It was a decision that some believe helped set the table for this year’s transportation-focused city elections and proved a turning point for Toronto’s cycling community.

With the installation of bike lanes on Jarvis St., beginning on Friday, motorists and cyclists will be able to gauge the impact of last year’s hard-fought battle to remove the reversible centre lane in favour of bikes.

Partial road closures and lane reductions between Queen and Charles Sts. through the week of July 26, will inevitably stoke the anger of motorists who waged a loud battle against the scheme.

The paint and the dismantling of the signals over the centre lane will only cost about $65,000.

But Daniel Egan, Toronto’s manager of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, says the 2009 controversy over the bike lanes “was overblown.”

“It was pitched as a war against cars — quite frankly it’s going to be a four-lane arterial road like every other street downtown. That (reversible) centre lane did cause a lot of confusion,” he said.

The summer is a good time to install the lanes because there’s less traffic. But once the traffic flow returns and people have had a chance to get used to the new lanes in the fall the city will be assessing the impact on bike and car traffic, said Egan.

The Jarvis bike lanes were a significant victory for the newly formed Toronto Cyclists Union and a turning point for the city’s cycling community, said Yvonne Bambrick, executive director.

Council’s vote on the issue happened on the first day of Bike Month so there were many cyclists at Nathan Phillips Square that day, who went inside to watch council.

“We were engaging cyclists and everyday citizens in how city politics functions which was a big step and also it showed just how interested all kinds of different cyclists from all different parts of Toronto are in seeing the streets become more bike friendly,” Bambrick said.

Since then there have been more victories for the cycling movement including the introduction next year of a bike sharing program like the one in Montreal. Advocates are working to persuade 1,000 Torontonians to commit to the $95 annual membership fee that will enable them to access 1,000 bikes at 80 downtown Toronto stations.

Getting that many people to sign up in advance will be the city’s biggest challenge, said Egan, who has no doubt that it will be over-subscribed once it’s underway.

Montreal’s Bixie program started with 2,400 bikes and expanded to 5,000 this year.

Where cycling in Toronto goes from here will depend on the outcome of the election.

Mayoral candidate Rocco Rossi restated his intention Thursday to take bike lanes off Jarvis if he’s elected.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“The math doesn’t work. There are almost 30,000 cars a day that use Jarvis, rain or shine, winter or summer,” he said.

Bikes, now scarce on Jarvis, could go one block over to Sherbourne and use the lanes there to travel north-south. Not every city street can accommodate every user, he said.