Municipal roads are having a bit of a moment.
Recommended Videos
While the Ontario government’s decision to pass legislation removing bike lanes in Toronto has sucked up the oxygen in the room, it has also diverted attention from an even more problematic situation unfolding on roads in every corner of the province.
The Ministry of Transportation’s latest Ontario Road Safety Annual Report (ORSAR) spends much of its 92 pages arguing how towing industry reform, new school bus illumination standards, and legislative changes to make the use of photo radar easier for municipalities have resulted in a “road safety record [that] demonstrates how government initiatives combined with strong enforcement and education are working to make our roads safer.”
These are good initiatives and the government should be applauded for taking these steps.
But dig into that same report’s data and a much different story emerges. It turns out, the last four years were a terrible time to be a road user in Ontario.
Since 2020, Ontario’s road safety performance has been going backwards. During this time, the number of collisions, injuries and deaths occurring on the province’s roads has increased – by a lot.
Back in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, 530 people lost their lives on Ontario roads. By 2023, this had increased to 616 fatalities, a number not seen since 2008. Personal injuries jumped from 31,792 in 2020 to 36,090 in 2023, an increase of more than 14%. In 2021, the last year that full data has been published, roadway collisions resulted in 4,645 hospital admissions that resulted in 51,796 days of hospital care. That is more than 141 years of care.
Dig deeper into the data it emerges that these risks and tragedies are disproportionately concentrated in rural, northern and remote communities. While home to 17% of Ontarians, rural municipalities were the site of 61% fatalities on municipal roads.
This fact has significant negative consequences for all Ontarians. In addition to immense personal suffering, road violence strains an already overburdened rural health care system and drives runaway personal and municipal insurances costs.
It does not have to be this way.
Jurisdictions around the world have implemented programs to fix the unique challenges posed by rural roads. These programs use the latest engineering science and cutting-edge analysis to identify what is wrong with a road and put in place the solutions to prevent these tragedies. The American Transportation Research Board has determined that this approach provides a 36 to 1 return-on-investment. Yes, 36 to 1.
Recognizing that Canada is one of the only advanced economies that does not have such a program, Good Roads – Ontario’s original municipal association – has been pushing the Ministry of Transportation to fund a rural road safety program similar to those that have worked elsewhere.
In the last two weeks, more than 60 municipalities have endorsed this call to action. Clearly, Premier Doug Ford feels the same.
Speaking to the media last Friday, Ford stated: “We want to keep everyone safe. I want to keep everyone safe across the roads.”
At a time when decision-makers at the local and provincial level are looking for solutions to big problems, this is one of those rare initiatives where the payoff is obvious, immediate and significant.
As world renowned road safety expert Kenn Beer told delegates at the Good Roads Conference in April in Toronto, “The risks associated with rural roads are easy to see and just as easy to fix.”
What are we waiting for?
– Scott Butler is the executive director of Good Roads, a municipal association concerned with the quality and design of roads in Ontario