Walk Toronto’s Dylan Reid wrote a letter to the editor that was published in the Toronto Star on Feb. 22, 2024. The letter expressed support for the proposed transformation of part of Avenue Road into a safer street with more space for pedestrians and slower traffic. The letter was in support of an op-ed in the Toronto Star by Albert Koehl, “There is no reason to fear a safer Avenue Road.”
The text of the letter was as follows:
Transforming Avenue Road is long overdue
I lived on Avenue Road near Dupont in the 1990s and regularly walked along it to get to work or for errands. At one point, I wrote to my Metro councillor in the hope that planned roadworks might narrow such a dangerous and intimidating street for pedestrians, with its speeding cars and narrow sidewalks, and she wrote back that, much as she’d like to see it, it could never happen. So it’s heartening to see, three decades later, that this necessary transformation is within grasp. A two-kilometre six-lane highway is not just an anomaly in the city, but serves no real purpose now that the streets north and south of it are all four lanes. It’s time to start making it a normal downtown main street.
Dylan Reid, Toronto
The letter can be found online on the Toronto Star website with other Feb. 22, 2024 letters.
Walk Toronto is a member of the Avenue Road Safety Coalition. City of Toronto staff will be presenting a plan to make Avenue Road safer for pedestrians at the March 27, 2024 Infrastructure and Environment Committee. Everyone who supports this concept is encouraged to connect with the coalition, and to express their support to the local councillors (Dianne Saxe and Josh Matlow).
