While bike lanes on University, Yonge and a stretch of Bloor Street West running through Etobicoke have been installed in the last few years – other areas with long-established lanes now appear to be targeted. For example, in the Annex neighbourhood near Bloor and Spadina Avenue, bike lanes have been in place for almost a decade. A cyclist on Bloor near Christie Street on Sept. 20, 2023.Sarah Palmer/The Globe and Mail
Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria says his government could soon scrap the entire length of bike lanes along Toronto’s Bloor Street, University Avenue and Yonge Street, despite originally announcing he would ask the city for data on cycle paths installed over the past five years before any decisions were made.
The minister was asked on Friday for more detail about what stretches of the three roads could be affected after the province posted its intention to draft regulations that said it would allow it to “remove sections of the Bloor Street, Yonge Street, and University Avenue bike lanes” and restore car lanes, a move Mr. Sarkaria says is needed to fight traffic congestion.
Speaking to reporters in Mississauga at an unrelated press conference, Mr. Sarkaria said every kilometre of the three streets could be stripped of their bike lanes.
“All parts of the sections are up for removal,” Mr. Sarkaria said. “We will continue along the process to identify which specific parts but the entire street, whether it be Yonge Street, whether it be Bloor, whether it be University, can be removed.”
While bike lanes on University, Yonge and a stretch of Bloor Street West running through Premier Doug Ford’s political home base of Etobicoke have been installed in the last few years – other areas with long-established lanes now appear to be targeted. For example, in the Annex neighbourhood near Bloor Street West and Spadina Avenue, bike lanes have been in place for almost a decade.
Just last week, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said she had hoped for dialogue with the Premier on bike lanes. On Friday, she said bike lanes were up to municipalities, noting all the lanes had been studied and approved by city council multiple times. She said the province’s decision was based on no evidence – and that ripping out freshly installed bike paths would be a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“We want to give them the evidence. We want to submit information to them. But the way they are rushing this through it’s making it quite difficult,” Ms. Chow told reporters. “It’s arbitrary. And I don’t believe it’s called for.”
Brian Burchell, general manager of the Bloor Annex Business Improvement Area, says the bike lanes in his area – first installed in 2016, long before the minister’s initial five-year window for a review – have made it a much more attractive shopping destination. He said he is set to make his case to Transportation Ministry staff on Tuesday.
“Governance by gut feeling is never a good thing,” he said of the Premier’s approach. “We came at this whole question of bike lane versus no bike lanes with such care, with such careful measurement of the economic impact, of the impact on safety, the impact on parking.”
Even Sam Pappas, the owner of the Crooked Cue on Bloor Street West in Etobicoke who has championed the removal of the bike lanes in front of his business, said he had hoped the Premier would have worked with the city on the issue.
“I wish he had done a little more collaboration with the city on this,” Mr. Pappas said, adding that he believed bike lanes can work in other parts of Toronto. “As the guys who were advocating to have them changed and reworked, we wanted the data from the city.”
The Progressive Conservative government’s public position has shifted rapidly since Mr. Sarkaria announced the bike-lane plan on Oct. 15. Speaking that day, using Mr. Pappas’s pub as a backdrop, Mr. Sarkaria said that existing bike lanes, including those in Etobicoke’s Kingsway area, “as of right now,” would not be removed until the government had received traffic data from the city.
However, in public comments just days later, Mr. Ford said he intended to rip out bike lanes on Bloor, Yonge and University, without waiting for any data. And a regulatory posting, allowing for 30 days of public comments, was amended to include the removals on Thursday.
Michael Longfield, executive director of the Cycle Toronto lobby group, said the shifting positions exacerbated the province’s “unprecedented jurisdictional overreach” that he called an affront to local democracy.