24-hour road work, towing delivery trucks could ease gridlock: Tory
Posted July 17, 2014 4:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Mayoral candidate John Tory has come up with more ideas to combat the ever-worsening gridlock in Toronto.
On Thursday, he expanded on his Fighting Gridlock Initiative with four measures he said are “common sense.”
“I just think people are fed up with the fact that it seems city hall is insensitive to the needs of drivers — and by that I include drivers of cars, of trucks and of transit vehicles — ‘cause they’re stuck in the same traffic jams a lot of the time,” Tory told reporters.
He promised, as mayor, to start towing delivery vehicles blocking lanes on major roads during rush hour; to have more parking enforcement officers focused on key arteries and fewer in residential areas; to have a committee coordinate construction projects; and to examine whether road work can be done around the clock, while respecting residential areas.
“I’ve heard the frustration … of people who see these projects — including in part the ones nearby the Gardiner and the Lake Shore — where people go there on a Saturday morning or a Tuesday evening at six o’clock and see nobody there,” Tory said.
Construction on the Gardiner is due to be finished in 2016.
In April, Tory put forward other ideas to relieve traffic, including water taxis, better timing for construction projects, testing out new signal technology, parking enforcement during rush hour and express buses on routes like Don Mills Road, Dufferin Street and Front Street.
The Olivia Chow campaign called Tory’s plan “rhetoric” and “still very similar to Rob Ford’s.” It also criticized Tory for not having a cycling strategy.
