Liberty Village residents teetering on the brink of congestion, Toronto says solution is coming – Toronto

Traffic congestion has become so bad that getting around Liberty Village is so difficult that Toronto’s deputy mayor has asked the city to come up with a plan to clear the streets. Residents are frustrated by the lack of traffic and are wondering where the plan was months ago.

Liberty Village is a neighborhood notoriously difficult to navigate, even in the best of times, but ongoing construction projects in the area have exacerbated the problems. The reconstruction of the Gardiner Expressway to the south and work on the water main and streetcar on King Street West directly north of Liberty Village have forced motorists to find a clear path through the narrow streets.

All this has led to slow road conditions throughout the area. The situation is not much better for the above-ground public transport routes, which are also stuck in the congestion.

“This year is the worst, it’s not even worth driving, honestly. I just take public transportation, I don’t like driving; it just takes longer,” said Jennifer D’Costa, who has lived in the neighborhood for five years. She said poor planning has long been a problem and the lack of coordination recently hasn’t helped.

Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik has prepared a motion for this week’s city council meeting, in which she is looking for municipal staff to address the situation.

“The increased traffic is very serious and while we know it would have an impact on the neighborhood,” said Malik, who is a city councilor for the area. She said the impact on transit times and safety issues that have arisen should be addressed by a staff report.

But Malik said that if her motion were approved by the council, the staff report likely wouldn’t be ready until the fall. She acknowledged that a plan drawn up before construction began, as residents have complained, would have been a better course of action. “There could have been more done in terms of what that coordination could be,” she said.

In retrospect, that doesn’t sit well with Ashley Kubbinga, who has worked on Hannah Avenue for 11 years and has never seen traffic this heavy. Kubbinga was walking across a crosswalk with her child in a stroller last weekend and said she was nearly hit by a car as it anxiously tried to weave through traffic.

“It’s too little too late, something has to happen and it has to happen now,” Kubbinga said of the lackluster efforts to address traffic so far. “You just can’t get anywhere here now.”

The council will also consider a plan to accelerate construction of the Gardiner Expressway this week. A broader congestion plan will also be tabled in September, marking the fourth attempt to address the deteriorating road conditions this year alone.

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