North York bike lane proposal absurd: Councillor

Torontosun.com
May 9, 2017
By Sue-Ann Levy

Coun. Giorgio Mammolitti summed up City Hall’s latest ludicrous plan to add bike lanes to the most congested part of Yonge Street best Tuesday when he called it “one of the stupidest ideas to come out of City Hall.”

Nevertheless this adventure in social engineering - a vanity project of NDP Coun. John Filion with the requisite support from the city’s leftist chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat and new transplanted transportation GM Barbara Gray - passed yet another hurdle when the public works committee approved unanimously a request to spend $2 million on an environmental assessment of the scheme.

City officials will come back with their report in late fall.

The REImagining Yonge St project, seemingly one of the best kept secrets in the Sheppard and Yonge neighborhood until a month ago, had originally proposed narrowing one of Toronto’s top congested areas - Yonge St. from Sheppard north to Finch - from six lanes to four to put in bike lanes, to landscape the centre median and to widen the boulevards.

Gray and her fellow car haters in the city’s transportation department have now been instructed to study the condo-dense parallel ring roads as a possible alternative for those bike lanes and to consult with the local businesses, who from all reports were not properly informed of the plan or its proposal to remove 255 frequently in-demand parking spots.

Leo Papageorge, who owns four Tim Hortons stores in the area targeted by the plan, said he lives in the neighbourhood and knew nothing of it until he read about it in the newspaper a few weeks ago.

“It would kill my business,” he said, noting it was important enough for him to take time off and come down from North York to speak Tuesday. “To be honest, it (the plan) is ridiculous.”

Area resident Heather Ellison said no one wants to talk about how EMS vehicles will get through the already gridlocked Yonge St. when seconds are important.

Ellison said she went to the first two open houses last year on the plan and staff “did not want to hear anything that would go against” it - that the consultation was “biased.”

“I get the idea there wasn’t a true consultation ... I have a feeling the majority of people who came out were staff and special interest groups but very few residents,” added Mammolitti.

Murray John Stewart, who belongs to Filion’s Willowdale West group, was the only speaker in support of the scheme.

In a lengthy interchange with the committee, Stewart claimed Yonge St. is not a transportation corridor and that it was “more logical” to put bike lanes on Yonge St. so families can use them to get to the shops.

Filion sat throughout with a smirk on his face, saying very little.