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Toronto cyclists were given a two big presents for bike month last week. On June 9th City Council approved a ten year plan that promises to double the length of cycle lanes across the city. A day earlier, the government of Ontario's Climate Action Plan also promised $150m to $225m province wide over the next ten years to boost cycling province-wide.
Council is doubling the allocated capital spending for cycle lanes to $16m a year, the amount recommended by its staff, but some of the work in the network plan would have taken place anyway, and spending on cycle lanes has been higher than the capital budget allocated to it in the last few years. According to the city's staff report, this plan adds around $56.5m to planned spending over the next ten years - a 50% annual spending increase.
When the plan was first examined in committee, it voted to cancel the "Major Corridor Studies" needed to enable cycle lanes on eight arterial roads in the city:
• Yonge Street (Steeles Avenue to Front Street)
• Bloor Street (Dundas Street West to Sherbourne Street)
• Danforth Avenue (Broadview Avenue to Eglinton Avenue)
• Jane Street (South of Hwy 401 to Steeles Avenue)
• Kingston Road (Eglinton Avenue to Highland Creek Trail)
• Kipling Avenue (Bloor Street to Waterfront Trail)
• Midland Avenue (Steeles Avenue to Lawrence Avenue - Gatineau Trail to Waterfront Trail)
• Lake Shore Boulevard West (Mississauga to Humber River)
The full council restored the Danforth study, to take place in fall 2017, and in 2018 the plan will come before the council again for re-evaluation at which point funding levels could change and the remaining studies could be authorised. In any case, Council has already approved a pilot cycle path on Bloor between Shaw and Avenue Road. Council also approved an amendment from deputy mayor Denzil Minnan-Wong asking the City to study seasonal bike lanes that would be closed during the winter months.
In a separate initiative, the public works committee asked Council in April to seek Federal infrastructure funding to build the West Toronto Railpath Extension and the East Don Trail - the city manager is looking into this further but if federal money were offered, it would be on the understanding that funding would be matched by the City or the Province, and so far this has not been offered.
Although Council's cycle plan falls short of what the City's planners and lobby groups like Cycle Toronto had hoped for, it still represents a funded commitment to a greatly-extended network. Fifteen years ago, Council launched another ambitious ten year bike plan, promising 1000km of bike lanes of which half would be on-road, but in the end only 113km of on-road lanes were built in that period—partly because this plan was un-funded, and partly due to political opposition during the Ford years.
According to Jared Kolb, the Executive Director of Cycle Toronto, this is a good step forward for the city, but he is already looking forward to 2018, by which point the Bloor Street cycle lane pilot will have been studied, the first stages of this plan will be up for review by Council, and the implications for Toronto's cyclists of Ontario's Climate Change Action Plan will be better understood.
Join our members in this forum thread to discuss cycling in Toronto.
