Toronto city council has voted overwhelmingly in favour of making the temporary bike lanes along Bloor Street permanent.
As part of a one-year pilot project implemented in June 2016, the city installed separated bike lanes along Bloor Street from Avenue Road to Shaw Street.
After studying the impacts of the pilot, city staff released a lengthy report last month recommending that council make the bike lanes permanent along that stretch.
Council then voted 36-6 in favour of that recommendation on Tuesday, following a debate that stretched on for several hours.
“Today’s decision puts to bed the old debate that it is bikes versus cars or bikes vs businesses,” Ward 20 Coun. Joe Cressy told CP24 following the vote. “I think it shows that we are finally ready to enter the 21st century and 21st century cities build cycling infrastructure.”
Data released in the staff report showed that the number of cyclists travelling along the corridor increased by 49 per cent from June 2016 to June 2017.
The report found the bike lanes brought more customers to businesses in the area and only slowed vehicular traffic by an average of two to four minutes.
Public support for bike lanes, according to the staff report, appears to be somewhat mixed.
In an online survey of approximately 14,000 people, 92 per cent of respondents who say they bike along Bloor Street were in favour of the lanes. Of the respondents who said they drive and don't cycle, 57 per cent are not in favour of bike lanes on Bloor.
Approximately 3,800 of the 14,000 respondents live in the general area and 74 per cent of them said they support the lanes.
The report also found that despite the surge in cyclist traffic, the number of collisions between cyclists and vehicles remained about the same when compared to collisions prior to the installation of the lanes.
According to the report, the number of “near-miss collisions” decreased by 44 per cent.
“All the data pointed to bike lanes working on Bloor but the most important one was public safety,” Ward 19 Coun. Mike Layton told CP24 following the vote. “What we saw through the pilot was that cyclists felt safer but more importantly those near misses were down considerably.”
Mayor John Tory was among those who voted in favour of making the bike lanes permanent.
Earlier in the day, he said that the data shows that the lanes have been positive overall.
“I think the data indicates that these bike lanes are a positive net improvement overall,” Tory said.
“I think that once we make some of the modifications to address the concerns especially identified by local businesses, we can make this more acceptable to them as well.”
