Since arriving in Toronto in 1997, I have persisted in using a bicycle for many of my transportation needs, even though I also drive a car and use public transportation. While often having been frustrated and worried about the lack of safe cycling infrastructure, I trusted that Toronto would inevitably join one day the many world-class cities that integrated cycling as a key component of solving transportation woes and of creating liveable streets that entice people to live and work in the city.
Familiar with studies that show how population density cannot be reconciled with having everyone rely on a car as their primary mode of transportation, how cycling infrastructure reduces gridlock, and how cycling and walking contributes to public health, I educated my children on how to cycle in the city; encouraged countless students, colleagues and friends to cycle; and showed them by example how you can bike even with suit and tie and (so I hope) how there is nothing woke about cycling. It’s just an easy, healthy mode of transportation, which further contributes to reducing the number of cars on the road, thus facilitating the life of those who still rely on them. While not everyone can use cycling for their daily commute, those who have the opportunity to do so, even if only for some of their transportation needs, contribute to efficient transportation and a healthier environment. They should be encouraged, equally protected, and appreciated, not marginalized and put at risk.
Over the years, I have mourned, with anger, the death of a University of Toronto colleague, father of then two young children, killed by a right turning truck driver in the late 1990s, the more recent death of a disabled wheelchair user who died in similar circumstances on the Danforth; and many other cyclists and pedestrians who were killed in a city which until recently failed abysmally in creating safe cycling infrastructure, reducing traffic speed, and building safer intersections for pedestrian and cyclists alike. I also had my own close calls, both cycling and walking, most often the result of traffic rules and infrastructure that prioritize cars and put cyclists and pedestrians at risk.
My patience seemed to pay off: Toronto has, with much delay, been transformed lately, just as countless other cities before it: we have a growing, albeit often inconsistent and incomplete, cycling infrastructure. Thousands of people now use a bike to get to work, to bring their children to school, to go on outings, and to run errands. Many, including tourists, use Toronto's hugely successful bike share programme. I witnessed how delivery services are increasingly shifting to deliveries by bike couriers, including major postal companies. Although this comes with its own challenges, particularly when more and more fast-driving electric vehicles use already over-crowded bike lanes and often inexperienced riders ignore basic traffic rules, it is an inevitable development; an essential part of solving transportation challenges in a modern, increasingly densely populated city. I have further experienced how more and more drivers have become aware that they are not alone on the road and are taking precautions that benefit cyclists and pedestrians alike, even if the number of aggressive drivers remains remarkably high in Toronto. Some minimal police enforcement and prohibiting or restricting turning right on red would surely remedy some of that. I’ve also seen, when walking previously excessively noisy and busy streets, how reducing traffic lanes and creating bike lanes and broader side-walks contributes to an increasingly liveable city for everyone. This also benefits businesses, with, indeed, Bloor Street in the centre of the city as a perfect example.
Yet, all these developments risk facing a huge setback because of reckless policy making by our provincial government. While we still need to see the details of their plans, both Premier Doug Ford and Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria have announced that the government will limit the power of local authorities in designing safe, efficient, and liveable streets. With ill-informed ‘common sense’ that plays to the instinct of some car drivers frustrated about being stuck in traffic while hordes of cyclists pass by, they pretend to have a solution to grid-lock that will inevitably augment it, while putting the lives of countless Ontarians at risk.
Minister Sarkaria’s ‘common sense’ response to his frustration of being stuck in Toronto’s traffic was laid out this weekend in a Toronto Star editorial, enthusiastically distributed by the Premier. He announced there that they will require cities to move bike lanes from the busy streets to “more quiet streets and neighborhoods” . The arguments put forward in the editorial reflect either a blatant unfamiliarity with well-established evidence (see for example here), or reflect an intentional political manipulation of inevitable traffic woes, created by a combination of a growing population and major infrastructure works, in order to score cheap political points. Both are embarrassing for a Premier and Transportation Minister of Canada’s most urbanized and most populated province.
The plan risks putting Toronto further behind comparable cities around the world. Evidence is clear: gridlock is not solved by adding car lanes or removing bike lanes, but by encouraging people to take public transportation, to bike or walk to work, and by discouraging car use in specific areas, for example by imposing car fees to those driving to the downtown core, as London (UK) has done. All these measures end up facilitating those, including the Minister and Premier, who need--or simply insist on--using their car for all their commutes.
Suggesting moving bike lanes to “quiet streets and neighborhoods” ignores that thousands of Torontonians contribute daily to reducing traffic by biking to school and work, including to downtown offices and buildings at busy intersections; the same places the minister and others like to drive to. It ignores how bike lanes have made streets--including busy shopping streets--safer, how they reduced accidents, and made the city more liveable, clearly benefitting businesses in the long run.
For the Minister, ‘cyclists’ seem a distinct category of people, who he contrasts with “drivers [who] drop off their kids, run errands, make deliveries or get to work.” One of the most remarkable transformations in Toronto since cycling infrastructure has improved is precisely how many ordinary Torontonians now do what millions in major cities such as Paris, London, Berlin, Montreal, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Copenhagen, have been doing already for years: cycling (with) kids to work, running errands by bike, and getting deliveries from companies that increasingly use cargo bikes. The Minister should encourage more of them to do so, not marginale them, and putting their lives at risk.
When the Minister states that Ontario is “a place where most commuters still drive”, he fails to acknowledge what policy can and must do. A transportation minister should be looking for solutions, not rely on the status quo. This inevitably includes nudging commuters to use more efficient transportation tools than their own car. Discouraging bike use with huge population growth is the opposite of creating transportation solutions. If Toronto had embraced this status quo approach, thousands of Torontonians who now use their bike for at least part of their commutes would still rely on their car, adding to grid-lock.
Finally, let’s also stop spreading the silly myth that “cold winters make cycling impractical for much of the year.” I have been cycling throughout most of Toronto winters for more than two decades. If I managed to adjust to these 'terribly cold' Toronto winters at a more advanced age, surely most of those born here can do the same. I invite the ministry of transportation to officially measure the days that snow or ice made cycling challenging in the last decade. Having cycled extensively in winter weather in Belgium, Germany, and England, characterized by frequent, often uninterrupted sweeping rain and heavy wind, and yes, occasional snow, Toronto is throughout the year a much more comfortable place for cycling than those countries. And if Montreal can efficiently organize cycling throughout the winter, it's kind of embarrassing to suggest we can't. The days that winter-weather make cycling unsafe or uncomfortable can be counted on two hands, with improved snow removal and maintenance of bike lanes making even these no longer more of a barrier for cycling than for driving.
The Minister's plans to remove bike lanes, discouraging people from picking up cycling, and making it unsafe for the many who are now accustomed to this most efficient and healthiest form of transportation, will augment gridlock, not diminish it, as both common sense and evidence tells us. It will also make our streets less safe, less liveable, and more polluted.
In short: forcing cities to restrict or remove bike lanes which an increasing number of people use daily is reckless and terribly short-sighted. Mayor Olivia Chow and our city councillors should use every power and leverage they have to push back on those extraordinarily backward plans.
[picture illustrates remaining inconsistent and incomplete cycling infrastructure in Toronto]
