City transportation staff will be putting the squeeze on lane widths across the city over the coming years.
The plan, hatched by Toronto Transportation staff earlier this year, is intended to encourage drivers to travel a little more slowly but help traffic move more smoothly, and will be rolled out as the city completes repaving and other road work on arterial and collector roads across the city.
It came as a surprise to Mayor-elect John Tory as it did to most Torontonians when it was unveiled in a newspaper article.
But Tory, who is just days from taking office for the 2014-2018 term of council, said he’s willing to take a wait-and-see approach on whether the move delivers its as-advertised promises.
"I will be watching like a hawk to make sure the intended consequence of this is in fact achieved, which is to make traffic move better and more smoothly," said Tory Tuesday, Nov. 25.
"Any sign it is slowing traffic down is something I will take out."
The plan is a result of work by a team of Traffic Operations experts, looking at ways to make streets safer and easier to travel.
What they found was that in jurisdictions where individual traffic lanes were slightly narrower, motorists tended to keep closer to the posted speed limit and the road was safer for cars, pedestrians and cyclists.
The new guidelines don’t offer a one-size-fits-all lane width for arterial roads. But speaking with reporters, Toronto’s Manager of Pedestrian Projects Fiona Chapman said that in general, on a four-lane road the centre ‘through-lanes’ would be just three metres wide, reduced from as wide as 3.7 metres on some roads in the city.
Curb lanes would get more wiggle room, she said, and could be as wide as 4.3 metres.
"You don’t want it any wider, because then cars would try to fit in an extra lane for cars and we don’t want that," said Chapman.
Those wider lanes, she said, might be used for a variety of purposes: bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or as a buffer space to allow left turn lanes along the road.
The changes are being implemented without the specific approval of Toronto Council, because explained Chapman, they are matters of engineering standards.
But the lane widths being proposed to be phased in across the city aren’t unheard of in Toronto.
Parts of Danforth Avenue, University Avenue, Jarvis Street and Bay Street all have narrower lanes.
The changes are being implemented in response to the number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, which are between 20 and 40 annually for pedestrians and two to four cyclists each year on Toronto streets.
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