LILLEY: End of the road for Bloor, Yonge and University bike lanes
Province makes clear their intention to rip out bike lanes on three main arteries
Article content
Rip ’em out already will ya? That seems to be the attitude of the Ford government when it comes to bike lanes on arterial roads.
On Thursday afternoon, a notice was posted that the province plans to move forward with removing “sections of the Bloor Street, Yonge Street, and University Avenue bike lanes” and returning them for use by cars. The 30-day consultation process began on Oct. 21, the day the province introduced Bill 212 to allow them to remove bike lanes, and the consultation runs until Nov. 20.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
LILLEY: End of the road for Bloor, Yonge and University bike lanes Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
“The removal of lanes of traffic on our busiest roads, such as Bloor Street, University Avenue, and Yonge Street, has only made gridlock worse, Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said in a statement. “Bike lanes should be on secondary roads, where they make sense.”
Exactly which parts of the bike lanes will be ripped out isn’t exactly clear, the province says they will give more details in due course.
Under the province’s new rules in their yet to be passed but sure to be popular legislation, they will be able to review and remove any bike lane installed over the last five years. One caveat, though, is that it must be a bike lane that removed a lane of traffic from a major roadway.
That means there may be other bike lanes in the City of Toronto that will be removed, or even in other cities across the province, but for now, the three main ones in Toronto are on the chopping block – and not a moment too soon.
The lanes installed on University Ave. are the Taj Mahal of bike lanes, large enough for a road hockey game as a friend says. They are also empty enough that you could play road hockey in the University Ave. bike lanes and not be bothered.
On Sunday, after driving the length of University, plus a good portion of Queen’s Park Circle, I posted to social media that I had counted 12 bikes – eight of them food delivery workers.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
tap here to see other videos from our team.
That’s what the bike lanes in much of Toronto have become, a subsidy for Uber Eats, Door Dash and Skip the Dishes – it’s people delivering burgers using those lanes, not people commuting to work or school for most of the day.
Of course, that post was met with outrage by the cycling activists – there aren’t many, but they are loud and obnoxious. They claimed I was cherry picking, that I should show up at rush-hour where I would see 1,200 to 1,800 cyclists an hour in the University bike lanes.
I returned just after 8 a.m. on Monday morning, watched what was happening for close to 10 minutes as I walked down the street and then broadcast live on X for six minutes. During my six-minute broadcast, exactly six cyclists rode past me – I showed each one of them on camera.
That’s a far cry from the 20-30 per minute that activists claim are on those bike lanes.
As Minister Sarkaria made clear in his statement, 70% of people in Toronto commute via car, just 1.2% use bicycles and that statistic is from the month of May when roads are clear and the weather is nice. It is certainly well below 1.2% in the depths of winter, which is where we are heading.
“Toronto already loses $11 billion each year due to congestion. We are doing everything we can to fight congestion and keep major arterial roads moving,” Sarkaria said.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
tap here to see other videos from our team.
No one is saying there should be no bike lanes, but they don’t belong on major roads. They should be on secondary routes.
For far too long, we have had a City Hall that has listened only to cycling advocates backed up by a staff that ignored the will of the majority in favour of their own ideology.
It shouldn’t have taken the provincial government to step in to try and fix this mess, but thankfully, they finally have.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.