When Toronto put bike lanes on Adelaide and Richmond streets, cycling increased 1,000 per cent and collisions involving cyclists dramatically decreased.

When the city put a bike lane on Bloor, cycling increased again. Even pedestrians were made safer from vehicles and merchant sales went up.

Bike lanes work. They dramatically increase cycling, make everyone safer and have minimal impact on traffic flow.

So why does the City of Toronto continue to be so very timid with its plans for expanding painted and protected bike lanes?

Three years ago, Toronto council approved a 10-year cycling network plan calling for more than 500 kilometres of painted and protected lanes. On paper, it’s decently ambitious.

But the city has managed to get only about 30 kilometres of those lanes built. On top of that, the city has put off the necessary studies for putting lanes on major roadways in the suburbs where infrastructure is desperately needed. Money isn’t the problem; the city hasn’t even spent its annual cycling budget.

In the face of all that — the evidence of success and the need for more — the city’s update to its 10-year plan should be a rousing call to do better. Instead, the document to be considered by councillors on the city’s infrastructure committee on Thursday waters it down.

It strips out longer term goals and sets no real targets beyond 2021. And, of all things, proposes yet more study and a go-slow approach for a cross-town Bloor-Danforth bike lane.

That was first recommended more than a quarter century ago. The city needs to show some vision and pick up the pace on getting the Bloor bike lanes extended west to High Park and east along the Danforth.

If it can’t do that, what hope is there for the bike lanes that are needed in the more suburban parts of the city where council hasn’t even mustered the courage to launch studies?

We all know traffic is a problem and commute times in Toronto are rising. TransformTO, Toronto’s new climate action strategy, wants to see three-quarters of trips under 5 kilometres walked or cycled by 2050.

That won’t just happen. Toronto needs to encourage the behaviour it wants to see.

Cycling rates in Toronto are rising, particularly where there’s new and improved cycling infrastructure. In the Bloor-Spadina neighbourhood around the University of Toronto the city says 33 per cent of trips are made by bike. Up at York University it’s just 9 per cent.

Little wonder.

It’s one thing to get on a bicycle in the central city where motorists generally drive slower given lower speed limits and the constant challenges of navigating around construction sites, illegally parked delivery vehicles, streetcars, hordes of pedestrians and cyclists.

It’s quite another to get on that same bicycle on a fast-moving suburban road where the car-is-king attitude remains untouched.

Those are also the roads that present the greatest danger to pedestrians. The city’s other updated plan, Vision Zero, aims to reduce those pedestrian deaths by lowering speed limits and changing road design and traffic signals. And, as we’ve already seen on Richmond, Adelaide and Bloor, bike lanes play an important role in road safety.

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“Demand for safe, connected cycling routes throughout the city is on the rise, and recent polls demonstrate the majority of residents support protected bike lanes,” the cycling update report says.

That’s not just coming from those who ride bicycles but motorists who know everyone is better off with defined and separated road space.

It’s time for councillors to take all this to heart and encourage the behaviour the city wants to see by moving this bike plan into the fast lane.