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Public vs private streets

Public streets
The design of Toronto’s new residential streets must satisfy a broad range of Council policies and statutory obligations that seek to make Toronto a clean and beautiful City and to improve the quality of life for all its residents and visitors. In order to achieve this goal, new streets must balance a number of competing objectives such as:

• Creating a safe and comfortable pedestrian environment;

• Allowing adequate vehicular access including emergency vehicles, cars and bicycles;

• Improving access for persons with disabilities;

• Increasing the number of trees in the City.

• Allowing for clean and efficient waste collection services

• Adequate emergency access

• Achieving maintenance and servicing efficiencies (i.e. reducing the cost of maintenance and servicing); and

• Providing space to accommodate telecommunications, energy and water infrastructure provided by utility companies and the City.

Meeting all of these objectives can be best achieved when the street system is under public control. Public streets can be designed to standards that reflect your City Council’s planning aspirations and operational objectives. Since there may be limited situations where private streets make sense in small developments, the City recognises the need to establish criteria for when they are appropriate.

Private streets
Private streets are favoured by the development industry, particularly for freehold townhouse developments, because they can be significantly narrower than streets built to current City standards and therefore produce a higher unit yield for the development site and allow the redevelopment of smaller sites at a lower unit cost.

In these situations, the future residential unit owners jointly own and maintain these private streets either through private agreements or a relationship described as a “common element condominium”. Residents in these developments do not receive other City services such as winter maintenance or long term maintenance of the private roads or the private sewers and watermains underneath them.

Private streets typically have a Right of Way (ROW) width of six to 10 metres. Many developments are built without the typical features that are found on public streets. The narrower ROW widths are often achieved by meeting minimum fire access requirements resulting in tighter turning radii, locating services and utilities under the pavement or on the freehold lots, providing inadequate or no sidewalks, and providing few trees and landscaped areas.