Steeles & Woodbine City’s Busiest Intersection

Think about a Toronto rush hour and the word gridlock comes to mind.

But if you were asked which intersection in the city has the most traffic, chances are you’d name a main thoroughfare downtown that crosses Yonge St.

And you’d be wrong.

New numbers from Toronto’s Urban Transit Control Systems (UTCS) show the winner, if you can call it that, is Steeles and Woodbine. Click here to jump to the list of Busiest Intersections.

That intersection came in first in a survey of the average number of cars that pass through two main city streets. At least 58,000 vehicles zoom through the intersection over an eight hour period.  

The results may be a surprise to some motorists, but not to those who drive the route every day.

“It’s going to take me at least five, ten minutes to make a left, five minutes minimum to make a left,” complains driver Andrew Morrison.

But it’s Sheppard Ave. that may be the biggest surprise. It showed up seven times in the top 20. The intersection of Sheppard and the Allen ranked second overall.

Steeles appears no less than five times in the Top 10 alone.

Why are these streets so jammed packed?   In this case, size really does matter.

“They’re the busiest intersections in the city basically because they’re very large,” suggests UTCS G.M. Bruce Zvaniga. “They have many lanes so they can accommodate many cars. There are other intersections in the city where there are as many cars that want to go through it but there isn’t the room to get them through.”

Don Mills and Eglinton was the runner up, coming in third.

But busy sometimes also means dangerous, as well. Kennedy and Sheppard not only appears on the list of those that are among the most crowded, but on the annual look at the most dangerous intersections.

The bottom line: leave earlier and drive more slowly. You may not have much choice.

Gridlock is a continuing problem in the G.T.A. and the fact that it happens on such wide avenues proves that expanding them just seems to attract more traffic, but doesn’t necessarily ease the endless jam sessions.

The Top 20 Busiest Intersections In Toronto
(Ranked by volume over an eight-hour period between 2001 and 2004)

1) Steeles E. &  Woodbine Ave.  (57,797)

2) Sheppard. W. & Allen Rd.  (52,942)

3) Don Mills & Eglinton Ave. E. (49,929)

4) Steeles & Yonge St. (47,753)

5) Bayview & Sheppard Ave. E. (47,651)
 
6) Dufferin & Finch Ave. W. (47,146 )

7) Dufferin  & Steeles Ave. W. (46,337)

8) Sheppard & Yonge St. (45,230)

9) Bayview  & Steeles Ave. E. (45,040)

10) Pharmacy & Steeles Ave. E. (44,410)

11) Don Mills  & Sheppard Ave. E. (44,197)

 

12) Leslie & Sheppard Ave. E. (43,813)

 

13) Hwy. 401 N. Signal &  Markham Rd. (43,664)

 

14) Keele & Steeles Ave. W. (43,641)

 

15) Kennedy & Sheppard Ave. E. (43,606)

 

16) Sheppard E. &  Victoria Park Ave. (43,306)

 

17) Finch & Yonge St. (43,250)

 

18) Hwy. 401 N. Signal &  Kennedy Rd. (43,056)

 

19) Markham &  Progress Ave. (42,868)

 

20) Kipling &  The Queensway (42,841)

Source: Urban Transit Control Systems