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Road Safety & Vision Zero Plan

Please, do not use the United States of America as an example of how we, in Canada, should follow in terms of road safety.

A Round and a Roundy: No Wonder America is Losing the Safety Race

From link.

streets-race-web.jpg

Our cartoonist Bill Roundy got angry after reading our coverage last week about how America is far behind the Netherlands, England, Germany and Norway in making roads safer.

Researchers found that Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the United Kingdom reduced per capita pedestrian fatalities by at least 61 percent over the last three decades (Denmark did so by a whopping 69 percent!), but the U.S. reduced ours by just 36 percent.

There are lots of reasons for our failure to achieve true gains, but Roundy — being Roundy — focused on the main villain: cars. Enjoy.

All of Bill Roundy’s cartoons are archived here.
 
Announcement today from Mayor Tory on some congestion and ‘safety’ initiatives via David Rider:


Highlights:
  • 500 traffic signals that respond to demand
  • 100 pedestrian signals that respond to demand (video technology?)
  • 100 new transit priority signals. Possibility (?) of rolling this out city-wide
  • Construction hub pilot; providing one place for staging trucks for developments in an area (also I saw mention of reducing lane closures)
 
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Announcement today from Mayor Tory on some congestion and ‘safety’ initiatives via David Rider:


Highlights:
  • 500 traffic signals that respond to demand
  • 100 pedestrian signals that respond to demand (video technology?)
  • 100 new transit priority signals. Possibility (?) of rolling this out city-wide
  • Construction hub pilot; providing one place for staging trucks for developments in an area (also I saw mention of reducing lane closures)

I hope by "100 pedestrian signals that respond to demand" means traffic signals that would behave like the grocery store doors, and turn on without having to press a button.
 
Announcement today from Mayor Tory on some congestion and ‘safety’ initiatives via David Rider:


Highlights:
  • 500 traffic signals that respond to demand
  • 100 pedestrian signals that respond to demand (video technology?)
  • 100 new transit priority signals. Possibility (?) of rolling this out city-wide
  • Construction hub pilot; providing one place for staging trucks for developments in an area (also I saw mention of reducing lane closures)

This is discussed in this report which is coming to the next Infrastructure and Environment Committee mtg. on November 5th.


From said report:

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(plain English, the new 'Transit Priority signals will be integrated w/TTC software and deny priority for on-time vehicles while granted it for those running late)

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1603981292040.png

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I hope by "100 pedestrian signals that respond to demand" means traffic signals that would behave like the grocery store doors, and turn on without having to press a button.
Yes - as per announcement today, this would be passive, camera-based technology. If I understand correctly it's 'localized' as well (no cloud requirement?) But I'm unsure about the second part.
 
Yes - as per announcement today, this would be passive, camera-based technology. If I understand correctly it's 'localized' as well (no cloud requirement?) But I'm unsure about the second part.
The compute required is not that significant, so cloud should not be needed.
 
Man, getting basic transit and infrastructure improvements in this city is like pulling teeth.
Honestly, how long did that smart signal pilot project take? The better part of 3 years and it's only now they're finally getting around to implementing it.

November 24, 2017

I'm also curious to know if this means that the city will finally (once and for all after 20+ years) activate signal priority of streetcar ROWs. If not, all this is just a half-baked attempt at addressing traffic problems
 
Forgive me for not knowing traffic signal stuff too well. But I was under the impression we did have a fairly robust "smart" traffic system already. I only say this because I recall it being talked about almost ten years ago, and over that time traffic has progressively gotten better. I swear things move much smoother than they did 5, 6, 7yrs ago (discounting Covid stuff of course). Or has that been an illusion because less volume?
 
Forgive me for not knowing traffic signal stuff too well. But I was under the impression we did have a fairly robust "smart" traffic system already. I only say this because I recall it being talked about almost ten years ago, and over that time traffic has progressively gotten better. I swear things move much smoother than they did 5, 6, 7yrs ago (discounting Covid stuff of course). Or has that been an illusion because less volume?

And even before that. I recall 'timed' signals on major routes as far back as the 60s. Obviously, long before 'smart' or much of networked anything, but if you caught it right and kept to the speed limit you could said through green lights for miles. Obviously lighter traffic and I recall they were off-peak hours only.
 
Man, getting basic transit and infrastructure improvements in this city is like pulling teeth.
Honestly, how long did that smart signal pilot project take?
Toronto prefers to study and “consultation” and pilot something to death until events make inevitability obvious. Results in a lot of analysis paralysis. Somewhere, somehow, people designing the processes forgot that “more data” doesn’t mean “better” and there’s always a time/cost/benefit tradeoff.

This city absolutely needs more of the “F*** it, let’s do it!” attitude.
 

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