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I also think it's worthwhile to at least try the approaches available. Yes, we may be fobbed off, but it's worthwhile to get our concerns on paper and not declare defeat before we try.

I'm not sure if there's an advocacy group that would help push walkability and safety in the area. That's another way to increase your leverage.
 
crs1026 said:
^I'm not defending Grimes, but he only represents three of the four quadrants of that intersection. Councillor Holyday represents the fourth quadrant. You should try both.

Grimes held a town hall this past week regarding road safety. It is likely on line somewhere. From his comments, I do think he would respond to concerns about this major intersection.

By the way, of the 700+ pedestrian-vehicle incidents in the TPS database for Etobicoke since 2006ish, only 20ish happened on local roads, and only 6 of these in non-sidewalk zones. The biggest risk factor for pedestrians is on major roads and at major intersections - so this particular intersection is definitely in the high-risk, high-frequency category. The Vision Zero fascination with sidewalks on side streets is dogma, not data driven.

I travel that stretch regularly, and that bend on Dundas does need some attention.

- Paul
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But for the bolded above, I would be happy to endorse this statement.

The commitment to sidewalks is about more than avoiding pedestrian fatalities.

In many cases the pedestrian accident rates are low on such streets because there are very few pedestrians in the first place.

Streets without sidewalks are generally inaccessible to those who use mobility aids.

Traversing lawns/ditches, or even the roadway as an able-bodied person, in the snow-free season may be do-able; but doing it in a scooter/wheelchair or while using a cane is considerably more problematic.

In winter, when lawns are covered in snow and ice, and snowbanks narrow the road, most streets are impassable to even most able-bodied people absent a sidewalk.

Aside from accessibility and ensuring everyone has an ability to get from their home to the bus stop, school, a shop or place of employment.........

It's also important to note the environmental and land-use costs associated with low-volumes of pedestrian activity.

One also wouldn't want to discount, on the accident front, and pedestrian-only accidents (slip and fall) are likely not counted in any of the those transportation statistics.

****

All of which is to say, a sidewalk on every road was an important and established City goal long before 'Vision Zero'; as it should have been, and remains so.
 
I think no sidewalks is perfectly reasonable. I also believe there should be a strictly enforced (by camera ticketing systems) speed limit of 10km/h on any street where all modes of travel are mixed together.

I have no objections to neighbourhoods desiring a woonerf or 2.
 
rbt said:
I think no sidewalks is perfectly reasonable. I also believe there should be a strictly enforced (by camera ticketing systems) speed limit of 10km/h on any street where all modes of travel are mixed together.

I have no objections to neighbourhoods desiring a woonerf or 2.
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Most sidewalk-less roads could not be Woonerfs and are not.

How would you resolve accessibility? Wheelchairs on front lawns doesn't work.
 
Northern Light said:
Most sidewalk-less roads could not be Woonerfs and are not.

How would you resolve accessibility? Wheelchairs on front lawns doesn't work.
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The sidewalk-less roads generally have w-i-d-e asphalt roadways to accommodate the speeders doing twice the posted speed limits.
 
^In fact, the residents who Grimes recently went to bat for over sidewalks also requested speed controls including speed humps, lowered speed limit to 30km/h, narrowing of the roadway, and physical modifications to some intersections which encourage high speed turns by virtue of angled geometry. The speed humps were approved by the EY Community Council. I don’t know what the final road design is and whether any further improvements are planned.
Since then, residents on other streets in the area have also been asking for road modifications, 4-way stops near schools, speed limit reductions, and traffic enforcement. Grimes’ town hall brought residents together with city staff and TPS to understand what’s possible and how to access these things. One resident even asked if they could privately fund a speed radar unit for their area.
The point being, it is possible for a community to be working on improving road safety without buying into sidewalks as the sine qua non prerequisite of a safe street.
This is all a digression to the Six Points discussion, my point in raising it is that while some people choose to slag Mark Grimes over his position on sidewalks, he is actually facilitating a lot of road safety improvements and in the context of Six Points he might prove receptive and useful. (I will save the slagging for more germaine issues #HumberBay)

What Six Points needs is to have total separation of pedestrian and vehicular pathways. I’m still surprised that in a new design that will form the city centre, there was absolutely no preplanning for a PATH like underground passageway, or even the kind of overhead walkways or tunnelways that one sees in more bike/pedestrian friendly environs,
All of Bloor, Kipling, and Dundas are major streets that will form the basis of the city’s road network - and road transport is not being eliminated. The space was there for much more effective and progressive separation of the three. All we got was wider sidewalks and de minimus bike lanes, but old fashioned at-grade pedestrian crossing technology.
- Paul
 
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Northern Light said:
How would you resolve accessibility? Wheelchairs on front lawns doesn't work.
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After Council declares the space to be a pedestrian way (something they're quite capable of doing as ActiveTO has shown); the wheelchair person (and any other pedestrian) uses the 15m wide asphalt pedestrian way with very-low-speed, or even time-of-day, restriction for local-only vehicles.

Council only needs to eliminate discrimination against pedestrians once. After that, residents will be demanding sidewalks.
 
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Some images from the community consultation meeting held this week

Capture.PNGCapture.PNGCapture.PNG
Presentation available at: https://createto.ca/housingnow/wp-c...Presentation-FINAL-1-converted-compressed.pdf
 
Voltz said:
Seems they are going to remove the Police Station that is there currently?
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As they should. It occupies a lot of land.

A new station could probably be incorporated into one of the phases, and better situated with the changing nature of the neighbourhood. The current station is suburban and the area is rapidly densifying.
 
WislaHD said:
As they should. It occupies a lot of land.

A new station could probably be incorporated into one of the phases, and better situated with the changing nature of the neighbourhood. The current station is suburban and the area is rapidly densifying.
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22 Division is not suburban in urban design. The station is pretty close to the road, with parking at the rear. This is urban build form design. It's not like they get away with no parking - they need space for the police vehicles. This is an urban police station.
 
toaster29 said:
22 Division is not suburban in urban design. The station is pretty close to the road, with parking at the rear. This is urban build form design. It's not like they get away with no parking - they need space for the police vehicles. This is an urban police station.
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The plan all along was to move the police station as that is where the new road was to go south of Bloor St at the traffic light intersection.

The new police station does not require surface parking as it can be built under the station and this style is used a lot in the US from what I have seen first had, The station could be the base of a complex.
 
^There are the usual number of towers. It's hard to tell from the renders how well they are designing the space at street level. The buildings seem to plan a lot of court yards - encouraging, but if these are just interior spaces for residents of specific buildings without connections or thoroughfares it's a huge opportunity missed to make an interesting ground level space that you can walk through, take different routes through, etc.
I'm hoping they are striving to a true "walkable" district.... hopefully very different from, say, North York City Centre which is just a long stretch of towers with utterly uninteresting street level spaces. Otherwise, it's just another drab bit of overbuilding, and Toronto has plenty of that already.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
^There are the usual number of towers. It's hard to tell from the renders how well they are designing the space at street level. The buildings seem to plan a lot of court yards - encouraging, but if these are just interior spaces for residents of specific buildings without connections or thoroughfares it's a huge opportunity missed to make an interesting ground level space that you can walk through, take different routes through, etc.
I'm hoping they are striving to a true "walkable" district.... hopefully very different from, say, North York City Centre which is just a long stretch of towers with utterly uninteresting street level spaces. Otherwise, it's just another drab bit of overbuilding, and Toronto has plenty of that already.

- Paul
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If in your opinion NYCC has uninteresting street level spaces, then you'll most likely be disappointed. This seems to be a cross of Downtown Markham and NYCC.
 
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