Toynbee Trail from Dearham Wood to Livingston is unsafe. The road design encourages speeding. Blind spots are ignored by drivers. There are no sidewalks or bike lanes.

This stretch connects neighbourhood kids to 4 schools.

Children and families playing, walking or biking to school, community members out for a stroll constantly must dodge speeding cars in both directions with nowhere to escape but jumping onto people’s front yards. That’s completely unreasonable and not possible of course when snow and ice is piled up or when ground is saturated by rain or melted snow.

The City of Toronto has many. many traffic calming tools available but despite these tools and despite a comprehensive Vision Zero Plan, for decades, families have been ignored.

Here’s a list of community generated ideas that could easily be implemented:

• Sidewalks both sides. Run sidewalk along existing edge of curb to minimize front yard encroachment.
• Install grass boulevard between sidewalk and road. This will narrow the road and act as protective buffer between sidewalk and road.
• Install chicanes with room between chicane and boulevard for bicycles to ride straight through.
• Install 3-way stop signs at intersecting streets.
• Close 1 side of the Chancery & Toynbee triangle
• Reduce speed limit to 30 km/h
• Install Local Traffic signs only at each entry point.
• Eliminate street parking.
• Make Toynbee between Regency and Navarre 1-way.
• Install speed bumps.

Following a discussion last year about this portion of Toynbee, we shared a list of comments and ideas here:

What can be done to reduce vehicle speed and increase pedestrian safety and comfort on the Toynbee Trail road-share stretch between Livingston and Dearham Wood?

More and more families call for action. This road is a shared space but so far the City is completely ignoring the comfort and safety of its most vulnerable users.

Send your concerns and solution ideas to Councillor Paul Ainslie: Councillor_Ainslie_CO@toronto.ca