Keesmaat says 30 km/h fast enough
Mayoral candidate vows to cut speed limit in residential areas
Mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat says she’d cut the speed limit on residential streets to 30 km/h, redesign100 of the city’s most dangerous intersections and create pedestrian-safe zones around schools as a part of a two-year “Safer Streets” plan.
“One of the most pressing issues facing this city is safe streets,” Keesmaat said Friday.
“Too many people are dying on our city streets and not enough is going on to ensure we are preventing the deaths that we can in our city.”
Keesmaat singled out her opponent, incumbent Mayor John Tory, for what she called “inaction” on road safety and the implementation of Toronto’s “Vision Zero” plan to cut road-related deaths to zero. “What did John Tory do? He committed to reducing deaths on our streets by 20 per cent,” Keesmaat said. “Not only did he embrace an entirely unacceptable and unambitious plan but also, when presented with the opportunity to accelerate implementation from five years to two years, he opposed it.”
After Keesmaat’s news conference, Tory’s campaign refuted her assertion.
“The mayor is committed to doing everything possible as quickly as possible to make our streets safer,” the campaign’s statement reads. “The goal is and always has been zero deaths or injuries on our streets.”
The statement noted that the Vision Zero Road Safety plan has been accelerated and enhanced five times, and in June, Toronto council approved another $22 million to bring the investment to $109 million.
Keesmaat’s plan would see some funding added to that — 3 per cent of the city’s transportation capital budget, or about $15 million a year, to fund a twoyear “Safer Streets” plan. She said she would:
Ensure every school in the city is safer for children to walk to, with bollards or planter boxes put in place to slow traffic.
Redesign 100 unsafe intersections to make it easier for seniors and children to cross by widening sidewalks and nar- rowing the roadway.
Lower speed limits on residential streets from 40 km/h to 30 km/h, as is currently the case in the Toronto and East York Community Council area.
On the last point, Keesmaat stressed the importance of consistency across the city.
“A patchwork approach is confusing for drivers,” she said. “We need to convey clearly that all our residential streets will be safe streets for children, safe for pedestrians, safe for cycling. The patchwork approach is contributing to an unsafe city.”
While Keesmaat unveiled the plan at a downtown Toronto intersection, she said the plan “is very much about the suburbs.
“That is precisely where we have to make the design changes. This is where we have to have wide street right-of-ways, where it is possible for seniors and young people to make it across the wide streets.”