What's the best way to identify and track the streetscape improvement projects? Curious about proposed timing for this one, John St, and Mercer St for example
Not that easy I'm afraid.
There are several kinds of streetscaping projects, and they are variously trackable in different ways.
1) Major Streetscape Projects (ie. John Street, Yonge - Downtown, Yonge- North York, Eglinton Connects)
These are generally line-items in the public budget documents, under Transportation's 10-year capital plan
2) BIA based Streetscape projects
These are somewhat trackable in the Economic Development operating budgets for BIAs, you can see the total number budgeted for capital in the current year.
Sometimes the associated descriptions may give a clear sense of what the money is for, ie. lighting, but sometimes they can be quite opaque. Which would leave you
to trying to track the details through the BIA itself or perhaps the Councillor's office. In some cases work will show up on T.O. Inview, but rarely w/any detail.
3) Developer-based projects, for the most part, the details are in the Landscape Plans filed during zoning/site-plan approvals; though these become unavailable shortly after a project is fully approved by Council.
The implementation timing typically is associated w/close-out and occupancy of a project, but this isn't always the case.
4) Planning - based Streetscape projects are those initiated by the Urban Design staff in planning, typically to accompany a major road reconstruction project, where there is no BIA. Internally, Planning has an
'A' List and 'B' list, those being projects they hope to pursue this year; and those they can pursue if a project from the 'A' list is delayed.
Those lists have been public some years under Planning's Capital budget; and are usually found under the 'Places' program; however, many years it gets left out for whatever reason. If you phone someone in Urban Design you can generally get the list
emailed to you w/o any hassle.
