Even by the standards of Toronto city hall, this has been an exceedingly slow ride. Almost a quarter century after commissioning multiple studies on putting bike lanes on Bloor St., bureaucrats finally have a solid proposal in hand.

Details were made public this past week, and they are encouraging. Planners appear to have effectively balanced drivers’ concerns about gridlock and store owners’ demand for parking against the need to make cycling safer. The result could prompt more people to quit their car to pump bicycle pedals instead of a gas pedal.

Bloor St. has long been considered a prime candidate for a bikeway — it’s a long east-west route, relatively flat, has no streetcar tracks, and is well-connected to major north-south thoroughfares.

That also makes it popular with drivers, who tend to fight surrender of road lanes to cyclists. And upscale merchants on the downtown stretch of Bloor, dubbed Toronto’s version of Rodeo Drive, have been loath to part with on-street parking. The result has been significant political resistance to installing bike lanes, separated from traffic, on this route.

Toronto’s proposed new bikeway pilot project offers a viable way forward. It would create safe lanes for cyclists on a 2.4-kilometre section of Bloor between Shaw St. and Avenue Rd., while minimizing traffic disruption by installing dedicated turn lanes and improved traffic signal timing.

The number of on-street parking spaces would drop from 280 to 135, but they would be arranged to alternate between the north and south sides of the thoroughfare, equalizing access. It seems a reasonable compromise.

Cyclists would be separated from traffic by painted lines on the roadway, parked cars, and upright flexi-posts. This should provide a degree of security for drivers as well as bike riders. In earlier consultations, 60 per cent of motorists on Bloor reported feeling uncomfortable steering next to cyclists dodging parked cars and weaving through traffic in the street’s current configuration.

A final thing to bear in mind is that this would be only a pilot project. If it produces intolerable traffic jams, parking chaos, and little increase in the number of cyclists using Bloor, the flexi-posts can easily be taken up and the street returned to the way it is now.

But if the benefits far outweigh any drawbacks, it could make a strong case for extending the cycling corridor to cover even more of Bloor. Either way, it’s well worth finding out. When the proposed Bloor bikeway goes before city council, likely later this spring, the politicians should let it roll instead of jamming its spokes yet again.