With the new bike lane pilot project coming to Bloor West, a utopia of cycling infrastructure (to read the most glowing takes on it) is soon to descend on Toronto.
Stretching 2.6 kilometres between Shaw and Avenue Road, it will be a physically separated cycle track plans for its installation are to be completed by late summer.
To some cyclists, it can’t come soon enough. But will a separated cycle track really improve matters for cyclists? Take the Roncesvalles bike lane between Queen and Dundas.
Even its detractors admit that Roncesvalles was a great idea in principle: the path is elevated and protected from traffic.
In stretches, however, the lane presents unique obstacles of its own, particularly at “bump outs” along the path designed to allow pedestrians to board the streetcar from the curb, which puts them in the way of bike traffic. At other points along the path, cyclists are exposed to parked cars (and car door zones) and streetcar tracks.
Jared Kolb, executive director of Cycle Toronto, points to the inconsistent, haphazard design of Roncesvalles and argues that an elevated path is a better solution to the street’s design problems than none at all.
“While the transit stops were designed with cyclists in mind, the rest of the street wasn’t,” he says. “Bike lanes on main streets like Roncesvalles should instead be physically separated, follow a consistent design and include great intersection design.” So why wasn’t Roncesvalles completely separated? Like most bike infrastructure built in the city over the last decade, Roncesvalles became a case of get what you can get when you can get it.
Back in 2009 the street was up for reconstruction to replace streetcar tracks and make it more pedestrian-friendly as part of the city’s “Walking Strategy.” The plan included removing one lane of traffic in each direction to widen sidewalks. The street wasn’t wide enough to accommodate a dedicated bike lane and parking so parking as usual won out. It probably didn’t help matters that the familiar “war on cars” rhetoric was nearing full bore across town in debate over the city’s plans to remove a lane of traffic from Jarvis to accommodate bike lanes.
So while it’s far from perfect, Roncey became a case of “learning by doing.”
Getting more bike riders on the streets presents opportunities to find answers to questions of cycling safety, says city cycling manager Jacquelyn Hayward Galati.
What lessons can be learned for Bloor?
Although bikes are considered vehicles under the Highway Traffic Act, their operation isn’t approached that way by most riders. Kolb cites American studies showing that most cyclists prefer riding at lower speeds and taking side-road routes, and only ride on main streets when physically separated lanes are available.
Kolb says, “we need to invest in a city-wide minimum grid of protected bike lanes on main streets… to get Toronto moving by bicycle.”
But is a one-size-fits-all approach the best way to implement that grid?
“We know there’s not one model that works for every cyclist, for every road, for every neighbourhood,” says Councillor Mike Layton. He raises the example of Harbord Street in his ward.
“When we were looking at a bi-directional [bike lane] on Harbord, we learned that if we did bi-directional instead of uni-directional, while there tended to be many who liked it, it actually slowed down cycling [traffic].” Signalling, Layton explained, was one problem managing vehicle traffic around the bi-directional lane was another.
Elsewhere along Harbord, the density of cyclists riding in the popular, heavily used lane, some of whom ride two abreast, means that full separation is a disadvantage for faster cyclists who Layton says “want to get around them because they’re going too slow.”
The Bloor lane is another matter, though. “I grew up biking on Bloor,” Layton says, “and I can safely navigate Bloor. [But] we realize that’s not for everyone in order to get people out of their cars, we need to have some kind of separation.”
Hayward Galati agrees. “What we find by and large, is that separated lanes increase the comfort and perception of safety for new cyclists. But we are trying to design those separated lanes to reduce the feeling of being constrained and reduce the challenges of passing, as bike lanes get busier.”
Albert Koehl, a founder of Bells on Bloor and environmental lawyer, says “We should think of separated bike lanes as part of a broader set of safety measures,” that include lower speed limits, narrower traffic lanes, a Vulnerable Road User Law, speed cameras, improved pedestrian crossings and public education programs.
“Better road safety requires a change in approach that means taking speed and space away from automobiles,” Koehl says.
Toronto, he argues, should stop pretending that roads can safely be shared by cyclists, pedestrians and cars.
“The traditional attitude of ‘why can’t we all just get along’ simply serves and perpetuates the dangerous status quo,” Koehl says.
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