Toronto accused of backpedalling on 10-year cycling plan

Thestar.com
June 21, 2019
Jennifer Pagliaro

After the city has fallen well behind on its ambitious 10-year cycling network plan approved only three years ago, staff are now recommending they focus first on a short-term program to potentially install new lanes.

Advocates say that puts a less ambitious plan in front of council while abandoning the specific targets they originally approved in 2016. And it comes at a time the city says the demand for cycling infrastructure is growing.

“They’ve effectively jettisoned the goals of the 10-year cycling network plan and I think that’s really concerning,” said Jared Kolb, executive director of the Cycle Toronto advocacy group.

Kolb said there are some good “near-term” opportunities like a planned study on Danforth Ave., but that throwing out the old plan in light of challenges in implementing it is not an effective response.

He noted the new plan leaves expanding the cycling network on roadways rather than trails into the suburbs on the back burner.

“We’re limiting ourselves,” he said.

City staff say they are not abandoning their earlier work and instead building on it while trying to address implementation challenges faced over the last three years. The cycling plan update will be in front of councillors at the city’s infrastructure committee at city hall on June 27.

“The plan has been enhanced with updated analysis,” Jacquelyn Hayward, the city’s director of transportation project design and management, said in an email, as well as a “bigger focus on safety, and a new approach to ensuring the plan serves equity-seeking communities of our diverse city.”

In June 2016, council approved a 10-year cycling plan with $16 million in annual funding. It included a detailed year-by-year schedule and budget for study and implementation of proposed bike lanes, cycle tracks and trails.

But since 2016, just 33 kilometres of the 560 kilometres of painted and protected bike lanes envisioned in the original plan have been built. The Star has also previously reported the city has underspent the annual budget for the plan in both 2017 and 2018.

“This rate of implementation reflects that projects take time to move through the design and approval process and need to be co-ordinated, and often bundled, with other work at least three years out to minimize disruption,” the city staff report says, noting some road projects were deferred or didn’t allow enough time for public consultation to co-ordinate the addition of cycling infrastructure. Other projects, the report says, were “much more technically challenging than anticipated.”

The new plan splits what appears to be the previously-proposed network -- what is shown on maps but not detailed in the report -- with a few amendments into two stages. The first stage is a three-year priority plan for 120 kilometres of new infrastructure and 70 additional kilometres to be studied for potential implementation. The second stage will take place after 2022 and currently has no schedule attached to it.

Danforth Ave. is scheduled for study between Broadview and Victoria Park Aves., along with extensions of the Bloor St. bikes lanes, the report says -- “major corridors” staff say would become part of the “backbone” of the city’s cycling network.

Other “major city-wide routes” are now targeted for completion in 2041, the report says.

Dr. Samantha Green, a family physician and a co-founder of Doctors for Safe Cycling, said council should be approving a physically separated bike lane as a pilot on Danforth Ave. between Broadview Ave. and Dawes Rd. by 2020 rather than the possible 2021 implementation, if approved by council.

She said recent debates at council that have seen some advocating for lanes located off major arteries is the wrong approach.

“People who are riding bicycles want to go to those commercial strips just like everyone else and so they’re going to be riding on those major roads whether there are bike lanes there or not,” Green said. “So, what we need to do is build those bike lanes so they are safe when they are inevitably going to be riding there.”

Councillor Brad Bradford (Ward 19 Beaches--East York), an avid cyclist who represents part of the Danforth Ave. stretch, said in a statement Thursday he was glad to see it included as part of the new near-term study plan, saying bike lanes have been proven to improve both the reduction of collisions and increase of sales for businesses along those routes.

“I am optimistic we will get a bike lane on the Danforth soon, but we can’t rush this process,” he said. “We need to hear from businesses and local stakeholders so we can ensure that the street will be vibrant for generations to come.”

The staff report released Thursday also acknowledges parts of the city are being left out.

“Not every area of Toronto feels like a cycling city yet. The lower cycling mode share among Toronto residents outside of downtown largely mirrors lower coverage of cycling infrastructure,” it reads.