Finally, someone is going to bat for the public in the rapacious business of Toronto condominium construction.

My spirits soared when I read a Star story last week about Councillor Josh Matlow’s bid to make it a lot harder for developers to occupy traffic lanes and sidewalks for years at a time to build condos.

Readers of this column know that I loathe how easy it is for builders to close curb lanes, and how the city’s default position is to let them do pretty much whatever they want, for as long as they want.

For instance, I wrote last summer about the closure of the curb lane of eastbound Queen St. E. at Logan Ave. for more than a year, to make room for condo construction, and how it remained closed long after the building was finished for questionable reasons.

Or how about a condo project that long closed the eastbound curb lane on Davenport Rd. in 2016, which remained barricaded for months after the job was done so the developer could add the finishing touches at a leisurely pace?

Travelling in Toronto becomes more difficult each year, partly due to pinch-point traffic jams created by development that pushes out past the sidewalk and obstructs traffic.

Often, a curb lane can be closed for upwards of two years to make room for construction. If it’s in the inner city – and a lot of them are – closures are a major obstacle to ease of movement, for drivers and pedestrians alike.

The Star just reported that 20,000 new condo units came onto the market in 2019, with another 30,000 expected to be completed this year. That doesn’t include buildings still in the planning and sales stages.

The intense condo market is driven in part by speculators who want in on the action and are banking on turning a profit by flipping units or renting them out until they can resell and grab a hefty return.

A big part of the cost of their speculation is being paid by the public, in the form of traffic delays and restriction of movement from funnelling two lanes of high-volume traffic into one.

I’m not against development. There’s a huge demand for housing and the only place left to build is upward. The jobs and economic activity that comes with such relentless development helps fuel a prosperous local economy.

But most people aren’t speculating on condos and don’t have any skin in the game; they just want to get where they’re going without driving into a construction-caused traffic backups along the way.

Matlow is likely to make a lot of friends with his proposal – unanimously endorsed by city council’s infrastructure and environment committee — that defaults to a denial of requests for permits to occupy the road allowance, except when no other options are available.

He suggests that the cost of occupying public space be made more expensive by imposing much higher fees that incentivize developers to keep the lane closures to a minimum, or tradeoffs for affordable housing or public uses.

The development industry is pushing back and city planning staff is on their side. A development spokesperson is quoted in the Star as saying “this just doesn’t seem to be the right answer.”

Of course, builders will say that recalibrating the considerations is not the right answer. And you can bet they’ll be hiring the most persuasive lobbyists working the corridors at city hall to press their case before the issue come to the full city council.

But Matlow (Ward 12, Toronto-St. Paul’s) is finally putting voice to what so many people think: The public interest has for many years taken a back seat to what the development industry wants.

Mayor John Tory has talked a lot about the need to reduce inner-city traffic woes and is a proponent of ticket blitzes and other low-impact measures to keep traffic moving.

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”How you do it is something you have to be careful about,” said Tory of Matlow’s ideas on reducing curb lane occupancies, not exactly an indication that he wants to lead the charge.

We’ll find out soon enough if the mayor and city council have the will to better balance the public’s right to ease of movement against the needs of speculation-driven development. Based on past performance, I’d bet on the developers.

I’m interested in hearing if readers think the positive impact of development on the local economy is sufficient to give developers carte blanche to reduce public movement, or if it’s time to reshuffle the considerations. So fire away.