Mayor John Tory says he has asked staff to look into “additional measures” that can be taken to improve road safety in the wake of an 11-year-old boy being struck and killed by a vehicle in Scarborough.
The boy was attempting to cross Canongate Trail at Purcell Square at around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday when he was hit by a northbound vehicle. The boy had just left nearby Kennedy Public School at the time of the collision.
School officials identified him Wednesday as Grade 6 student Duncan Xu.
Xu is the second child to be fatally struck by a vehicle in a school zone so far this year. Five-year-old Camila de Almeida Torcato was killed outside her Downsview school in January when she was pinned by an unoccupied vehicle.
“I was angry. No child, eleven years old, should be in that situation,” Tory said of the latest accident on Wednesday. “I convened a meeting in my office last night and again before I came here this morning to say look whatever it is we are doing it is still not enough and we need to determine other things we can do to improve the level of safety for pedestrians.”
The city introduced an ambitious five-year road safety plan called ‘Vision Zero” in 2016 with the goal of reducing the number of pedestrians killed by vehicles to zero.
As part of the 50-point plan, the city has introduced a number of school safety zones with additional signage in order to get drivers to slow down, extended the crossing time at more than 50 intersections and installed red light cameras at dozens of other intersections.
Tory, however, conceded on Wednesday that more needs to be done to protect pedestrians even if the city has to provide additional funding beyond the $80 million allocated to “Vision Zero.”
He said that he has asked staff to look into speeding up efforts to add crosswalks to roads where pedestrian activity is high and also plans to speak with school board officials to determine whether improvements can be made to streamline the pick-up and drop-off process.
“Scenes are described to me of utter chaos in around schools where people are parking perpendicular to the sidewalk and they are jockeying their cars around,” he said. “We need to decide that the safety of those kids is more important than whatever it might cost to put a traffic circle in front of the school or something like that.”
So far this year, there have been nine pedestrians that been struck and killed on Toronto streets, which would put the city on pace to surpass the 42 pedestrians killed in 2017.
Tory said that he is willing to look at a range of measures to improve pedestrian safety because we simply “cannot have this carnage continue.”
“When you have deaths taking place like this that is a crisis,” he said.
At the scene of the crash on Wednesday, parents of students at Kennedy Public School laid flowers near a curb.
Sally Ayu said the boy’s mother was returning from a nearby plaza and as she walked up to the accident scene she collapsed, recognizing her son’s jacket, shoes and backpack strewn on the road. The boy lives with his family in a basement apartment only 50 metres away from where he was hit.
“When the mom came over here and saw her son’s schoolbag… his mom couldn’t even stand up, she lied down (on the ground),” Ayu said, her voice choked with emotion.
School officials say Xu had recently come to Toronto from China and was enrolled in September.
Principal Frank Liu said Xu was a happy boy who loved to read and take part in school projects.
“He was a well-liked boy, he was a good student,” Liu told CTV News Toronto. “He left the school yesterday laughing and the tragedy is that we won’t hear that laugh in the days ahead.”
Residents say Canongate Trail is constantly lined with vehicles on either side when school lets out.
Greif counsellors were made available at the school all day to help students deal with the devastating news.