A downtown councillor is questioning Ottawa’s policy on red light right-hand turns after what she describes as a very dangerous summer for cyclists and pedestrians.
Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster submitted a formal inquiry into right-turn-on-red legislation to Ottawa Public Works after personally witnessing a cyclist get hit by a car. This was a few weeks after an Ottawa woman was killed by a pickup truck near a crosswalk at the intersection of Elgin Street and Laurier Avenue West.
“In the summer, we had a ridiculous amount of carnage on the streets in terms of pedestrians and cyclists,” Troster told Capital Current. “The response from the community was overwhelming, and what started to pour in was stories of people having been hit or having had near misses, so I submitted the inquiry to try to get some more data on the situation.”
In response, public works said right turn on red restrictions are considered “case-by-case.” The staff report says “potential safety impacts, concerns and increased traffic congestion, as well as compliance and enforcement challenges” are reasons why restrictions are not more widely used.
“At intersections with heavy right turn volumes, delays increase because opportunities to turn during the red or other signal phases are removed,” city staff said. “This often leads to aggressive driver behaviour such as speeding or reduced attention to vulnerable road users, raising the risk of collisions.”
At present, nine per cent of intersections in Ottawa have restrictions on right turns on red lights.
For William van Geest, executive director of Ecology Ottawa, the city’s deference to drivers is a disservice to those who don’t move around with the use of a vehicle.
“The fact that city staff can cite these as reasons to not improve safety on the roads, it’s just kind of mind blowing,” van Geest told Capital Current. “Instead of saying, ‘okay, we have a serious problem here’ it’s [become] acceptable for drivers to drive dangerously because they’re frustrated.”
“I don’t think that there’s ever an argument to prefer momentary convenience for drivers over the safety of everyone else,” he said.
Following staff’s response to Troster, Ecology Ottawa circulated a petition calling for immediate action to protect vulnerable road users. The petition now has more than 800 signatures.
City data suggests collisions involving vehicles turning right make up a small proportion of the collisions that lead to fatal and major injuries.
“Right-turn-on-red restrictions would not address the majority (approximately 90 per cent) of fatal and major injury collisions involving vulnerable road users,” said city staff.
Van Geest argues the city’s choice to only include fatal and major injuries in support of right-turn-on-red positioning represents a flaw in its data collection methods.
“A number of delegates, and councillors as well, [at the recent Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting] pointed out how really inadequate it was, partly because that only records fatal and major injuries that were reported,” said van Geest. “So, if you don’t have a serious injury or if it’s characterized as minor in the system that the city uses, [the injury] doesn’t show up here.”
The city’s collision data also does not mention of near misses with pedestrians. While difficult to track, Troster makes the case that incorporating the near misses is vital.
“Near misses, first of all, can be terrifying, and second of all, can permanently alter people’s commuting patterns,” said Troster. “With our city intensifying, we need people to cycle and to walk and to take the bus, and we’re not going to get buy-in for that if people don’t feel that the roads are safe for them.”
A 2025 study by CAA, which monitored intersections across Canada, found 155 per cent of pedestrians and 50 per cent of cyclists observed in intersections experienced “near-miss” collisions with vehicles making right-hand turns. And in 2015, Toronto Public Health reported that right-turns-on-red resulted in 1,300 pedestrian injuries and deaths between 2008 and 2012, 13 per cent of all serious injuries and deaths because of vehicle driver crashes during the period.
Troster stopped short of saying she would favour of an outright ban on all right turns on red in Ottawa and clarified that she is currently leaning towards perhaps proposing a pilot program focused on the city’s downtown core. But she says the city should strive higher than its current Road Safety Action Plan goal of reducing traffic fatalities by 20 per cent annually.
“I’m frustrated with the response that we got to the inquiry,” said Troster. “I think we should be placing a higher priority on safety.”
