It took a global pandemic for Toronto to make significant progress on bike lanes. Significant, that is, compared to the city’s habit of taking two steps forward and two steps back in its urban planning.
In 2019, drivers here spent five days and 22 hours in rush-hour traffic. A pedestrian was killed about every nine days. Traffic congestion costs the average GTA household $125 a year.
And yet, not much has been done to tangibly improve the safety, efficiency and fun (yes, fun) of our streets. My hunch is that it’s because the answer we need isn’t the answer we want: our cities need fewer cars on the road.
However destructive the coronavirus is – and it is horribly destructive – this pandemic has a way of creating space to reconsider problems we thought unsolvable.
Ending the Stalemate
When the late Rob Ford was mayor of Toronto, he championed the status quo on public roads – a kind of proto-MAGA stance that enshrined car driving at the top of a transportation pyramid.
10 years ago, the city spent about $60,000 to install bike lanes on one downtown street, only to spend nearly $300,000 to remove them two years later. Then, last year, city council floated the idea of bringing them back. That proposal was defeated by a few votes.
One of those opposing votes was from Toronto’s current mayor John Tory, someone who has lately welcomed bike lanes as part of a pandemic coping strategy. He officially proclaimed September as “Bike Month” around the same time Ekos published a poll that found “84 per cent of respondents supported the construction of protected bike lanes in Toronto,” with two-thirds also saying they wanted the city’s ActiveTO plan expanded.
The changing fortunes for safe cycling infrastructure is not unique to Toronto, but is part of a much broader rethink happening in big cities around the world.
Image: Bloor Bike Lanes, City of Toronto
Why is Cycling the Answer?
Bike lanes are finally having their moment, and the Globe and Mail’s editorial board explained why:
“The pandemic exposed many failings across society. In cities, it became clearer than ever how much space is devoted to cars, and how much planning is about moving them as quickly as possible from A to B. Those choices undermine what makes a great city: vibrant spaces and thriving street life.”
Relocating a sizeable portion of a city’s workforce to home offices means downgrading the almighty Daily Commute as the north star of urban planning. And that means possibilities open up for what a city should look like and how its streets should be used. Instead of being a method for getting through a city, a street can become a destination in itself.
But is it Just a Dream?
With winter coming, cities like Edmonton, Vancouver and Montreal are removing some temporary bike lanes. And in Toronto, cyclists are gearing up for a continued push to keep making progress through the year to come.
Big cities around the world seem to be on-side with permanently dropping car-centric urban planning, though. The newly re-elected mayor of Paris says, “We must forget the crossing of Paris from east to west by car.” In an open letter to New York’s mayor Bill De Blasio, the city’s Surface Transportation Advisory Council called for (among other things) “a connected and protected network of bike and bus infrastructure.”
A recent piece in The Economist mentions how these changes to urban planning are also reaching across the global economic divide:
“As rich cities are, at last, undoing their past planning mistakes, activists in developing ones are trying to ensure that they are not repeated. They are lobbying for safe walking and cycling routes as well as better public transport, and for traffic laws to be enforced—before pollution and inactivity take their full toll.”
Making Streets More Complete
The pandemic hasn’t only changed commuting patterns on our streets; it’s also heightened the importance of streets as delivery routes. Online shopping has increased since we’ve all been quarantined at home, and that means more delivery trucks making more stops. (Delivery companies are actively working on solutions for improving how to deliver packages.)
This further complicates what we need from our streets, but points to the same answer cyclists and pedestrians have been calling for: streets that are meant for more than just car traffic.
Urban planning will not get any easier, and bless the folks who can do it well. While driver-cyclists like me might worry that our cities’ progressive responses to the pandemic are temporary measures within our larger green recovery, we can at least be assured in the mounting evidence that supports arguments for safer, more efficient streets.
Find me on Twitter @seanminogue or check out my website here.
Did you like this post? If so, nudge someone to take a look and subscribe!