Lake Shore School Traffic Prompts Safety Concerns

Parents dropping their children off at school. College students trying to find a parking spot before their class starts. Passengers trying to catch a bus. At the intersection of Lake Shore Blvd. and Kipling Ave. these three worlds combine — often with stressful results.

With the opening of Holy Trinity Catholic School last February there are now three schools that call the intersection home. Both Humber College and Father John Redmond Catholic School also share the stretch of road. This means a lot of traffic in morning and late afternoon hours.

“The school was planned 14 years ago,” says Julie Aube, Holy Trinity’s Principal. “We had no way of knowing how busy the area would become before the school got built.”

The three schools have coordinated to help ensure the safety of the students going to school. Holy Trinity allows parents to drop their kids off at 8:05 a.m., which is earlier than other schools in the area. The schools all share parking after 5pm.

Aube says that they have spoken to Ward 3 councillor Mark Grimes to try and fix the problem.

“People are frustrated more then anything,” explains Aube. “We’ve been trying to get a new crosswalk put in place to help the problem.”

A recent survey of the Greater Toronto Hamilton area from Transportation Tomorrow, which is conducted every 5 years, shows that the number of kids walking to school has decreased to 36.9% in 2016 from 39% in 2011 in ages 11 to 13-years old. It also showed a decrease in kids ages 14-17 walking to school, 25.5% in 2016 from 28% in 2011.

The report says that driving and public transit has become the most dominate form of transportation, leading to congestion in areas around schools. Metrolinx reports that school commutes make up 20% of the morning traffic in the GTA.

“I definitely think it’s dangerous in the morning with all the schools around here,” says Humber student Adam Teare. “It’d be nice to see them work out some way to make it safer for everyone trying to get to school”