[lenaitch]

I'm not an engineer, and maybe watch too much fiction where technology does magical things, but I would have thought that all that's needed is to direct a beam of light of measured and calibrated power in one side of the window and measure how much light makes it out the other side. There must be portable devices that do that, if the regs were written to allow that. Could be done from the sidewalk with the car neither unlocked nor entered.

- Paul

All of the ones I am aware of have a transmitter and receiver, and most straddle a partially opened window which obviously implies an attended vehicle. Regardless, it would require the appropriate legislation, designated measuring devices, calibration protocol, etc.

I'm sure you could at least issue a summons to have it measured and a fine for failure to appear.

A basic principle of summary conviction regulatory law is to be found committing a particular offence (with very few exceptions). Suspicion of an offence is not grounds to compel a driver or owner to do anything.

Unarmed Enforcement officers have confrontations with motorists all the time. Some escalate to violence, sure, but relatively few. There's no reason why citing a parked vehicle for obscured plate would be any more of a risk than citing it for parking next to a fire hydrant, or overstaying a paid meter transaction. Or even lacking a license plate. I am suggesting citing parked cars, not conducting traffic stops (which are definitely higher risk)

We should not inflate the perceived risk beyond actual experience and probability. I'm jumping ahead of the investigators and assuming that the officers in this situation had grounds to fear for their safety, hence their actions were legal and justified. But every transaction between officers - armed or otherwise - and the public should not be escalated just because some do turn out lethal. There will always be some ambiguity and hence some risk taken - which is why we pay officers well, give them respect, and equip and train them for the dangers of the job.

- Paul

The interaction of Parking Control with a driver or owner is incidental to their duties, not conditional.

 

[evandyk]

The interaction of Parking Control with a driver or owner is incidental to their duties, not conditional.

That would still be the case if Parking Control was empowered to issue tickets for obscured license plates (or overly tinted windows) on a parked car.

 

[SubHuman]

Evans Ave between Treeview Dr and Kipling could probably use at least one place for pedestrians to cross.
I was leaving the Etobicoke Ikea one day last week at about 6:30 PM, and the transit app directions said to walk south on Wickman Rd and cross Evans Ave to catch the eastbound Route 15 TTC bus.
I never played video games, but I think Frogger was the one people would use to describe that situation.

 

[lenaitch]

That would still be the case if Parking Control was empowered to issue tickets for obscured license plates (or overly tinted windows) on a parked car.

Correct. It would require Parking Control personnel to be designated as Provincial Offences Officers and designated for the purposes of the HTA, as well as much better written 'tinting' section of the HTA to make it practically enforceable on an unattended vehicle.

 

[Northern Light]

There isn't a super obvious spot (to me) to put this, so I'll stick it here.

A report is coming to the next meeting of Infrastructure and Environment Ctte on the subject of a suicide prevention barrier being added to the Millwood/Leaside Bridge.

https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2025/ie/bgrd/backgroundfile-254063.pdf

At this stage, the City has narrowed down the possibilities to two designs with a leaning towards one............ but there is no actual project file for construction.

The current intent is to include $500,000 in the next 5-year capital plan to further study/assess and presumably, subject to said assessment, move forward with a given design.

Aside from preferences on aesthetics/heritage, the main issues will be assessing how much structural load (weight) the new barriers will add, whether the current bridge design can support this, and general inspection of the sidewalks/parapet walls to see what condition they are in, and whether they should be constructed as part of this project.

The two preferred design options are numbers six and seven which you can see below, for the others, follow the link to the report and peruse at your leisure. (Six is the most probable selection)

View attachment 641031
View attachment 641032

Leaside Bridge update.

Council made some tweaks.

1) They picked option 6

2) They directed that the work here (installing the barrier) be prioritized and expedited.

3) They authorized staff to issue a contract RV Anderson for design/engineering.

4) They directed that a status update and timeline on procurement be provided by the end of September:

 

[Northern Light]

Once again, a local City Councillor is here to assure you that Vision Zero doesn't mean a thing.....

Added to today's I&E agenda at the last minute:

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Once again, a local City Councillor is here to assure you that Vision Zero doesn't mean a thing.....

Added to today's I&E agenda at the last minute:

View attachment 649453

No sidewalks means that people and especially children will be using the road. Then post "30 km/h" speed limit signs and enforce it.

 

[rbt]

No sidewalks means that people and especially children will be using the road. Then post "30 km/h" speed limit signs and enforce it.

15km/h. No sidewalk means its a woonerf.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

15km/h. No sidewalk means its a woonerf.

With raised intersections and crossings. Not speed humps at mid-block.

 

[crs1026]

An old debate repeating itself, and I will repeat myself - the City really needs to revisit the premise of its local street sidewalk building and recalibrate. It is a textbook case of how not to build support for a program despite good intentions all round.

The premise - that building a few hundred meters of sidewalks a year in random order will cumulatively transform things over a very long time period - remains at odds with a) the mandate (found in the original program document) to prioritise sidewalk construction based on certain objective and data driven factors and b) the premise that building sidewalks need only happen when roadwork is undertaken, meaning that there is no hurry felt (and no funding offered) to address risks where these are most present.

A quick look on Streetview says that in this case, once again the City is wanting to build sidewalks in a very quiet backwater, and not in locations that see lots of traffic and present high risks to pedestrians using local streets.

If it were my program, I would identify every public school that does not have sidewalks extending for 200 m in every direction.... and impose those sidewalks first, with no exceptions granted. It would be much harder for residents to mount opposition in that context, and it would deliver more safety where more needed. And then it would create a body of living-near-to-school residents who might say to the opposers, look we took one for the team by accepting sidewalks so kids can walk to school safely, now it's your turn to extend them onto your street.

- Paul

 

[Northern Light]

An old debate repeating itself, and I will repeat myself - the City really needs to revisit the premise of its local street sidewalk building and recalibrate. It is a textbook case of how not to build support for a program despite good intentions all round.

The premise - that building a few hundred meters of sidewalks a year in random order will cumulatively transform things over a very long time period - remains at odds with a) the mandate (found in the original program document) to prioritise sidewalk construction based on certain objective and data driven factors and b) the premise that building sidewalks need only happen when roadwork is undertaken, meaning that there is no hurry felt (and no funding offered) to address risks where these are most present.

A quick look on Streetview says that in this case, once again the City is wanting to build sidewalks in a very quiet backwater, and not in locations that see lots of traffic and present high risks to pedestrians using local streets.

If it were my program, I would identify every public school that does not have sidewalks extending for 200 m in every direction.... and impose those sidewalks first, with no exceptions granted. It would be much harder for residents to mount opposition in that context, and it would deliver more safety where more needed. And then it would create a body of living-near-to-school residents who might say to the opposers, look we took one for the team by accepting sidewalks so kids can walk to school safely, now it's your turn to extend them onto your street.

- Paul

I take no issue w/your premise Paul, except.........that in this case, as many others, this was bundled with reconstruction work that was taking place anyway. It wasn't random, it was opportunistic, because road is dug up and the curbs removed, and moving stuff around in these circumstances is cheaper and easier to do properly than the manner which you suggest.

Adding sidewalks when no road work is planned means either, expensively, moving the curbs, excavating a portion of perfectly good road, and relocating the catch basins, then patching said road, and almost certainly shortening its lifespan....

Or

It means bulldozing it through people's gardens, and across their driveways, in some areas, making it impossible to park cars in said driveway, as you can't block the sidewalk. You sure about that drawing less opposition?

Btw, the dedicated budget for missing sidewalks, for the entire City is a mere 2.5M per year. Which is enough money to finish the job .....(assuming the standard is sidewalks on both sides of arterials and one side on local streets....)...

Hmm, that's 730km of missing sidewalk................that's about 1.7B worth of sidewalk in present-day dollars........so we'll finish in 680 years.............unless we use the reconstruction budget.

 

[crs1026]

Adding sidewalks when no road work is planned means either, expensively, moving the curbs, excavating a portion of perfectly good road, and relocating the catch basins, then patching said road, and almost certainly shortening its lifespan....

Or

It means bulldozing it through people's gardens, and across their driveways, in some areas, making it impossible to park cars in said driveway, as you can't block the sidewalk. You sure about that drawing less opposition?

I appreciate the financial and technical merits of what you are saying....but I have to wonder if there is some middle ground here. Would we accept a lesser design standard or interim quality of product if it quickly and cheaply got us more kms of off-road pathways in more locations without compromising the base road structure or creating major havoc for residents?

I'm sorely ignorant as to all the considerations in designing sidewalks, but to be simplistic....there are lots of places where a meter wide strip of some informal medium (red crushed stone, perhps?) could be placed next to whatever curb or road edge currently exists... this would not meet every accessibility or all-weather requirement, but might move a lot of pedestrian presence off the roads while not egregiously harming residents' interests. And serving notice that further measures will happen eventually.

The old saying - actions speak loudest. For a policy that is rooted in a sense of urgency about reducing harm, the optics of accepting decades taken to address obvious places of greater risk really works against public acceptance. There's a real ambiguity about whether sidewalks re a critical need or just a nice to have that can wait for another day whereever sewers re holding up.

- Paul

 

[Northern Light]

I appreciate the financial and technical merits of what you are saying....but I have to wonder if there is some middle ground here. Would we accept a lesser design standard or interim quality of product if it quickly and cheaply got us more kms of off-road pathways in more locations without compromising the base road structure or creating major havoc for residents?

A fine question to which I can't muster any glib answer.

I'm sorely ignorant as to all the considerations in designing sidewalks, but to be simplistic....there are lots of places where a meter wide strip of some informal medium (red crushed stone, perhps?) could be placed next to whatever curb or road edge currently exists... this would not meet every accessibility or all-weather requirement, but might move a lot of pedestrian presence off the roads while not egregiously harming residents' interests. And serving notice that further measures will happen eventually.

The standard for accessibility and sidewalks in generally thus at this point, is 2.1M wide.

I believe that's considered a legal standard at this point, its certainly the design requirement for the City.

I'm not sure if crushed stone would be considered a passable substitute for concrete. Let me get back to you on that.

The old saying - actions speak loudest. For a policy that is rooted in a sense of urgency about reducing harm, the optics of accepting decades taken to address obvious places of greater risk really works against public acceptance. There's a real ambiguity about whether sidewalks re a critical need or just a nice to have that can wait for another day whereever sewers re holding up.

- Paul

I'll be the first to agree things aren't perfect as they are...........

But where I'm inclined to draw a different line is to say, if the road is being reconstructed.......why should a sidewalk not be included?

We can certainly discuss places we should do 'something' where we are not.....

But is it reasonable to do 'nothing' because the locals would prefer that?

My instinct is that the answer should be 'no' to the above. I'm willing to entertain decorative, or higher-quality materials............but maybe, the locals should be prepared to accept a premium if they want their walkways made of granite?

 

[lenaitch]

But is it reasonable to do 'nothing' because the locals would prefer that?

I clearly have no dog in this hunt, but there is a member of another forum I follow who lives in an old, quite, perhaps 'toney', neighbourhood of curvy streets in the west end who want nothing to do with sidewalks. They're the ones who walk there - it's not a route to or from anywhere.

I get it if there is actual pedestrian or vehicular traffic to create conflict.

 

[vic]

When I lived near Bloor and Islington I liked walking on those quiet sidewalk-free residential streets south of Bloor. Seemed nice, even pleasant, having wide space to walk. As long as the (very light) traffic was slow and everyone treated it respectfully...