No one likes a person who complains about a problem and also complains about the solution to that problem. So let’s start with this: it’s good that Toronto is upgrading some of its infrastructure. As has been noted in recent columns of mine, here and elsewhere, we have fallen very badly behind on this stuff, and it’s necessary — urgently necessary — that we begin getting caught up.
But, like, oh my God, do we ever do it stupidly.
I live in midtown Toronto, in the Leaside neighbourhood, specifically. And as I’ve told readers here before, a cousin who married an American and now lives down in the United States came back a few years ago for a family visit, the first that had been possible in years, due to the pandemic. Within seconds of the hug and initial pleasantries, she asked me, “Matt, what happened to the roads?” And it was a good point. For those of us who live and drive here on the daily, it had sort of snuck up on us. But the roads, in common with much of the infrastructure owned by Toronto (and in further common with most cities and provinces), were in bad shape. Really bad shape. Basic maintenance had been repeatedly deferred to the point that someone who’d grown up here but then spent a few years away was literally shocked at how bad they’ve gotten. I think about this a lot. I was the frog in the warming pot of water. She saw clearly what I’d slowly gotten used to.
There is good news of a kind. Some of the roads have been fixed. And another big stretch is being fixed. It’s the stretch of Bayview Avenue that runs from Eglinton north past the entrance to Sunnybrook Hospital. If you’re super-keen on all the details, they’re here for your reading pleasure, but the short version is this: the city is resurfacing just under a kilometre of roads and also taking the time to do work on the sidewalks, curbs, and traffic signals. Heavy road work began a few weeks ago and is expected to last until September.
And friends, good Lord, it is a disaster.
I’ve been joking with friends recently — at least I think it’s a joke? — that if the city were trying to slowly and incrementally blockade Leaside without anyone noticing, what we’re seeing in terms of road work doesn’t look much different from how it’d probably try to do it. Even against the backdrop of spectacularly dysfunctional Toronto traffic (the Toronto Star is now running features on the toll it’s taking on people’s romantic lives, which is some kind of indicator I’m not emotionally ready to fully grapple with yet), Leaside itself is essentially surrounded by major construction projects. The traffic these are producing is clogging the secondary roads, and as noted, the effect of this is basically tantamount to a blockade. A few weeks ago, I had to drive to Ottawa for some meetings, and by far the worst part of the entire drive was getting the first couple of kilometres from my house. Everything else was easy.
There’s probably a column to be written about Toronto’s outright refusal to meaningfully coordinate large traffic projects so that at least some alternative routes remain passable, but I’m not sure that’s really the problem here. One of the major roadwork projects has been an emergency repair effort to fix a road that got eaten by a sinkhole, and some of the other disruptions are related to ongoing surface-level work on the Eglinton Crosstown, which is, at least theoretically, a mass-transit project that will one day open. There isn’t really a lot that the city can do about either of those. Accidents happen. Whatever the hell is going on with the Crosstown apparently happens, too. The Bayview Avenue work and the traffic snarls it’s causing can be seen as just bad timing — especially since it was delayed due to issues with the bureaucracy that no one has explained.
But, and I say this as a guy who has had lots of opportunities to see the work up close and personal — as I’m sitting in it for lack of any other viable routes or transit options — there is also a heapin’ helpin’ of bad management going on here. I know how cliched it is to complain about the all-too-Canadian experience of getting stuck in a traffic jam caused by the deployment of a bajillion orange traffic cones that are walling off an area in which absolutely no work is occurring, but the work on Bayview Avenue is probably the most bonkers example of this I’ve ever beheld.
In theory, work is scheduled to go from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., Monday to Friday, and the city has warned that weekends and overnights may be required. I’ve driven up and down the damn road at all hours of the day and at all times in the week, and I think I’ve observed, like, six humans actually doing work during that time? What I have seen, though, are entire lanes removed from service with pylons and reflective tape, which forces multiple lanes to merge into one, causing traffic chaos… without any work being visible. None. At all. And this is during the nominal working hours. One day last week, I saw hundreds of metres of road that had been closed, right in front of Sunnybrook Hospital, and for the life of me, beyond what seemed to be some newly poured concrete in a handful (at most) of sections of the curb, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what actual work had been accomplished.
Do we need to shut down an entire lane of traffic for hundreds of metres to protect maybe a dozen metres of new curb? Is this the best practice? Is this the right balance between disruption of local life and the safety of workers and the protection of newly poured concrete infrastructure?
Is it literally impossible to do better?
The entire situation is especially absurd because, as noted, this stretch of road is the main access point for Sunnybrook Hospital, with its comprehensive set of emergency rooms for serious trauma cases. I emailed the media team there, and they told me that they’d coordinated with the city and had been able to maintain normal operations. That’s good! Very reassuring. But I can guarantee you, as a guy who’s twice had to jump into the car and make a quick dash to the Sunnybrook ER to get myself or a kid seen to, it would take me a lot longer — a lot longer — to make that drive today than it normally would.
It would be nice to think that every construction project took place with conscious effort and thought going into how to minimize disruption to local life. It would be especially nice to think that this would be made an absolute priority when traffic disruptions could delay access to emergency medical care. But this is not how Toronto seems to function — ever.
It’s great that we’re doing the work. It’s long overdue. I welcome it. But, my God, we can and must find a way to do it better than this. Is anyone at city hall even trying?
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