Winter/Spring 2022

Welcome to our Winter/Spring Newsletter!

We've barely passed the first day of spring, but we have lots of exciting news to report. Indeed, for those who say that no one cycles in the winter, please read on. Judging by the number of complaints City Hall got for its lacklustre effort to clear snowed-in bike lanes after the January 17 snowfall, Toronto clearly needs to treat cycling as a year-round mode of transportation.

In this newsletter we report on:

• The city’s first-ever “Cycling Year in Review” report, released March 4. The report is great news for advocates, residents, and city councillors who want to easily compare year-over-year progress in creating safe roads.

• A proposal for bike lanes on Bloor Street in Mississauga that could provide a safe 30km bike route from Scarborough into the heart of Mississauga.

• The city’s latest three-year bike plan (released December 2021), for which we provided input, sets out 33km per year of bike lanes (although, as always, actual installations will require ongoing public pressure).

It’s also that time of year when we celebrate our many grassroots road safety champions. Nominations are open until April 15, 2022.

The Bike Account (now known as the Cycling Year in Review)

We are very pleased to see the city's “Cycling Year in Review,” which concisely sets out matters such as bike lane/cycle track installations, bike parking, and installations per city district, as well as the road safety record for cycling.

For over a year we pushed for an annual report of just this sort (a “Bike Account”) that provides transparency regarding City Hall’s work to make our roads safe for people on bikes.

But we would like to see more information in future annual reports - especially on the annual budget dollars allocated for cycling capital projects. For the time being though, we congratulate the city’s Cycling and Pedestrian Projects Unit for this valuable document.

The full report can be found here.

Bike Lanes on Bloor - in Mississauga

The long, hard-fought battle for bike lanes on Bloor Street has now moved beyond Toronto and into the City of Mississauga. Our neighbour to the west is proposing a five-kilometre cycle track from Central Parkway East to the city border at Etobicoke Creek that could connect to a westward extension of the Bloor bike lane for which we have been fighting.

“Imagine a Bloor-Danforth bike lane” (as “Take the Tooker” once suggested) that not only crosses our city, but allows people to safely ride from Mississauga to Scarborough.

The City of Toronto plans to extend the Bloor bike lane in a piecemeal fashion over a number of years, while our We Belong on Bloor campaign calls for this extension to be completed as soon as possible. The Mississauga initiative further strengthens our arguments.

(Also, our campaign now has an innovative tool called a Story Map, created by volunteers Ingrid Buday, Roger Morier, and Jay Brown.)

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022, several TCBC members cycled to the Mississauga-Toronto border on Bloor Street for a ceremonial hand over of flags, bells, and vests to our comrades and to show our solidarity.

The Mississauga advocates face some novel arguments, including one suggesting the cycle track would infringe motorists’ rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to exit and enter their driveways (that argument made it to the top-12 list of “Bonkers Stuff”).

We also organized another ride on Sunday, March 20, the first day of spring, which brought together cyclists from Mississauga and Toronto, with a rendezvous at the border at Etobicoke Creek, to call for Bloor street bike lanes on both sides of the municipal border.

Nominations Now Open for our Annual Road Safety Awards

It’s time again to recognize individuals and groups that have made a special contribution to road safety in our city. Nominations can be made until April 15, 2022 in the categories listed below. Please email us at Toronto.Community.Bikeways@gmail.com with the name of the individual, your contact details, and a few paragraphs about the nominee.

• Wayne Scott Community Service Award (open to any community group; the award carries a $1,000 prize)

• Advocate of the Year

• Emerging Road Safety Leader (Individual)

• Emerging Road Safety Leader (Group)

• Suburban Road Safety Champion

• Business Road Safety Champion

Winter Maintenance of Toronto’s Active Transportation Infrastructure

Over the past four winters (2018-19 to 2021-22), Ward 14 Bikes and TCBC member Michael Holloway has been tracking the efficacy of Toronto’s winter operations using social media posts by users (see his “Winter Maintenance Efficacy Reports”).

‘Windrow-piling’ appears to be an issue everywhere in the city and requires a capacity to do detail-work after plow operators complete multiple passes per day.

Incremental advances are being made. Between winter 2018-19 and winter 2021-22, the city has gone from storing snow in bike lanes to plowing as part of a routine maintenance schedule. But attaining the city’s stated (albeit still-unsatisfactory) goals almost never happens.

In 2018-19 a quick series of storms stymied snow-clearing operations, and again this year when a 32.5cm snowfall collapsed the operations.

There has been no progress made on streets with painted lanes beside curb-side parking which are plowed and salted, but windrows are left which block in parked cars - and some of that windrow snow ends up back in the bike lane. Even worse, most it is hand-shoveled to the sidewalk-side, which very quickly moves the de facto parking lane into the bike lane!

City Council has approved city-wide sidewalk snow clearing. Let’s take that scaling experience and apply it to clearing all Toronto’s bike lanes (even those in the suburbs!), plus erasing windrow issues on all infrastructure in the city in real time.

The 2022-24 Near-Term Bike Plan

On December 15, 2021, City Council approved the 2022-24 Near Term Cycling Implementation Plan which sets out 100 kilometres of new bikeways, as well as a $20 million annual budget (which is often supplemented by federal and provincial funding). In a nod to our “We Belong on Bloor” campaign, the Bloor bike lanes are to be extended from Runnymede to Six Points by 2024.

Our friends in Scarborough can look forward to bikeways on Danforth Avenue and on Kingston, Scarborough Golf Club, and Ellesmere Roads, while transit riders can expect bike lanes along the soon-to-be-completed Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRT routes. These bike lanes are, however, subject to design, consultation, and council votes, so be sure to get involved when public consultations come up.

The official bike plan motion, Robert Zaichkowski’s analysis of the plan, and this link to upcoming public consultations for new projects offer opportunities to learn more and engage in the city process.

News in Short(s)

• The Overlea Bridge public consultation for road safety improvements took place in early March. Public feedback can be given until March 25, 2022

• The next meeting of the Toronto Road Safety Collaborative, an initiative to bring together advocates - for information sharing, networking, and the exploration of opportunities to work together - is on June 7. Email us for details.

• The ActiveTO temporary bike lane on Yonge Street (between Bloor and Davisville) is coming up for review at the city’s Infrastructure & Environment Committee on March 29. Please let the committee know that you support the lanes by emailing iec@toronto.ca

So Long, Farewell, Adieu, Aufwiedersehn…

We wish Janet Joy Wilson, a TCBC coordinator and founding member, a happy and enjoyable time in New York City, her new home. We can’t hope to replace Janet Joy’s energy, enthusiasm and sense of humour (but that won’t stop us from trying).

Thank you, Janet Joy for your fabulous contributions to the group, and to road safety in Toronto!

Wishing you safe travels!

Donna, Arthur, Robert, Michael H, Mary Ann, Albert, Michael B, Marc, Mark, Jonathan, and Danielle

(All photos in this newsletter are by Jun Nogami, with the exception of the award to Najia Zewari, credited to the Women’s Cycling Network, and the crop of Toronto’s Cycling Year in Review cover. Thank you, Jun!)