City staff advise making Richmond and Adelaide bike lanes permanent

Thestar.com
January 11, 2019
Gilbert Ngabo

The first meeting of the year for the new city council’s infrastructure and environment committee will have at least one item on the agenda that’s about cycling infrastructure -- and that gives cycling advocate Sarah Bradley both thrill and concern.

The communications manager for Cycle Toronto hopes council will heed city staff’s advice to make cycle tracks on Richmond and Adelaide Sts. permanent -- as well as move the cycling track from the south to north side of Adelaide -- but wants to see them add curbs as well as other safety features.

“Time is ticking,” she said. “We think this is an easy win and we feel optimistic it’ll happen early this year.”

A city staff report going to the committee next week will recommend making permanent the cycle tracks on Richmond and Adelaide Sts. from Parliament to Bathurst Sts. The report also recommends keeping bicycle lanes on Simcoe and Peter Sts. between Queen and King Sts.

Cycle tracks were first installed on these streets between 2014 and 2016 as pilot projects, and the report notes the decision to make them permanent stems from the concrete results that have been observed so far, both in terms of safety and use.

According to the report, there has been significant increase in cyclist volume after the bike lanes were installed, sometimes as much as 10 times higher than before. The bike lanes have also significantly decreased collision rates, which went down by 73 per cent on Richmond and Adelaide.

The report shows that on Richmond St., where the speed limit was reduced from 50 km/h to 40 km/h, vehicle travel time has increased since cycle tracks installation by about one minute and 31 seconds. On Adelaide, vehicle travel time has decreased by 57 seconds.

Should city council approve the recommendation, transportation services would have to cough up nearly $200,000 annually in maintenance and snow clearance costs, according to the report.

Bradley said she is especially happy about the proposal to move the cycle tracks on Adelaide to the opposite side of the street -- a move the report estimates will cost some $315,000. She said there’s too much truck movement and loading activity in front of Scotiabank Plaza and First Canadian Place, which often forces cyclists to merge into car traffic.

“We hear a lot from our members who are on this route that it’s a very challenging environment because bike lanes there are also not separated,” she said.

If approved, as these cycle tracks move from pilot to permanent Bradley said it’s equally important to increase safety by installing concrete curbs to separate them from vehicular traffic.

She and other advocates say they would also like the city to apply green paint through all intersections to help increase visibility and avoid left-turn collisions. Signal timing reconfiguration could also help, such as giving cyclists a slight head-start through intersections.

Robert Zaichkowski, another Toronto cyclist who also runs cycling blog Two Wheeled Politics, said he is thrilled about the city possibly making the Richmond and Adelaide bike lanes permanent, but wonders what took city staff so long to decide.

He said the city’s 10-year cycling plan has only built about 25 kilometres (out 525 kilometres proposed) of new bicycle infrastructure in nearly three years, an average of eight kilometres per year.

“One thing I am frustrated with the city is how slow they do things especially when it comes to building bicycle infrastructure,” he said.

Bradley added there are many areas that still require focus.

“We’re kind of still radio silent on the major streets that we want to see bikes lanes on. For example, extending Bloor St. W., getting bike lanes on the Danforth, getting bike lanes on Yonge in North York, we haven’t heard anything about that,” she said.