The City of Toronto is moving to redesign the intersection of Eglinton Avenue and Allen Road, one of the busiest junctions in the area, in an effort to ease the heavy traffic that builds up there. Officials say residents have repeatedly raised safety concerns about the crossing, and the city wants to make sure it gets the redesign right before committing to a final plan.
The scale of the problem is hard to miss. According to the city, the area sees a mile-long traffic jam every single day, a persistent bottleneck in one of the area's main corridors. That congestion, combined with the safety concerns flagged by people who live nearby, is what officials say has prompted them to act on the long-troubled intersection now.
To shape the project, the city has been holding public consultation meetings over the past week. The sessions are meant to show the community the different options being considered for the intersection and to invite residents to weigh in with their feedback, with officials saying they hope to move forward with the redesign soon after gathering public input.
Allen Road itself carries a long history in the city. It was originally conceived as part of the Spadina Expressway, a major roadway plan that was ultimately cancelled before it could be completed. What survived of that project now functions as a busy arterial route rather than the full expressway that planners had once envisioned for the corridor.
Today, Allen Road serves as one of the main corridors connecting Midtown and North York, carrying heavy volumes of traffic between the two parts of the city. The Eglinton and Allen junction is also a busy transit hub, sitting at the interchange of subway lines 1 and 5, which adds to the pressure on the crossing and raises the stakes of any redesign.
Residents who could not attend the in-person sessions still have a way to make their views known. The city has opened an online survey, available on its official website, that lets people provide feedback on the proposed changes to the intersection. That survey is set to close on June 14, after which the city says it plans to advance the redesign of the area.