Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Toronto: Toronto’s network of roadways must work for all travellers regardless of whether they drive a car, ride a bike or get around on foot, the city’s new general manager of transportation says.
Barbara Gray made the comment to reporters on Tuesday morning as she was officially introduced as the successor to Stephen Buckley, who left city hall for a job in Philadelphia this past summer.
Gray, who has been on the job for nine days, previously worked as the deputy director of the department of transportation in Seattle. Gray was with the City of Seattle when voters approved the 9-year, $930 million Move Seattle levy to fund transportation initiatives in 2015 and also helped create a 20-year plan for Seattle’s transportation network.
“If you own a car and a car is a more convenient way for you to get around the city you want to know your trip is going to be safe and reliable and I want to know that you are sharing the road safely for those making a different choice and to me that is the issue,” Gray said. “It is about making the network work for all of our travellers regardless of what mode they choose.”
$400 million budget
As the head of Transportation Services, Gray will oversee a department with a $400-million budget and several difficult challenges ahead, including the city’s well-documented congestion problems and a startling increase in the number of fatal collisions involving pedestrians so far this year.
In introducing Gray, Mayor Tory said that “there no war on cars in Toronto” but he stressed that there is a need to design a road network that reflects the increasing number of people choosing to commute to work using alternate means of transportation.
“It’s an evolution; it is not a war. People who are trying to describe this as some sort of war are just trying to stir up trouble and ignore the fact that cities are changing. They are ignoring the fact that there are huge percentages of people who live in this city today who don’t have a car and who want to make sure they can get around the city in other ways,” he said. “I think our job is to try to achieve a balanced transportation system where there is no king but a lot of people sharing.”
Gray open to lower speed limits
Gray said that one of her first orders of business will be to make sure that the city’s five-year, $80-million road safety plan is rolled out as “quickly and aggressively” as possible.
Gray also said that she will take steps to ensure that existing speed limits are being followed and is open to further conversations about reduced speed limits. In Seattle, the city’s transportation department used pedestrian decoys in intersections to catch drivers who were violating the rules of the road.
“I think it is the same challenges that we faced even in the little hamlet of Seattle,” Gray said on Tuesday, citing the drivers versus cyclists and pedestrians mentality that sometimes exists in cities. “The rhetoric is exactly the same, so it is not different. Certainly the scale is different.”
Last year, the city voted to lower speed limits to 30 km/h on residential roads within the Toronto and East York community council and Mayor Tory has said that other community councils could propose similar initiatives.
The City of Seattle has about 650,000 people compared to 2.6 million in Toronto.
