Item - 2021.IE20.12

City Council considered Items IE20.12 and IE20.13 together.

The Infrastructure and Environment Committee recommends that:

1. City Council request the General Manager, Transportation Services to continue to pursue opportunities to provide, where possible and under the advice of Toronto Public Health and through the City-wide recovery planning process, more space for pedestrians, cyclists and public transit riders to allow for better physical distancing through ActiveTO Major Road Closures and Cycling Network Expansion Projects.

2. City Council request the General Manager, Transportation Services to report back to Infrastructure and Environment Committee in the fourth quarter of 2021 on the outcome and future recommendations regarding the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion Projects, following a period of monitoring and evaluation.

3. City Council direct the General Manager, Transportation Services, as part of the design, installation, and monitoring process underway for ActiveTO projects, to continue to work in consultation with the local Councillors and stakeholders to identify and implement changes to the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion Projects as may be necessary to address operational and safety issues as they may arise, including modification or removal of the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion Projects if deemed necessary.

4. City Council delegate, despite any City of Toronto By-law to the contrary, to the General Manager, Transportation Services, until April 30, 2022, for the purposes of implementing and then addressing operational and safety issues that may arise in relation to the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion Projects, the authority to implement changes and process and submit directly to City Council any necessary Bills for By-law amendments to the schedules to City of Toronto Code Chapters on the streets and within the parameters as identified in Attachment 1 to the report (March 9, 2021) from the General Manager, Transportation Services, such regulation changes to be in effect no longer than April 30, 2022.

5. City Council authorize the appropriate City Officials to submit directly to City Council at the appropriate time any necessary Bills to amend the appropriate City of Toronto Municipal Code Chapter, and any Schedules to the Code, to reinstate the traffic and parking regulations to what they were immediately prior to the By-law amendments made in connection with the report (March 9, 2021) from the General Manager, Transportation Services.

6. City Council authorize and direct the appropriate City Officials to take the necessary action to give effect to City Council's decision, including the introduction in Council of any and all Bills that may be required. 

The Infrastructure and Environment Committee:

1. Requested the General Manager, Transportation Services to investigate, in consultation with local Councillors, and report directly to the April 7 and 8, 2021 City Council meeting on:

a. opportunities to accommodate Lake Shore Boulevard West ActiveTO partial or full closures on select weekends or consider alternate ActiveTO installations, similar to Bayview Avenue;

b. opportunities for additional ActiveTO locations, including on the Exhibition Place grounds; and

c. opportunities to accelerate traffic-calming in local neighbourhoods through the refocused efforts mentioned in the report, and creating enhanced Quiet Streets, based on lessons learned in 2020, as well as opportunities for a Quiet Neighbourhoods approach where appropriate.

2. Requested the General Manager, Transportation Services to work with the Chief Executive Officer, Toronto Transit Commission to identify any potential impacts to transit customers using shuttle buses during Toronto Transit Commission closures, the Automatic Train Control rollout and the proposed Yonge midtown complete street pilot, with attention paid to Yonge Street north of St. Clair Avenue, and to report directly to the April 7 and 8, 2021 City Council meeting on opportunities to mitigate the impact on transit customers.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a drastic and evolving change to the balance of demands on Toronto’s streets. Throughout 2020, the City of Toronto's Transportation Services Division introduced a variety of COVID-19 response programs in consultation with the Medical Officer of Health to accommodate the need for residents to be outside of their homes while physical distancing.

These programs, including ActiveTO, transformed Toronto's streets to support the city during the first summer of the pandemic. ActiveTO dedicated road space to facilitate active transportation for essential trips and physical activity and is highlighted in the Toronto Office of Recovery and Rebuild's COVID-19 - Impacts and Opportunities Report. Transportation infrastructure and programs will be critical for Toronto's recovery and efforts to build back better and prioritize investments that support key priorities all through an equity and resilience lens. 

ActiveTO was composed of three main programs; Major Road Closures, Quiet Streets and Cycling Network Expansion. This set of programs enabled the largest expansion of cycling infrastructure in the City's history and supported thousands of safe cycling and walking trips to essential services and recreation for mental and physical health.

The Major Road Closures were short-term recurring closures (i.e. weekends and holidays) of major roadways adjacent to highly utilized trails to provide more space for walking and cycling, thus enabling physical distancing. This program launched in May 2020 and continued through October 2020. Thousands of people made use of the Major Road Closures with record numbers in May and then leveling off to over 36,000 people/weekend day utilizing the closures in June, July and August.

Transportation Services proposes that the ActiveTO Major Road Closures program continues in 2021 and beyond. This program aligns with the City Council approved COVID-19 - Impact and Opportunities Report Recommendation 59, which states "accelerate or make permanent transit initiatives the City undertook quickly to support crisis response and restart, such as instituting priority bus lanes, improved cycling infrastructure, expansion of bike share and weekend recreational street closures, among others."

The Quiet Streets program was introduced in May of 2020 and installed 65 kilometres of traffic calming in approximately 30 locations. The program utilized temporary signage and barricades to slow vehicular traffic and encourage a shared use of the roadway. This program reinforced Transportation Services understanding that neighbourhoods across Toronto are eager to see traffic managed on local streets to make walking and cycling easier and safer.

In 2021, Transportation Services recommends refocusing the approach to local street calming through existing programs including the Council-adopted Traffic Calming Policy and related programs, speed limit reductions on local roads, implementation of the School Safety Zones, Automated Speed Enforcement in Community Safety Zones, neighbourhood-scale mobility and traffic management planning, and localized improvements identified through 311 calls and requests from City Councillors and Ward Office staff.

Through the Cycling Network Expansion program, Transportation Services accelerated and installed new bikeways along eight key corridors in the Council-adopted 2019 Cycling Network Plan, with particular focus on routes that mirrored major transit routes and/or connected to trails and greenspace. The ActiveTO cycling projects coupled with Transportation Services' permanent on-street cycling network and trail project represents the largest, single year increase in new bikeways in the City of Toronto's history.

Through delegated authority, staff were able to consult, design, and install an unprecedented amount of new cycling infrastructure, which supported a significant growth in cycling this summer and enabled staff to make modifications to projects quickly in response to monitoring and stakeholder feedback. Transportation Services recommends building on the success of rapidly deploying new bikeways through the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion program, but through a more modest deployment to better match existing resources and enhanced public consultation in 2021.

The 2019 Council-adopted Cycling Network Near-Term Implementation Plan included a corridor comparison study of Avenue Road, Yonge Street, and Mount Pleasant Avenue between Bloor Street and Lawrence Avenue, which was programmed to be undertaken in 2021. In October 2020, City Council requested Transportation Services to consider the opportunity to install a complete street pilot (i.e. streetscape improvements and road safety measures, in conjunction with a protected bikeway) on Yonge Street between Bloor Street and Lawrence Avenue or parallel corridors by Second Quarter 2021.

As directed in the City Council adopted 2019 Cycling Network Plan, Transportation Services was preparing to undertake a corridor study of the three parallel midtown corridors, and based on the IE 15.11 request, also included a review of the feasibility of the delivery of a complete street pilot in 2021 as part of the ActiveTO program and COVID-19 pandemic response. 

In line with the objectives of the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion projects delivered in 2020, the Midtown corridor project would be intended to provide multi-modal capacity along the Line 1 subway through a temporary cycling connection between Midtown and the downtown core, as well as support economic recovery of the main street businesses through opportunities to expand on-street patios and streetscape improvements.  

Following a corridor comparison analysis and initial consultation with local stakeholders, Transportation Services is seeking City Council authority to undertake broader community consultation and installation of a temporary ActiveTO complete street pilot on Yonge Street between Bloor Street and Davisville Avenue / Chaplin Crescent, subject to further review of these limits and potential impact to surface transit operations as part of the detailed design process, using a similar approach to the Destination Danforth complete streets pilot project. Consistent with the approach to delegation for the ActiveTO Cycling Network Expansion projects approved by City Council in May 2020, the proposed delegation would be time-limited and would end on April 30, 2022. This delegation of authority would allow Transportation Services to consult, analyze, design and install a recommended complete street on Yonge Street after local consultation without delay.

Transportation Services also recommends that the ActiveTO Bayview Cycling Corridor installed in 2020 from Rosedale Valley Road to River Street be extended southerly from River Street to Mill Street on a temporary basis in order to provide a detour route during the 2021 Lower Don Trail Construction Closure.

Transportation Services plans to report back to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee in the fourth quarter of 2021 on the outcome and future recommendations regarding the ActiveTO cycling projects, following a period of monitoring and evaluation.