Over the last three months, city crews have made changes to 14 intersections that are known to be dangerous for pedestrians and plans are underway to make more improvements.

Public Works Chair Jaye Robinson said Thursday morning that improvements to the structure and alignment of problematic intersections will continue to be done across the city.

The work is part of the city’s five-year road safety plan, which was unanimously approved by city council in July. As part of the plan, the city will spend $80 million on a variety of engineering, traffic enforcement and education measures aimed at reducing the number of road deaths.

“We have made excellent progress in three short months but we have much more work to do,” Robinson said on Thursday as she stood alongside the intersection of Dundas and River streets. “We have to be aggressive in putting this plan into action as every life lost on our streets in Toronto is one too many.”

The work that has been undertaken so far has included the realignment of 14 dangerous intersections, Robinson said. In some cases, crews have also removed right turn channelizations, where vehicles are only required to yield to pedestrians and not come to a full stop.

Robinson said that in addition to the road work that has been done, work has also begun on reducing speed limits at 14 other intersections and re-timing traffic lights at 37 others to provide pedestrians with more time to get across.

Robison said that by January, crews will also have installed 79 red light cameras at dangerous intersections.

“We are taking a data-based approach,” Robinson said. “One size does not fit all. Every intersection is different.”

Safety push comes amid deadly year on the roads

The push to improve road safety comes amid a particularly dangerous year on Toronto streets.

So far in 2016 there have been a total of 65 fatal collisions, which is one more than was recorded in all of 2015.

If there is at least one more traffic fatality between now and the end of the year the city will have recorded the highest number of road deaths since 2003 when there was 74.

There has also been a noted uptick in collisions involving pedestrians with a total of 18 – one of them fatal – occurring just last Thursday alone.

“We often report these are statistics but these are people’s lives,” Robinson said. “They are children, they are parents, they are grandparents. Making our roads safer has to be one of the most important priorities for the city.”

Some of the other steps that have been taken or will be taken to improve road safety include:

  • Installing 400 new speed limit signs
  • Improving line markings at 317 intersections
  • The addition of accessible pedestrian signals and depressed curbs at 56 intersections
  • The installation of ‘watch your speed’ signs in school zones