Toronto’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee nearly bent itself double last week trying to make sure it avoided any hint of consistency and logic when it approved removing bicycle lanes from Jarvis Street, Birchmount Road and Pharmacy Avenue.
Everybody listened/nobody listened: First, it spent a good deal of time listening to people living near Birchmount and Pharmacy — and their local councillor Michelle Beradinetti, who is not a member of the committee — in demanding that the city remove the lanes on the Scarborough streets. Then it spent absolutely no time listening to anyone living near Jarvis to quickly decide that the city should remove the lanes on that street as well.
One size fits/doesn’t fit all: The committee heard from Birchmount and Pharmacy residents who told them that no one in their neighbourhood used the bike lanes, only people from outside their area did. Berardinetti urged the committee to remove the lanes because they imposed downtown standards on the inner suburbs and “one size didn’t fit all.”
Then it quickly adopted a motion from Leaside Councillor John Parker to remove the lanes from Jarvis, because they slowed traffic from Rosedale, Moore Park and North Toronto by a mere two minutes. City stats showed that the number of cyclists using the street had increased from about 300 to about 800 daily since the City installed the lanes. By approving Parker’s motion the Committee totally ignored the dynamics of its earlier Pharmacy/Birchmount decision, this time imposing inner suburb standards on a downtown community.
Didn’t go anywhere/did go somewhere: The Scarboroughites claimed the Birchmount and Pharmacy lanes were a terrible idea because they “didn’t go anywhere.” In fact the Pharmacy lanes stopped just a few blocks south of the Gatineau bike path that the city has been developing across central Scarborough; the Birchmount lanes led to a series of paths into the Warden Woods ravine. How did councillors expect cyclists to use off-road trails, if the city has no safe on-street routes for cyclist to reach them?
No one asked Jarvis folk whether their lanes led anywhere. In the same city staff report the committee considered a proposal to postpone building safe crosstown lanes along Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue. Those lanes would have helped to connect the Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount bike lanes with each other and with other off- and on-street bike paths across the city.
Nobody asked us/everybody asked us: The east-enders complained that the city didn’t consult with them when it installed the Scarborough bike lanes, even though the lanes were part of an extensive bike network the city approved way back in 2001 — when that famously left-wing, bike-riding, pinko mayor, Mel Lastman, led city council. On the other hand, the city extensively consulted with Jarvis residents — the bike lanes were part of a plan that the neighbourhood enthusiastically endorsed to improve the streetscape on Jarvis and slow traffic down — yet even that consultation process failed to halt a committee apparently bent on keeping bicycles off city streets.
City council will finalize the committee’s action when it meets on July 12 and 13. Maybe the entire council will have better luck coming to a decision that’s consistent and makes sense; one that doesn’t leave councillors, and cyclists, completely bent out of shape.
