Spring/Summer 2024 Newsletter

Mary Ann Neary

On May 12, 2024 we lost a good friend, a reliable colleague, and a leader in Toronto's road safety movement.

When the COVID pandemic reached Toronto, Mary Ann didn't sit still, but instead helped bring together a coalition of community groups so large that it spurred City Hall to dramatically accelerate its building of cycling infrastructure. She then served as a founder of our group, dedicated to holding the city to account for its climate, cycling, and road safety plans and policies.

Mary Ann's cycling advocacy certainly didn't begin with our group; in fact, she was a key member of Bells on Danforth, which celebrated - after a very long fight - the installation of bike lanes on Danforth Avenue in 2020. She was also a leader of 32 Spokes in east Toronto. 

Mary Ann's reliable, respectful, and friendly manner was a model for her peers, and even appreciated by the government officials she challenged. We will miss Mary Ann, but honour her memory by using the example she provided as inspiration for our ongoing work.

On May 23, Mary Ann's road safety and cycling advocacy work was honoured by City Council in a motion brought by Councillors Alejandra Bravo and Brad Bradford. You can also read a beautiful digital obituary for Mary Ann here.

While we mourn the passing of our friend and colleague, who reviewed an earlier version of this newsletter, we want to update you on some initiatives we have been working on, such as:

• our call for the city to streamline its approval process for bike lanes;

• the release of our comprehensive report, “Oversized Danger”; and

• a list of Jane's Walk events led by our members.

Road Safety is a Right, Not a Perk

Toronto’s failure to meet bike plan targets is a perennial problem.

The impressive 2001 bike plan, “Shifting Gears,” was a dismal failure in implementation, while the 2016 Ten-Year Cycling Network Plan, and its subsequent three-year segments, has likewise failed to deliver (with the exception of 30 km of bike lanes installed in the pandemic year, largely due the advocacy of community groups, including the substantial coalition we organized).

We don't simply sit back and wait for the city to fail. Instead, we actively explore new, more effective approaches, which now leads us to call on the city to streamline its bike lane approval process, which currently includes two steps:

• first an approval, in principle, by city council - after public consultation and debate - of the plan, which sets out particular bike lanes; and

• second, another round of public consultations and debate (usually accompanied by an exhaustive community mobilization) on the specific design. 

It’s no surprise that in Toronto we are constantly talking about bike lanes without actually installing many. In fact, the second consultation is often treated as a new opportunity to debate whether we should have bike lanes at all, instead of how to install them. We are all for public consultation, but we believe that once the bike plan is approved, implementation (and the conduct of additional consultation) should be delegated to city staff.

Community Bikeways, along with a coalition of other groups, has written to the mayor about the problem and articulated our arguments in a Spacing op ed. We look forward to meeting with city officials shortly to advance this position.

A tragic example of the slow pace of action is Avenue Road. Community Bikeways is part of the Avenue Road Safety Coalition, which has for seven years(!) been calling for safety improvements that would help tame this urban speedway. But when courier Ali Sezgin Armagan was killed while riding his bicycle on Avenue Road on April 30, 2024, none of the safety improvements, let alone a planned bike lane between Bloor and Davenport (where three cyclists have now been killed in the last decade), were in place.

Oversized Danger – C.R.A.S.H. calls for action from each level of government

On April 18, as part of the Coalition to Reduce Auto Size Dangers (C.R.A.S.H.), we released a new report, Oversized Danger, which includes recommendations to each level of government for reducing the far greater fatality risk, relative to cars, of pickups and large SUVs in crashes involving pedestrians and cyclists.

On the same day, C.R.A.S.H. collaborated with our academic partners, the University of Windsor’s Centre for Cities and the University of Toronto’s Mobility Network to present and discuss our report at a symposium held at the U of T. We made eleven recommendations, including:

• Federal: include pedestrian and cyclist safety in new vehicle assessments and require advertising warnings about vehicle safety risks.

• Provincial: ensure that drivers are qualified to deal with the greater dangers of pickups and large SUVs; adjust (or re-introduce) vehicle registration fees on a sliding scale with higher fees for the most dangerous vehicles; and expand municipal powers in community safety zones.

• Municipal: introduce parking fees that reflect vehicle size; update Vision Zero plans; and ensure that purchasing policies do not allow for large, dangerous vehicles that are unnecessary to their tasks. Matt Elliott’s City Hall Watcher helpfully documented in “Toronto Keeps on Trucking, But Should It?” the large number of pickups in Toronto’s vehicle fleet that are used for “light duty” tasks.

The symposium was followed by an online seminar on April 25 with Professor Justin Tyndall, whose recent research focuses on a vehicle’s front-end height as a key predictor of pedestrian and cyclist fatality risk in a crash.

Our work garnered national attention in both print and broadcast media, with interviews from coast to coast to coast. We were also the featured topic on CBC’s Ontario Today on May 3.

We will continue to grow our coalition, which now includes 20 groups nationwide, and a leadership group comprised of the TCBC, Bike Windsor Essex, Walk Toronto, Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists (ARC), Bike Law Canada, and Friends and Families for Safe Streets (FFSS). Our next step will be to exert pressure on every level of government to take life-saving action.

Jane’s Walk(s) and Bike Tours

The Jane’s Walk event, a grassroots initiative that now reaches dozens of cities around the world, was also an opportunity to demonstrate the breadth or our TCBC group.

In Etobicoke, our We Belong on Bloor committee member Jennifer Alexander (and former Steering Committee member, Pam Gough) led an informative walk from Royal York at Bloor to the Six Points intersection at Dundas Street W. They identified a variety of road safety treatments that benefit pedestrians – that is to say, everyone.

In Scarborough, Toronto East Cyclists (and the Scarborough Junction Community) conducted a walk along a former rail trail that they are advocating for conversion to a bike path.

In the central city, TCBC Coordinator Albert Koehl, conducted two tours, one on foot and the other by bike, beginning at the home of one of the city’s most illustrious cycling advocates in the 1890s, the incredible Dr. Doolittle (not to be confused with the Amazing Dr. Dolittle of later fame.) The tour included the Toronto Bicycle Club’s home, the Millionaires’ Church on Sherbourne, and the Rosedale Lacrosse Grounds (now Rosedale Park), once home to a racetrack and 5,000-person grandstand.

Velo Odds And Ends

• On June 1 we will be celebrating our first-ever Bike Day in Islington Village. Join us at the Bike Share station on Mabelle Avenue (in front of the parkette). Events include a Bike Share demo with e-bikes, a penny-farthing rider, a bike repair café, and a bike tour along Etobicoke bike routes and bikeways, ending with a talk at the Novel Spot Bookshop, with Albert Koehl, author of Wheeling Through Toronto, A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders (University of Toronto Press).

• Work to extend the Bloor Complete Street, including bike lane, from its current western terminus at Aberfoyle Cres. to Resurrection Road began this month (May 2024) and will be completed by the Fall. The project was approved by council in June 2023, but split into a 2023 installation (Runnymede to Aberfoyle) and one in 2024 (Aberfoyle to Resurrection). The total length of the Bloor-Danforth bike lane with this extension in place will be about 21 km!

• The City's Cycling and Pedestrian Unit has released its latest annual progress report, entitled 2023 Cycling Year in Review. We will give ourselves a little pat on the back for this initiative, since it was our group, and Mary Ann in particular, that pushed for such an annual report.

• Our annual Strategic Planning Session, fueled by Albert’s blueberry pancakes hot off the griddle, was held on April 27, with a work plan that will cover the next 18 months.

Support Community Bikeways

We are a fiercely independent group that shuns government and corporate donations. This approach allows us to carry out, without restraint or qualification, our mission of holding City Hall and other levels of government to account for their road safety, climate, and cycling plans.

We nonetheless gratefully accept individual donations that help us carry out our mission and to hold fun events that lift spirits. If you are in a position to donate or to volunteer, please email us at Community.Bikeways.Toronto@gmail.com

Wishing you safe rides!

The Community Bikeways Steering Committee: Jessie, Ersan, Michael B, Michael H, Bob, Mary Ann, Robert, Roger, Jonathan, Mark F x 2, and Albert.

Webmaster: Marc