Toronto should be improving transportation infrastructure

The latest trend in urban planning is called “complete streets.” The idea is to improve streets with non-transportation uses like bike lanes, extra-wide sidewalks, art installations and landscaping. What planners don’t realize is that streets are not recreation and exercise centres; they are not parks; they are not fashionable restaurant patios nor entertainment venues for storytellers and pop-up concerts.

First and foremost, streets are for transportation, moving people and goods from one part of the city to another. Unlike private property, where buildings can add storeys for more intensive use, there is no room to expand our streets. Every square metre of the street allowance that is used for landscaping is a square metre that is not available for mobility.

Of course, the other important transportation infrastructure is transit. But in Toronto, the politicians have been unable to agree on any major transit initiative for years. Most experts worry that even if transit projects get beyond the coloured-line-on-a-map stage, they will be so expensive as to be unaffordable. And the very few transit projects that have been built require years and years and years of traffic, neighbourhood and economic disruption.

With all its new high-density, highrise development, Toronto should actually be increasing transportation infrastructure. But, at the very least, city hall should not be removing it.

Michael Ufford, retired City of Toronto planner