Blue Jays Chairman Mark Shapiro Calls On Council To Cancel Frequent Closure Of Lake Shore Boulevard West For Activeto

The city regularly closes part of the road to vehicular traffic from the summer of 2020 as part of the ActiveTO program.
The closures, which also take place along many other roads, were originally introduced as a means of giving people more space for recreational activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But they proved so popular that the city chose to keep the program in place, even as the risk of a pandemic diminished and public health advice evolved to place less emphasis on physical distance when outdoors.
In a letter sent to the mayor’s office earlier this week, Shapiro said he acknowledged that “ActiveTO has played a crucial role in encouraging people to go out and move around again, at a time when leisure options were limited.”
However, he said the closure of Lakeshore Boulevard West this spring had “drastically affected” the ability of Jays fans to access the Rogers Center and was likely to only get worse in the summer, when “baseball is the main attraction in town”.
“Many of our fans travel to the Rogers Center outside the GTA and public transport is not an option.  Out-of-town fans are often unaware of ActiveTO and do not know how to spend extra travel time.  “In the days when ActiveTO was in force on Lake Shore, our local fans experienced significant delays in transit because traffic has stopped on all routes to the city center,” he said.  “As a sports organization, we support people who go out and are active, but Toronto has many options and routes to use, while our fans do not.
Tori has promised change
The city council is expected to discuss the fate of the ActiveTO program during a meeting on June 15.
Speaking to CP24 earlier this week, Mayor John Tory acknowledged that “there is no doubt” that the closure had “a greater negative impact on traffic” so far in 2022 than in previous years.
He said he would like to see the program continue but perhaps not in its current form.
“All I can say is that we look very carefully at all these results, the data and the real facts as opposed to the stories.  “We will come up with something that takes into account all these thoughts,” he said.
Data collected from the city of Toronto in 2021 indicate that travel times on the Gardiner Expressway and Queensway double or even triple ActiveTO days against “ActiveTO no-closure conditions and provincial lockdown measures.”
City data, however, also showed a significant increase in the volume of cyclists and pedestrians along ActiveTO routes when closures are in effect.  In the case of Lakeshore Boulevard West, the data indicate a more than threefold increase in pedestrians and cyclists when the road is closed to traffic.

title: “Blue Jays Chairman Mark Shapiro Calls On Council To Cancel Frequent Closure Of Lake Shore Boulevard West For Activeto " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-23” author: “Betty Miller”

The city regularly closes part of the road to vehicular traffic from the summer of 2020 as part of the ActiveTO program.
The closures, which also take place along many other roads, were originally introduced as a means of giving people more space for recreational activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But they proved so popular that the city chose to keep the program in place, even as the risk of a pandemic diminished and public health advice evolved to place less emphasis on physical distance when outdoors.
In a letter sent to the mayor’s office earlier this week, Shapiro said he acknowledged that “ActiveTO has played a crucial role in encouraging people to go out and move around again, at a time when leisure options were limited.”
However, he said the closure of Lakeshore Boulevard West this spring had “drastically affected” the ability of Jays fans to access the Rogers Center and was likely to only get worse in the summer, when “baseball is the main attraction in town”.
“Many of our fans travel to the Rogers Center outside the GTA and public transport is not an option.  Out-of-town fans are often unaware of ActiveTO and do not know how to spend extra travel time.  “In the days when ActiveTO was in force on Lake Shore, our local fans experienced significant delays in transit because traffic has stopped on all routes to the city center,” he said.  “As a sports organization, we support people who go out and are active, but Toronto has many options and routes to use, while our fans do not.
Tori has promised change
The city council is expected to discuss the fate of the ActiveTO program during a meeting on June 15.
Speaking to CP24 earlier this week, Mayor John Tory acknowledged that “there is no doubt” that the closure had “a greater negative impact on traffic” so far in 2022 than in previous years.
He said he would like to see the program continue but perhaps not in its current form.
“All I can say is that we look very carefully at all these results, the data and the real facts as opposed to the stories.  “We will come up with something that takes into account all these thoughts,” he said.
Data collected from the city of Toronto in 2021 indicate that travel times on the Gardiner Expressway and Queensway double or even triple ActiveTO days against “ActiveTO no-closure conditions and provincial lockdown measures.”
City data, however, also showed a significant increase in the volume of cyclists and pedestrians along ActiveTO routes when closures are in effect.  In the case of Lakeshore Boulevard West, the data indicate a more than threefold increase in pedestrians and cyclists when the road is closed to traffic.
In a statement to CP24 on Friday afternoon, city spokesman Brad Ross said staff “continued to review the ActiveTO on a case-by-case basis” as the city gradually reopened and many events returned to the streets.
He said they were “gathering as much data as possible from the recent ActiveTO road closure in Lake Shore West” and would report to the city council next week on their findings.