there will still be about 220 parking spaces and the peak observed demand for parking was only 197 spaces, local residents still showed up to complain about the loss of parking spaces. One woman said that some of the parking was several blocks from where the peak demand was — presumably a few minute’s walk is simply too inconvenient.

I was impressed, though, that representatives from the Roncesvalles BIA and from local resident’s associations came to strongly support the proposals. One group of local residents, to alleviate parking concerns, did a “parking convenience study” where they counted parked cars on 21 different occasions. They didn’t just count total cars and parking spaces, either — they specifically looked to see if there was parking available within a block in the busiest parts of the street. They discovered that there were always some parking spots available within a block of any particular location, even at peak times. Maybe the city should study this methodology as a way of alleviating these typical parking concerns. In the end, the committee approved the proposal unanimously.

The next item was the City’s new Walking Strategy — a broad, strategic document that outlines a vision for making Toronto a more walkable city, and identifies 46 actions to make that happen, including some important, fundamental shifts in City policies and processes and some innovative pilot programs.

But that’s not what the discussion was about. No, many minutes of debate — and all of the press coverage — focused on one of the most minor proposals in the document, the idea of adding “no-right-turn” provisions to 10 new intersections in Toronto (in addition to the 98 that already exist, and out of some 2,000 intersections in the city).

The media headlines portrayed this as “Toronto banning right turns”, and Minnan-Wong appeared at the committee in defense of drivers to complain that  it would impede vehicles (not apparently considering that cars turning right on red might impede pedestrians. Pedestrians are traffic too). He said that Toronto “is conducting a deliberate campaign against drivers.” Councillor Palacio introduced a motion for the issue to be further studied.

Most of the committee then took Minnan-Wong’s arguments to pieces. Councillor Carroll pointed out that at the intersections that were being considered, pedestrian traffic was so heavy cars probably couldn’t turn on reds anyway. Councillor Perks pointed out sarcastically all of the events (e.g. Blue Jays games) that cause much worse congestion in Toronto. Councillor Vaughan showed up to point out that congestion is a positive sign of a vibrant city — you can go to Detroit or Buffalo to find no congestion — a point that Councillor Perks reiterated.

Councillor Carroll also pointed out that in the centre of the city, where people have other options to get around, traffic may move slowly, but there is rarely gridlock, whereas in suburban areas (such as the one she represents) where there are few travel options other than the car, there is regular gridlock during rush hour.

Councillors Giambrone and De Baeremaeker thankfully then moved the issue to the bigger picture, Giambrone pointing out that the centre of the city has been able to move increasingly large numbers of people in a restricted space because they are using modes other than cars, and De Baeremaeker pronouncing the whole strategy “fabulous” and expressing pleasure that it recognizes the needs of suburban areas for better walking environments. In the end Palacio’s motion was defeated, and the Walking Strategy passed unanimously.

It was ironic, then, that the first thing the committee did after lunch was nix a project that embodied the Walking Strategy’s goals of creating better streetscapes for pedestrians. When the Jarvis Street Streetscape proposal to remove a lane on Jarvis came up the committee, as expected, rejected the staff recommendation to use the space to create a tree-lined sidewalk boulevard, and instead voted to adopt Councillor Rae’s motion (introduced by Councillor Perks) to use it to create bike lanes. I wasn’t able to stay for this drama, but Hamutal Dotan wrote an account on Torontoist. Apparently Minnan-Wong appeared again to defend drivers, along with many deputants from north of Bloor complaining that their 8-minute commute along Jarvis would now be 10 or more minutes. In a city region where the average commute is more like an hour, it’s hard to imagine how they would think they would get much sympathy.

What’s remarkable is just how confused the mainstream media is about what happened. They (Star, Post, Globe, though Barber gets it) are still reporting that there will be more trees and wider sidewalks as well as bike lanes (to be clear — the Environmental Assessment report clearly states that there will be no new trees, no widened sidewalks, and only limited pedestrian improvements with the bike lane option). They are also reporting the cost as around $6 million, when in fact the cost of the bike lane proposal is around $3 million (which was, presumably, part of its appeal). As with the Walking Strategy, the media seems to gravitate to the simplest conflict story (red light turn restrictions, drivers vs. a nicer street) and have a hard time digesting and presenting more complex underlying and complicating factors about what is going on.