Birchmount Ave. at Zenith.
Cyclists hoping to block a city committee’s recent decision to remove bike lanes from three city streets have mostly focused their efforts on saving the lanes along Jarvis Street. For me, an equally important bike-lane issue lies further east in Scarborough.
Earlier today, I wrote about last week’s decision by the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee to recommend the removal of bike lanes from Pharmacy Avenue from just south of Eglinton Avenue to just north of Danforth Avenue, and from Birchmount Road between St. Clair and Danforth Avenues.
Residents claimed that the lanes resulted in “great queues of traffic” along their streets and that, as a result, TTC buses blocked all traffic, whenever they stopped for passengers.
Removing the lanes, however, puts a great hole in the network of safe bike lanes that the city approved back in 2001. Even though the city is developing a network of off-road paths to help cyclists move through the city, riders still need safe on-street routes to get to those off-street paths.
The 2001 Toronto Bike Plan intended for bike lanes to line almost all of Pharmacy Avenue south of Highway 401 and all of Birchmount Road south of Steeles, not just the short stretches that the city has installed and that the committee now wants to remove. Both streets are ideal candidates for cycling — both are largely residential, with much less traffic than other north-south streets through Scarborough.
Birchmount is a particularly important street for cyclists because it’s one of the few streets that crosses Highway 401 without an interchange. That means that cyclists can safely ride between north and south Scarborough, without having to weave through merging traffic from a 401 off-ramp. Lack of access to the 401 also improves Birchmount and Pharmacy as bike routes: both have much less traffic than most other north-south arteries in that area.
Recently, I’ve been travelling up and down Pharmacy and Birchmount a lot to find out what all the fuss is about. I’ve visited and photographed both roads from points just south of St. Clair Avenue to try to see the great “queues of traffic” that are bothering everybody.
I visited both streets at the start and the end of the morning rush hours. And just to get a perspective on other times of the week, I’ve also gone there at 11 am on a weekday and on a Saturday. There were no “great queues” of traffic and TTC buses pulled into the bus lane, right over to the curb — as the Highway Traffic Act requires them to do — whenever they dropped off and picked up riders. Cars could easily pass any stopped buses.
To be fair, I also didn’t see any cyclists in the bike lanes.
If the cycling plan is to remain alive, indeed if cycling is to remain a viable and safe transportation option for everyone in the city, cyclists need to start putting as much effort in making sure that the city reverses its decision on Birchmount and Pharmacy as they’re doing for Jarvis. Otherwise they’re going to be forever trapped downtown when they want to cycle and no-one’s going to use the multi-million dollar ravine trails the city wants to build.
Council considers the matter at its meeting next week.
