Toronto is currently considering a car-free King Street, making it solely a corridor for transit, pedestrians, and a cyclist zone.
On Wednesday a Green Cities conference took place, where Toronto’s chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat announced a new website that will look into various possible plans for King Street between Dufferin Street and River Street.
“We want to make sure that the areas of the city that we are directing growth to in fact have excellent transit service and the King Street corridor can be a big win,” said Keesmaat.
Keesmaat also stresses that “focusing on walking and cycling is in fact the most important thing we can do to become a green city.”
The rest of the options being considered will be announced to the public on February 13.
“Because King Street is so congested, if we can get just transit and allow pedestrians and bikes on the street, we may end up diverting a lot of that pedestrian and cycle traffic to King Street rather than other streets that have traffic and cars on them,” said Sarah Thomson of the Toronto Transit Alliance. “If it doesn’t work we’ll go back to the drawing board.”
Image via Nic Redhead/Flickr