Six traffic lanes to stay on Yonge Street in North York as committee opts for scaled-down plan

The city’s public works and infrastructure committee has opted to ignore a staff-endorsed plan for the revamping of a portion of Yonge Street in favour of a more modest proposal that doesn’t call for the removal of two lanes of traffic in a busy North York strip.

The initial proposal, endorsed by staff and backed by the local councillor, 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.

In arguing for the plan, staff had said that it “provided the best support for vibrancy” and would help create a Main Street culture along that stretch of Yonge Street.

The plan, however, was opposed by Mayor John Tory and some of his allies, who were concerned about the potential impact on traffic.

They pushed for a scaled-down version of the plan, wherein a bike lane would be put in along a parallel corridor on Beecroft Road, allowing the number of lanes of traffic along Yonge Street to stay the same. Staff had reported that the plan was viable after being asked to study it but did not favour it over the more dramatic proposal that they previously endorsed.

Nonetheless, members of the public works committee voted 4-1 in favour of the scaled-down plan on Tuesday.

The vote came one week after nine community organizations sent Tory an open letter calling on him to “demonstrate leadership” and support the initial proposal, one that they called the “the only way forward for safe streets”

“I want increased cycling infrastructure across the city, make no mistake about that. I just want it done in a sensible and balanced way that takes into account that there are other interests, including the public realm, including car drivers and including transit vehicles that have to move along Yonge Street,” Tory told reporters ahead of the vote on Tuesday morning. “I want to make sure that whatever we improve in the end – and it will come to council – is something that is balanced and takes everyone’s interest into account.”

Staff said impact on commute times would have been minimal

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

Opponents of the plan, meanwhile, contended that any increase in commute times along an already traffic-clogged artery would be unacceptable.

In a message posted to Twitter following the vote on Tuesday, former Chief Planner Jennifer called the decision “small-town thinking” and said that the initial plan was “key to attracting growth” for the area and turning it into a “walkable destination.”

“Pathetic! We should be sick and tired of this small-town thinking. This is an urban centre above a subway line. Councillors redrawing years of staff analysis on the back of a napkin. We are better than this, Toronto,” she wrote, using the hashtag #LeadershipNeeded.

The proposal approved by the committee on Tuesday was initially supposed to add $20 million to the $51 million cost of the staff-endorsed plan but it appears as though some savings will be realized by forgoing the acquisition of some property that was required for the installation of the bike lane.

The motion approved by the committee states that shared-lane pavement markings will instead be implemented along a portion of the bike lane until a section of Greenview Avenue is reconstructed and widened.

The proposal still needs to be approved by city council as a whole.