Debating Yonge bike lanes
Re Tory firmly opposed to Yonge bike lanes, Feb. 21 I am outraged at Mayor John Tory’s opposition to city staff recommendations to transform Yonge St. with protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks and an improved public realm.
Having accessed that part of Yonge by bicycle, public transit and car, I can see first hand how unpleasant it is. There is no justification to keep six lanes on Yonge.
The staff report showed moving bike lanes to Beecroft Rd. would cost $20 million more and save people who drive only 30 seconds. City council needs to recognize that all people — whether they walk, bike or drive — prefer to use direct routes and have a right to do so safely. Claiming safety must be “balanced” is unacceptable and is a slap in the face to road-safety advocates, considering record pedestrian and cyclist fatalities over the past two years.
Torontonians deserve better and they should take note of the outcome on Yonge when they go to the polls in October. Robert Zaichkowski, Cycle Toronto advocacy committee Even John “Mr. Bike Lanes” Tory is opposed to the installation of bike lanes (eliminating two lanes of traffic) on north Yonge Street from Sheppard to Finch. Some common sense at last.
The Star article cites current pedestrian injuries and fatalities — I’m sure many occurring in the right turn lane at Sheppard and Yonge. How many of those pedestrians crossing the road were either texting or immersed in a phone call when hit by cars turning right. I wonder if police keep track of that statistic.
Beecroft (wide enough and much-less-travelled than Yonge) would be a much better alternative for bike lanes. And this street is only about 75 metres west of Yonge.
Let the bikers take a small detour west and safely use this alternative to get up to or down from Finch and keep the traffic flow unimpeded on Yonge. Marty Fruchtman, Toronto Twenty years ago, North York city council commissioned the architectural and urban design firm Du Toit Allsopp Hillier to do an analysis and report on Yonge St. from Sheppard to Finch.
The final report spoke of the difficulties of animating and improving the public realm when the buildings that the city had allowed to be built there had completely disregarded the public use of the street, making it a bleak, uninteresting place.
The only bright spots were the twostorey older buildings that had restaurants and patios and the rare situation where side streets adjacent to Yonge had stores and places to eat and socialize. I will always remember, at one of the public meetings, Roger De Toit (who sadly was killed riding his bicycle to work in 2015) calling Yonge St. “a traffic sewer.”
The ring roads of Doris and Beecroft were built to ease the traffic on Yonge. They are the most obvious choice for bike lanes. The intense danger of Yonge will never disappear. It will always be a traffic sewer and no amount of wide sidewalks and planters will change that. Robin Collyer, Toronto Mayor John Tory strongly opposes the Yonge St. bike lanes and is pushing to reroute them to Beecroft Ave., despite costing the city an additional $20 million and Yonge being a priority corridor for safety improvements under the Vision Zero Road Safety Plan.
Having participated in Toronto’s Complete Streets Stakeholder Advisory Group two years ago, I hoped Toronto would move into the 21st century and become a leader in civic infrastructure. Unfortunately, two years later, the Complete Streets’ objectives are being compromised by politics. The mayor of North America’s fourth-largest city should be looking forward, not backwards. Harold B. Smith, Toronto
“The ring roads of Doris and Beecroft were built to ease the traffic on Yonge. They are the most obvious choice for bike lanes.” ROBERT COLLYER TORONTO