Doug Ford’s plans to remove bike lanes and its reception
During a speech on October 17, 2024, Ontario Premier Doug Ford confirmed that the province plans on removing existing municipal bike lanes on major thoroughfares, specifically targeting Yonge Street, Avenue Road, College Street, Harbord Street, and Bloor Street. Ford plans to enact these plans under the upcoming “Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act.” This act blocks the construction of new bike lanes, gives the province final authorization on any future bike lanes, and gives the province the right to remove bike lanes installed in the past five years. Doug Ford asserted that bike lanes should be relegated to secondary roads and that “existing bike lanes on primary roads…are bringing traffic in our cities to a standstill.” Ford’s main line of reasoning for this legislation is to alleviate traffic and make transportation more efficient for motor vehicles.
The Toronto mayor, Olivia Chow, sees Ford’s legislation as an unnecessary assertion of provincial power over municipalities. Ford’s new legislation conflicts with the current plan set out by the Toronto City Council to build 100 kilometres of bike lanes in the next three years. Mayor Olivia Chow and the Association of Municipalities of Toronto see Ford’s new legislation as a “significant overreach into municipal jurisdiction.” The criticism of Ford meddling in municipal affairs is not new. In 2018, Doug Ford passed a controversial piece of legislation that nearly halved the size of the Toronto city council in the midst of the city’s election campaign. Ford’s views on how government responsibility should be relegated between municipal and provincial is murky. He believes that municipalities should be responsible for housing yet believes that they should not be responsible for road infrastructure or the size of their own councils. This has led to much criticism from the Toronto municipal government who believe that they are better adapted at addressing the needs of Torontonians.
Olivia Chow believes that Ford’s legislation is a disingenuous attempt to improve mobility in the GTA. In a tweet made on October 15, Chow states, “the Province should focus on their job of finally getting the Eglinton Crosstown and Finch West LRTs open, which will have a huge impact on congestion in our city.” The Eglinton Crosstown and the Finch West LRT projects both aim to improve public transportation by making mobility faster, more affordable, and more extensive. Emma, a commuter student at Vic, says that her commute would be significantly faster by having the Eglinton Crosstown. “This whole thing on bike lanes is a complete waste of time,” she says, “[the Province] should be building, not dismantling, infrastructure.”
The research on the effectiveness of bike lanes in Toronto is not clear-cut due to the relative newness of bike lanes. A report by the city found that between November 2022 (when bike lanes were installed) and March 2023, there has been an overall increase in motor vehicle travel times. Though this supports the reasoning behind Ford’s legislation, it disregards that the lockdowns of 2022 alleviated congestion, not the wider car lanes. It is unjustified to correlate the heavy traffic of the city solely to bike lanes when there is a lack of public transportation infrastructure in Toronto, especially compared to other metropolitan cities. Cities such as New York have shown that bike lanes have improved congestion and mobility. The latent demand for bike lanes in Toronto has shown their importance in public infrastructure. Bike Share Toronto found that ridership has heavily increased since 2015, from 665,000 bike trips to 5.7 million trips in 2023. Jack, a commuter student at Vic, says that he finds “Bike Share Toronto more reliable and more efficient than the subway.” He went on to say that “[he] really likes riding on streets like Bloor since the bike lanes make [him] feel more safe.” Critics of Ford, such as Max Fawcett, a lead columnist of Canada’s National Observer, cite this legislation not as blind ignorance or lack of rationale but as a strategic political plot to appeal to his Conservative voters who rely on motor-transportation over public transportation. The Conservative populus include mainly the following voting groups: Affluent Families, Aging Heartlands, and Big City Burbs. Fawcett believes that by appealing to Conservative interests, despite its counterintuitive effects on transportation, Ford is shown to be more focused on securing his position as Premier of Ontario than being in the best interests of Torontonians. This all ties back to Olivia Chow’s belief that the provincial government needs to stay out of the way of municipalities that can better address their constituents.
Despite the large amount of controversy on bike lanes, Ford’s legislation is being put into action. The discourse surrounding public transportation is one that will not end anytime soon. Toronto is behind in numerous aspects of public infrastructure compared to other major cities on the Northeast Coast; our subway system is rudimentary at best, the traffic is insane, and now bike lanes are being removed. Even if having bike lanes dismantled on major roads had a positive effect on transportation, it only helps those who use motor vehicles. Those who rely on the subway, such as commuter students, are stuck with the joke that is the TTC. When it comes to public transportation, it is easy to say that everyone is “wheely” mad.
