Bloor Street bike lanes show the power of data
Hope of winning over stubborn Torontonians
Ihave long had a vision of a city where cyclists, pedestrians, motorists and transit- riders aren’t fighting a zero-sum battle in pursuit of maximum advantage, but simply going about their lives in reasonable, respectful harmony. As of July, I call that vision “Berlin.”
This is just a tourist’s superficial impression, of course, but the German capital presents as something like transport utopia. Cars and surface transit vehicles move swiftly through the city centre. Cheerful pelotons of cyclists of all ages whiz merrily along at a reasonable pace, with no helmets or Go Pros at the ready to capture inevitable calamity. In many cases cyclists share wide sidewalks with pedestrians, in marked but not physically separated lanes, and I was particularly struck by the friendly ease with which cyclists and pedestrians and indeed motorists seemed to interact when their paths necessarily crossed.
There are numerous practical barriers to importing this model to Toronto. Ger- mans actually know how to drive, for one thing, whereas Ontario seems totally uninterested in demanding any technical or mental facility behind the wheel. Berlin has many wide avenues and sidewalks, leaving plenty of room for everyone. Toronto’s thoroughfares mostly do not.
Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue are not exceptions: just two lanes in either direction and narrow sidewalks — and since August last year, between Shaw Street and Avenue Road, a bike lane in either direction.
But City Council voted Tuesday to make those bike lanes permanent — 36- 6, not even close — based on the findings of a yearlong pilot project. The debate was contentious and at times idiotic, but I’m allowing myself to believe somewhat less so than in the past. There might be some glimmer of hope here of getting Torontonians to look at the bigger picture.
Supporters have always framed the Bloor bike lanes as eminently logical: the street is flat, central, and already heavily used by cyclists. City staff say the pilot project was the most thoroughly studied in Toronto history, and its data mostly vindicated those supporters.
From June 2016 to June 2017, vehicular travel times in the eastbound a. m. peak on Bloor Street rose about two minutes; in the westbound p. m. peak, about four min- utes. That’s not nothing, by any means; it adds up, especially if the bike lanes end up being extended. But there’s an utterly compelling transit alternative right underneath: the Bloor- Danforth subway. That’s what it’s there for.
Total daily cycle traffic on Bloor increased nearly 50 per cent — most of that apparently drawn from Harbord and Dupont streets. ( The total number of trips on Bloor, Harbord and Dupont combined rose only by four per cent.) Presumably as a consequence — good news for drivers — both Harbord and Dupont offered faster trips.
The loss of 136 on- street parking spaces on Bloor drove people to off- street l ots, which more of t en reached 100- per- cent capacity than before — but which also more than made up for the lost parking revenue. ( If you’re upset about how long it takes to drive along Bloor, ask yourself how it’s possible for a municipal parking concern to make more money f rom parking lots than from renting out chunks of thoroughfare that you and thousands of your fellow citizens want to use for travel.)
Data from Moneris, whose payment technology roughly one- third of the businesses along Bloor use, suggest the bike lanes didn’t cause huge economic hardship: “Total customer spending in the … pilot area increased more than in the area surrounding the pilot,” staff reported.
A study commissioned by the Bloor Annex and Korea Town business improvement areas found 90 per cent of area customers do not arrive by car. Some businesses claim their hardships aren’t reflected in the data, and several people have claimed to me the travel time estimates are bunk. We don’t have data from Bloor Street in winter months, when staff expect bike traffic to drop roughly 75 per cent — but we will have that data going forward.
The lesson here, surely, is that more data is always better. You’ll never win everyone over, but you won’t win anyone over — you won’t coax anyone into re- examining their preferences — without that data. Mayor John Tory planted his flag on that principle with this pilot project, and while it was an awful lot of work for not very much bike lane, the principle has proven correct.
Cycling advocates will immediately begin advocating extending the Bloor Street bike lanes east and west; cycling skeptics will immediately begin arguing against it.
There are still people in Toronto who believe one person in a car has more rights than one person on a bike. There are still people who just can’t stand cyclists, and indeed there is a small minority of cyclists who are very difficult to stand. Many Toronto drivers are still active menaces, dozy cows or both. So it’s still a long way from Toronto to Berlin — but as of Tuesday afternoon, I think maybe one or two steps closer. We can all get along, and we will ... some day.
MAYOR JOHN TORY PLANTED HIS FLAG ON THAT PRINCIPLE.