Leaside Community Safety committee

Working Towards a Safer Community for Everyone

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The Leaside Community Safety Committee is concerned with building a safer community for all Leaside residents.

 

We are parents and family members, local business owners, educators and concerned citizens.

 

Our motivation to organize and become active as a community on this issue was driven by recognition that the speed of traffic and volume of collisions along the stretch of Eglinton Avenue through Leaside is a serious public safety issue; especially given the number of young children who cross the street daily for school.

While we recognize that Eglinton is an arterial road in Toronto and is designed to move a significant number of vehicles on a daily basis, the speeds at which a large number of these vehicles traverse this span of roadway are dangerously high. In addition, collision data we have obtained from the City of Toronto indicates that there is a reported collision on Eglinton every two days on average between Bayview and Leslie. Many of these have involved pedestrians and many more have been near misses. Since we have organized we have documented over 30 motor vehicle collisions and posted photographs of them on a dedicated Facebook page.  {Note these have been captured sporadically when one of our committee members has been present to document collisions.}

 

Traffic Operations data reveal that over 20,000 motorists traveled faster than the posted limit (50 km/hr), over 1,000 are traveled faster than 70 km/hr, and over 100 traveled 81 km/hr to 100 km/hr during a 24 hour period last December on Eglinton between Bayview and Rumsey. Note that 36 motorists managed to travel between 81 and 100 km/hr between the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00 pm past the schools and homes here.  This is unacceptable.

 

In addition to speeding, approximately 185 collisions are reported on Eglinton Ave East between Bayview and Brentcliffe per year, or about one every two days on average. Many of the collisions result in gridlock that causes motorists to infiltrate slower side streets with stop signs and/or speed bumps.

 

Copies of the spreadsheets and the report can be found here

 

When we first enquired with the city about our concerns we were told that "There has not been a motor vehicle collision between Bayview Avenue and Brentcliffe in the last few years!” We urged the city to conduct a study (which they did)  that demonstrated over 1,300 motorists are travelling at or above 70 kilometres per hour every day past schools and homes along this section of road.

Conversations with traffic officers from Toronto’s special Traffic Services Division spent some time on a speed trap at the corner of Eglinton and Rumsey, we were told by officers that speeds of 70 to 80 kilometres per hour were common along this stretch of road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leasidesafety@gmail.com