Why a 2,000 Parking Garage at Ontario Place Will Make Cycling More Dangerous
The importance of considering vehicle volumes in pedestrian and cyclist safety
Despite it’s issues, the Martin Goodman Trail remains one of the safest areas in Toronto to cycle, mainly due to the fact that it is mostly separated from vehicle traffic. The risks that do exist, come from the times that a road or accessway does intersect with the path. These range in safety along the trail. Some are designed very well, while others could desperately use an upgrade.
At this crossing, from 6-lane Lakeshore West, vehicles can worry about watching for a gap in traffic first, then a raised crossing meets the entrance at 90 degreed so the driver can make a separate check for cyclists and pedestrians and move on. The driver never has to worry about more than one thing at once.
However, this entrance outside of Ontario Place offers none of the same protections. Left turns are allowed while cyclists and pedestrians are crossing, so a left-turning driver is required to do all of the following at the same time:
Watch to see if the light has turned yellow
Watch for a gap in incoming, 3-lane traffic
Watch for pedestrians and cyclists from the right
Watch for pedestrians and cyclists from the left
This is simply too much to ask of a driver, when the consequences are so high.
So why does this intersection not generate more serious incidents? The simple answer is that very few drivers need to enter this area. With few vehicles attempting to turn here, the odds that it happens at a time when someone is crossing remain small, and most are spared from the consequence of this poor design. But this will change in a huge way with plans for the new Ontario Place.
The new Ontario Place, and in particular the Therme Spa, is a car-centric development. This is obvious from the fact that it includes a 2,118 spot parking garage, and that it is expected that most of the visitors will come from outside of Toronto according to the Traffic Impact Study (TIS). The result is an assumed 71% of visitors to the space will use a private vehicle or car share. (The study presents this as if the number of parking spots is necessary to accommodate the number of drivers but this ignores that the existence of parking generates vehicle trips, so I have not presented it that way.) The study also ignores Toronto’s maximum parking limits which would normally not allow this number of spaces.
An entrance to this parking garage sits at Ontario Drive, the same intersection from the picture shown above. After the development of the new Ontario Place, there is expected to be 196 left turns during the Saturday peak hour (up 142 from the 54 currently). During the PM peak hour, there will be 138 left turns (up 133 from a total of 5 currently). Each turning vehicle is a potential conflict with a pedestrian or cyclists on the busiest trail in the city.
So could we improve the safety the intersection design? We could in a couple ways. First, we could configure the signals to have a fully protected left turns and no rights on red, where no conflicts would be possible unless someone does not follow the signals. The TIS suggests the addition of a protected left but it’s unsure if the left movement would be fully separated from the straight green. However, this would create significant delays as cyclists and pedestrians wait for additional signal phases. Currently, it is rare to get a red light while biking or walking through this intersection. Ultimately, this is a tradeoff of efficiency for safety.
A physical redesign of the intersection could also help, although with the turn counts expected coming from such a high-speed road, it is unlikely the safety margin will be made up by this. A redesigned is discussed in some of the plan documents, but with the current renderings, it is clear this has not been given much thought.
Ultimately, one of the best safety mechanisms is to eliminate the source of the conflict, and reducing the volume of vehicles is one of the most effective ways of doing so. There are ways to manage this increase in traffic but regardless, it will be impossible to maintain the same quality and safety the current Martin Goodman Trail offers in this area.