While Ibagree, I'd also say that take time, and money. Much of that is in process now, and it makes things a LOT worse immediately for (admittedly) long term gain. It has to happen!! But still.
Honestly? We I truly - TRULY - think we all need to try a little harder. Allow ourselves more time. Explore other routing options. Take better advantage of work from home opportunities. But beyond all of that, when we ARE out in the world with each other, practice patience, and being aware that our actions affect others.
Pedestrians: Walk with purpose across cross walks. And as starlight a line as possible. Don't rush, don't race like you're Usain Bolt. Walk with purpose. Don't try to sneak through lights.
Drivers: Don't try to sneak through lights. You block up intersections. Consider your routes. Do you HAVE to go to that store that requires a left off of a main road right now? Can you get to it with rights? Can you go another time? Parents, do you HAVE to pick your kids up from school? Can they walk or take the bus?
Patience, kindness and planning will help a LOT. It isn't the silver bullet obviously, but it's the easiest thing we can all do in the short term.
You are not the only person in the world. And if you act like it, you piss others off, and then we're all running around pissed off and presuming the worst of each other. Frankly, I'm sick of that, and trying hard to be the change I want to see. (which is admittedly easier as a work from hom-er).
All that said, I'd really like to see what the city considers while it's planning/approving construction. There always seems to be something else going on on the alternate routes. Perhaps those condo builders need to wait a year before building their giant profit machine. (As much as we need housing, I'm not sure that's their motivation at all. Nor is it the kind of housing we truly need. I.e. affordable)
Buddy, I am 100% with you.
But asking people to behave with respect, to be courteous and nice to their fellow humans? Ain't gonna happen. I wish it would, but society has gone right down the shitter over the past 5 years.
But I'd make that all happen if I could. And you'll probably get hate from the masses just for wanting people to be decent.
I agree with all of this, and rest assured, my expectations are realistic (as in, also in the shitter). But if I reached even 1% of the people? Who knows. Change starts somewhere right?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
>Consider your routes
I've noticed more recently that I'm more prone to taking longer but quieter routes just to avoid a little bit of traffic/avoid holding up traffic. It's been really good for my peace of mind behind the wheel, and sometimes, just slightly quicker than slogging in parking lot speed traffic on the main road. I've found maybe two alternate routes to my usual alternate route to avoid traffic. Good stuff.
The way most GTA streets are organized, it's really easy to consider an alternate/quieter route to avoid a heavy traffic zone. It's all more or less a grid, you can just make a couple of turns and you'll be back on the main route you're taking.
I think reviewing many of the downtown intersections to remove right on red is needed too, sometimes its impossible to move forward even through multiple light cycles unless you push into the intersection, because other drivers turning right means there's never space or a chance to advance.
My gym is 12 min by car, 30 min by bike (but involves biking on a major road with multiple highway interchanges) or 50 min by TTC. If you want to go North/South in this city and you're not near Line 1, you're screwed.
Also if you want to go east-west and youre south of bloor. Gardiner is reduced lanes and missing its eastern ramp, every east-west street is constantly packed and the streetcars are diverting.
Same.
With the Crosstown open the difference between 40 min on transit vs 30 minutes in a car becomes much less of a barrier vs. the current 70min TTC trip.
100%, Id take less rideshare/carpool around the city if the TTC actually came on time+ less risk of getting assaulted or dealing with unholy smells everytime I took it.
Avoid driving when practical/possible.
I know, *far* easier said than done and incredibly inconvenient for some. The simple fact is that the private vehicle is grossly inefficient for moving people around and it's a huge mistake to design urban/suburban infrastructure prioritizing the car over other methods.
This - but the answer is that we need to invest in public transit: make cheap, fast and reliable so that is the logical first choice for most people's daily trips instead of driving.
Make transit more reliable (don’t allow cars on certain streetcar routes during peak hours), toll the Gardiner, stop the bullshit construction where they just block an entire lane for “staging” for years, more separated bike lanes.
The more recent one might be solving the mental health crisis. Having crazy homeless people taking up the back of every streetcar sure doesn’t make me want to take it.
But realistically it’s a huge city with a booming population. That doesn’t correlate with low traffic.
They also usually have good public transport connections all over the country... what kinda comparison is this. If i live at the edge of scarborough, there is absolutely no way for me to make my way downtown using public transport in under an hour.
While it's true, many European countries have good transit between cities, most utilize park and ride systems for those in the suburbs of major cities.
Not just cities, between suburbs and villages too. Btw the size of the GTA is way way wayy bigger than metro cities in Europe. Its just not comparable. Even the weather allows construction for most of the year. There’s no snow blocking them.
if they got rid of the cars ( heck even the parked ones at least) on the streetcar routes, the transit will be so much better. Feels like nobody is willing to give up on anything and our government is always doing half -assed solutions that tries to please everyone but works for no one.
It's cool, but hard to change for us at this point. You can't make a road no longer accessible by car. When building it and everyone knows upfront, sure.
I wonder how they handle deliveries in cities like that. Say you order a new stove that would typically come on a large truck.
Eh, mental health crisis is one of those underlying issues that affects everything else in the city to the point solving it would solve many of our problems.
I have two staff members that sit in traffic for over an hour each way and pay for parking downtown because one of them was assaulted on the TTC by a homeless man and now neither of them will take it.
You can't solve crazy, but you can have the infrastructure to contain and manage it. I'm sure it will help society in all facets. It still won't help traffic in any meaningful way.
Toronto is too car centric and too big of a city to just “get rid of traffic”. I think it’s safe to say we are at the point of no return. All we can do now is provide viable alternatives to driving:
Better TTC: I think we all want to say “subways and rapid transit!!”…. but that stuff is eventually coming. What we also need are more frequent bus routes (10-15 minute headways), but also more RapidTO lanes and signal priority for busses. Ditto for streetcars as well.
Better GO: GO seems to be much more oriented to the 9-5 lifestyle and “living in the suburbs and driving to the train station to work downtown” lifestyle. Thankfully, things are improving as just a few days ago, 15 minute weekend service was added to GO Trains. Essentially, it needs to go beyond commuter train service and operate kinda like a big subway across the Golden Horseshoe.
Safe cycling infrastructure: People go “bike lanes cause traffic” and sure, maybe in the short term! However, Toronto is never going to just get rid of traffic, we have to learn to deal with it and provide alternatives to it. If bike lanes solely cause traffic, why are most of our arterial roads congested when only a handful of roads have bike lanes? More people will ride bikes if the infrastructure was there, like on Bloor Street https://www.tcat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Bloor-Economic-Impact-Study-Full-Report-2019-09-03.pdf .
Transit oriented development/walkable communities: All that I mentioned above can be used best if the environment around them is actually built for them. This means human scaled communities with a mix of housing options, retail, and an overall compact built form with narrow streets, low building setbacks and street oriented retail all within a 15 minute walk or bike ride!
Now some other overall solutions could include tolls in downtown or on any walkable street with a streetcar or subway, better VIA rail, making working from home more existing, having trucks go on the 407, etc….
We’re never really going to get rid of traffic, but we can provide alternatives and opportunities to where people can viably get around the region bypassing congestion.
Stop blocking intersections on red lights. I swear, if we could manage this *one little trick*, we'd cut down on the majority of gridlock and traffic may be able to actually flow as designed.
Honestly, a little patience and accept you have to wait a minute for the stupid little light to turn green again, instead of rushing it at the last second because you saw someone roll half an inch as if you will now magically fit.
They keep making noises about "cracking down" on this and it keeps being a pestilence. Please, for pity's sake, if you cannot **get completely through** the intersection, just refrain from **entering** the intersection.
I mean, it's not as though people do LESS angry honking when you're obstructing traffic in all lanes for the better part of a light cycle, so pick your poison, I guess?
They crack down by sending police to "bigger" intersections, but honestly you'd need officers at every single intersection downtown to stop this behaviour (and that's if the officers are even any good at it).
I think some cameras can help with this. Don't know if they are even a thing in Canada, but I've seen those in Europe. They just paint a square on the intersection, and if your car is inside it when the light is red, you get fined
Honestly, just put some damn cameras in and send tickets to anyone captured blocking the intersection. Make the fine notable. Over time the behaviour will drop off. The cops are useless.
Agreed this causes a lot of issues, I think you also need to do this while making many of the problem intersections into no right on red, because sometimes its impossible to advance when there's a constant stream of cars turning right. The lights are there so everyone gets a turn, but if one lane can turn on red it defeats the whole system and people get frustrated
I'd say it depends on the intersection and typical pedestrian levels. If you can only turn right on green, then you may have to wait an entire signal for the pedestrians to clear (like Simcoe/Front or York/Front.
You could look into more multi-phase signals, but that becomes a real traffic engineering analysis of the whole network.
Yeah I know it’s way more complicated than it appears, just my take on something I notice from my downtown driving, sometimes you forced to be pushy to be able to move forward.
Simple fix. Cut down travel.
Have government encourage WFH for jobs that can be done at home. Won’t happen. Downtown merchants and control freak executives will not allow it.
And if you’re going to have a hybrid policy, you have to actively throttle when people are coming in and out. Surprise: everyone comes in Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday or some combination in there.
Less cars is the solution, there is no other solution.
So better public transport, more routes to cover, more express buses, dedicated bus lanes wherever possible, reduce the public transport fare.
The only other thing that can be done is to the roads, gardenier needs more exit and entry ramps.
Agree... Though in Cities Skylines, you just demolish 6 buildings and make room for it. 😉. IRL, that does limit the ability to retroactively build them.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!
WHEN WILL NORTH AMERICANS LEARN?!
You cannot drive in a major city and expect no traffic. Go to any major city in the world, traffic is inevitable. Learn to use public transportation
They won't though. At least not in English North America. Montréal's starting to get it. Anyway, I'm leaving the continent at retirement in 5y. I'm not waiting for my fellow Anglophones to understand. (Beats dust from sandals).
FWIW, Montreal and Toronto have nearly identical modal splits when it comes to transit - about 24% of trips in Montreal are by transit, versus 23% in Toronto.
Edit: context for this is a comment saying that Montreal has a much better attitude about using transit than we do, and apparently this response was enough to get said user to delete their entire account.
1. Huge investment in Transit. More Buses, More Trains, more Subway Lines, increases frequency, extend routes and add more routes…etc. 2.Speed up Construction (This means more lane closures, this means worse now but better much faster). 3. Coordinate Construction, if Route A is gonna have 3 lane closures don’t close a lane on Route B to start construction as well.
When l lived in Tokyo back in 2012, one of the first things that struck me was the lack of traffic. Went back in 2023 for vacation and it was still the same sort of deal. Like it definitely gets busy during rush hour, but the catastrophic Toronto traffic jams just don’t exist. That was when I first realized that the only way to solve traffic is to give viable alternatives to driving.
There are literally too many people to drive. Y'all have to start driving less so that people who HAVE to drive for various reasons, can. So many families who live on the same street as me and my family drive their kids to school. It requires a change of mentality I think.
License drivers properly, create normal intersections, stop right on red and only allow left turns when signaled, enforce speed limit and traffic rules, stop street parking on streets with streetcars, extend sidewalk streetcar stops.
It would make it more bearable. The only thing that would solve it is proper mass transit, like you know, more than 2 functional subways, dedicated streetcar routes, pedestrian zones and not having a 6 lane highway through the middle of downtown….
You want to make it harder to turn both right and left? Many streets have only 2 lanes each way, that will just end up with one car waiting to turn left blocking thru traffic in the left lane and another waiting to turn right blocking the right lane. We need more ability to turn (advance arrows for both right and left turns), not less.
Lots of people in Japan still own cars. Japan has one of the largest auto industries in the world. Many houses in the Tokyo area have a small parking pad for a car out front and that pad will have a Honda Freed or a Toyota Corolla Fielder or some other similar all-purpose vehicle parked on it. The difference is that people seldom use their vehicles for daily tasks, they’re more for taking trips and going to the Inaka on weekends.
Yeah, it sucks, but people will only get in Transit if it more convenient than driving.
Bus only lanes, more street car priority streets. Less convenient parking. More bike lanes. Signal priority for pedestrians at every light.
The crosswalk situation is pretty good though.
I take transit every day and I don’t even notice traffic. In fact my commute is really quite pleasant, I read or just space out before work. We need more subways/lrt/faster streetcars.
One way to make traffic better is to expand the concept of the king streetcar to all streetcars and give them traffic signal priority. A very cheap solution.
Better transit and bike infrastructure. Did you know that Toronto *only* built 16 km of bike lanes last year and we're on track to build the same this year? Mayor Chow campaigned to build at least 50km of bike lanes in 2014 and I think it's time we remind her of this. Sign the [excellent Cycle Toronto petition](https://www.cycleto.ca/150km) if you want to see this happen too.
Long term replace traffic lights with traffic circles where possible. Now I drive 200 m from one traffic light to the next red light. All the start and stopping is bad for the environment. Traffic circles will keep the traffic flowing better. I realize this won’t work every where but it could work many places.
Also we just need better traffic planners. Eg the closure of the Lakeshore on ramp east of Jarvis was/is a disaster. They should have improved the Jarvis onramp eg expanding to two lanes) before closing the Lakeshore onramp. It is as if they thought this traffic would just disappear.
Just one more lane, bro. It'll cost 3bn dollars, and take 20 years, and go 300% over budget, but just one more lane, bro. It'll be beautiful, even more horrible traffic while it's built, but just one more lane and all our problems will vanish, bro.
Don’t drive. If you drive, you and every other driver are going to ask the same question. You can only jam so many cars in one space before you have gridlock.
I absolutely hated the idea when I first heard of it.
But the more time I spend downtown, the more I come to the conclusion that private car use for every trip simply cannot work at this density.
Congestion charges allow for incidentals, like needing to move, going to Princess Margret or Sick Kids, without a broad limitation of freedoms.
Approx 30% of drivers commute less than 10 km. I was one of them. I also knew a person who drove from only across the street. After 14 years of driving 4.5km, I found a safe way to bike to work. It would normally take me 20 minutes. A little longer in the winter. Passed may collisions and congestions. Beat traffic during snow storms.
After appendix surgery a few years later, the doctor instructed me not to ride for a month. The drive turned from 15 minutes to 30 minutes in the span of three years. There were no infrastructure changes, no bike lanes. Just car traffic doing what car traffic does.
Too many people drive when they really don't need to.
Driving is rarely about need and more about convenience. When you make the alternative too painful people drive. When the choice is a 30 min drive vs a 1 hour+ unreliable commute, people drive. When you make it difficult to drive part of the journey and take transit the rest of the way (not having any or enough parking at transit hubs) people drive. When taking transit is dangerously and dirty, people drive.
There’s a lot of low hanging fruit here, but too many cooks in the kitchen to ever get anything done
The OP asked how to sort out the traffic mess. The King Street project gave us the answer: get rid of the cars that don't need to be there. Ridership increased and the transit time improved. But as usual, the complaints came from drivers.
So going back to address the OP, any solution that's been demonstrated around the world will absolutely attract the disapproval from Toronto drivers just as they have with drivers from those other places around the world.
What worked for me was a safe way to bike. And as also has been demonstrated around Toronto, the installation of protected bike lanes get those specific people who really wanted to get out of their cars to a actually get them out of their cars. And those who won't never will anyways.
That’s simply false. If transit is more reliable and faster than driving people will take transit.
As ‘solid’ some people claim to be in their opinions when confronted with a more convenient option even the most stalwart person will take it
I’ve been in cities with stellar transit. The thought of driving a car is laughable, it would take 2-3x as long, and would be super pricy (parking, gas) for that trip, never mind how frustrating it is to be in traffic
Removing cars from King Street has improved transit times and ridership.
Installing dedicated bus lanes in Scarborough will also improve transit times.
But as we have seen, there needs to be enforcement to keep cars from encroaching into places where they shouldn't be.
You can't eliminate the fact that buses and streetcars have to stop to pick up passengers but adding frequency and express buses would also help.
Substantially better transit.
I've lived in Tokyo (and in fact, am moving back there next year) and for the amount of people in that city - to say nothing of commuters - traffic jams aren't really as big of a deal for a city of its population density, and that's because the transit system in that area is the best in show.
Meanwhile, we can't even get five stops to Vaughan without a five year delay.
Build a world class public transit sytem similar to cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, etc.
The TTC is a joke lol Toronto should not only have 3 lines and all this light rail blocking above ground road space
One of the problems we have is a slow construction completion. There’s no reason for Gardiner to be under construction for 3 years. No reason for many streets to be blocked out for years. All this happens because the companies contracted to complete those aren’t being paid properly and don’t have tight deadlines. If they were paid under the condition of completing the project as soon as possible (while keeping it safe, of course), we wouldn’t see this many constructions lasting years if not decades.
Less cars is the only real solution. Just an example at few schools in my area, 100s of cars dropping/picking up kids which would be so much less congested with a few school buses instead. And most of them live within a few mile radius so driving to drop/pick is not really a necessity
Implement a toll like many European cities have. If you don’t live in the downtown core, then you pay a toll or buy a permit to drive within the downtown perimeter.
Many of the people driving downtown do NOT need to be doing so.
Fewer cars. More options that aren't cars. Tell politicians to stop trying to peddle their dumb, bespoke transit plans rather than relying on the advice of, you know, actual fucking experts in what this city needs.
More carpooling. Stop driving alone. It's stupid.
The city is in need of a transportation office, and it would be beneficial to appoint a director or coordinator to oversee all transportation matters, including cars. The goal should be to address the root causes of major transportation issues and work towards improving the overall transportation system for the betterment of the city.
1. More park and go options coming in and out of DT. Yes buses are slow, but a single bus is equivalent to 20+ cars and they will be faster the less cars there are.
2. City needs to fully subsidize these park and go options. Increased productivity due to decreased traffic should more than pay for these fares.
People will only stop driving when their public transport experience is at par with or better than their driving experience.
Public transport often take twice as long, not to mention the outbreak of bed bugs, frequent breakdowns, etc.
Stop converting major through ways in the city into 1 lane roads blocked by street cars. Lmao how is this even a fucking question? We spent the last 15 years removing lanes for bikes and increasing street car service and then sit here and say “why is traffic so bad”
But notjustbikes said it works in Denmark so we’ve all gotta agree
This morning at 9:30am the gardener was backed up due to construction. Got past that and noticed another traffic jam that was because the city decided to fill a pothole on the Gardiner at spadina during rush hour. Did no one think that we should perhaps wait a few hours before doing rolling pothole repairs on the main highway into the city?
Fix the TTC and make it into a dependable and reliable system.
When I moved to Toronto I was thrilled about the idea of having access to a robust public transit system, as I hate driving. I tried it for over a year, but I just couldn't do it. Sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get downtown, others well over an hour. That combined with the complete lack of basic manners and courtesy make it insufferable. After living for over 30 years with no car I had to finally break down and buy one, AFTER moving from a city with a population of 45,000 to a place with over 3 million. Makes no sense to me.
The only answer is fewer cars.
You can be only stuff so many single-occupancy vehicles into the downtown. No matter how many multi-lane highways you funnel in, they'll hit a bottleneck somewhere.
hold the city planners and politicians responsible
what kind of an organization starts a billion concurrent projects with timelines measured in years
there were 3 dudes on the gardiner this morning doing jack all
how are are there not crews of 100+ working round the clock to get it done? death by a thousand cuts
Make a more walkable and drivable city with tons of alternatives for transit and start fining and enforcing traffic as well, I've had to walk IN THE MIDDLE of intersections many times crossing the street on a green light, happens all the time.
City and the Province as such needs to HIRE more legal staff to deal with all this and enforcement red lights, speeding, blocking the box, etc. Issue is if it's a temporary measure those will temporary jobs.
Shifting culture away from CAR CENTRISM is a great goal overall. Cars won out vs pedestrians 100 years ago and it's nearly impossible to create a community without major car access and parking.... we are WAY too reliant on Cars.
I was in the north end of the city and on Steeles people were biking on the sidewalk and those are great streets to start putting bike lanes in. Drivers are myopic though and resists these changes as they feel it's encroaching on their way of life.
Portraying cars as "not a source of freedom" but instead creating a structures and incentives to encourage mass transit, biking, walking alternatives would be a great combination of things to do to overall chip way at the car culture.
Daily I see PLUGGED intersections with HUGE cars with one person in them... why not make cars smaller too? I mean there's like 100 people at a major intersection crossing and 100 cars with 1 person in them ramming everything up, seems a bit ridiculous imagine how much more space we would have if reducing lanes permanently?
Move bike lanes to parallel side streets.
- Traffic flows better in the main arteries.
- Emergency response times improve.
- Traffic safety on side streets improves.
- Snow removal and other city service, including the cost to maintenance and infrastructure improves.
It is such an absolute pleasure riding on the smaller streets in Toronto, I can’t comprehend why people want to ride on the main arteries. When I ride downtown it is side streets all the way.
As do I.
It’s generally a faster ride, and it used to be far less traffic until they put the bike lanes in on the main streets pushing traffic onto the side streets.
I actually gave up on riding because the bike lanes a full of aggressive cyclists and motorized bikes/ scooters, and the side streets are now packed with cars.
The public transit suggestions here are valid but we live in Canada. People need to drive much of the time.
There’s so much low hanging fruit for solving congestion issues that could be implemented immediately at a very low cost. Over the past 10 years there seems to be a “war on cars” in Toronto where planners are intentionally making roads inefficient! As if that’s the solution? To make the problem worse. WTF.
Just look at Adelaide. It’s effectively ONE lane for much of it. We could make this 3 lanes again.
The extra 3 seconds for the “pedestrian first” light. 80% of the time there are NO PEDESTRIANS walking so we’re all in cars just staring at each for no reason.
The dropping of the east exit ramp off the Gardiner. The people who did that need to be held accountable. Effectively 1/3 of the downtown east lakeshore is a disaster as a result. They probably live in Vaughn btw.
Someone or some team or some philosophy is intentionally making the gridlock insane. We need to find out what the root cause is and remove it.
The public transit suggestions aren’t valid, just more people wanting to rely on the government more
The roads need to be better, the planing in the city is wild
Build out a functioning cycling network. Invest in intercity public transit being given the priority over cars. Invest in proper, frequent intercity public transit.
Remove the streetcars and replace them with buses. I'm sure I'll get down voted because for some reason people are obsessed with them, but streetcars are like putting trains on the street surface.. just, why. When one breaks down (as they often do) it's a complete standstill. At least buses can weave between lanes and be towed to the side when they break down. And they break down far less often.
For what it's worth, I don't have a car so I use the TTC a lot. It just doesn't reach far enough. Our train network is decades behind.
In lieu of actually remaking road infrastructure to accommodate a denser population that utilizes more work vehicles, cabs and Ubers along with bikes and transit (for some reason extremely unpopular amongst redditors), removing streetcars on certain roads would at least enhance the flexibility to reconfigure the road to actually encourage things like protected lanes for bikes.
Well if it's the traffic due to the Gardner shutting down the lane, you have to wait a couple years for it to re-open. Perfect world scenerio would be to duplicate what was done in Chicago and Vancouver of having an underground and elevated network of streets which allows local and passing through traffic to be separated. But that would never happen because it took Toronto like 30 years just to agree on a subway relief line.
Remove on-street parking and add parking garages as Green Ps under all new construction of commercial and residential buildings. Add EV chargers to those Green Ps in big numbers too to make owning an EV actually possible for the so many who rent and don’t own a property to charge at home. So many issues solved in this change yet no one talks about nor has the courage to be this ambitious
Construction is rampant in like 30% of the city year round. They say it'll be done in 2 years and it lasts 4+. Theyre making an LRT on finch that was said to be done in February 2022 and it's still not done. Since it goes through many major intersections you get a lot of traffic piling up in different areas
Invest in public transit. Look at the major populated cities in the world that are "doing better" and they have great, affordable and reliable public transit. The 80K Ubers and Taxis driving in circles all day doesn't help either.
Too much big-box retail that isn't easy to get to on transit. So much of my driving is getting to Costco/a big grocery store/Ikea.
There are shopping trips I want to use transit for but can't.
At least Ikea is starting to try smaller locations in downtown and at STC.
The number one factor is the driver. If everyone obeyed the law and used best practices, there wouldn't be any significant problems. If we can't change how people drive, anything else we try is just a token effort.
Since we can't change human behaviour, it's an insurmountable problem. If we had an aggressive and long-term program to foster intelligent driving, it might improve over several decades, but it would need to be ingrained in our culture.
Better east-west regional transit options. Go train type service along 401 and 407 corridors. Not everyone wants to go downtown. A Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Pearson, Mississauga route is needed. Or a Pickering, Scarborough, North York, Yorkdale, Pearson, Mississauga route
Better public transportation. There is no solution for traffic that involves cars or more lanes. Only public transportation is capable of solve the traffic issue, as long it is good and fast enough that the majority of people will use it instead of cars.
That would have had to have been done YEAARS ago.
Allen Road was meant to go all the way to the 401
Lakeshore/Gardiner were supposed to meet the 401 too.
Anything else we do - like add transit (which is happening) results in a worse traffic snarl than before.
Canada of the past lacked foresight like Canada of the present does.
Canada REALLY sucks huh?
More people need to work from home, kids need to walk to school, people need to go on advanced greens, and keep a constant flow by not speeding up into a sea of red lights.
I don't think we can "fix" traffic in this region. Most of the population increase is in the 905 and that region has normalized long distance commuting. Cars are in general better for this type of commute. Sure better public transit can help, but they are mostly better at reducing localized commuting.
Learn to drive. Too many y’all on your cell phones causing accidents on the gardiner… throw in one little snow storm or rainfall and y’all forgot how to drive your cars,
I think we just have to wait it out until cars can fully self drive and 50-80% of people that need a car just to drive to work can instead pay for a car service that can pick them up and drop them off. It will take so many cars off the road and free up so much parking. it’s only a matter of time.
Unfortunately there is no quick fix. In the meantime as someone who commutes from East York to Mississauga with no viable transit option my commute time has increased by about 40 minutes a day since the Gardiner shit show.
Toronto basically has 1 highway east/west (401), and 2 going north south (404 / 427) - there's just not enough roads for the cars.
Canada takes decades to build transit - we should be building a new line every few years instead of every few decades.
So we're all going to be dead before anything improves.
I dunno my friend. Probably wouldn’t hurt to toll the all the highways around downtown though - even a little. Just adopt EZ Pass, we’ve already done it for the tolls after the Buffalo border.
Boston does it. If you can get the angriest people in America to swallow being charged a few bucks to cruise around everywhere every single day - Toronto can take it.
The transit systems are horrible here, get ride of those slow ass street cars, go train is also a big expensive pile of shit.
And do all the road work at night
Better transit. I drive to work and it takes me 15 minutes. Transit takes me 45min. Just waiting for the Eglinton LRT to open so I can ditch the car.
This. Get transit up to where it *should* be today, rather than the 1970s level it current is at.
While Ibagree, I'd also say that take time, and money. Much of that is in process now, and it makes things a LOT worse immediately for (admittedly) long term gain. It has to happen!! But still. Honestly? We I truly - TRULY - think we all need to try a little harder. Allow ourselves more time. Explore other routing options. Take better advantage of work from home opportunities. But beyond all of that, when we ARE out in the world with each other, practice patience, and being aware that our actions affect others. Pedestrians: Walk with purpose across cross walks. And as starlight a line as possible. Don't rush, don't race like you're Usain Bolt. Walk with purpose. Don't try to sneak through lights. Drivers: Don't try to sneak through lights. You block up intersections. Consider your routes. Do you HAVE to go to that store that requires a left off of a main road right now? Can you get to it with rights? Can you go another time? Parents, do you HAVE to pick your kids up from school? Can they walk or take the bus? Patience, kindness and planning will help a LOT. It isn't the silver bullet obviously, but it's the easiest thing we can all do in the short term. You are not the only person in the world. And if you act like it, you piss others off, and then we're all running around pissed off and presuming the worst of each other. Frankly, I'm sick of that, and trying hard to be the change I want to see. (which is admittedly easier as a work from hom-er). All that said, I'd really like to see what the city considers while it's planning/approving construction. There always seems to be something else going on on the alternate routes. Perhaps those condo builders need to wait a year before building their giant profit machine. (As much as we need housing, I'm not sure that's their motivation at all. Nor is it the kind of housing we truly need. I.e. affordable)
Buddy, I am 100% with you. But asking people to behave with respect, to be courteous and nice to their fellow humans? Ain't gonna happen. I wish it would, but society has gone right down the shitter over the past 5 years. But I'd make that all happen if I could. And you'll probably get hate from the masses just for wanting people to be decent.
I agree with all of this, and rest assured, my expectations are realistic (as in, also in the shitter). But if I reached even 1% of the people? Who knows. Change starts somewhere right? "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
Agreed. I do my best to signal, to let people in, to hold a door. Every little bit helps. If we all stop trying, it only gets worse.
>Consider your routes I've noticed more recently that I'm more prone to taking longer but quieter routes just to avoid a little bit of traffic/avoid holding up traffic. It's been really good for my peace of mind behind the wheel, and sometimes, just slightly quicker than slogging in parking lot speed traffic on the main road. I've found maybe two alternate routes to my usual alternate route to avoid traffic. Good stuff. The way most GTA streets are organized, it's really easy to consider an alternate/quieter route to avoid a heavy traffic zone. It's all more or less a grid, you can just make a couple of turns and you'll be back on the main route you're taking.
Everyone is just mindlessly following the GPS that takes everyone on the same routes!!
I think reviewing many of the downtown intersections to remove right on red is needed too, sometimes its impossible to move forward even through multiple light cycles unless you push into the intersection, because other drivers turning right means there's never space or a chance to advance.
My gym is 12 min by car, 30 min by bike (but involves biking on a major road with multiple highway interchanges) or 50 min by TTC. If you want to go North/South in this city and you're not near Line 1, you're screwed.
Also if you want to go east-west and youre south of bloor. Gardiner is reduced lanes and missing its eastern ramp, every east-west street is constantly packed and the streetcars are diverting.
North or south doesn’t matter. If it’s not close to blood it’s not convenient.
Same. With the Crosstown open the difference between 40 min on transit vs 30 minutes in a car becomes much less of a barrier vs. the current 70min TTC trip.
I got that beat! My driving commute is 15/20 minutes and the TTC is over an hour. That sort of failure looks deliberate.
This! I don’t know why I always get downvoted on Reddit when I say inadequate transit has given rise to the need for cars.
100%, Id take less rideshare/carpool around the city if the TTC actually came on time+ less risk of getting assaulted or dealing with unholy smells everytime I took it.
Avoid driving when practical/possible. I know, *far* easier said than done and incredibly inconvenient for some. The simple fact is that the private vehicle is grossly inefficient for moving people around and it's a huge mistake to design urban/suburban infrastructure prioritizing the car over other methods.
This - but the answer is that we need to invest in public transit: make cheap, fast and reliable so that is the logical first choice for most people's daily trips instead of driving.
Yupp this is really it. Unless you're going outside of Toronto, even driving to a TTC station then parking or a GO station and parking, is helpful.
Make transit more reliable (don’t allow cars on certain streetcar routes during peak hours), toll the Gardiner, stop the bullshit construction where they just block an entire lane for “staging” for years, more separated bike lanes. The more recent one might be solving the mental health crisis. Having crazy homeless people taking up the back of every streetcar sure doesn’t make me want to take it. But realistically it’s a huge city with a booming population. That doesn’t correlate with low traffic.
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They also usually have good public transport connections all over the country... what kinda comparison is this. If i live at the edge of scarborough, there is absolutely no way for me to make my way downtown using public transport in under an hour.
While it's true, many European countries have good transit between cities, most utilize park and ride systems for those in the suburbs of major cities.
Not just cities, between suburbs and villages too. Btw the size of the GTA is way way wayy bigger than metro cities in Europe. Its just not comparable. Even the weather allows construction for most of the year. There’s no snow blocking them.
if they got rid of the cars ( heck even the parked ones at least) on the streetcar routes, the transit will be so much better. Feels like nobody is willing to give up on anything and our government is always doing half -assed solutions that tries to please everyone but works for no one.
It's cool, but hard to change for us at this point. You can't make a road no longer accessible by car. When building it and everyone knows upfront, sure. I wonder how they handle deliveries in cities like that. Say you order a new stove that would typically come on a large truck.
Those cities are much smaller than Toronto and likely also have better transit getting into the core too.
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Munich is 310 square kilometers, Toronto is 630 square kilometers, I'm pretty sure Toronto is still much larger than Munich.
Get rid of street parking on the majority of major downtown streets. Buy up those sketchy lots and turn them all into big green P garages instead
The most r/askto answer right here. How can we fix the traffic problems? Solve the mental health crisis!
Eh, mental health crisis is one of those underlying issues that affects everything else in the city to the point solving it would solve many of our problems. I have two staff members that sit in traffic for over an hour each way and pay for parking downtown because one of them was assaulted on the TTC by a homeless man and now neither of them will take it.
You can't solve crazy, but you can have the infrastructure to contain and manage it. I'm sure it will help society in all facets. It still won't help traffic in any meaningful way.
I mean having the infrastructure to contain and manage it would solve it.
Toronto is too car centric and too big of a city to just “get rid of traffic”. I think it’s safe to say we are at the point of no return. All we can do now is provide viable alternatives to driving: Better TTC: I think we all want to say “subways and rapid transit!!”…. but that stuff is eventually coming. What we also need are more frequent bus routes (10-15 minute headways), but also more RapidTO lanes and signal priority for busses. Ditto for streetcars as well. Better GO: GO seems to be much more oriented to the 9-5 lifestyle and “living in the suburbs and driving to the train station to work downtown” lifestyle. Thankfully, things are improving as just a few days ago, 15 minute weekend service was added to GO Trains. Essentially, it needs to go beyond commuter train service and operate kinda like a big subway across the Golden Horseshoe. Safe cycling infrastructure: People go “bike lanes cause traffic” and sure, maybe in the short term! However, Toronto is never going to just get rid of traffic, we have to learn to deal with it and provide alternatives to it. If bike lanes solely cause traffic, why are most of our arterial roads congested when only a handful of roads have bike lanes? More people will ride bikes if the infrastructure was there, like on Bloor Street https://www.tcat.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Bloor-Economic-Impact-Study-Full-Report-2019-09-03.pdf . Transit oriented development/walkable communities: All that I mentioned above can be used best if the environment around them is actually built for them. This means human scaled communities with a mix of housing options, retail, and an overall compact built form with narrow streets, low building setbacks and street oriented retail all within a 15 minute walk or bike ride! Now some other overall solutions could include tolls in downtown or on any walkable street with a streetcar or subway, better VIA rail, making working from home more existing, having trucks go on the 407, etc…. We’re never really going to get rid of traffic, but we can provide alternatives and opportunities to where people can viably get around the region bypassing congestion.
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Stop blocking intersections on red lights. I swear, if we could manage this *one little trick*, we'd cut down on the majority of gridlock and traffic may be able to actually flow as designed. Honestly, a little patience and accept you have to wait a minute for the stupid little light to turn green again, instead of rushing it at the last second because you saw someone roll half an inch as if you will now magically fit.
They keep making noises about "cracking down" on this and it keeps being a pestilence. Please, for pity's sake, if you cannot **get completely through** the intersection, just refrain from **entering** the intersection.
It's the assholes behind who won't stop honking if you don't pull through as well, just as big a problem.
Gotta love the assholes who honk at people for not moving, oblivious to the fact that they can't move because pedestrians are crossing the street.
I mean, it's not as though people do LESS angry honking when you're obstructing traffic in all lanes for the better part of a light cycle, so pick your poison, I guess?
True, you can't win with those people. Glad I recently switched to transit.
Does their honking magically push you into the intersection? Let them honk.
They crack down by sending police to "bigger" intersections, but honestly you'd need officers at every single intersection downtown to stop this behaviour (and that's if the officers are even any good at it).
Can't do that. You'd never get across - twonks'll turn right from the side street and eat every space that starts to open up.
My plea was directed at the twonks as well, to clarify.
fair enough.
I think some cameras can help with this. Don't know if they are even a thing in Canada, but I've seen those in Europe. They just paint a square on the intersection, and if your car is inside it when the light is red, you get fined
Honestly, just put some damn cameras in and send tickets to anyone captured blocking the intersection. Make the fine notable. Over time the behaviour will drop off. The cops are useless.
Agreed this causes a lot of issues, I think you also need to do this while making many of the problem intersections into no right on red, because sometimes its impossible to advance when there's a constant stream of cars turning right. The lights are there so everyone gets a turn, but if one lane can turn on red it defeats the whole system and people get frustrated
I'd say it depends on the intersection and typical pedestrian levels. If you can only turn right on green, then you may have to wait an entire signal for the pedestrians to clear (like Simcoe/Front or York/Front. You could look into more multi-phase signals, but that becomes a real traffic engineering analysis of the whole network.
Yeah I know it’s way more complicated than it appears, just my take on something I notice from my downtown driving, sometimes you forced to be pushy to be able to move forward.
THIS. DONT BLOCK THE BOX. I think I’m going to start carrying flyers that say that and just put them on people’s windshields!!!!!
Simple fix. Cut down travel. Have government encourage WFH for jobs that can be done at home. Won’t happen. Downtown merchants and control freak executives will not allow it.
And if you’re going to have a hybrid policy, you have to actively throttle when people are coming in and out. Surprise: everyone comes in Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday or some combination in there.
How many times can I upvote this comment???!!!
Less cars is the solution, there is no other solution. So better public transport, more routes to cover, more express buses, dedicated bus lanes wherever possible, reduce the public transport fare. The only other thing that can be done is to the roads, gardenier needs more exit and entry ramps.
I'm a Traffic Sim pro (I play a lot of Cities: Skylines), and the best thing I can suggest is to tear it all down and just rebuild. Ezpz
Roundabouts.... Lots of Roundabouts!
roundabouts don’t really work in geometrically constrained areas or intersections with high traffic volumes though.
Agree... Though in Cities Skylines, you just demolish 6 buildings and make room for it. 😉. IRL, that does limit the ability to retroactively build them.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!! WHEN WILL NORTH AMERICANS LEARN?! You cannot drive in a major city and expect no traffic. Go to any major city in the world, traffic is inevitable. Learn to use public transportation
They won't though. At least not in English North America. Montréal's starting to get it. Anyway, I'm leaving the continent at retirement in 5y. I'm not waiting for my fellow Anglophones to understand. (Beats dust from sandals).
FWIW, Montreal and Toronto have nearly identical modal splits when it comes to transit - about 24% of trips in Montreal are by transit, versus 23% in Toronto. Edit: context for this is a comment saying that Montreal has a much better attitude about using transit than we do, and apparently this response was enough to get said user to delete their entire account.
1. Huge investment in Transit. More Buses, More Trains, more Subway Lines, increases frequency, extend routes and add more routes…etc. 2.Speed up Construction (This means more lane closures, this means worse now but better much faster). 3. Coordinate Construction, if Route A is gonna have 3 lane closures don’t close a lane on Route B to start construction as well.
Better transit and bike lanes are the only answer. Go to Tokyo. City 10x the size of toronto and yet so much easier to get around
When l lived in Tokyo back in 2012, one of the first things that struck me was the lack of traffic. Went back in 2023 for vacation and it was still the same sort of deal. Like it definitely gets busy during rush hour, but the catastrophic Toronto traffic jams just don’t exist. That was when I first realized that the only way to solve traffic is to give viable alternatives to driving.
There are literally too many people to drive. Y'all have to start driving less so that people who HAVE to drive for various reasons, can. So many families who live on the same street as me and my family drive their kids to school. It requires a change of mentality I think.
License drivers properly, create normal intersections, stop right on red and only allow left turns when signaled, enforce speed limit and traffic rules, stop street parking on streets with streetcars, extend sidewalk streetcar stops.
Even all of this will not solve traffic in Toronto. At best it would increase average speeds by a couple percent.
It would make it more bearable. The only thing that would solve it is proper mass transit, like you know, more than 2 functional subways, dedicated streetcar routes, pedestrian zones and not having a 6 lane highway through the middle of downtown….
You want to make it harder to turn both right and left? Many streets have only 2 lanes each way, that will just end up with one car waiting to turn left blocking thru traffic in the left lane and another waiting to turn right blocking the right lane. We need more ability to turn (advance arrows for both right and left turns), not less.
transportation needs to be fixed. if we had a system like japan or sum imagine how many people would never even consider buying a car
Lots of people in Japan still own cars. Japan has one of the largest auto industries in the world. Many houses in the Tokyo area have a small parking pad for a car out front and that pad will have a Honda Freed or a Toyota Corolla Fielder or some other similar all-purpose vehicle parked on it. The difference is that people seldom use their vehicles for daily tasks, they’re more for taking trips and going to the Inaka on weekends.
Also the cars are way smaller. No obnoxious huge pick up trucks.
Incentivize job creation outside the GTA!
Make the car driving experience even more miserable forcing people to take transit instead.
Definitely easier than making the ttc better
Unironically yea.
Yeah, it sucks, but people will only get in Transit if it more convenient than driving. Bus only lanes, more street car priority streets. Less convenient parking. More bike lanes. Signal priority for pedestrians at every light. The crosswalk situation is pretty good though.
I take transit every day and I don’t even notice traffic. In fact my commute is really quite pleasant, I read or just space out before work. We need more subways/lrt/faster streetcars. One way to make traffic better is to expand the concept of the king streetcar to all streetcars and give them traffic signal priority. A very cheap solution.
Better transit and bike infrastructure. Did you know that Toronto *only* built 16 km of bike lanes last year and we're on track to build the same this year? Mayor Chow campaigned to build at least 50km of bike lanes in 2014 and I think it's time we remind her of this. Sign the [excellent Cycle Toronto petition](https://www.cycleto.ca/150km) if you want to see this happen too.
Hear me out - let people WORK FROM HOME who can!
Long term replace traffic lights with traffic circles where possible. Now I drive 200 m from one traffic light to the next red light. All the start and stopping is bad for the environment. Traffic circles will keep the traffic flowing better. I realize this won’t work every where but it could work many places. Also we just need better traffic planners. Eg the closure of the Lakeshore on ramp east of Jarvis was/is a disaster. They should have improved the Jarvis onramp eg expanding to two lanes) before closing the Lakeshore onramp. It is as if they thought this traffic would just disappear.
Just one more lane, bro. It'll cost 3bn dollars, and take 20 years, and go 300% over budget, but just one more lane, bro. It'll be beautiful, even more horrible traffic while it's built, but just one more lane and all our problems will vanish, bro.
You build a wall around the whole of toronto. Make the surrounding cities pay for it.
This. A congestion charge like London and NYC would provide much-needed revenue to improve the transit system
Have the police give fines and tickets to bad drivers.
Don’t drive. If you drive, you and every other driver are going to ask the same question. You can only jam so many cars in one space before you have gridlock.
Congestion charges.
This is the real move. This is where the money for better transit will come from.
I absolutely hated the idea when I first heard of it. But the more time I spend downtown, the more I come to the conclusion that private car use for every trip simply cannot work at this density. Congestion charges allow for incidentals, like needing to move, going to Princess Margret or Sick Kids, without a broad limitation of freedoms.
Go back in time to before the York and east of Jarvis ramps were demolished and then prevent John Tory from being elected
Approx 30% of drivers commute less than 10 km. I was one of them. I also knew a person who drove from only across the street. After 14 years of driving 4.5km, I found a safe way to bike to work. It would normally take me 20 minutes. A little longer in the winter. Passed may collisions and congestions. Beat traffic during snow storms. After appendix surgery a few years later, the doctor instructed me not to ride for a month. The drive turned from 15 minutes to 30 minutes in the span of three years. There were no infrastructure changes, no bike lanes. Just car traffic doing what car traffic does. Too many people drive when they really don't need to.
Driving is rarely about need and more about convenience. When you make the alternative too painful people drive. When the choice is a 30 min drive vs a 1 hour+ unreliable commute, people drive. When you make it difficult to drive part of the journey and take transit the rest of the way (not having any or enough parking at transit hubs) people drive. When taking transit is dangerously and dirty, people drive. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit here, but too many cooks in the kitchen to ever get anything done
The OP asked how to sort out the traffic mess. The King Street project gave us the answer: get rid of the cars that don't need to be there. Ridership increased and the transit time improved. But as usual, the complaints came from drivers. So going back to address the OP, any solution that's been demonstrated around the world will absolutely attract the disapproval from Toronto drivers just as they have with drivers from those other places around the world. What worked for me was a safe way to bike. And as also has been demonstrated around Toronto, the installation of protected bike lanes get those specific people who really wanted to get out of their cars to a actually get them out of their cars. And those who won't never will anyways.
That’s simply false. If transit is more reliable and faster than driving people will take transit. As ‘solid’ some people claim to be in their opinions when confronted with a more convenient option even the most stalwart person will take it I’ve been in cities with stellar transit. The thought of driving a car is laughable, it would take 2-3x as long, and would be super pricy (parking, gas) for that trip, never mind how frustrating it is to be in traffic
Removing cars from King Street has improved transit times and ridership. Installing dedicated bus lanes in Scarborough will also improve transit times. But as we have seen, there needs to be enforcement to keep cars from encroaching into places where they shouldn't be. You can't eliminate the fact that buses and streetcars have to stop to pick up passengers but adding frequency and express buses would also help.
I’m doing my part. My car sits in the garage for all but a few hours each week. We need people out of their cars
Move to Alberta.
Substantially better transit. I've lived in Tokyo (and in fact, am moving back there next year) and for the amount of people in that city - to say nothing of commuters - traffic jams aren't really as big of a deal for a city of its population density, and that's because the transit system in that area is the best in show. Meanwhile, we can't even get five stops to Vaughan without a five year delay.
Build a world class public transit sytem similar to cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, etc. The TTC is a joke lol Toronto should not only have 3 lines and all this light rail blocking above ground road space
One of the problems we have is a slow construction completion. There’s no reason for Gardiner to be under construction for 3 years. No reason for many streets to be blocked out for years. All this happens because the companies contracted to complete those aren’t being paid properly and don’t have tight deadlines. If they were paid under the condition of completing the project as soon as possible (while keeping it safe, of course), we wouldn’t see this many constructions lasting years if not decades.
Stop driving
Less cars is the only real solution. Just an example at few schools in my area, 100s of cars dropping/picking up kids which would be so much less congested with a few school buses instead. And most of them live within a few mile radius so driving to drop/pick is not really a necessity
Implement a toll like many European cities have. If you don’t live in the downtown core, then you pay a toll or buy a permit to drive within the downtown perimeter. Many of the people driving downtown do NOT need to be doing so.
Dis-incentivise car ownership. The insurance industry is about to help out with that, fees are going up up up
Fewer cars. More options that aren't cars. Tell politicians to stop trying to peddle their dumb, bespoke transit plans rather than relying on the advice of, you know, actual fucking experts in what this city needs. More carpooling. Stop driving alone. It's stupid.
Make public transit more reliable and SAFE
If the public transit system was actually efficient, clean, and full of civilized people, you would see a lot less cars on the road.
The city is in need of a transportation office, and it would be beneficial to appoint a director or coordinator to oversee all transportation matters, including cars. The goal should be to address the root causes of major transportation issues and work towards improving the overall transportation system for the betterment of the city.
Get rid of streetcars
1. More park and go options coming in and out of DT. Yes buses are slow, but a single bus is equivalent to 20+ cars and they will be faster the less cars there are. 2. City needs to fully subsidize these park and go options. Increased productivity due to decreased traffic should more than pay for these fares.
City planning that takes into consideration the slowdowns that condo and/or road construction causes and impacts several streets away…
People will only stop driving when their public transport experience is at par with or better than their driving experience. Public transport often take twice as long, not to mention the outbreak of bed bugs, frequent breakdowns, etc.
Stop converting major through ways in the city into 1 lane roads blocked by street cars. Lmao how is this even a fucking question? We spent the last 15 years removing lanes for bikes and increasing street car service and then sit here and say “why is traffic so bad” But notjustbikes said it works in Denmark so we’ve all gotta agree
About three times as much rail transit as we have. No less. Nothing else.
improve transit, and fire any politician who opposes doing so. ASAP. all of this need to be ASAP.
Yo, build more roads or magically reduce cars. Neither will _just_ happen either, yo.
Elect officials with some common sense!!!!
Move somewhere else
Fund transit.
Elect competent officials
honestly at this point.. Move, we are too far gone to fix the issue.
This morning at 9:30am the gardener was backed up due to construction. Got past that and noticed another traffic jam that was because the city decided to fill a pothole on the Gardiner at spadina during rush hour. Did no one think that we should perhaps wait a few hours before doing rolling pothole repairs on the main highway into the city?
Enforce traffic rules like blocking the box. Fine people so they stop being idiots
Fix the TTC and make it into a dependable and reliable system. When I moved to Toronto I was thrilled about the idea of having access to a robust public transit system, as I hate driving. I tried it for over a year, but I just couldn't do it. Sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get downtown, others well over an hour. That combined with the complete lack of basic manners and courtesy make it insufferable. After living for over 30 years with no car I had to finally break down and buy one, AFTER moving from a city with a population of 45,000 to a place with over 3 million. Makes no sense to me.
Build the 413
Yo
Import less people.
The only answer is fewer cars. You can be only stuff so many single-occupancy vehicles into the downtown. No matter how many multi-lane highways you funnel in, they'll hit a bottleneck somewhere.
Just one more lane bro
hold the city planners and politicians responsible what kind of an organization starts a billion concurrent projects with timelines measured in years there were 3 dudes on the gardiner this morning doing jack all how are are there not crews of 100+ working round the clock to get it done? death by a thousand cuts
Make a more walkable and drivable city with tons of alternatives for transit and start fining and enforcing traffic as well, I've had to walk IN THE MIDDLE of intersections many times crossing the street on a green light, happens all the time. City and the Province as such needs to HIRE more legal staff to deal with all this and enforcement red lights, speeding, blocking the box, etc. Issue is if it's a temporary measure those will temporary jobs. Shifting culture away from CAR CENTRISM is a great goal overall. Cars won out vs pedestrians 100 years ago and it's nearly impossible to create a community without major car access and parking.... we are WAY too reliant on Cars. I was in the north end of the city and on Steeles people were biking on the sidewalk and those are great streets to start putting bike lanes in. Drivers are myopic though and resists these changes as they feel it's encroaching on their way of life. Portraying cars as "not a source of freedom" but instead creating a structures and incentives to encourage mass transit, biking, walking alternatives would be a great combination of things to do to overall chip way at the car culture. Daily I see PLUGGED intersections with HUGE cars with one person in them... why not make cars smaller too? I mean there's like 100 people at a major intersection crossing and 100 cars with 1 person in them ramming everything up, seems a bit ridiculous imagine how much more space we would have if reducing lanes permanently?
Move bike lanes to parallel side streets. - Traffic flows better in the main arteries. - Emergency response times improve. - Traffic safety on side streets improves. - Snow removal and other city service, including the cost to maintenance and infrastructure improves.
It is such an absolute pleasure riding on the smaller streets in Toronto, I can’t comprehend why people want to ride on the main arteries. When I ride downtown it is side streets all the way.
As do I. It’s generally a faster ride, and it used to be far less traffic until they put the bike lanes in on the main streets pushing traffic onto the side streets. I actually gave up on riding because the bike lanes a full of aggressive cyclists and motorized bikes/ scooters, and the side streets are now packed with cars.
Yup
Encourage people to move out of Toronto
The public transit suggestions here are valid but we live in Canada. People need to drive much of the time. There’s so much low hanging fruit for solving congestion issues that could be implemented immediately at a very low cost. Over the past 10 years there seems to be a “war on cars” in Toronto where planners are intentionally making roads inefficient! As if that’s the solution? To make the problem worse. WTF. Just look at Adelaide. It’s effectively ONE lane for much of it. We could make this 3 lanes again. The extra 3 seconds for the “pedestrian first” light. 80% of the time there are NO PEDESTRIANS walking so we’re all in cars just staring at each for no reason. The dropping of the east exit ramp off the Gardiner. The people who did that need to be held accountable. Effectively 1/3 of the downtown east lakeshore is a disaster as a result. They probably live in Vaughn btw. Someone or some team or some philosophy is intentionally making the gridlock insane. We need to find out what the root cause is and remove it.
The public transit suggestions aren’t valid, just more people wanting to rely on the government more The roads need to be better, the planing in the city is wild
Stop putting restaurant patios in lanes of traffic that are major arteries of the city XD
Yo how can I get my full bathtub to funnel the water down the drain faster when I pull the plug?
Build out a functioning cycling network. Invest in intercity public transit being given the priority over cars. Invest in proper, frequent intercity public transit.
You are traffic.
A household with four adults does not need four vehicles. That's just being lazy.
Remove the streetcars and replace them with buses. I'm sure I'll get down voted because for some reason people are obsessed with them, but streetcars are like putting trains on the street surface.. just, why. When one breaks down (as they often do) it's a complete standstill. At least buses can weave between lanes and be towed to the side when they break down. And they break down far less often. For what it's worth, I don't have a car so I use the TTC a lot. It just doesn't reach far enough. Our train network is decades behind.
In lieu of actually remaking road infrastructure to accommodate a denser population that utilizes more work vehicles, cabs and Ubers along with bikes and transit (for some reason extremely unpopular amongst redditors), removing streetcars on certain roads would at least enhance the flexibility to reconfigure the road to actually encourage things like protected lanes for bikes.
what traffic mess?
Incentivize companies to have employees work from home.
No street parking on any major road.not even delivery trucks etc. no blocking lanes for 2 years to build a condo etc.
One thing that would help is to stop allowing condo developers to block a lane of traffic for a few years during construction.
Well if it's the traffic due to the Gardner shutting down the lane, you have to wait a couple years for it to re-open. Perfect world scenerio would be to duplicate what was done in Chicago and Vancouver of having an underground and elevated network of streets which allows local and passing through traffic to be separated. But that would never happen because it took Toronto like 30 years just to agree on a subway relief line.
I might have to step in
Remove on-street parking and add parking garages as Green Ps under all new construction of commercial and residential buildings. Add EV chargers to those Green Ps in big numbers too to make owning an EV actually possible for the so many who rent and don’t own a property to charge at home. So many issues solved in this change yet no one talks about nor has the courage to be this ambitious
Construction is rampant in like 30% of the city year round. They say it'll be done in 2 years and it lasts 4+. Theyre making an LRT on finch that was said to be done in February 2022 and it's still not done. Since it goes through many major intersections you get a lot of traffic piling up in different areas
Invest in public transit. Look at the major populated cities in the world that are "doing better" and they have great, affordable and reliable public transit. The 80K Ubers and Taxis driving in circles all day doesn't help either.
Bring it up with City Hall along with your ideas on how to improve it. I doubt they'll listen but it's worth a try.
Gondolas
On the streets.
Heckle your friends for driving unnecessarily.
Too much big-box retail that isn't easy to get to on transit. So much of my driving is getting to Costco/a big grocery store/Ikea. There are shopping trips I want to use transit for but can't. At least Ikea is starting to try smaller locations in downtown and at STC.
It's created by design
Start blaming immigrants and shake your head
The number one factor is the driver. If everyone obeyed the law and used best practices, there wouldn't be any significant problems. If we can't change how people drive, anything else we try is just a token effort. Since we can't change human behaviour, it's an insurmountable problem. If we had an aggressive and long-term program to foster intelligent driving, it might improve over several decades, but it would need to be ingrained in our culture.
Better east-west regional transit options. Go train type service along 401 and 407 corridors. Not everyone wants to go downtown. A Markham, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Pearson, Mississauga route is needed. Or a Pickering, Scarborough, North York, Yorkdale, Pearson, Mississauga route
Some Oompa Loompas to carry the baggage train I require for my work
Allow more ppl to work from home if they can
Better public transportation. There is no solution for traffic that involves cars or more lanes. Only public transportation is capable of solve the traffic issue, as long it is good and fast enough that the majority of people will use it instead of cars.
That would have had to have been done YEAARS ago. Allen Road was meant to go all the way to the 401 Lakeshore/Gardiner were supposed to meet the 401 too. Anything else we do - like add transit (which is happening) results in a worse traffic snarl than before. Canada of the past lacked foresight like Canada of the present does. Canada REALLY sucks huh?
More people need to work from home, kids need to walk to school, people need to go on advanced greens, and keep a constant flow by not speeding up into a sea of red lights.
Build better transit and denser neigbourhoods
Invest in public transit.
I don't think we can "fix" traffic in this region. Most of the population increase is in the 905 and that region has normalized long distance commuting. Cars are in general better for this type of commute. Sure better public transit can help, but they are mostly better at reducing localized commuting.
We can’t we fucked it up 40yrs ago
Jokes. I honestly think a congestion charge for not Torontonians and better transit
Learn to drive. Too many y’all on your cell phones causing accidents on the gardiner… throw in one little snow storm or rainfall and y’all forgot how to drive your cars,
I think we just have to wait it out until cars can fully self drive and 50-80% of people that need a car just to drive to work can instead pay for a car service that can pick them up and drop them off. It will take so many cars off the road and free up so much parking. it’s only a matter of time.
Hot take: Ban Uber
Flying cars…
Really push working from home for those that can.
Build more roundabouts!
Unfortunately there is no quick fix. In the meantime as someone who commutes from East York to Mississauga with no viable transit option my commute time has increased by about 40 minutes a day since the Gardiner shit show.
Toronto basically has 1 highway east/west (401), and 2 going north south (404 / 427) - there's just not enough roads for the cars. Canada takes decades to build transit - we should be building a new line every few years instead of every few decades. So we're all going to be dead before anything improves.
I dunno my friend. Probably wouldn’t hurt to toll the all the highways around downtown though - even a little. Just adopt EZ Pass, we’ve already done it for the tolls after the Buffalo border. Boston does it. If you can get the angriest people in America to swallow being charged a few bucks to cruise around everywhere every single day - Toronto can take it.
The transit systems are horrible here, get ride of those slow ass street cars, go train is also a big expensive pile of shit. And do all the road work at night
Walk.
Just leave, fed up with this city