Between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., on an unseasonably warm, sunny weekday in October, 18 cyclists travel in the eastbound bike lane on Bloor Street West in Etobicoke, in front of a church, where elderly men and women struggle to climb the stairs to their morning sermon.
Local resident and former Toronto city councillor John Campbell watches ruefully. He voted for the extension of the Bloor West bike lanes from Shaw Street to Runnymede Road when he represented what was then Ward 4 (Etobicoke Centre) from 2014 to 2018.
But this latest extension — from Runnymede to Aberfoyle Crescent to the west in 2023 and Aberfoyle to Resurrection Road this year — he cannot fathom and does not support.
“It’s not like they’re never used, but they’re not used anywhere near enough to justify putting them in,” said Campbell.
“This is city hall, telling people what is good for them.”
One week later and 800 metres west, Mark Fernando, a founder of We Belong on Bloor, waves at the newest bike lanes, extolling their virtues as part of a “complete street,” that includes traffic calming measures that make roads and sidewalks safer for everyone, including pedestrians.
The measures have reduced vehicular speeds along the corridor, according to the city.
Bike lanes on Bloor West that stretch into Etobicoke have been at the centre of local and provincial debate. Some drivers have railed against the bike lanes. Other residents said the combined traffic calming measures have made the roads and sidewalks safer.
Across from Tom Riley Park, where Fernando says his eight-year-old son was nearly hit by a car running a red light last year, speeds are down to 53 km/h from 64 km/h.
“The narrative is always ‘the bike lanes,’ ” says Fernando. “I don’t see this project as a bike-lanes project. I see it as being a Bloor complete-street project to improve safety overall across the project area.”
Facts related to the Bloor Street bike lanes project in Etobicoke have been hotly contested, including how many cyclists use the lanes; whether the city’s consultation process was robust and meaningful; how local businesses have been affected; whether the bike lanes have increased local congestion and by how much and whether the lanes are worsening emergency service response times.
Residents and businesses who have publicly opposed the bike lanes on Bloor West in Etobicoke have been harassed. Balance on Bloor founder Cody MacRae has been inundated by crank emails, including someone who told him he’d be “sorry” for making himself a public figure.
Sam Pappas, owner of the Crooked Cue, says more than two dozen one-star reviews for his business were posted to Google after a related press conference was held there in October. The reviews have since been removed.
“There’s a lot of aggressive people who sit behind their computers and come after you. That’s just the way the world is,” says Pappas.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
It is this debate, over a 4.7-kilometre stretch of Bloor between Runnymede and Resurrection Roads, fought over the past year, that compelled Premier Doug Ford to introduce provincial legislation that will affect whether and how all cities in Ontario implement plans to install bike lanes — a welcome intervention for some, an unacceptable intrusion into municipal affairs for others.
How did Toronto’s cycling plan, which seemed to have slipped into a smooth new gear after COVID, crash in Etobicoke?
Until it crossed the Humber River, the city’s plan to install a network of 500 kilometres of bike lanes on major arterial routes by 2042 seemed to have finally achieved critical momentum. A master cycling network plan had been approved in 2016. In December 2021, about 30 kilometres of temporary bike lanes installed during COVID as part of the city’s ActiveTO pandemic response were made permanent, and a 4.7-kilometre bike lane extension on Bloor Street West in Etobicoke was approved in principle by council.
In June 2023, council overwhelmingly voted to authorize installation of the Bloor West complete street project, which included removing two lanes of vehicular traffic along Bloor from Runnymede Road to Resurrection Road to add bike lanes on the north and south side of the street, along with other traffic calming measures.
The first stretch, from Runnymede to Aberfoyle Crescent, was to be built in 2023, the second stretch, from Aberfoyle to Resurrection Road, near Islington subway station, in 2024.
The city held numerous consultations on the Etobicoke project in 2023, but at that point, officials weren’t asking the community whether the bike lanes should be built, they were explaining the plan and looking for suggestions on how to fine-tune it.
This led some residents to believe they weren’t being meaningfully consulted and that the bike lanes were going in over their objections.
“Consultations are not a referendum,” says Michael Longfield, executive director of Cycle Toronto, adding that he believes the consultations are good-faith forums to get feedback on projects.
Longtime Etobicoke Coun. Stephen Holyday (Ward 2 Etobicoke-Centre) believes some residents were surprised by the bike lane construction because when the decision was made in 2021 to make the ActiveTO bike lanes permanent and expand the cycling network along Bloor St. W. in Etobicoke, they were obviously preoccupied — with COVID. Bike lane advocates were more aware of the process that was taking place and brought their influence to bear at city meetings and consultations.
Holyday notes that it’s not unusual for special interest groups and residents’ associations to be more aware of what is going on at city hall and be making suggestions and submissions.
Opponents complained that the bike lanes were hideous, destroyed the village feel of the local community, and made the area more hazardous for pedestrians, especially older people, who reported trouble navigating the added infrastructure. Some changes were made to reflect their concerns, but the city was not going to back down on the project. Neither were the opponents in Etobicoke.
The members of Balance on Bloor are no ordinary crowd, counting among their ranks members of the city’s business elite and backroom political organizers on a first-name basis with the premier. Their influence also cuts across party lines. Politicians of all stripes from Jack Layton, who led the federal NDP before his death in 2011, to former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, have swung through The Crooked Cue, for a pool game, to launch a campaign, or win votes.
Holyday believes another contributing factor to the backlash was a lack of local reporting on the issue. Etobicoke used to have two local papers covering things like development proposals and bike lanes.
“I think this is a major reason why citizens have become detached from their local government, and why so much comes as an unpleasant surprise to many,” said Holyday.
He says the experience on Bloor West in Etobicoke has gone so wrong that it has soured residents on other cycling projects, even simple ones that would have no impact on traffic. He cites as an example a project on Mill Road that would have linked Centennial Park to a trail in Mississauga, without reducing any vehicular lanes.
“It all made logical sense, but there was a backlash in the community because they were so worried about what they saw on Bloor Street,” says Holyday.
“It’s making it harder for even noncontroversial projects to advance because of the stigma associated with bikes.”
Campbell says that while bike lanes make sense in more densely populated neighbourhoods, they make less sense in Etobicoke, a former Toronto suburb, now a part of the city, with an aging population. He thinks the neighbourhood is just too far from downtown for the average person to turn in their transit pass or four tires for two wheels.
“The underlying assumption is that if the traffic gets bad enough, people are going to hop on their bikes. That’s not a logical inference to me,” says Campbell.
“The city has taken a one-size-fits-all approach to the bike lanes. And clearly, what’s happened in Etobicoke was residents are saying, ‘No, one size doesn’t fit all.’ ”
The fact that residents who opposed bike lanes felt like what they thought didn’t matter or was stupid — they were compared to flat-earthers — didn’t win anyone over.
Residents were motivated by a sense of injustice, MacRae says. Balance on Bloor is a grassroots organization. Cycle Toronto, which lobbies the city in support of bike lanes, is a federally registered charity with reported revenues of nearly $500,000 in 2023, including $119,000 from local governments.
Cycle Toronto holds workshops to help members make effective presentations at city hall when the topic of bike lanes is under discussion.
A bus stop ramp on Bloor Street West that asks bikes to yield to TTC riders as they get on the bus.
R.J. Johnston/Toronto Star
Longfield believes Balance on Bloor was able to garner support because it was founded during a chaotic time — when the bike lanes were going in, before the city had an opportunity to fine-tune the project.
A defining characteristic of the battle over the Etobicoke bike lanes has been the inability of the two sides to agree on even basic facts, says Longfield.
He cites as an example the city’s figures on travel times through the corridor that show an increase in motor vehicle times ranging from 1.5 minutes to 4.4 minutes, depending on the time of day and direction of travel.
The fact that those figures don’t align with a person’s subjective experience doesn’t make the data untrue, Longfield says.
“It’s hard for people to wrap their head around,” he says.
Pappas and others say they have seen an uptick in the number of people cycling along Bloor, but not nearly enough to justify the major changes to the local roadways.
The city collected data for one day before installing the bike lanes, and over three days afterward.
“For more reliable results, we usually recommend data from at least 3-5 continuous workdays, ideally excluding any days affected by environmental (e.g., snow, rainfall) or operational (e.g., construction) factors,” said Mudasser (Rafi) Seraj, founder and lead consultant, iVision Traffic Solution (iTS), an Alberta-based traffic engineering analytics firm.
Seraj reviewed the data for the Star.
The city also predicted that an additional benefit of the bike lanes would be a drop in vehicular volumes of between five and 15 per cent along the corridor. Traffic has gone down one per cent, Jacquelyn Hayward, director of transportation project design and management at the City of Toronto, told residents at a neighbourhood meeting held in October to inform the community about the plan for bike lanes.
“Given current trends in population growth, it (was) optimistic to anticipate such a decrease on a major arterial road,” said Seraj.
For supporters of the bike lanes, extending Toronto’s cycling network is not just about how many people use bike lanes today. It’s about providing the infrastructure that will encourage more people to use the lanes over time, a stated city objective.
“It takes time for people to adjust their travel habits and acclimatize to changes,” the city wrote in response to questions from the Star.
“The city continues to monitor the area and will publish a report by the end of the year.”
