Mayoralty candidate George Smitherman took to construction-ravaged Bloor Street on the eve of Toronto's annual Simcoe Day long weekend traffic jam, to promise to streamline road-work season and make it easier for drivers to get around more easily.
The plan - which Smitherman originally unveiled much earlier in the campaign - would aim to reduce the amount of time that crews spend working on particular roads."We need new approaches and new attitudes at the city, where people fess up and live up to their responsibilities," said Smitherman, standing on a square of sidewalk outside the Williams-Sonoma store on the north side of Bloor west of Bay Street while pedestrians streamed around him and through caged-in temporary walkways through the massive construction project.Smitherman said his plan would help prevent the problems that caused the revitalization of Bloor Street between Church Street and Avenue Road to stretch into such a lengthy project.Originally prompted by local businesses hoping to spruce up the high-end retail avenue, the project has gone up by millions of dollars in cost and could be delayed until the end of the year or longer.That project has resulted in finger-pointing between the BIA, the city and Toronto Hydro and other utilities, who have had to contend with a variety of problems including a need to rebuild transformer vaults and replace underground telephone lines.Smitherman said his plan - to minimize so-called "Days of Disruption" - would prevent something like this from happening."I seek to create a new model that will limit days of disruption," he said. "Quickly we will create an index, that is live to telephone apps and people with GPS's, that will give people up to date information about where traffic is disrupted because of construction, and within 100 days of taking office I would expect construction officials to create a new strategy to reduce days of disruption. If they can't do it, that would be a sign they need to be moved along."Smitherman said he would also create new requirements and incentives in construction contracts to ensure the jobs are done more quickly, and contractors work longer hours.He said that while the cost of such contracts might be higher, it would be worth the price."Maybe there's an incremental cost associated with it, but it is only an incremental cost if you don't measure the loss and inconveniences to businesses like on this stretch of Bloor, which is a model retail stretch in the City of Toronto - our Fifth Avenue, our Golden Mile," he said.As well, he would push for better co-ordination between the city and its agencies and corporations - and if that co-ordination didn't occur, he said top executives would find that reflected in their pay."The collective of the city and its agencies need to get their head together, and people running transportation and other agencies - part of their executive compensation is going to be based on their abilities to eliminate the days of disruption."