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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or After waiting more than a decade, cyclists are taking to the new bike lanes in style Back to video

After more than a decade of study, debate, lobbying, motions, protests, cyclist deaths and environmental assessments, this week crews created Toronto’s first east-end separated lanes to move bike traffic in and out of the financial district.

Biking to work on Wednesday, when I crossed Bathurst Street at Adelaide Street West I came upon a bike lane, painted for three blocks eastward.

Thursday I returned at 9 a.m. At St. Mary’s Catholic Church clustered 20 cyclists: helmeted citizens in shirts and ties, skirts and dress shoes, astride bikes by Trek and Giant and CCM and Linus, commuting to work. When the light changed we poured onto Adelaide. Half the cyclists took the new bike lane. The other half rode in the northernmost lane; perhaps they didn’t notice the new “cycle track.”

By Thursday crews, working at night, had extended the lane eight blocks to Widmer Street.

Cyclists have waited since at least 2001, when council approved a 1,000-kilometre “bikeway” network, for these lanes. They are arriving in style.

After years of condo construction Richmond and Adelaide are bumpy as logging roads. Crews have “shaved and paved” the right lane of each street for the bike lanes, giving cyclists a smoother ride than drivers.