Traffic infiltration is something my ward, Don Valley East, has in common with Leaside, one of Toronto’s oldest planned subdivisions. On bad days on the Don Valley Parkway, literally up to 100,000 cars might disembark at Eglinton Avenue and infiltrate Leaside to get downtown. This is why, quite understandably, residents of Leaside rose up in one angry voice when little Georgia Walsh was fatally hit by a car in 2014 on a subdivision collector road.
Ward 33 includes the nexus of the Don Valley Parkway and Highway 401 as well as all the nearest alternate arteries to accommodate overflow from these highways. Most daily commuters from Scarborough and Markham know all sorts of clever shortcuts around these arteries and highways by darting onto Ward 33’s local roads and subdivision collector roads.
The current proposal before the public works and infrastructure committee to reduce the default speed limit on local roads and collector roads to 30 kilometres per hour is designed to improve quality of life in neighbourhoods just like these. But here is the kicker, this measure has also been shown in some cases to make your drive to work faster, not slower.
Reducing speeds inside the subdivisions reduces infiltration, making access and egress from driveways and around schools more efficient. If you offset things further by being more consistent in making main arteries 60 kilometres per hour wherever road design allows, you all but eliminate infiltration.
If we abandon our shortcuts and enter local roads only once we are there for a local purpose, some of these improvements could be achievable today.