Toronto could pass largest road safety budget in Vision Zero's history

Toronto could hike spending on its road safety program by about 25 per cent later this month as it continues to grapple with dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries each year on its streets.

City staff are asking councillors to approve the largest budget in the history of the Vision Zero strategy, created in 2016 to eliminate all road fatalities. Staff want spending to increase to $99 million, up from nearly $80 million this year, as they step up work to improve intersections, install more traffic calming measures and double the number of automated speed enforcement cameras.

While fatalities and injuries have dropped since the program's inception, this latest Vision Zero annual report comes after 46 people including pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, have died on Toronto roads this year.

"It is really hard to talk about killed or seriously injured as statistics," said Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie, chair of the city's infrastructure committee. "They are people. And they are people that did not get home to their families, or people that following a horrific incident, will never be the same."

The committee greenlit the additional spending this week but it will still need a final approval from city council later this month.

Speed cameras will increase to 150 under plan

Under the plan, the city would more than double its complement of speed cameras across Toronto early in 2025 from 75 to 150. Most of the city's current camera stock is moved to different locations twice a year. Barbara Gray, the city's general manager of transportation services, said 25 of the new cameras would be permanently installed in places with a high number of collisions.

Those cameras raise tens of millions for the city in ticket revenue each year. But Gray defended their use as a safety tool and not a money-maker for Toronto.

"Our goal would be that the cameras didn't generate any revenue at all, because people would not be traveling above the speed limit," she said. "Sadly, that's not been the case so far, but we hope that as we continue to expand the program, we really start to see that impact."

The plan would also see staff push ahead with a multi-year effort to lower the speed limit on local roads citywide to 30 km/h. So far, that has been done in 15 of the city's 25 wards, with two more wards set to change each year until 2028. The transition takes four to six months in each ward as staff need to install between 500 and 1,000 new signs.

The city will also roll out hundreds more traffic calming measures, including an estimated 735 speed humps next year and 810 in 2026.

"We do know that speed is such a huge issue," Gray said. "That's a lot of what a lot of what our tools support is managing speeds… So, we know that the toolkit that we're using on Vision Zero is the right tool kit."

Injuries up in recent years

The number of deaths and injuries on Toronto roads have been coming down since the program's start eight years ago. In 2016, 78 people died and 337 were injured. In 2023, the last year with complete data available, 45 people died and 294 were injured.

Despite the overall decrease, Coun. Dianne Saxe said she's troubled by the number of injuries sustained on city roads in recent years. Those numbers jumped between 2021 and 2023, from 241 to 294.

"We are absolutely getting value for the dollar. I have no doubt about that," she said of Vision Zero spending, adding that an increase in the program's budget is warranted.

"We have people feeling that because congestion is bad, they're entitled to take shortcuts, break the rules, go through red lights, drive on sidewalks, race whenever they see a spot, and they don't take into account who will pay the price," she added.

But Coun. Anthony Perruzza said while the work — and spending — to curb dangerous driving habits is important, so too is public education to ensure pedestrians and cyclists exercise caution on city streets.

"It's really, really difficult to fix stupid," Perruzza said of distracted pedestrians often on their cell phones. "You have a 2,000 pound vehicle, and you meet it on foot or you meet it on your bike or in some other way — you're going to lose."