A lot is riding on the city’s bike lanes,
One day we’ll wonder why we tangled ourselves into knots fighting with each other over a few feet of road.
We are the only city on the list of cities that matter removing bike lanes. Earlier this year lanes on Birchmount Rd. were erased, and on Tuesday city council voted to remove the Jarvis St. lanes at a cost of nearly $300,000. This from an administration claiming to be concerned about your money.
While travelling in the U.K. and Scandinavia recently, I met people who didn’t know much about Toronto. But they did know one thing. On several separate occasions, I was asked, “Toronto is the city removing bike lanes, right?” We’re world famous, finally. Whether led by people from the left or right, cities worldwide are embracing bicyclists. It’s the future. It’s the way it’s going to be.
New York and London’s conservative mayors are big on bikes. Chicago, the city our mayor loves to love, has one of the most ambitious bike plans on the continent. We can choose to freak out and make fools of ourselves, or grow up and give a bit of space to bikes.
I live on Jarvis, ride my bike on it, and drive my car on it. Losing the bike lanes means all three of those experiences will be degraded. Like before, motorists on this poorly planned urban highway will fight for space, but now they will be vying for it with cyclists as well.
Jarvis was once Toronto’s grandest street, with mansions lining its sides. Some mansions are still there, like the one housing the Keg Steakhouse & Bar, but now apartments, condos and townhomes are home to thousands more people.
The bike lane was a welcome buffer for us.
At only three feet, it wasn’t much, but enough to keep the Jarvis freeway at a slightly more comfortable distance from our neighbourhood. That was until city council decided not to ask us what we thought when they voted against holding community consultation meetings.
While biking was easier with the bike lane, so too was driving. The weird reversible middle lane that is returning felt uncomfortable to be inside. People in Toronto aren’t used to their road reversing. The five lanes jammed onto Jarvis were also narrower than most. Uncomfortably narrow.
Add in cyclists and Jarvis will be a mess. Cars and bikes will have to share a lane, but worse for drivers, there’s no room to pass so they’ll have move into another lane to do so. One bike will disrupt two lanes of traffic. This influx isn’t temporary. More bikes are coming. It’s the future.
The made-in-Toronto tragedy here is that for a brief period, Jarvis worked. There was order and peace. It doesn’t matter that nearby Sherbourne St. is getting bike lanes, or that car commutes were only two minutes longer with the lane, or that the bottlenecks at the top and bottom of Jarvis, where the middle lane ends, will return.
For a little bit, Jarvis was a nicer street for everybody. And now it won’t be, again.
Is this what we want? To be civically exhausted by three feet of pavement every time this comes up? To be in a state of perpetual war with our fellow Torontonians, whether in a car or on a bike?
We need to get over this. Toronto isn’t a baby anymore. Let’s figure out how to share. Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about where and how we live in the GTA. Wander the streets with him on Twitter @shawnmicallef.