Toronto man who stood up to aggressive drivers frustrated city won't put speed humps on his street

Alex Weaver stood in the middle of his North York street to slow down speeding drivers last summer.

But he's not sure what he'll have to do to get city hall to install speed humps.

Weaver, who lives on Park Home Avenue in the Yonge Street and Sheppard Avenue West area, says more than half of the residents on his street signed a petition requesting the common traffic-calming measure. However, five months after Weaver filed it, city transportation staff rejected the request, noting in a report that while speeding is common in the area, humps shouldn't be added because Park Home doesn't have a sidewalk.

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Weaver, who now has a videocamera trained on the street to record speeders (Toronto police told him to stop walking out into traffic), is frustrated with the response.

"I'm worried about somebody getting killed, because it's going to come to that," he told CBC Toronto.

Transportation staff are recommending adding a sidewalk to the suburban-style street, but Weaver says his neighbours have told him they "absolutely" don't want that. 

Local Coun. John Filion, who is currently fighting for a major redesign of Yonge Street a few blocks from Weaver's home, says he supports the idea of a sidewalk, and his office is surveying residents about that option now. He didn't rule out adding speed humps, but says the city's official traffic-calming policy requires the presence of a sidewalk before humps can be added.

Filion also says adding humps aren't always the best solution.

"There's a lot of better, more effective, more comprehensive ways of creating safety," he said.

With speed humps, "you get all kinds of unintended consequences. Like people literally do things like drive with two wheels up on a sidewalk."

Filion suggested he's also open to looking at other measures, like lowering the speed limit, which is currently 40 km/h — the city report notes most vehicles operate between 6 and 13 km/h faster than that, though Weaver says he's seen cars travelling far faster.

Should city change speed hump policy?

While Weaver's dispute with city hall is ongoing, it points to a larger issue.

Coun. Mike Layton, who wants more capital funding put behind the city's Vision Zero plan to eliminate road deaths, says it takes too long for the city to review requests to add speed humps and the barrier to putting them in may be too high as well. Since adopting Vision Zero in 2016, the city has installed fewer than 200 humps in just over 50 locations to slow down aggressive drivers.

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Layton suggests it may be time to revisit the city's policies around installing speed humps.

"The reality is, if we want to build a safer city, maybe our warrants are incorrect," he said.

Toronto has seen a spate of pedestrian deaths in 2018. While many fatal collisions have been on major roads, others have occurred on smaller streets, including the one that claimed the life of an 11-year-old boy. In that case, the local councillor moved to temporarily close a laneway until transportation staff can evaluate speed humps in the area.