Toronto gaining momentum among cycling cities: report
Toronto on track to become a strong cycling city, says author of a Pembina Report that compares five Canadian centres.

thestar.com
Nov. 26, 2015
By Tess Kalinowski

Torontonians make 96,000 bike trips a day and the numbers are growing. So is the city’s momentum when it comes to building cycling infrastructure, says the Pembina Institute, a national environmental think tank.

When it comes to building a bike nation, different cities have different strengths and one size definitely does not fit all, said Nithya Vijayakumar, one of the report’s authors.

Pembina looked at bike lanes, paths and trails in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal and Calgary.

While Calgary had the fewest bike trips, it had the most kilometres of cycling trails and lanes - 1,032 km - compared with 856 in Toronto and only 221 in Ottawa.

How much infrastructure and the type of facilities cities need and build depends on their geography and demographics, said Vijayakumar.

After years of stalling on cycling, Toronto has a plan and is increasing its investment in cycling infrastructure, she said.

“We just need to keep this stride and continue in the direction of pilot projects like the Bloor Street (pilot) being planned for next year.”

Toronto council has approved a 44 per cent increase in spending for cycling infrastructure next year. But most of it - $11.7 million of the $13.5-million total - will go to off-street trails, notes the report, called Cycle Cities: Supporting cycling in Canadian cities.

“We have a really great lakefront system and we do have a nice multi-use trail system but those aren’t exactly the most proximate to downtown unless you work closer to the waterfront. To make those connections from the multi-use trail system to the places where people live and work there is going to need to be more on-street infrastructure,” said Vijayakumar.

But, she noted, the recently expanded Richmond-Adelaide cycle tracks, have filled a gap in east-west routes into downtown.

With the most cycling trips of the five cities in the study - 100,000 - Vancouver also had far fewer on-street bike lanes than Toronto and Montreal - 62 km, compared to 230 km in Toronto.

“Vancouver is lauded for being such a bicycle friendly city but the majority of their cycling infrastructure is actually just signed routes on residential streets. But they’ve introduced policy to lower the speed limits on those streets and increase the awareness of cyclists so vehicles know they’re sharing those streets,” she said.

Among the five cities, Toronto ranked lowest in terms of integrating cycling facilities with transit.

Only 76 per cent of TTC stations are within 400 metres of a bike path or lane. By contrast, in Vancouver and Ottawa all transit stations have cycling proximity as do more than 80 per cent of Calgary and Montreal stations.

“When we’re planning new subway or transit, we should look at the accessibility for pedestrians but also see how it can connect to cycling routes or how we can get cyclists closer so they have the choice to cycle to transit,” said Vijayakumar.