Tory says he’ll chair road closure committee if elected mayor

Toronto mayoral candidate John Tory is promising to take a lead role in battling gridlock in the city if he’s elected mayor.

Speaking at a news conference at Wellesley Street West and Bay Street on Tuesday morning, Tory said that as mayor he will personally chair the construction coordination committee to ensure things are done correctly.

He said he will bring what he calls a more “competent” approach to coordinating road closures during construction.

“[The] coordination committee will look a year ahead of these things, and start to bring some discipline and some sensitivity and some competence to the management of these things,” Tory said.

“This is going to be something I’m going to tackle starting day one when I become the mayor of Toronto because I think we have to get the traffic moving, including the public transit vehicles, and I intend to do that.”

Tory stood before a road closed for construction in the Wellesley Street and Bay Street area, with no work being done, to point out what he said is a lack of coordination by the present administration.

He called for 24-7 contracts so that “we won’t experience that frustration that we saw right here on this street, right here, where the street was closed for weeks and nobody was here doing anything.”

“Where we see lots of construction sites around the city, where there isn’t an issue with residential neighbours, and where they could be working longer hours, even if it isn’t all 24 hours, they could be working longer than they are, the people that are contracted to do that work.”

Tory said the summer’s road construction chaos in Toronto has been a perfect example of how not to coordinate road closures.

“When we saw the closure of the Gardiner Expressway and the Lake Shore at the same time, without any consideration for the inconveniencing of thousands of people, we saw yet again, that that coordination is not happening. I am going to make it happen,” Tory said.

He’s also vowing zero tolerance for delivery trucks parked on main routes during rush hour.

Tory has talked about gridlock before, but argues that this issue is being overshadowed by the transit debate.

He said that reducing gridlock helps everyone by improving the flow of transit vehicles and the safety for cyclists.

Tory also pushed his SmartTrack transit plan saying it is gaining traction with voters. The plan would see existing GO tracks electrified to add 22 new surface subway stops, including one in Liberty Village. Click here to read the full plan.

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