Liberty Village residents say they feel trapped as traffic conditions have gotten so bad, they say it takes a minimum of 30 minutes for drivers to get in and out of the downtown neighbourhood.
“It’s unbearable, completely unbearable. You cannot leave at any point in the morning or in the evening at any point,” says resident Pamela Westwater.
“There’s one road in and out. It’s literally like we’re being held hostage in our own community,” adds Angie DeOliveira.
“It’s garbage,” says Felicia Birnbaum, bluntly.
The three are among thousands of area residents who say the increased traffic in what was already a congested area due to construction on the Gardiner Expressway and King Street is making living or working there a miserable experience.
DeOliveira says her veterinarian’s office couldn’t open Friday morning because the doctor was stuck in traffic.
“We had an appointment to go pick up [my dog’s] medication and I got to the vet and they were closed. She had reception call everybody and say she can’t get to the office because she’s stuck in traffic and her ETA is about noon to get in,” she says.
Birnbaum says it’s impossible to get rideshares in the area.
“I have just gone to other streets to take them … and I’ll have them drop me off [just outside Liberty Village],” she says.
“You’re better off walking completely north to get there and then taking either TTC or an Uber to get somewhere because you cannot get picked up here. It’s intolerable,” adds Westwater.
Birnbaum adds that the mounting frustration and inability to escape the gridlock in the area is leading to road rage and unsafe driving.
“People will go off on these side roads and they see that it’s clear — like this very small space — and they’ll try to speed through. So then it becomes a danger for people that are walking and people that are biking,” she says.
Numerous summer concerts, festivals and sports games in nearby venues only serve to make the congestion worse. Those attending concerts at the Budweiser Stage were routinely advised to park in Liberty Village and the website was only recently updated to remove mention of the area.
Westwater says she got stuck in traffic so badly one Saturday night, she just gave up.
“I believe there was a TFC game, a concert going on … and there were two music festivals going on. As I approached Strachan Avenue, the police let me know that all of Strachan was shut down … so they redirected me to Dufferin. It took me about 40 minutes to get to Dufferin on Lake Shore because everything had just let out at the same time. To get from Dufferin one block in, I sat there for about an hour,” she recalls.
“I then took a back route, which only the people who live in the area know. I then sat there for another 40 minutes and decided, you know what? Forget it. I parked my car and walked home.”
She says she was only able to retrieve her car after 2:00 a.m. when traffic finally cleared up.
Apart from concerts bringing more people and cars into the neighbourhood, regular road closures for events like marathons or the Honda Indy this weekend, on top of the ongoing construction closures, create even more gridlock.
“As much as these events are great for Toronto and the economy of Toronto, it’s impacting our daily lives. It took me two hours to drive 900 meters to get home,” says DeOliveira.
“It’s only going to get worse. The CNE’s coming, we’re expecting basically just not to be able to move at all because that’ll be all day and all night,” adds Westwater.
Many residents have been inundating Ward 10 councillor Ausma Malik’s inbox with complaints and demands to find an immediate solution.
“You need to think about how we get in and out of this area … you have to make adjustments so that the people living here have bearable traffic and it’s bearable for them to live here,” says Westwater.
“Whether they change it to local traffic only, whether they coordinate when events are happening, where people can park. I don’t know what the solution is … just do something. Do something,” adds DeOliveira, exasperated.
Councilor Malik says she knows that the situation is at a critical point. In a statement to CityNews she said in part:
“At Council next week, I will be calling for a Liberty Village Traffic Action Plan to identify and implement short, medium and long term solutions with a dedicated focus. Some of this work is already underway – the city’s new, dedicated Special Events Traffic Management team is already enhancing traffic coordination for multiple events and addressing neighborhood concerns.”
Other mitigation efforts will include deploying traffic agents and traffic control personnel as well as traffic signal timing modifications. These measures are to be implemented starting this month. City staff are to provide a status update in September.
Meanwhile, residents are in for another weekend of congestion and frustration with road closures necessitated by the Honda Indy cutting off even more access and egress to the area.
Southbound Strachan Avenue is closed from Lake Shore Boulevard to Fleet Street and Lake Shore Boulevard is closed from Strachan to British Columbia Road. Roads will reopen at 11 p.m. on Sunday.
