Toronto spent $160,000 on bike lanes for Brimley Road. Five months later, it’s spending $80,000 to remove them

Thestar.com
Dec. 3
Ben Spurr

Bike lanes the city installed in Scarborough this summer as part of its pandemic response are being removed just five months after they were put in.

The city built separated cycle tracks on a four-kilometre stretch of Brimley Road between Lawrence Avenue East and Kingston Road in July in a wider push to rapidly install about 25 kilometres of new bike lanes under the Active TO program.

The goal was to give residents space to safely get active outside and provide alternate ways to travel while social distancing on public transit wasn’t possible. When the city announced the program in May it said staff would monitor the bike lanes and report back by the end of the year about whether to keep them.

According to a presentation given to residents by city staff at a virtual town hall on Monday, the Brimley lanes will be removed “as soon as possible.” Staff cited data that showed the lanes increased travel times for drivers, as well as “dialogue with local councillors” and feedback from constituents.

The Brimley lanes cost approximately $160,000 to install and the city expects to spend about $80,000 removing them.

Marvin Macaraig, co-ordinator of Scarborough Cycles, a community cycling promotion program, said he was extremely disappointed.

“We’ve seen this kind of bait-and-switch game happen before,” he said, pointing to the city’s decision a decade ago to install and then remove north-south bike lanes on Birchmount Road and Pharmacy Avenue, also in Scarborough.

Macaraig said the eastern suburb’s cycling routes are disconnected and if Brimley, Birchmount and Pharmacy are eliminated, there are few other north-south corridors that can be used to create a safe grid.

Coun. Michael Thompson (Ward 21, Scarborough Centre) defended the decision to remove the lanes, saying the installation on Brimley was always supposed to be temporary and subject to review.

Thompson said he and his community support bike lanes and he will work to have them included in the reconstruction of Brimley the city has scheduled for between 2022 and 2024. The councillor said the roadway is wide enough that a cycle track could be built without removing any traffic lanes.

“I’ve always been supportive of advancing dedicated bike lanes in the proper way, and I think that’s what you’ll see come forward on Brimley,” he said.

Staff selected Brimley for the ActiveTO cycling route because they determined it would provide a safe north-south connection between the Gatineau Hydro Corridor Trail and Bluffer’s Park. According to city data, 70 per cent of motorists on the affected section drive more than 10 km/h over the speed limit, and there have been three fatal collisions there in the past five years. Two of the victims were motorists and one a pedestrian.

The bike lanes replaced curb lanes on each side of Brimley, leaving one motor traffic lane in each direction and dedicated left-turn lanes at major intersections. After their installation, cycling volumes increased to about 100 riders per day, from about 35. But travel times for motorists on some sections also increased by as much as 1 minute and 18 seconds, or 49 per cent. As many as 11,800 drivers used the road every eight hours.

The city monitored travel times between May and November, during a period traffic patterns were fluctuating as a result of COVID-19. Staff determined some driving time increases could be associated with the easing of pandemic restrictions, “but more significant increases are likely linked to the bike lane installation.”

Other cycling routes installed under ActiveTO include University Avenue, Huntington Drive, and Bloor Street between Sherbourne Street and Avenue Road. Combined with previously planned cycling infrastructure, the ActiveTO routes brought the city’s on-street network expansion in 2020 to about 40 kilometres, the biggest one-year build-out in Toronto’s history. The city said Wednesday that while all routes will be monitored, there are currently no plans to remove any other ActiveTO bike lanes.