Toronto needs to implement a few things as potential solutions.
First, make the city more affordable for families to live in, ie. make a 3 or 4 bedroom unit easy to find and male its price compared in sqft the same as a single family home in the GTA (suburbs). Our cities need less commuters and more actually people living on them. Things to look at are missing middle homes, tackle parking requirements, take a look at fire codes and zoning in cities to allow low rose 6-7/story developments aimed at families and not investors.
Second, implement a greater increase in transportation infrastructure, this means closing streets to only transit such as trams, buses, taxis, and cycling. Focused on making the city walkable and livable from a pedestrian standpoint. This will cause more people to want to live on the city. The concept of a 15min city is the key.
Third, implement a low carbon, or low emission zone in toronto. Specifically starting in the downtown core, probaby up till saint clair or maybe even Ellington. Prevent larger and less file efficient cars for coming into the city to promote greater transit and less pollution, again urguing more people to choose to live on the city.
Fourth, look at infrastructure planing in Ontario. Out road and street design are not well thought out. We need to stop developing “strodes” and classify our roadways between streets, roads, and hyways for effectively. We need to cut down infrastructure costs as well, we can do this by cuting down on the amount of signaled intersections, and instead we should look at roundabout or traffic circles as much as possible. Most moneys cities spend are in the continued maintenance of traffic signals/lights. A roundabout is only built once and the maintenance costs in substantially lower.
Taking about classification of roadways, Ontario has almost no high speed roads, instead we implement “strodes” which are neither safe for pedestrian traffic or cycaling. This also sucks for transits. Instead we need proper design where hwys spill into high speed roads, which meet low speed roads, then into low speed streets and residential neighbourhood streets. We treat everything either as a hwy or a road at the moment, and each road has multiple driveways whicj causes congestion.
In the example of the Gardiner its was originaly designed as a high speed road with a limit of 90km, but its currently treated like a hwy. All the off ramps also empty out directly onto low density low speed streets.
IMO, the only place in all of Toronto that shows some sense of planing is a small section of the Allan road traveling north. The section looks like this.
You have the 401 hwy connect you to the Allan Rd (high speed road with no lights), empty out into a low traffic low speed city street, which then connects you into a suburban low speed speed. You have no traffic lights in this location (except the one intersection across the Allan at the top right), this section should really be a full two lane roundabout.
Most moneys cities spend are in the continued maintenance of traffic signals/lights.
Do you have a source for this? I work in capital projects, and given the amount of money spent on road reconstruction and sewer/watermain rehab, I’d be surprised. I’ve got ~30mil of work in the GTA this year for like 1.5km of roads with no lights
maybe some business taxes need to increase to de-incentivize commercial overuse of public roads. Surely the free market can provide a solution like a profitably tolled tunnel running right under the Gardiner?
Or maybe rail for commercial transport…
Yup, rail for long distance commercial transport. Regulate trucking (as its a profession).
Truck speed limiters for all commercial trucks over 10ft in size. Restricted truck sizes in city centers limited to cargo trucks or maybe 15ft maximum at certain hours.
Prevent truckers form overtaking each other on the hwy or any roads over 80kmh in speed. Restrictions for trucks to stay on the right.
Redesign on/off ramp location so the right lane does not “disappear”. This IMO is the largest reason for traffic as all truckers hog the center lane because of the disappearing right lane.
For roads like the Gardiner trucking should be restricted at certain hours.
Another “solution” like the 407? No thanks!
the problem with the 407 is that the Ontario taxpayer paid to build it and then gave it away for nothing when nobody really wanted to drive on it. The P3 model is shit.
Which is then to be leased by the conservative government for 99 years to private entities in order to “balance the books” for 1 year.
Perhaps get a chunk of non-essential traffic off the Gardiner? There are people who can switch to commute by public transit. Incemtivise them hard to do so.
“It’s a huge drop from a productivity perspective,” Branch said. “We’ve got fleets doing last-mile delivery, right, service and repair. So you can think about – imagine the person sitting in the vehicle, spending that much more time on the road, what it does to them mentally, what it does the productivity of their work day.”
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Branch, meanwhile, stresses that the stats and the science exist right here in the GTA; City Hall simply needs to leverage the technology to help solve the congestion conundrum.
“We have access to this data at-scale, privacy-compliant, all aggregate, that we can help use to make some really intelligent decisions. So it’s management by measurement,” he said.
“We can use management by measurement to help keep Toronto moving."
I see GeoTag is ready to make some cash. 😅
If some of the traffic (commercial traffic) is more worthy than other traffic (non-commercial traffic), why doesn’t the province institute tolls that would naturally clear the unworthy traffic out of the way of the worthy traffic?
This is one way to do it. Of course everyone will hate it even if the remainder moves faster. I think not nearly enough people are aware of the reality that it’s isn’t feasible for everyone to drive a car at speed in metro areas like Toronto and even most of the GTA. We can’t make the roads wide enough to accommodate all the induced demand and still have enough slack left. If most people get this, then the attitudes towards tolls and other prioritizing solutions would likely change too.
Widening roads and Hwys actually does not reduce traffic, most city planers have known this since the 1930s. The concept is called “induced demand”.
In its simplicity, as a roadway become wider more people choose to take it for a small amount of time, and then once again traffic builds up to past levels.
Here is a great video that summaries the concept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZwOAIect4
This is why the 401 in my opinion is way too wide, it should really be redesign to be more efficient in on/off ramp locations. The collectors and express concept is really poorly implement as well IMO within the Toronto area and there are two many of/on ramps.
The best design on 401 hwy at the moment is a stretch located between the 410 & James Snow Parkway in both directions. Lanes are reduced with a dedicated HOV, and trucking traffic is restricted to the right lane with passing traffic on the left. The right hand lane rarely “disappears” as well, allowing trucking to stick to the right without being pushed out onto a off ramp.
What Ontario really needs is better road classifications, we really lack highspeed roadways, instead we only design “strodes” or Hwys. Where we should really be adding highspeed roads instead (no signalised intersections and no driveways)
Strodes are awfully designed for all road users, from pedestrian traffic (walking/cycling) to automobile traffic.
Some of the older well designed roads we used to have in Toronto unfortunately have been butcher like the Allan Rd and Black Creek Drive.
Think the equivalent of adding signaled lights and pedestrian sidewalks to a highway bad, with a ton of driveways on and off the Hwy.
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Crews fix the right lane, Cars and trucks wreck the shit out of the left lane.
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So then crews fix the left lane, cars and trucks wreck the shit out of the right lane.
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Go to 1.
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