City council meets in attempt to slow Ford’s roll on ripping out some Toronto bike lanes

It’s an issue that has many Toronto city councillors, including Mayor Olivia Chow, spinning: Premier Doug Ford’s plan to use provincial legislation to rip out bike lanes of his choosing.

The focus on bike lanes will be discussed at Wednesday’s city council meeting, during which councillors and Mayor Chow will examine the options available to fight the strong-arming from Premier Ford and Queen’s Park.

“I am not going to back down when it comes to safety, and, literally, some bike lanes save lives,” Toronto’s mayor said.

Mayor Chow has called it an overreach by Ford and the province, but it remains to be seen what the city can do aside from polite persuasion.

“Let’s work collaboratively,” Mayor Chow added. “But legally, I am not sure. We’ll see.”

The Progressive Conservative government tabled a bill requiring municipalities to ask the province for permission to install bike lanes when they would remove a lane of vehicle traffic, citing statistics that only one per cent of commuters use bicycles.

Cycling advocates, who gathered again this past weekend to protest the provincial plan, have disputed those numbers.

The government is going further through regulation, posting a proposed rule requiring the province to remove sections of Bloor Street, Yonge Street, and University Avenue bike lanes and restore them as vehicle lanes.

“The removal of lanes of traffic on our busiest roads, such as Bloor Street, University Avenue, and Yonge Street, has only made gridlock worse,” said Prabmeet Sarkaria, Ontario’s Minister of Transportation. “Bike lanes should be on secondary roads, where they make sense for the more than 70 per cent of people who drive and for the 1.2 per cent who commute by bike. It’s just common sense.”

Mayor Chow vehemently opposed this, saying it shouldn’t be about driver convenience but cyclist safety. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has also slammed the province for its bike lane legislation, calling it a “significant overreach” of power. 

When asked about bike lanes, Mayor Chow repeatedly referred to “common ground” with the province in other files, such as housing. The question for the mayor and her administration is, barring a legal way to stop the bike lanes from coming out, what else is she willing to negotiate to keep them—and is the province prepared to listen?  

Toronto’s city council will consider a staff report on cyclists’ use of bike lanes, their impact on drivers, the cost of removing them, and who pays.