Star’s view: Extend lanes on Bloor,

The evidence is in and it’s clear: the bike lanes along a key part of busy Bloor St. have been a resounding success.

Since they were installed last year as a pilot project there has been a major increase in cycling along Bloor, both cyclists and motorists say they feel safer, and traffic delays have been minimal. Local businesses haven’t suffered, either.

All this is made clear in an exhaustive report by Toronto city staff, made public on Wednesday. It gives city councillors all the evidence they need to support making the lanes permanent when the issue goes to the public works committee next week and then to the full council, probably next month.

There’s bound to be some push-back from die-hard members of the cars-only lobby. But it would be a travesty if city council loses its nerve at this point and fails to back bikes on Bloor. Aside from everything else, it would make a mockery of the ambitious10-year plan to create 525 kilometres of new bike lanes that council adopted last year.

In fact, councillors should go further and support an expansion of the current lanes, which run along Bloor between Avenue Rd. and Shaw St. The city report points in that direction, suggesting that the success of the pilot project has been so striking that “it should be considered for the full length of the Bloor-Danforth corridor.”

That would create a major east-west route across the entire city, an enormous step forward in making cycling a significant part of Toronto’s basic transportation infrastructure.

As city councillors Joe Cressy and Mike Layton point out on the opposite page, the Bloor lanes have been “the most studied transportation project in recent memory.” It has been examined from every imaginable angle, and the results are positive all around.

The number of people cycling in the area covered by the project is up 56 per cent in a year, to an average of 5,220 on an average weekday. It’s already the second busiest bike route, after the popular lanes on Adelaide and Richmond streets.

The number of collisions between cars and bikes is steady, despite the big increase in usage, indicating a lower collision rate. The lanes have “significantly increased levels of comfort and safety for both motorists and cyclists.”

Delays for motorists are small — an average of two minutes in the eastbound morning rush-hour and four minutes going west during the busiest part of the afternoon. That’s half the delay when the project was first launched, thanks to tweaks in signal timing.

Most people support the idea — including local residents, pedestrians, and those who drive on Bloor and sometimes bike. (Although most of those who drive and never bike say they don’t like the lanes.)

Most surprisingly, the report concludes that local businesses in the area covered by the pilot project haven’t taken a hit. Merchants along Bloor reported growth in the number of their customers. And an analysis of customer spending based on point-of-sale data showed spending was actually up more than in the surrounding neighbourhood or in a comparable stretch of the Danforth.

That flies in the face of loud complaints from some merchants who say the bike lanes are killing their businesses because fewer parking spots translate into fewer customers. No doubt some are suffering, but the evidence doesn’t support the idea that bike lanes are an overall negative for local business. And as anyone familiar with the area can see, the sidewalks on Bloor are still packed with people — all of them potential customers.

Making cycling in the city easier and safer has a host of benefits: it’s healthy, good for the environment, and eases congestion on the roads and public transit.

The Bloor project shows it can work even in some of the busiest parts of the city, if it’s done right. City council should get on board and make these lanes a permanent part of city life.

The evidence is in and it’s clear: the bike lanes along a key part of busy Bloor St. have been a resounding success