A staff-endorsed plan to remove two lanes of traffic along Yonge Street in North York as part of wider transformation of the corridor has been put on hold, likely until the next term of city council.

Staff had initially called for Yonge Street to be reduced from six to four lanes between Sheppard and Finch avenues in order to accommodate a bike lane, wider sidewalks and a landscaped median.

Mayor John Tory and a number of his allies opposed that plan, however, and asked staff to prepare an alternative which would place a bike lane a parallel corridor on Beecroft Road, allowing the number of lanes of traffic on Yonge Street to stay the same.

That scaled-down proposal was approved by the public works and infrastructure committee earlier this month and was brought before council for final approval on Tuesday but was ultimately put on hold following a 20-15 vote sending it back to staff for further study.

The vote came after a contentious day-long debate. Both Mayor John Tory and Willowdale Coun. John Filion, who were on opposite sides of the debate, voted in favour of deferral.

“I am very disappointed but at least it wasn’t defeated. The votes just weren’t there today so hopefully they will be another day,” Filion, who had been an advocate of the initial plan, told CP24. “Hopefully we will have a more future thinking council next term.”

“This is an opportunity that comes along once every 60 to 75 years, so you have to do it right,” Filion told CP24 earlier in the day. “You can’t just put new concrete where there was old concrete. You have to think about what do we need over the next 60 years, how the area has changed over the last 60 years and how it is going to change over the next 60 years. It is not just for 2018; it is for 2058.”

Filion has been a vocal advocate for the staff-endorsed plan for Yonge Street since it was first brought forward in February, 2017 and on Monday he held a news conference alongside residents and community leaders to pressure members of council to support the plan.

Speaking with CP24 on Tuesday, he conceded that Tory likely “has the votes” to push through his preferred option for Yonge Street but said that he is hopeful that members of council supporting him would be “held to account” for their votes during October’s municipal election.

He also said that he is “absolutely” convinced that the outcome would have been different had it not been an election year in Toronto.

“For people to go into contortions to come up with stupid plans that they think get them more votes, that is just the worst kind of politics and I guess is part of the reason why politicians are generally held in such low esteem,” he said. “This is really a referendum on the future of the city. That referendum will continue to Oct. 22 and beyond because obviously we need some change here on council. We need people with vision and a little bit of courage.”

Staff have said proposal is 'the best option for vibrancy'

While staff have said that their initial proposal “provides the best option for vibrancy” along Yonge, opponents of the plan have argued that it will create gridlock and have a negative effect on commerce in the area.

“I think when we are taking away lanes of traffic it is going to add more congestion to our city and as a taxi industry we have to focus in on how we are going to drop people off and if there is less lanes to do it in then you are going to have a lot more congestion and there is going to be more people behind you honking and getting irritated,” Sam Moini, spokesperson for the Toronto Taxi Alliance, told CP24 during a break in the meeting on Tuesday. “I think Beecroft is the right option here. I think it is best for the city, it helps the bike infrastructure and it is just the most positive way to go about this.”

Moini told CP24 that the initial proposal would have a negative impact on the “day-to-day life of Willowdale residents” by adding to the congestion in the neighbourhood and removing on-street parking spaces for businesses.

Meanwhile, supporters of the plan argue that it will benefit residents and businesses alike by making the street livelier and more pedestrian-friendly.

Last week a group of 13 leading city builders, including former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat and author Richard Florida, penned an open letter to members of council in which they warned them not to pass up a “once-in –a-generation opportunity” to redesign “a six-lane thoroughfare into a truly urban main street.”

They said that the area surrounding Yonge Street in North York is already home to a combined 75,000 residents and jobs and needs “thoughtful and forward-thinking street design” to ensure the long-term livability of the neighbourhood.

“Reducing one lane of traffic in each direction allows for expanded sidewalks, greenery, and more space for patios and public life. Bike lanes are part of the package, but they aren’t the impetus,” the letter stated.

“Platitudes about making our city greener. Platitudes about #VisionZero + eliminating pedestrian deaths. Platitudes about creating a more equitable city. A real plan with a real design to move our suburbs towards becoming all of this? Inaction,” Keesmaat said in a message posted to Twitter following the vote.

Intersection is ‘one of most chaotic for traffic,’ Tory says

For his part, Tory has refused to back down from his opposition to the initial plan, though.

On Tuesday morning, he told CP24 that the intersection of Yonge Street and Sheppard Avenue is “one of the most chaotic for traffic in all of Toronto,” making any removal of lanes unacceptable.

“I am on record as not supporting that particular way of doing it which takes out two lanes of traffic. And I can commit to people that the alternative that was brought forward by staff at our request, which puts bike lanes on Beecroft, does widen the sidewalks and does leave the lanes of traffic in place,” he said. “I am quite happy – by the way – to have any safety measures that people want to take that are reasonable in conjunction with those lanes of traffic.”

It should be noted that traffic modelling data that was included in the initial staff report had suggested that commute times along Yonge Street would be slowed by one or two minutes on average as a result of the removal of the two lanes.

The cost of rebuilding the street in the manner favoured by staff is $51 million. Tory’s plan was initially supposed to add $22 million to the price tag, however staff say that number can be reduced to $9 million by forgoing the acquisition of some property that was required for the installation of the bike lane.

On Tuesday Tory moved a motion that would call for a "immediate safety" review of Yonge Street between Finch and Sheppard avenues, though Filion called that motion “a show to try to justify doing the wrong thing.”