TORONTO

City officials aren’t backpedalling on a decision not to have physical barriers on the Richmond-Adelaide bike lanes.

Despite an outcry from Cycle Toronto and some councillors for more of a separation for the new lanes, city staff say the lanes will stay in their current form as part of the ongoing pilot project.

Stephen Buckley, the city’s general manager of Transportation Services, said the bike lanes on Richmond and Adelaide Sts. separated by a painted buffer of asphalt will stay in place until next spring so they can test whether they work or not.

“The corridor is still under construction,” Buckley told the Toronto Sun. “It typically takes a week or two for folks to figure it out … there will be some adjustment period to this.”

He said city staff are out monitoring whether the lanes are working properly.

“Our goal was to look at up and down the corridor to see what’s working, what’s not working,” Buckley said.

“At the end of the day what we want is a safe and effective final solution … the best way we arrive at that is by using the pilot as an opportunity to test.”

Buckley said bollards between bike lanes and car lanes were needed historically to keep motorized vehicles out of bike lanes.

“What we had is situations where the fines weren’t high enough so we’ve increased the fines — they used to be $60 now they are $150,” he said.

Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon said she’ll be at the public works committee next week asking for more of a physical separation on those lanes. If she loses, McMahon said she’ll take the fight to city council later this month.

“My understanding is we voted for a cycle track which is not what we got,” McMahon said.

“They need to be fully physically separated, not just paint - that’s not what I voted for. I think we need a little semantics lesson for everyone or dictionaries or something.”

Public Works chairman Denzil Minnan-Wong didn’t rule out changes entirely to the Richmond-Adelaide bike lanes at some point.

“If we believe that the bike lanes aren’t working and staff believe something more robust needs to be put in place they will,” Minnan-Wong said.

Mayor Rob Ford argued bike lanes were a “downtown issue.”

“I agree with the temporary painting of the lines,” Ford said. “If it becomes permanent then if the people downtown want the bike lanes, I don’t have a problem with them.

“Out in Etobicoke, out in Scarborough, up in North York, I’m sorry, very few people ride bikes up there.”

But Ford maintained traffic has to keep flowing.

“If it is going to take away from traffic, a lane of traffic, I cannot support that,” he said.