Everything you need to know about bike-lane politics…

To understand the state of bike infrastructure in this city, you have to understand two words: "in principle."City councillors love.

This is from an actual video that Mike Layton made for last month's council meeting. (Watch below.)

To understand the state of bike infrastructure in this city, you have to understand two words: “in principle.”

City councillors love bike lanes in the abstract. Who could disagree with low-cost modifications that add safety and predictability to interactions between drivers and cyclists? It’s a great idea! they proclaim. Toronto needs to be a bike-friendly city!

But that enthusiasm tends to wane the moment a specific project is contemplated. For many councillors, the concern ceases to be about the city they want but rather the status quo they fear to lose. Even the possibility of inconveniencing those who enjoy current road privileges is considered an intolerable cost.

When Toronto’s 10-year bike plan went to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee last month, it arrived with a straightforward recommendation from staff: “that City Council adopt the Ten Year Cycling Network Plan as outlined within this report” and its accompanying maps.

Upon being amended by the committee, however, that same recommendation reads: “that City Council adopt in principle the Ten Year Cycling Network Plan… excluding the proposed Major Corridor Studies except those currently underway, with implementation of individual projects in this plan subject to future City Council approval, as appropriate” (emphasis added).

In other words, the committee’s members supported the basic idea of the bike plan minus most of its core components studies of eight major corridors that would serve as the backbone of the network: Yonge, Bloor, Danforth, Jane, Kingston, Kipling, Midland and Lake Shore West. The only studies to survived were those already under way for parts of Bloor/Dupont (from Keele to Sherbourne) and Yonge (from Finch to Sheppard and Bloor to Front).

This week, council will decide whether to endorse the committee’s preference to kick this work at least a few years down the road.

We could examine decades’ worth of political dynamics on the issue of cycling infrastructure, but in some ways you can acquire years’ worth of lessons from just the past month and a half:

Community councils had jurisdiction over bike lanes until 2008 when, to “streamline” the process, authority was transferred to the Works Committee. Mayor David Miller had become frustrated that non-downtown community councils seldom approved bike lanes, and this was a way of getting around that.

In subsequent council terms, however, the change has had an opposite effect: Works Committees dominated by suburban councillors have ranged from hostile to ambivalent toward bike lanes. Council still has the final say, but the committee that was supposed to facilitate a coordinated network of bicycle infrastructure has instead become its most reliable stumbling block.

At the most recent Works meeting, for example, Etobicoke Councillor Stephen Holyday one of council’s biggest bike skeptics even asked staff to report on potentially giving responsibility for bike lanes back to community councils. In their response, staff maintained that “implementing the cycling network is a city-wide initiative, therefore it is important that bicycle lane proposals be considered as part of a connected, city-wide system” [pdf]. It’s hard to argue with that logic, but it means there will continue to be a single choke point for the foreseeable future.

COLLISION

Chester Ave and Danforth Ave, report of a cyclist struck, no injuries ^cb Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) June 6, 2016

Ahead of the Bloor bike lane pilot going to Works in April, Councillors Mike Layton and Joe Cressy rounded up a critical mass of support from local residents and businesses. They’d already done the work to achieve neighbourhood buy-in for the Shaw-to-Avenue cycle tracks and were prepared to go to council with their shit in order.

But dozens of deputations and hundreds of letters in favour were no match for the infinite voices of the human imagination.

“It is a very impassioned group, but it’s a group that I believe is the minority, the cyclists,” Holyday concluded upon hearing from the deputants. “And I completely understand and appreciate why they really want to have lanes on Bloor: to complement the other ones that are in the area. However, in my heart of hearts, they are a minority compared to the massive volumes of people that need to move.”

Councillor John Campbell offered similar thoughts, conceding that the pilot is “probably a good idea” but arguing that “where the support comes from is not at all surprising. Anyone who lives in the area of the proposed bike lanes is going to prefer that bike lanes go up instead of having cars.”

Deadlocked in a series of 2-2 votes, the committee ultimately forwarded the report to council without any accompanying recommendations.

COLLISION:

Leslie St + Coldwater Rd

-Cyclist struck by car

-Woman bleeding

-Unknown seriousness

^dh Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) June 8, 2016

When the Star Wars theme blasted through the council chamber on May the 4th, I had a very good feeling about it. Having earlier spotted the words “Bloor Bikelane” against a star field on Layton’s laptop, I suspected he had something special planned. After all, his father once played a clip from The Simpsons during a debate, and once you start down that path, it dominates your pedigree.

“EPISODE 3 A BLOOR HOPE,” read the title scrolling up the chamber’s giant screen. “It was a transformative time in the municipality of Toronto,” said Layton loud and clear.

Ironically less wonky than the actual Episode I crawl, it went on to warn that “some Sith Lords even brought to the galactic municipal council amendments to destroy these plans and future prosperity of the region. Councillors were urged to vote against any changes to the plans trusting that the galactic city staff would evaluate the plan as it was built out.”

The odds of the Bloor bike pilot successfully navigating council were already pretty good, but the analysis provided by Councillor Layton was meant to spell certain doom for the small band of councillors struggling to scuttle it.

COLLISION

King St W and Ed Mirvish Way, report of a cyclist struck, reporting head injuries ^cb Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) June 3, 2016

Of course, council didn’t actually line up 38-3 behind the Bloor bike pilot because of Layton’s presentation. If any one thing could be credited for the near-consensus, it was Mayor John Tory planting himself firmly in favour of it.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Tory waved off “the notion that a bike lane pilot project for a year on Bloor Street is some sort of revolutionary act I mean, come now.”

“For me,” he said, “this bike pilot will be a success if it provides us with all the information to make informed decisions, not just about Bloor Street but to help us make informed decisions elsewhere in the city.”

At the time, the statement seemed to indicate that the mayor hoped Bloor would be a starting point for a more extensive network of bike lanes on major roads. But since the mayor’s backing of the Works Committee’s indefinite deferral of the major corridor studies pending the outcome of the Bloor pilot, it’s taken on a different meaning: what Mayor Tory was really saying was that future bike lanes would be contingent on the results from Bloor.

COLLISION

Oakwood Ave and Lanark Ave, report of a cyclist struck, minor injuries ^cb Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) June 3, 2016

Data is a crucial element of the argument for cycling infrastructure, but the actual collection of that data can be wielded as a weapon against it. Councillors often enjoy layering on requests for additional aspects of a cycling project to be measured and reported on. Some of these requests are redundant (you think staff don’t already consider impacts on traffic flow?), and others require minimal extra effort. (You want a public survey done? Sure.)

But others are more sinister.

The Works Committee, for example, asked staff to report to this month’s council meeting on a process to require polling before going ahead with projects that would remove a lane of traffic or change where parking is allowed. Unlike surveys, polls are formal plebiscites administered by the City Clerk’s Office that involve mailing ballots to names on the assessment rolls.

Calling polling “a red herring for people who don’t want to see bike lane infrastructure,” Councillor Cressy tells NOW that if “they were used as a common policy across our major public works and infrastructure portfolio, we wouldn’t do anything anywhere in the city.”

In their report advising against such a process, staff explain that while most polls conducted by the city for things like boulevard cafes and front-yard parking involve 50 to 100 ballots, the Bloor bike pilot would have required more than 29,000 at a cost of $2.75 each.

Of course, the councillors most interested in polling local residents about bike infrastructure are also those most likely to dismiss the respondents as unrepresentative of the larger population.

COLLISION

Royal York Rd and Eglinton Ave W, report of a cyclist struck, no further info on injuries ^cb Toronto Police OPS (@TPSOperations) June 4, 2016

jonathang@nowtoronto.com | @goldsbie