There was a lot of debate at this week’s Toronto City Council meeting about sidewalks and, for once, it had nothing to do with the smart-city proposal at the waterfront.

At issue was the “missing sidewalk installation policy” that was to give city staff the authority to build sidewalks on streets that don’t already have them. Despite Toronto ostensibly being a proper city, there are quite a few streets where people have to walk on the road with moving traffic.

A sidewalk is a fundamental part of a city. It is where building meets road, where every motorist becomes a pedestrian once they exit their car and where the public life of the city plays out.

It’s why the urban innovation firm behind the smart-city plan is called Sidewalk Labs rather than, say, Off Ramp, Left Turn Lane or Underpass. The children’s television show Sesame Street could have been called Sesame Sidewalk, as just about all the outdoor action in the entire series takes place on sidewalks.

Despite their benign ubiquity, Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 2, Etobicoke Centre) moved a motion on Tuesday to amend the city’s road-safety plan to give local councillors a possible veto over new sidewalks, allowing them to take objections to the city’s infrastructure committee. Holyday said some residents in his ward who don’t have sidewalks are happy without them and don’t want them.

Ensuring all streets have sidewalks was a key part of what’s been called the Vision Zero 2.0 road-safety strategy, after the first watered-down, meek attempt three years ago failed to stop the carnage on our streets.

Read more:

‘You hesitate, you lose lives’: Toronto votes for more aggressive Vision Zero road safety plan

Toronto’s Vision Zero 2.0 pedestrian safety plan is progress. Now let’s work on version 3.0

Toronto mayor vows pedestrian safety plan will save lives. Advocates say it’s too timid

I’m lucky I often get to visit family in Councillor Holyday’s ward, particularly the Humber Valley Village neighbourhood northwest of Royal York Rd. and Dundas St. W. It’s a lovely place designed by the influential postwar architect and planner Eugene Faludi in the 1940s and has circuitous streets, treed lots and cul-de-sacs. But many of the streets don’t have sidewalks, so pedestrians must share the road with cars.

It’s curious, in light of Holyday’s motion, to walk these sidewalk-free streets and see residents reduced to begging cars to slow down in an attempt to keep their children safe.

Along and around Wimbledon Rd., one of the main through streets in the neighbourhood, you’ll see that in front yards and on corners residents have put out bright orange pylons and tent-like nylon signs that read “CAUTION: CHILDREN AT PLAY” with the image of two youngsters holding hands, seeming scurrying out of the way of traffic. Even more conspicuous are the upright plastic figures of children wearing cute red beanies, standing at the side of the road waving orange flags with the word SLOW written on their hips.

Holyday’s motion was vocally supported by his neighbouring councillor, Mark Grimes (Ward 3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore). On Twitter, Grimes’ policy adviser Mary Campbell was (at least before she made her account private) making bizarre arguments for why local councillors and residents should be able to object to sidewalks, including arguing that her ward was simply planned without sidewalks.

While true, and never mind that we improve on old designs all the time, some streets designed without sidewalks were planned in a more idyllic time, when each house might have had just one car rather than three or four and perhaps when people had more respect for the law.

You don’t need to be in Toronto long to know that speed limits, stop signs and even red lights are optional for many drivers and enforcement is almost non-existent. We all know what that pathetic neon kid is up against here.

The “designed without sidewalks” argument is even more absurd if you consider parts of Ward 3 were designed before the car itself, like Mimico and New Toronto, areas that pre-date the mass adoption of cars and their inherent danger. By this logic, we should remove the road itself since they weren’t designed with cars in mind.

In the end, 16 councillors, including Mayor John Tory, voted to pass Holyday’s motion, defeating the remaining 10 and yet again chipping away at the city’s road-safety plan.

Honestly, the incremental process of trying to make Toronto streets safer is exhausting. It would be comically absurd if it weren’t so routinely deadly.

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If we are indeed a city, it’s our duty to make it safe for everyone who lives here. Perhaps the homeowner doesn’t want a sidewalk, but these are public streets, and the postal worker, nanny, kid walking to a friend’s place, vision-impaired people and users of mobility devices all deserve safe and accessible infrastructure.

In his famous 1974 children’s poem “Where the Sidewalk Ends,” Shel Silverstein evoked an imaginary, childlike place of innocence. Had he been writing in Toronto, it might have been set in Etobicoke and included those neon kids with the flags trying desperately to slow traffic coming towards them.

They might as well be waving white flags of surrender in this city.