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Lane, lane go away

The latest incarnation of Toronto’s bike plan provoked some grumbling from the two-wheeling set when it was released last week, mostly for its recommendation that any plans for a bike lane on Bloor St. West be nixed.

But one part of the Bikeway Network report that went largely unnoticed was a Scarborough councillor’s alarming request that bike lanes in her ward be removed completely, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $210,000.

In a move many cycling advocates see as a striding step in the wrong direction, Ward 35 Councillor and Rob Ford ally Michelle Berardinetti wants the bike lanes on Birchmount Rd. and Pharmacy Ave. gone, even though city staff concluded that the lanes have had no significant adverse effect on traffic flow since they were approved in 2008. According to city staff, restoring Birchmount Rd. to its original four-lane configuration would cost $90,000, and doing the same on Pharmacy Ave. would cost an additional $120,000. All this in the midst of the worst financial crisis the city has ever seen, or so Rob Ford would have you believe.

But before you hop on your fixie and head down to Councillor Berardinetti’s office wielding bike chains and spanners, removing these lanes might not be as insane as it sounds, or at least not as expensive.

Berardinetti says she wants the lanes gone because that’s what her constituents want. “That is the will of this community. This is democracy in action,” she said.

The councillor says she’s received calls from drivers and cyclists alike who don’t like the bike lanes. According to her, the lanes don’t lead anywhere and because the roads are busy, younger cyclists tend not to use them. She would prefer to see the city take action on building an off-road biking trail through St. Clair Ravine Park, which runs through her ward.

She also claims that removing the lanes won’t cost the city a thing because Birchmount and Pharmacy are scheduled to be repaved anyway.

But Peter Noehammer, the city’s director of transportation services, says he’s not certain the bike lanes can be removed at the same time as the roads are repaved. “We’re trying to combine the two activities, if feasible,” he said. “We may not be doing all of the resurfacing routes all at once. In other stretches they’re still in good shape so we wouldn’t be planning to resurface them. We have had discussions about minimizing the costs but we haven’t come to any final resolution on it yet.”

Given the vagaries of public works projects, and the fact that not every part of the roads in question need to be repaved, it would be a miracle if removing the bike lanes actually cost zero dollars, as Berardinetti suggests.

While the existing bike lanes don’t appear to join any major transportation hubs, the off-road trail Berardinetti favours has the advantage of linking Scarborough bike trails to the trail newtork in the centre of the city. But the on-road bike lanes and off-road trail options aren’t mutually exclusive. The off-road trail is included in the most recent bike plan, and it’s set to run through St. Clair Ravine Park, which would connect the lanes on Birchmount and Pharmacy and form a new piece of suburban cycling infrastructure. That is, if the two bike lanes survive Berardinetti’s bid to wipe them out.

Besides the constituent concerns she cites, one also gets the sense Berardinetti objects to the bike lanes on ideological grounds. In her view they are relics from the David Miller era at City Hall, during which downtown councillors ruled the roost and unfairly imposed their city-building ideas on suburban councillors and their constituents.

“Had the previous councillor done community consultation, he never would have put these lanes in in the first place. So [removing them is] really righting a wrong,” she said. “What’s really ridiculous is we have a downtown ideology that’s been shoved down the throats of Scarborough residents. That’s not democracy.”

The Bikeway Network update will be debated at the Public Works and Infrastructure Meeting on Thursday, and city staff have asked for direction from City Council on whether to remove the bike lanes on Pharmacy and Birchmount.

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