Toronto will hire 75 new traffic agents in a bid to alleviate congestion at some of the city’s busiest intersections, Mayor Olivia Chow announced on Thursday.
Chow said her upcoming budget will include $3 million to bring the city’s roster of traffic agents from 25 to 100. The agents are placed at key intersections to help manage pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle traffic in the morning and afternoon rush hour.
“They make our intersections safe and easy to move through no matter what the conditions; rain, sleet, snow or cold,” Chow said.
The agents will primarily be deployed at intersections plagued by “blocking the box” — when a driver attempts to push through a light and gets caught in the middle of the intersection, disrupting traffic.
That normally happens downtown but also at intersections across the city where construction blocks lanes, Gray said. She highlighted some crossings near Metrolinx projects — like the various Ontario Line stations — and Allen Road.
“It's a pretty dynamic system that we're able to track the congestion issues and then apply the agents where we think they'd be the best tool to solve the problem,” Gray said.
Toronto police officers assist at some locations, such as the on-ramp to the Gardiner Expressway.
Deploying more agents — Toronto had just three in 2022 — has been a centrepiece of the city’s efforts to get traffic moving, and city statistics show the plans have worked.
In 2023, agents were on the ground for just over 10,000 hours, compared to over 20,000 hours in 2024.
Data shows that having an agent on duty significantly reduced transit travel times on King Street. When deployed at the King Street and Spadina Avenue intersection, streetcar travel times were between 17 and 21 minutes, compared to 44 to 65 minutes without an agent.
At Bay Street and Front Street, traffic agents cut down on box blocking by 64 per cent and reduced vehicle travel times by 33 per cent, according to stats from 2023.
Similar improvements were tracked at York Street and Bremner Boulevard, which saw 53 per cent fewer box-blocking incidents and a 38 per cent cut in vehicle travel times.
The first cohort of about 48 new agents will hit the streets in the spring once they graduate from the training program, said Barbara Gray, head of the city’s transportation services. The rest will be trained and hired later in the year, she added.
But Chow’s plans to have more boots on the ground could face some familiar roadblocks, according to a recent report from city staff.
The traffic agent program is prone to “significant staff turnover” due to the “strenuous” work. It also provides good experience and creates “many other employment opportunities in law or bylaw enforcement,” the report said.
Replacing traffic agents can also be a tall task.
When staff leave, it takes “a considerable amount of time to recruit and onboard new staff leaving gaps in traffic management support,” the report said.
