Vision Zero is working in other cities. Why not here?

One of the pillars of Vision Zero, which was adopted by the city last year, is that people will make mistakes.

“In every situation a person might fail, the road system should not,” says the narrator of a video explaining the initiative, which began in Sweden in 1997. Another pillar is that no loss of life due to traffic is acceptable.

“Every crash with serious injuries or fatalities is something you need to carefully look at and say what was wrong here, what should I have done, not the citizen — what should I have done as a professional and responsible person in the system?” Claus Tingvall, a director of traffic safety for the Swedish National Road Administration and co-architect of the vision, says in the video.

Sweden has managed to cut traffic-related deaths nearly in half. It has one of the lowest rates of road deaths among developed countries — 2.7 per 100,000 people. Canada has 5.4 deaths per 100,000, third-highest among 10 high-income countries after New Zealand and the U.S., which was at 10.3, according to a CDC report from 2015.

Swedish cities are building more roundabouts instead of intersections to reduce the risk of head-on crashes. Cars aren’t allowed to turn at intersections when pedestrians and cyclists are crossing. And they are building pedestrian bridges. Bicycles have separate lanes and police have cracked down on drinking and driving.

Toronto adopted the Vision Zero policy last year with a five-year action plan to reduce trafficrelated fatalities and serious injuries in six key areas — pedestrians, schoolchildren, older adults, cyclists, motorcyclists and aggressive driving and distraction.

But with deaths mounting, critics say the city is failing to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe.

A newly opened 1.4-kilometre separated bike lane on Lake Shore Blvd. W., between Norris Cres. and First St., is the only one that’s been built this year. Other improvements listed in a pamphlet being circulated at Vision Zero town halls by the city have not been implemented.

Riders in cycle tracks have one-ninth the risk of serious injury leading to hospitalization compared to a rider on a major street without any bicycling infrastructure, according to a study of cycling in Toronto and Vancouver in 2012.

“We were quite surprised to see that separated bike lanes made such a big difference,” says Kay Teschke, one of the study’s authors and a professor emeritus of the School of Population and Public Health at UBC.

As they do after every fatal accident, city staff from traffic operations and the traffic safety group, along with Shawn Dillon, acting manager of cycling infrastructure and programs, went to Dundas St. E. and Jones Ave. after cyclist Doug Crosbie was killed May 16, to investigate whether elements of the intersection, such as road markings and signal timing, were working as they should.

The city is still compiling the report, which won’t be made public.

“In many cases there may not be anything,” says Dillon. “In this case I think there probably could be some improvements made at that intersection.” The timing of those improvements will depend on cost. Big-budget items get deferred to future years.

Teschke says that separate signal timing is the true vision zero at intersections.

“For a driver, there are so many more vehicles and the catastrophe for a driver is being hit by a moving vehicle,” says Teschke. “So what are they looking for when they’re turning right or left? They’re looking for other vehicles. And look but fail to see is the classic problem.”

At least 1,000 U.S. and European cities have managed to achieve Vision Zero, when there were no traffic-related fatalities for at least a year.