Save Scarborough Driveways

We, the community of Scarborough Southwest, including the residents who are affected by the Brimley Road South Multi-Use Trail Project, request that the Toronto City Council and TRCA make reasonable accommodation not to deprive residents of their existing street access to Brimley Road South. We understand and respect the goal of the Project and believe our goals are not at odds. A compromise can be easily obtained if those leading the Project were to adopt a collaborative approach rather than the adversarial one taken to-date. We therefore ask that the City and TRCA work with us and live up to the TRCA's stated core values of integrity, collaboration, accountability, respect, and excellence when dealing with our community.

We ask that the Project, which proposes to build a new sidewalk and bicycle lane along Brimley Road South, incorporates our modest and reasonable request. Specifically, we are seeking intervention to ensure that the Project will:
1. Not deprive residents of existing driveway access to Brimley Road South for properties that currently enjoy permitted or legal non-conforming driveways, carports, and/or garages
2. Not deprive residents of existing walking access to Brimley Road South (and the proposed sidewalk and bicycle lane) for properties that currently enjoy walking access
3. Adopt a collaborative and respectful approach towards our community, making reasonable accommodations to achieve a fair and equitable outcome

Our focus is finding a collaborative outcome that achieves our stated goals. However, we regrettably note that there is a litany of examples where the TRCA has failed to live up to its core values. If productive and helpful, we can provide a review of our prior experiences trying to work collaboratively with the TRCA only to be marginalized.

Several residents were told that rather than incorporating a gate to the new sidewalk into the Project's design, which would be easy to do, they should instead explore doing so on their own. Additionally, the Technical Lead on the Project stated on a videoconference with the community that retaining vehicular access for residents with driveways would be 'easy' to accommodate under the existing proposal for the Project. Yet, despite the community's best efforts to work in good faith to do everything the TRCA and City has asked of us, we have inexplicably been ignored and have yet to be assured that our access will not be taken away. We, as a community, are unanimous in requesting that our elected officials and civil servants work collaboratively with us, incorporating modest and reasonable accommodations to not deprive us of our existing walking and/or vehicular access to Brimley Road South.

Lastly, we want to be clear that unlike other communities that have tried to halt projects altogether, our community would be conditionally supportive of the Project, provided we are not deprived of our existing access to Brimley Road South. We hope that you will choose to work with us on this urgent matter and save Scarborough driveways.

Respectfully,

The Community of Scarborough Southwest