Liberty Village residents on the edge over congestion, Toronto says a solution is coming

Traffic congestion has reached the point where it’s so difficult to get around Liberty Village that Toronto’s deputy mayor has requested city staff to come up with a plan to help de-clog the streets, but residents frustrated by the lack of movement are wondering where the plan was months ago.

Liberty Village has been a neighbourhood well known for its difficulty to navigate at the best of times, but ongoing construction projects around the area have exacerbated the problems. The Gardiner Expressway rebuild to the south, and watermain and streetcar work on King Street West directly north of Liberty Village, have been pushing drivers in search of a clear route through its narrow streets.

All of it has combined to create slow road conditions around the entire area. The situation is not faring much better for surface transit routes, which have also been stuck in the congestion.

“This year has been the worst for sure it’s not even worth driving, honestly. I just transit, I’d rather not drive; it just takes longer,” said Jennifer D’Costa who’s lived in the neighbourhood for five years. She said poor planning has been a problem for a long time and the lack of coordination lately hasn’t helped.

Deputy Mayor Ausma Malik has a member’s motion prepped for city council’s meeting this week looking for city staff to address the situation.

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“The worsening traffic is very serious and while we know it would have an impact on the neighbourhood,” said Malik, who is the city councillor for the neighbourhood. She said impacts to transit times and safety issues that have appeared need to be addressed by a staff report.

But Malik said if her motion is approved by council, the report from staff likely wouldn’t be ready until the fall. She conceded that a plan put in place before the construction had begun, as residents have complained should have happened, would have been the better course of action. “More could have been done in terms of what that coordination could be,” she said.

That hindsight isn’t sitting well with Ashley Kubbinga, who has worked on Hannah Avenue for 11 years and has never seen traffic this bad. Kubbinga was walking her child in a stroller through a crosswalk over the weekend and said she was almost hit by a car that was anxiously trying to weave through traffic.

“It’s too little too late, something needs to be done and it needs to be done now,” Kubbinga said of the lacking efforts to address the traffic so far. “You just can’t get anywhere down here right now.”

Council is also due to look at a plan to speed up construction on the Gardiner Expressway at this week’s meeting. A wider congestion plan will also be due in September, which will be the fourth attempt to address worsening conditions on the roads this year alone.

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