I just came back from the capital budget open house at City Hall today, and there is good news for pedestrians in the City of Toronto’s 2007 capital budget.
First, the first stage of the Pedestrian Crossover Review recommendations, for pedestrian crossovers on major arterial roads, is fully funded ($3.63 million). That means that by the end of the year, we can expect to see crosswalks on major arterial roads made much more visible, with the most dangerous ones converted to full traffic lights.
Second, the city is going to fund the Bloor Street revitalization project to start this year ($12 million this year and the same next year), but the money will be repaid in full over the long term by the Bloor-Yorkville BIA. This arrangement solves the only main pedestrian problem with the original proposal, which was the disproportionate allocation of resources to this strip because of the disproportionate wealth of the BIA (edit – as Hamish points out, there are unresolved issues for cyclists). Now what is possibly the busiest pedestrian strip in the city will get an attractive pedestrian makeover, and it will cost the city very little in the long term (maybe some interest charges).
Third, the very best news is that the budget for the Civic Improvement Program, which makes significant enhancements to public pedestrian spaces when opportunities arise, has been something like doubled, to $3.0 million a year. It means they will be able to take advantage of twice as many opportunities as they did in the past, and really start to make a difference to Toronto’s walking experience. This is a real boost to the pedestrian realm in Toronto.
It possibly gets better, too. In addition to the boost to the Civic Improvement Program (which is run by City Planning), the Transportation Division has pledged to implement improved standards for the pedestrian realm, such as tree planting, special paving and lighting, on 20% of their road reconstruction projects. This means the Civic Improvement Program can focus on more specialized projects. It’s also a start towards systematically using road reconstruction projects to make Toronto a real walking city. At the moment, this is just a pledge, so it’s not clear to what extent this will actually be put into practice, but at least it’s down in writing.
One pedestrian item in the capital budget that I was not able to get more detailed information about was the missing sidewalk program, since it is subsumed into a general sidewalks budget. It’s a good program, but its budget ($2.0 million) hasn’t been increased since it began.
photo by Adam Krawesky
2 comments
Pardon me, but I remain somewhat unconvinced that the funding of the Bloor St. revitalization project is such a great thing – what about bikes? We are in great need of a decent east-west bike facility, but other routes have complications (eg. Queen’s Park) or streetcar tracks that prevent repainting for bike lanes and give extra hazards. And Bloor has the subway which eases access and thus on-street parking worries as some changes with parking in some areas is likely. At least the BYBIA has agreed to nix some of the on-street parking, but it’s not okay to ignore cycling safety for even wider sidewalks (they really are wide already and aren’t so jammed as some others – though the privatization of public spaces for merchandise etc. isn’t as pronounced on Bloor – yet)
Please don’t sign up as big fans when the Cycling Committee isn’t even being re-formed so it can’t be consulted until it’s too late. And the reports about the implications of the TaketheTooker bike lane to the Works Cttee and BofHealth are already about a year or is it 16 months past their initiation, so geez, all approved, too late?
$200,000 would repaint Bloor for 8kms of bike lane. Is there any other more logical space to squeeze cars a bit and favour bikes than beside a subway?
Please don’t sign up as big fans when the Cycling Committee isn’t even being re-formed
Actually, it is.