Call it the pandemic pas de deux — that little dance pedestrians perform when they approach each other on a narrow Toronto sidewalk to ensure they don’t pass too close.

But keeping your distance during the COVID-19 outbreak isn’t always easy. To demonstrate just how little space pedestrians have, two local advocates with the Toronto Public Space Committee filmed themselves going for a stroll in a “social-distancing machine” — a hoop made of pipes and old bicycle tubes that forces people to stay the recommended two metres away.

The demonstration clearly resonated with Torontonians: By Monday evening, just a few hours after artist and writer Daniel Rotsztain posted it to Twitter, the video showing his collaborator Bobby Gabba bumping into obstacles and forcing fellow pedestrians into the street through Kensington Market and down Yonge Street was approaching 200,000 views.

“While we’re trying to maintain a safe distance, it’s literally impossible to do with the infrastructure we have,” explained Rotsztain, who filmed the experiment.

Crowding on Toronto sidewalks has become a touchy subject as advocates like Gabba and Rotsztain argue the city should close some traffic lanes to give pedestrians room to spread out during the pandemic.

The city has already rejected that proposal, and an idea Mayor John Tory briefly floated Monday — to make some sidewalks one-way — also raised ire before he dropped it as unsupported by Toronto health officials.

Meanwhile, the city’s top doctor has sought to assure citizens that despite social distancing recommendations residents remain at low risk of catching the virus from someone they pass on the street.

Rotsztain said he thinks the video struck a chord with so many people because the advice to keep two metres away from others is on everyone’s mind as they move about the city these days — he also suspects people just need a bit of comedic relief.

“People are feeling moody and anxious and we wanted to do something that was a bit humorous and exaggerated,” he said.

For his part, Gabba said he felt like “kind of a jerk” that people had to get into the street to avoid the distancing machine, but many passersby were on board with the project.

“Most people on the street thought it was funny,” he said.

While Rotsztain and Gabba made their point with humour, some public health experts are taking a more conventional approach.

On Monday, Ryerson University epidemiologists Anne Harris and Linda Rothman sent an open letter to Mayor Tory and Toronto Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eileen de Villa asking them to “reconsider closing lanes of motor vehicle traffic, or parking lanes, for Toronto residents who rely on sidewalks and bicycles for their essential transportation.”

They cited statistics that show 13 per cent of trips citywide rely on walking or cycling. The number rises to 41 per cent downtown, and goes even higher if public transit trips that require walking are factored in.

Harris and Rothman wrote they’re worried Torontonians “relying on sidewalks for essential transportation are forced to either ignore (two-metre) distancing rules or step into live traffic lanes to give distance.”

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Elsewhere, more than 60 cities including Brampton, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver have freed up road space for pedestrians and cyclists, they said.

In an interview, Harris said Toronto’s refusal to follow suit seems to ignore the fact that many people have no way to make essential trips like going to the grocery store except by walking.

“I am concerned that we might have an implicit, not necessarily conscious bias, that sees active transportation like walking, bicycling, or other use of sidewalks, as something people do for recreation,” she said.

“And then we think of motor vehicles as grownups with places to be.”

De Villa responded Monday with a letter of her own, reiterating the city’s position that the most effective way to fight COVID-19 is to encourage people to stay home, and warning that closing lanes to car traffic could have the opposite effect.

“We do not want to inadvertently encourage people to leave their homes through opening streets, which could result in higher pedestrian demand and social gathering,” she said.

City officials have also said that the signage and enforcement required to safely block lanes to car traffic would divert municipal resources from where they’re most needed.

In a television interview Monday morning, Mayor Tory said he was open to a proposal to tackle pedestrian congestion by implementing one-way sidewalks. The idea would be to direct pedestrians travelling in the same direction to stay on the same side of the street, with northbound walkers confined to the east side and southbound walkers on the west side, for instance.

But at the city’s daily COVID-19 news conference Monday afternoon the mayor said municipal public health experts weren’t recommending that option.

“Rather we will continue to rely on people to accommodate each other, which I think they’re doing,” he said.

Although the city is cracking down on people gathering in outdoor spaces like parks and public squares, de Villa told reporters that pedestrians passing close to each other on the sidewalk don’t pose a significant health risk. She said that’s because the virus that causes COVID-19 is mostly transmitted through close contact with an infected person’s respiratory secretions, which are spread through coughing, sneezing, and speaking.

“The risk when you actually pass somebody in an open-air environment, and if it’s quick, is considered low. We can’t say zero, there is no such thing as an absolute zero. But it is a very low risk,” she said.

Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr

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