Bloor bike lanes get the green light
Vast majority of councillors vote in favour of pilot project
After decades of advocacy by Toronto’s cycling community, bike lanes are coming to Bloor St. Following a lengthy debate Wednesday, council voted 38-3 to move ahead with a pilot project of installing physically separated cycle tracks along a 2.6-kilometre stretch of Bloor St. W., between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd. The city’s transportation department plans to install the lanes by late summer and report back in the third quarter of 2017 with recommendations about whether they should be made permanent, modified or removed.
The council vote was a major victory for bicycle advocates who have long argued that cycling infrastructure is needed on Bloor St. because the major east-west thoroughfare attracts a significant volume of riders, but offers them little protection from motor traffic. The idea for bike lanes on the street has been debated by city officials and advocates since at least the early 1970s.
Councillor Joe Cressy (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina), one of two councillors who spearheaded the initiative, said the decision was “long overdue” and shows city politicians have outgrown the divisive disputes about the “war on the car” that characterized much of the last council term.
“An overwhelming majority of councillors today, from north to south and east to west, voted to install bike lanes on Bloor. It reflects and shows that our city has moved past the debates and divisions of old, and demonstrates that bike lanes are a win-win for everybody,” Cressy said.
Up to 3,350 cyclists a day use Bloor St. W. between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd., according to city staff. But some councillors argued that Bloor St. is also an important driving route in and out of the downtown core for residents in the city’s outer wards, and that bike lanes would restrict the flow of traffic.
“I’m here actually to stand up for the people of the west end of the city who are going to be directly impacted,” said Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre), who voted against the pilot.
“This blocks the people from the west end from getting in and out.” Deputy Mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong backed the pilot, but said he was concerned that council hadn’t set clear enough criteria for determining whether it was a success. He warned that it could be the start of a bike lane “creep.”
“I think a lot of residents would be concerned about having bike lanes all along Bloor and all along the Danforth,” said Minnan-Wong, who is the councillor for Ward 34, Don Valley East.
Mayor John Tory threw his support behind the project, saying if council wanted to build “a 21st-century city,” it must do a better job of providing “alternate ways to move people around the city.”
“There’s a lot of people who drive cars who would like to be able to rely less on their cars, whether we could provide more transit for them, more safe cycling opportunities to get them where they want to go, or for that matter more pedestrian opportunities to get where they want to go safely,” he said.
But Tory also said that he wanted “extremely rigorous, objective measurement” of the pilot’s impacts, and if the data wasn’t favourable he wouldn’t hesitate to call for the lanes’ removal. He added that driver travel times will not be the primary deciding factor of the project’s success.
The estimated cost of installing the cycle tracks is $500,000. The pilot will also necessitate the removal of about 135 out of 280 on-street, pay-and-display parking spaces, which will result in an estimated annual loss of $840,000 for the Toronto Parking Authority. With files from Jennifer Pagliaro