Speeding and reckless driving have been a problem on Riverside Drive ever since Paul Roth can remember. About 30 years ago, shortly after he and his wife moved into their house, a car ended up on the lawn of a house a few doors down, and a neighbour was hit by a car as he walked home from work. That was just the beginning.
The winding street near the Humber River is often used as a shortcut, according to Roth, to avoid traffic on major streets to and from the Gardiner.
So when he heard the City of Toronto was planning to redesign the road, he saw it as an opportunity to make the street safer.
The road is being narrowed, “pinch points” are being added, curbs and gutters are being built, and a sidewalk with a 1.2 metre wide grass boulevard with trees is being added, according to Raffi Bedrosyan, the manager of engineering for local roads in Engineering Construction Services for the City of Toronto.
“These are tested and tried elsewhere and we think they are effective,” Bedrosyan said.
The speed limit on the street was also dropped from 40 km/h to 30 km/h, according to Councillor Sarah Doucette, who represents the neighbourhood.
But some residents like Roth are concerned that the changes will have no effect.
“The token things they’ve done, some pinch points and changing pavement here and there, it’s tokenism. It’s a waste of money. It’s not really going to do anything,” Roth said.
Another resident, Sydney Reimer, is concerned that the changes will not only fail to solve their speeding problem, but potentially make it worse. Reimer said the surface area of the road people drive on should be narrowed further and more areas where drivers are forced to slow down, through the use of features like islands and roundabouts, should be added. She said straightening the road in some areas and re-paving the street will make it easier to speed.
“They’re designing the road to be 70 km/hr and then trying to put obstacles in place that don’t work,” Reimer said. “We’re saying that’s wrong. Design the road to be 30 km/h. That’s the only way it’s going to work. It’s all about road design.”
Reimer, whose cleaning lady’s car has been hit three times in the past few years while parked on the road, was so frustrated by the speeding on her street that she took matters into her own hands. She began standing on her street corner, radar gun in hand, tracking the speed of vehicles as they passed by. Many vehicles, she said, were going 65 km/h on the 40 km/h street. The data she gathered was presented to the City.
Doucette said she agrees with residents “that the road is going too fast right now.”
But Doucette said they consulted the public throughout the redesign process. They had two open houses, where they first presented the proposal and then received feedback from residents, before coming back with a revised proposal, which they are now tweaking. The finalized redesign plan for Riverside Drive will be released “within the next week or so,” Bedrosyan said.
The city took many of the suggestions residents presented into consideration, according to Doucette, and she believes the new design will slow down drivers on the road.
“This is a unique street,” Doucette said. “It’s got a lot of history to it. This is why when I heard the city was just repaving it, I said ‘You can’t just do a repave and a basic sidewalk. Let’s engage the community.’”
But Reimer and Roth said the city ignored the plan residents presented, which they created with the help of transportation experts, and which all of the residents on their street, except for two, agreed upon.
“The most disappointing thing for me was that very specific promises were made about what the process would be,” Roth said. “It just didn’t happen. What we were promised didn’t happen.”
“As residents we have no voice,” Reimer said. “I feel like we’ve done everything that the city has asked.”
Reimer also took issue with the wall the city plans to add on the Humber River side of the street. A sidewalk will run along the opposite side of the road, making a view of the river impossible, Reimer said.
But Doucette argued the wall was a necessary replacement for the guardrail currently there, as there has been erosion of the roadside. The sidewalk, she said, was planned for the other side of the road so that it could be continuous down the entire length of the street.
“I’m not saying you’ll be able to look down into the River as you’re driving by but it will definitely not be a solid wall blocking people from looking out at the Humber River which is gorgeous,” Doucette said. “We know people love to walk and look out, so one of the pinch points down that hill will make it easier for pedestrians to cross over to where we’re doing a look out.”
Reimer also raised concerns about the damage such a plan could do to the historical significance of the street as the road was initially built along the site of the Carrying Place trail, an 8,000 year old portage route between Lake Ontario and Lake Simcoe.
She added: “And [the re-design] urbanizes the road even more. We just end up with cement things and signs that have zero effect and they’re taking away some of the natural charm of the road to make it even faster.”
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