One-way streets on Yonge and Bay proposed
Posted May 8, 2012 2:20 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A Toronto councillor thinks it may be time to change direction in downtown — as in change Yonge and Bay streets to one-way streets in opposite directions, south of Bloor Street.
According to Denzil Minnan-Wong, turning Yonge and Bay into one-way streets would be good for drivers and cyclists.
“You can also actually make way for a separated bike lane, you can have room for transit and you can have room for cars to travel very quickly,” Minnan-Wong explained. “It could go as far north as Bloor and as far south as Front Street or down to the waterfront.”
Minnan-Wong cites New York as a city where the one ways work.
Coun. Adam Vaughan told 680News he thinks it would just make things worse.
“They cause amazing gridlock. They force you to drive around the block to turn the corner. The experience in Hamilton and Vancouver is that they kill retail. they’re bad for pedestrians and they’re really bad for motorists.”
Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam doesn’t like the idea either and said one-way streets move people away from storefronts.
“It does not allow people to stop. It does not allow folks to come out to shops,” Wong-Tam said. “It is only designed to facilitate one objective and that is to move cars as quickly as possible.
Wong-Tam is proposing a redesign of Yonge that would allow specific drop-off points, since right now downtown Yonge is a no-stopping zone.
“If we’re going to curb urban sprawl, then we have to make the streets more liveable and sustainable and we have to build complete neighbourhoods,” Wong-Tam said. “One directional four-lane road is not good city building.”
The downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association has told 680News they have no official opinion at the moment.
City staff are currently in the middle of a downtown transportation study and Minnan-Wong said once they’re finished he’d like them to look at the one-way option.
