Part of King Street will again be closed to traffic for the Toronto International Film Festival in September despite an ongoing pilot project intended to prioritize the movement of streetcars along the busy downtown corridor.
King Street has been completely closed to traffic between Peter Street and University Avenue for the first weekend of TIFF since 2014 but there was some suggestion that it would not be shuttered this year due to the King Street pilot.
The city, however, has confirmed that there will be road closures in effect along King for at least part of TIFF.
Though the precise closure has not been determined and a permit has not yet been issued, Transportation Services spokesperson Bruce Hawkins tells CP24 that staff are already in discussions with TTC and TIFF officials about the closure.
In 2017, the TTC objected to closing King Street for the first weekend of the festival but the city went ahead with the closure anyway.
Mayor John Tory did tell CP24 last September that the closure was ‘unlikely’ to be repeated in 2018 but it appears that city staff have had a change of heart.
“With the King Street changes that are coming in terms of trying to move the transit vehicles better, you are unlikely to see this sort of thing next year because King Street will have changed in a way that probably won’t allow this to happen,” Tory said at the time.
Hawkins said that the city will “remove the dates of the planned TIFF closures from the data collection” for the King Street Pilot.
