Ecology Ottawa challenges City's problematic report on right turn on red

This is a reprint of an article published February 28, 2026 by Ecology Ottawa, an Ottawa-based organization that works to create a mobilized constituency of Ottawans who demand action and leadership on the environment. (see original post here). It is reprinted in the PEN with the permission of the organization. You can learn more about Ecology Ottawa—and sign up for their newsletter—at their website, here.

Ecology Ottawa addressed a meeting of Council's Public Works and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday to oppose a report recommending against protecting pedestrians and cyclists downtown with a ban on Right Turns On Red (RTOR). This report, a response to a Direction to Staff from Councillor Troster, was full of problems: the complete omission of research literature, wholly inadequate statistics, and an acquiescence to dangerous driver behaviour.

Despite major concerns raised to the Committee by eight delegates—including personal stories of vehicular violence—the Committee received the report, with Coun. Troster dissenting. (A motion presented by Vice Chair Kitts to preserve the status quo—under which near-misses and collisions with vulnerable road users continue to occur—was fortunately withdrawn, but the status quo will likely persist nevertheless.)

To take action and express your opposition, please see our suggested language to contact your councillor on this issue. The report comes to City Council at their March 11 meeting.

Please watch our delegation, or read it below. Also, note that Councillor Tierney, the chair of PWIC, cited us as claiming that banning RTOR increases GHG emissions, although in fact we said the opposite. You can listen to that explanation here.

Ecology Ottawa launched a petition last August, after a shocking number of people were hit by drivers. We called for a ban on all vehicular turns on red downtown, as a pilot project, with data collected for an eventual more expansive ban. To date, over 800 people have signed this petition.

We were looking for a simple, obvious, and effective measure. We were grateful that Councillor Troster for bringing this important issue forward, even though we—and I suspect she—would have preferred implementation rather than another study.

Anyone who’s walked or rolled downtown knows the danger of cars turning on red. I’ve provided an illustration of this on my first slide. The image on the left shows how when RTOR is allowed, drivers ignore the stop bar and roll into the intersection, endangering people crossing.

The best-case scenario is the driver blocks the crosswalk or the crossride. But just as easily, they may hit someone in the crosswalk. Drivers here aren’t looking for pedestrians—obviously, because of the threat of oncoming cars. This is particularly true if the pedestrian comes from the right, since the threatening oncoming cars come from the left. You can see this in the next slide: if the driver had arrived a moment later, they could’ve hit the pedestrian.

But blocking the crosswalk or crossride is also a problem, as it forces people into the very same oncoming cars that the driver seeks to avoid. You can see this on the next slide, where a truck driver has forced someone using a wheelchair out of the crosswalk.

I could show more photos, but time is short.

In light of the very real and obvious danger that RTOR poses, it was surprising to read staff’s report, with its claim that RTOR is somehow safer for people walking and rolling. Now some of the reasoning there relied on two noteworthy factors:

• That drivers may not comply, and indeed might get frustrated.

• That there’s too much car traffic.

On driver non-compliance, the report states, “[Delays] often leads to aggressive driver behaviour.” It also warns that “Drivers may choose to ignore right turn on red restrictions,” and there may be more “collisions, especially if drivers are distracted or behave aggressively.” But it seems wrongheaded to reward drivers’ non-compliance. Parents know if you indulge a child’s tantrum, you’re just inviting more tantrums. This is not sound transportation policy.

On too much traffic, this is an outcome of Council’s decisions, made with staff’s recommendation. For example, we reintroduced cars to Wellington Street, when all the research says that this would increase car traffic downtown. Before that, we reduced bus service downtown with the LRT opening. So we’re laying in the bed we’ve made. But why should vulnerable road users pay the price of Council’s poor decisions?

We also noticed that staff’s report didn’t cite any of the research literature on this issue. If they had, they would’ve reached the opposite conclusion. So we thought we’d share some of this literature, covering several aspects of the issue.

One literature review found that where turns on red were permitted, “all right-turning crashes increase by about 23%, pedestrian crashes by about 60%, and bicyclist crashes by about 100%.”

Another paper observed “significant increases in pedestrian and bicyclist [collisions]”—specifically, “40% for pedestrians and 82% for bicycles in New York State; 107 % for pedestrians and 72 % for bicycles in Wisconsin; 57 % for pedestrians and 80 % for bicycles in Ohio; and 82 % for pedestrians in New Orleans.”

A large CAA study of near misses showed that “55% of pedestrians and 50% of cyclists…had a close call with a vehicle,” and that “near misses most often involved vehicles making a right turn.”

Now, staff’s report also questioned compliance. A study of banning RTOR in a San Francisco revealed a 92% driver compliance and a 5 to 1 reduction in close calls—and, based on the pilot project, recommended not only maintaining a ban on RTOR, but expanding it.

And so on. All of these sources—and others—have been on Ecology Ottawa’s website since last August. So why does the report simply ignore this readily available literature?

I want to return to near misses briefly. Staff’s report presents data only on reported collisions with major injuries or death—and the numbers are already depressing. But it omits near misses, or trips altered or foregone out of fears for safety—to say nothing of collisions with minor injuries and unreported collisions.

In closing, staff’s report must be rejected. It completely ignores the research literature, it recommends yielding to driver petulance, and it prioritizes the momentary convenience of drivers over the very safety and well-being of everyone else.