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Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan
- Thread starter salsa
- Start date
crs1026
Superstar
Given the acute angle of that intersection, a slip lane of some sort is almost inevitable, and probably desirable. Perhaps some enhancements can be retrofitted at some point. But again, considering that resources are finite, perhaps it’s better to move on and tackle other intersections that are crying for better design, and come back to this one later.
- Paul.
- Paul.
MisterF
Senior Member
Disagree. Slip lanes aren't inevitable at all on that type of intersection, cars are easily capable of navigating that turn and there are plenty of intersections with an angle like that with no slip lanes. In some cases a slip lane is built to create a right angle with the cross street but that's not the case here. Building the intersection like that was a choice, nothing more.
Personally I find slip lanes annoying when I drive because in a lot of cases their design visually tells you to speed up to merge into traffic while leaving no room to actually merge. Virtually all of them force you into an angle where you have to look over your shoulder, taking your attention away from people crossing the street. That makes the intersection very intimidating to navigate on foot.
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afransen
Senior Member
A raised crossing ought to be pretty cheap.
afransen
Senior Member
Nice concise video explaining some features of Dutch arterials that contribute to safety. A lot of very thoughtful design features.
Northern Light
Superstar
UT's own @ProjectEnd engaging in a bit of pedestrian activism on Twitter:
He's already gotten 311 to respond and to forward the above for investigation by Transportation Services.
Big thumbs up from me!
Now.....I may just have to stick my nose into it a bit, cause his Tweet got me looking at this section of street.
Just to the south of the missing section of sidewalk.....is this:
All sorts of reserved parking on the boulevard...........the City-owned boulevard............
Cars access these spaces by climbing the curb, and going over that narrow sidewalk, which explains all that pavement.
It also explains this:
One dead street tree and all of the other tree pits empty (their previous occupants having died); nothing like oodles of road salt and lots of compaction and pavement to kill off all the streetscaping.
Perhaps we can ask the nice people at Ubisoft to find somewhere else to park (and revoke their permits for same on the boulevard regardless), then de-pave the boulevard and add a dozen new trees.
He's already gotten 311 to respond and to forward the above for investigation by Transportation Services.
Big thumbs up from me!
Now.....I may just have to stick my nose into it a bit, cause his Tweet got me looking at this section of street.
Just to the south of the missing section of sidewalk.....is this:
All sorts of reserved parking on the boulevard...........the City-owned boulevard............
Cars access these spaces by climbing the curb, and going over that narrow sidewalk, which explains all that pavement.
It also explains this:
One dead street tree and all of the other tree pits empty (their previous occupants having died); nothing like oodles of road salt and lots of compaction and pavement to kill off all the streetscaping.
Perhaps we can ask the nice people at Ubisoft to find somewhere else to park (and revoke their permits for same on the boulevard regardless), then de-pave the boulevard and add a dozen new trees.
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evandyk
Senior Member
I used to go to that block regularly because I worked in the west end and would stop at Halo, Wallace Espresso, Cafe Neon, Bairradino, etc., and that west side of that street always struck me as totally weird. Such wasted space.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
Northern Light
Superstar
So, reading the Vision Zero/Bike Plan related Briefing notes to Tomorrow's budget ctte meeting..........
Have to say, while we would all like things to move faster, I do really like hard data points, and there really are some signs of tangible progress:
Compared to peak years over the last decade, pedestrian/cyclist and motorist fatalities are down in a statistically significant way:
In 2020 we see a very notable drop-off from prior years, and subsequently we improved just a bit more in 2022.
Its Vision Zero, not Vision Two Sixty Seven; Still, as compared to 2018 at 446 serious injuries or fatalities, there's no mistaking a substantial improvement. That's about a 40% decline.
We need to see more marked improvement, with another drop of similar size in the next 2-3 years (or by all means better); but I do like that we're starting to show some traction.
The main briefing note is here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/bu/bgrd/backgroundfile-233951.pdf The above image was a stand-alone attachment.
Have to say, while we would all like things to move faster, I do really like hard data points, and there really are some signs of tangible progress:
Compared to peak years over the last decade, pedestrian/cyclist and motorist fatalities are down in a statistically significant way:
In 2020 we see a very notable drop-off from prior years, and subsequently we improved just a bit more in 2022.
Its Vision Zero, not Vision Two Sixty Seven; Still, as compared to 2018 at 446 serious injuries or fatalities, there's no mistaking a substantial improvement. That's about a 40% decline.
We need to see more marked improvement, with another drop of similar size in the next 2-3 years (or by all means better); but I do like that we're starting to show some traction.
The main briefing note is here: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2023/bu/bgrd/backgroundfile-233951.pdf The above image was a stand-alone attachment.
picard102
Senior Member
Be interesting to see how that looks per-capita. With the city adding more and more people, and the gross number of people on the decline, I imagine it would be even more apparent it's working.
allengeorge
Senior Member
I could not see any documents indicating where the source of these reductions were (that is, which intersections, etc.) or why they happened. Would be very illuminating.
Northern Light
Superstar
Good Question, lets see if there's anything we can see.
TPS ' KSI portal doesn't show data post-2020 for some reason.
But as that was the year of the big decline (also first year of Covid) ..............maybe there's something there:
Below is the 2018 data (previous near-term peak)
So the first thing that jumps out is the decline is absolute collisions. from 422 to 265.
Hmmmm
*****
Toronto has a separate Vision Zero portal.
To make this readable, I'm showing the map with Collision Fatalities only (not injuries)
2018:
2022:
I still find it a bit cluttered, lets remove deaths for motorists and motorcycles and look solely at cyclists and pedestrians:
2018:
2022:
What jumps out at me now is the reduction in Scarborough.
Ok......back to the day job for a few minutes, LOL
Here's the portal link for others to play with:
Vision Zero Mapping Tool
www.toronto.ca
facepalming_brooklynite
Active Member
It would also be interesting to compare this to changes in modeshare. I imagine that there are a lot more cyclists on the road compared to 2011, and this makes the fact that the KSI number is considerably lower more encouraging.
mrgrieves
Active Member
apologies if this has been discussed before, but I'm wondering how unique Toronto is with it's general lack of medians separating traffic on busy arterials. There are some well-known exceptions, like University, and Yonge between Sheppard and Finch. But otherwise they don't feature on our roads much.
In the inner suburbs, where roads are busy and also pretty wide, a narrow concrete strip would improve safety and flow of traffic (e.g. cars cannot make crazy left turns across 2 or 3 lanes of oncoming traffic).
In the inner suburbs, where roads are busy and also pretty wide, a narrow concrete strip would improve safety and flow of traffic (e.g. cars cannot make crazy left turns across 2 or 3 lanes of oncoming traffic).
crs1026
Superstar
Next you'll be offering us potato chips and saying "Just have one or two" ;-)
I did play a bit - and to your comment about Scarborough showing change - I found this view interesting.
The brown lines are roads that have seen speed limits lowered. Definitely a lot of change has gone on in Scarborough particularly.
The purple dots are locations that have seen speed enforcement cameras.
My hypothesis would be - perhaps simply reducing absolute speed on main roadways has made a difference in the burbs, at least for some types of situations.
Hard to demonstrate causality, but food for thought anyways.
- Paul