Extension of Bloor St. bike lanes delayed by at least two years

Thestar.com
July 11, 2018
Ben Spurr

Riders will have to wait a few more years for a key cycling connection on the east side of downtown.

A proposed extension of the Bloor St. bike lanes between Church and Sherbourne Sts. that had been planned for construction in 2019 has now been pushed back until at least 2021, according to the city.

The bike lane along Bloor Street East ends on the east side of Church Street. Cycling advocate Liz Sutherland is disappointed the city has delayed building bike lanes on Bloor St. East.

“I am very disappointed,” said Kristyn Wong-Tam, the councillor who represents the area.

She said she’s spent years advocating for bike lanes on the 530-metre stretch of road as part of a wider redesign that would include more trees, paving upgrades, seating, and bike parking.

Wong-Tam (Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale) said she’s frustrated the plan hasn’t gone ahead despite buy-in from the community and funding available from proceeds of booming development in her downtown ward.

There are already separated bike lanes on Bloor between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd. in the west, and painted bike lanes east of Sherbourne that transition into physically separated cycle tracks over the Prince Edward Viaduct. Between Avenue and Church there are only sharrows, or arrows painted on the pavement for cyclists to follow.

Wong-Tam says building bike lanes on the stretch between Church and Sherbourne would help close the gap between Bloor lanes in the east and west, with the eventual goal of replacing the sharrowed portion with bike lanes as well. That would create a continuous 5.5-kilometre cycling route through the heart of downtown.

Wong-Tam criticized the city’s approach to building bike infrastructure as “piecemeal.”

According to the city’s transportation department, the bike lanes on Bloor East have been deferred because of “conflicts with other major construction work in the immediate area,” including watermain and resurfacing work on Bloor between Avenue and Bathurst St., and bridge and tunnel reconstruction on Glen Rd.

Jacquelyn Hayward Gulati, acting director of transportation infrastructure management, acknowledged deferral of the bike lanes “may be frustrating,” but “it does provide us with the necessary time to confirm the right design for Bloor St. East, understand the impacts of changes to traffic operations, consult with the community, and bring the proposed changes forward for council approval.”

Staff has not finalized whether the Bloor East bike lanes would be painted or physically separated, she said.

According to Gulati, the city is “fully committed” to implementing improvements on Bloor East using a “complete streets perspective” that accounts for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.

But cycling advocates see the delay as the latest sign the city isn’t moving fast enough to make streets safer for riders.

“We are already behind in implementing the 10-year plan that was approved in 2016. We’ve seen very little progress this year,” said Liz Sutherland, director of advocacy and government relations for Cycle Toronto, a non-profit advocacy group.

According to transportation services, since council adopted its new cycling network plan two years ago, the city has installed 17 kilometres of physically separated cycle tracks, and 11.5 kilometres of painted bike lanes. It has also painted “contra-flow” bike lanes on 5.8 kilometres of one-way residential streets.

That puts the city well off the pace to achieve the plan’s original goal of installing up to 560 kilometres of separated cycle tracks or bike lanes over the next decade.

Sutherland said closing the gap on Bloor is critical.

“If we had Bloor and Danforth with safe protected bike lanes from one end to the other, that would provide a spine for the rest of the bike plan to be built on,” she said.

Richard Florida, head of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, lives in the area and cycles on Bloor East regularly.

He said the delay to bringing bike lanes to this portion of the street shows the city isn’t fully committed to its Vision Zero road safety plan, which aims to eliminate all traffic deaths.

He said the delay is doubly frustrating because the reconstruction of Glen Rd., one of the projects holding up work on Bloor East, also doesn’t include bike lanes.

“This suggests to me that we are just so far off the mark on cycling infrastructure and pedestrian safety that it’s tragic,” Florida said.

The city says Glen is too narrow to include bike lanes.