Cycling advocates say a city report showing fewer collisions on Jarvis St. since the bike lanes were installed is fresh ammunition in the battle to persuade Toronto to keep cycling space on that road.

But the chair of the public works and infrastructure committee said he hasn’t changed his mind about scrubbing the Jarvis lanes as soon as a new cycle track is built this year on Sherbourne St., physically separating bikes from cars on a parallel route.

“That decision has been made by council so there will be an alternative for them to cycle on Sherbourne,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong.

The Jarvis cycling lanes will be scrubbed when a reversible fifth car lane is restored after the Sherbourne work is complete, he said.

“I believe Jarvis is an important north-south corridor for vehicles and we can use that street for vehicles and offer better traffic flow,” Minnan-Wong said Friday.

The Jarvis Street Pre- and Post-Bicycle Lane Collision Review, shows that the overall number of reported collisions fell by 23 per cent, from 159 to 122 annually, after the bike lanes were installed.

Although the number of bike-car collisions actually increased from seven to 15, the number of cyclists using the street tripled to 890 in an average eight-hour day.

“The collisions haven’t gone up at the same volume as cyclists,” said John Mende, the city’s director of transportation infrastructure management.

Collisions involving cars and pedestrians plummeted from nine to only one in the study period.

While the report makes Jarvis appear safer, it also cautions that the findings can’t be considered hard evidence because it averages the three years of “before” results and compares it with a single year of “after” collision data, between Sept. 1, 2010 and Aug. 31, 2011.

“Normally we like to look at several years of data before you come with any definitive conclusions,” Mende said.

Jared Kolb, of Cycle Toronto, formerly the Toronto Cyclists Union, called it “a pretty commanding report.”

It shows, he said, “The removal of these bike lanes effectively makes the road more dangerous for everyone.”

If the bike lanes remain, collision numbers would continue to fall as people became more accustomed to cyclists on Jarvis, Kolb said.

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The bike group, which has about 2,200 members, changed its name at its Wednesday annual meeting in a move to attract cyclists across the political spectrum, some of whom were put off by the “union” aspect of the original name, he said.

“The first thing many people would say is, ‘I would never join a union.’ Cycling safety is not left or right,” said Kolb.

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