The Jarvis bike lanes will be removed by 2012 and the now much disputed stretch of road will be converted back into a five-lane thoroughfare with an alternating centre lane.
Today council voted 28-9 to approve the Bikeway Report, which included the elimination of the Jarvis bike lanes and the construction of a separated bike lane network downtown. Some councillors abstained from the vote because they didn’t want to vote for the whole report together.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who represents the ward that includes the lane, was one of the councillors who walked out of the chamber. Her name was on the amendment that’s given Jarvis a reprieve—the lane will remain until the Sherbourne dedicated bike lane has been built—but it was changed by Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong’s motion to bring back Jarvis’ fifth, reversible, rush hour lane.
“I realize now eight months on to the job that you have to be very careful of slippery eleventh hour motions, that this is a place that allows this type of trickery and that you can’t necessarily take people at their face value,” she said.
This is the second time that a last-minute motion has been moved regarding Jarvis; the first was at the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee where the bike lanes were designated for removal. Minnan-Wong said Wong-Tam should’ve have anticipated these motions.
“If Kristyn Wong-Tam really wanted to do her homework, she would have talked to the committee beforehand if they were willing to move motions. That’s the way it works,” he said. “She must have been living in a cave if she didn’t think it was going to come up.”
Wong-Tam said her conversations with Minnan-Wong did not indicate that the fifth lane was on the table, but he said removing the bike lane implied the return to the old street configuration.
“Those are not the conversations that Councillor Minnan-Wong and I had,” Wong-Tam said. “I told him that I had every intention of implementing the Jarvis Streetscape Improvement Plan.”
She said today’s vote unravels the work she’s been doing connecting Jarvis to other downtown neighbourhoods and building relationships with area businesses—like Rogers Communications. Instead it gives her community an unwanted urban highway.
“Nobody in the community has talked about the reinstallation of the fifth lane,” she said. “They talked about better traffic coordination, they’ve talked about beautifying the streets, they’ve talked about repositioning Jarvis as a cultural corridor.”
Councillor Minnan-Wong continued to sing the praises of the Bikeway Report and said he would fight to keep the $43 million allocated for the Mayor’s Bike Plan away from budget cuts—even though the Core Services Review targeted bike infrastructure. Approval of the Bikeway Report does include some positives for cyclists.
“What I believe is that we’ve taken a positive step forward for cyclists and we’re going to improve safety in the city,” he said.
On the cost of the removing Jarvis and the two lanes in Scarborough, which some have pegged at more than $400,000, he said it’s an investment in citywide infrastructure.
“We’re putting a separated bike lane on Sherbourne and we’re taking out Jarvis. It’s a decision of council where we are addressing gridlock and I think that’s a proper investment.”
Wong-Tam says the decision may have little effect on Jarvis traffic and serious impact on safety.
“Cyclists will still be there, they will just no longer be safe.”
For the Toronto Cyclists Union, the refrain was something along the lines of “Jarvis is dead! Long live Jarvis!” Director of Advocacy Andrea Garcia told the press that today’s vote is just the beginning, even with the installation signalling lights for the fifth lane set to go ahead.
“It’s been delayed for a year, now that gives us a year to organize around it and get even better data, and show that the street really is working,” she said.
“The Ford administration doesn’t have any problem with wasteful spending removing infrastructure. I’m not concerned about them putting the lights in and deciding not to remove the bike lanes later on.”
