Toronto bike advocates are urging the city to undertake a review of cycling hazards caused by streetcar tracks and tear up unused rails, following the death of a 41 46-year-old rider on Monday evening.
(Update: The rider has been identified as Joseph Mavec, a 46-year-old sprinkler technician)
A man died around 5:30 pm after the wheel of his bike became caught in the streetcar tracks on Wychwood Ave. near St. Clair Ave West. He fell off and hit his head on the pavement. He was not wearing a helmet at the time.
The man, whose identity has been determined but not yet released by police, was in cardiac arrest when emergency crews arrived and was pronounced dead on the scene. Constable Tony Vella of the Toronto Police said it was unclear whether he entered cardiac arrest before or after the accident. A post mortem was being conducted on Tuesday.
Tuesday morning, Cycle Toronto issued a statement calling on the city to launch a comprehensive study of “streetcar-cyclist interactions.”
In the meantime, the group wants the city to take immediate action to identify areas where streetcar tracks are particularly dangerous to cyclists, implement street markings to guide riders through rail intersections, erect on-street signs to demonstrate the safest way to cross tracks, and most significantly, remove all unused tracks from city roads.
The tracks on Wychwood have not been used by the TTC since a nearby carhouse was decommissioned in 1978. Sections of the rails have since been paved over and cut off from the functioning streetcar network.
“Streetcar tracks are a significant hazard for cyclists,” said Cycle Toronto’s Jared Kolb in the statement. “We’ve got to recognize this and get the conversation going on the short- and long-term solutions to make the streets safer for everyone.”
TTC spokesperson Brad Ross says he is unsure of how many pieces of decommissioned track there are in the city, but he has asked staff to do a count. He stresses that even unused rails are serviced to ensure they’re as safe as possible.
“We do maintain them in what we call a state of good repair so that they are flush with the road and safe to cross over,” he says.
According to Ross, removing unused tracks like those on Wychwood is prohibitively expensive and would only be done as part of regularly scheduled road work. There is no road work currently scheduled for Wychwood under the city’s ten-year capital plan.
The downtown streets of Adelaide, Richmond, and Wellington, which also have derelict rails, are all scheduled to be torn up in the next seven years. A city official said it would be up to the TTC whether the tracks stay or go.
Neither public works chair Denzil Minnan-Wong nor Dan Egan, the city manager for cycling infrastructure, responded to NOW’s request for comment.
In an article about the dangers of streetcar tracks published in NOW last Thursday, Councillor Mike Layton said he was considering asking TTC and city staff to draft a report on the issue at the September meeting of the public works committee.
Following Monday’s fatal accident, Layton says he wants to “go as fast as we can” to get staff working on a report.
“It’s a terrible tragedy and one we should do our best to try to avoid later,” Layton says.
He broadly supports Cycle Toronto’s recommendations, and expects they would be examined as part of the report he will request in the fall. But he also suggests there could be less expensive ways to deal with unused tracks besides tearing them up.
“Because they’re not used, maybe there’s something that can be done to fill them in,” he says.
Councillor Joe Mihevc, whose ward includes the site of Wychwood accident, says staff have told him gaps in the tracks could be plugged up with a “new material” that is more resistant than asphalt.
“Leaving it the way it is now is not an option,” Mihevc says. “Either [resurface it], or tear it out.”
Update: Councillors Mihevc and Layton have formally requested staff to look into covering or removing unused streetcar tracks, and investigate ways to make active streetcar tracks safer for riders. The issue is expected to be on the agenda of the public works meeting on September 12.
You can read the full text of the pair’s letter to the committee here.
