Ed Drass

There’s something about St. Clair. The proposal to build a protected right of way down the centre of this avenue has triggered surprisingly strong emotions. Some are scared that the reserved lanes will intimidate shoppers who come by car. Others worry that if transit can’t be improved on St. Clair, then city-wide plans for better TTC service are doomed.

The proposal is also the first real test of the city’s ambitious new official plan.

St. Clair – especially the six-lane-wide thoroughfare west of Yonge Street – links the older part of Toronto with the beginning of the city’s inner suburbs. It’s a major conduit for motorists and is the home to the TTC’s northernmost streetcar line. Because the roadway and tracks are so beat up, St. Clair must be rebuilt.

The TTC has made no secret that it wants exclusive lanes down the middle, arguing that traffic makes the ride slow and unreliable.

Some merchants and residents, primarily in the area near Dufferin Street, feel that City of Toronto officials don’t care about the street’s economic life and intend to force the lanes through.

The city’s transportation planners, along with the TTC and the roads department, are conducting a formal environmental study of the street – and perhaps because of the controversy, have scheduled an unprecedented fourth series of public meetings for later this month. Most such studies only go out to the community twice.

Jeff Gillan, chair of the Corso Italia Business Improvement Area, says those opposed to the right-of-way have suggestions for improving service on the 512 streetcar, but think reserved lanes are like using a sledgehammer when only a hammer is needed.

He says, "We have been wrongly painted as being . . . anti-TTC, and that’s not true. We’re very much in favour of it. We’re not in favour of the proposed solution – which has always been the solution. It’s been the only one on the table, irrespective of this environmental assessment."

That mistrust of the city’s intention is disappointing to chief transportation planner Rod McPhail, but he agrees that what happens to St. Clair is an important precedent for the whole city: "It’s where the tracks hit the road."

He says that while Toronto’s Official Plan clearly points to more transit instead of roads, planners are very sensitive to the needs of each part of the avenue.

The environmental study has looked at nine major options for the corridor, from doing nothing except repaving the road to building exclusive streetcar lanes.

In a kind of "St. Clair Survivor," four options now remain and McPhail says that there is most interest in a hybrid solution – using appropriate transit-improving measures tailored for different parts of the street. On Monday, a select group of residents walked the entire seven kilometres from Yonge St. to Keele St. Representatives of organizations both opposed to and in favour of reserved lanes came along on the four-hour tour, looking at the unique needs of each neighbourhood.

This could mean a combination of exclusive lanes in some areas, or special traffic signals, or ways of getting left-turning vehicles out of the way of streetcars. Improvements to traffic flow and parking are also part of the city’s agenda, which brings together several agencies that don’t usually work together. To get an idea what transit and car commuters would experience on a new St. Clair, traffic engineers at the University of Toronto have been called in to analyze the different proposals using state-of-the-art computer models.

It’s hard to say yet what St. Clair will look like after planners, citizens and politicians have their say, but this process is a great way to understand how Toronto works.

To get a look at the saga of St. Clair from all angles, visit the website www.mystclair.com, which has links to all of the concerned organizations.