Dividing Line

It took less than five kilometres of bike lane to push the city over the edge. On its face, the extension of the Bloor Street West path from Runnymede to Resurrection Road, which links downtown’s bike riding hub to the heart of Etobicoke commuter country, seemed innocuous enough. After all, it was just the latest expansion of a stretch that started in the Annex in 2016. What was another handful of blocks in the scheme of things? Well, that depends who you ask.

The new lanes were installed last spring and split the surrounding neighbourhoods into two camps. One faction saw them as a welcome and overdue safety measure—six cyclists died on Toronto streets in 2024, the deadliest year since at least 2006. But some motorists and other residents were furious at seeing a vehicle lane handed off to bicycles in a city already paralyzed by gridlock. Public sentiment was loud and pitched. A community group calling itself Balance on Bloor circulated a petition demanding a re-evaluation of the design, which gathered nearly 14,000 signatures. The Old Sod, a pub on Bloor West, printed T-shirts that said “Fuck Bike Lanes” (the “u” and “c” were replaced with bike tires) and sold almost 300 of them. At the Taste of the Kingsway festival, a woman was photographed at the Balance on Bloor table. Someone posted that photo to a pro-cycling group on Reddit, where one user encouraged readers to “plow” the table with a bicycle. I spoke to residents of the Kingsway neighbourhood last fall. Some lauded the new lanes, but others blamed them for a litany of problems: the loss of parking spaces, increased congestion, emergency vehicles waylaid by traffic and an overflow of cars onto residential streets. One resident said he’d never seen the community so divided.

Those who wanted the Bloor lanes gone soon found themselves with a powerful ally: Premier Doug Ford, a lifelong Etobicoke resident. With a potential early election looming, Ford cranked up the inflammatory rhetoric, pledging to rip out lanes that steal space from cars on major roads. But bike lanes fall under municipal jurisdiction, so making good on his promise took some legislative acrobatics. In November, the Conservative government passed Bill 212, a controversial new law that gives the province veto power over every new bike lane in every municipality in Ontario and opens the door for it to dismantle existing ones. An amendment named the first ones on the chopping block: sections of lanes on University, Yonge and Bloor.

Cyclists quickly shot back, accusing the province of putting their safety at risk just to shave a few minutes off drivers’ commute times. Hundreds showed up at protests in Toronto last fall, and in December, the advocacy group Cycle Toronto filed a suit that challenged the new law. Mayor Olivia Chow, a devoted cyclist, joined the cacophony, calling Ford’s move “arbitrary” and claiming that the work required to nix the lanes would only worsen Toronto’s notorious congestion. She tacked on a sharp broadside about how the province was partly to blame for traffic, since many road closures have been caused by Metrolinx’s much-delayed transit construction projects. Then there’s the price tag: a city report estimated that Ford’s plan to remove the lanes would cost taxpayers a staggering $48 million, a figure the premier dismissed as “hogwash.”

Since then, they’ve done little more than trade barbs. Meanwhile, Toronto keeps growing, getting busier and more densely populated. Driving downtown becomes less viable by the day—our roads are only so wide, and they aren’t about to get wider. We need better public transit, of course, and we need bike lanes. But, right now, the debate is so heated that we can barely talk about them at all. In Toronto, bike lanes are no longer simply strips of pavement; they’ve become a powerful ideological avatar, a place where opposing sides—­downtowners and suburbanites, liberals and conservatives, drivers and cyclists—clash over road safety, politics, congestion management and the city’s future.

I drive, walk, Uber and take the TTC, and I’ve also been biking in Toronto for about two decades. Reporting this story took me from Etobicoke to Scarborough, from Lawrence Avenue down to the lake shore. Just about everywhere I went, I met someone who said you have to be reckless to cycle in Toronto. They’re right. Any regular cyclist knows the dangers: streetcar tracks, swinging car doors, ice, delivery trucks cutting corners, road-raging drivers and sometimes even other cyclists. Vast parts of the city have scant cycling infrastructure, which necessitates detours through cemeteries, ravines, parks and side streets, watching over your shoulder as trucks roar past, sometimes inches from your handlebars.

I’ve gotten used to the cut and thrust of navigating a heavy stream of cars. I’ve been doored, and once, more than a decade ago, I was hit by a car. I was cycling east along Davenport Road, in the bike lane. As I pedalled across Dufferin, a car turned left and collided with me, knocking me off my bike. The driver stopped to make sure I was okay. I was shaken but not hurt, and my bike survived. It wasn’t long before I was riding again. That said, I’m not a hardcore cyclist. I don’t bike through the winter or at night, if I can avoid it. But I’ve found that cycling is often the fastest and most enjoyable way to get around, despite its inherent risks.

I live in northwest Toronto and hadn’t been downtown much since the pandemic. So one morning in October, I invited Michael Longfield, executive director of Cycle Toronto, to show me the new bike infrastructure in the core. We met at Christie Pits Park and biked to his office at Spadina and Richmond, staying in bike lanes the whole way. We glided along Bloor through Koreatown, then went south on Palmerston’s contraflow lane. We turned left onto a section of College with a bike lane, streetcar tracks and spacious sidewalks for pedestrians. That kind of design is known as a “complete street.” The idea is that roads can be made safer for everyone by introducing narrower lanes, curb extensions and protected bike paths, all of which slow cars down and prioritize safety over speed. In 2012, when the Ontario coroner’s office published a review of the 129 cycling deaths that occurred in the province between 2006 and 2010, its first recommendation was to create more complete streets.

Toronto’s cycling network has grown substantially over the past decade. In 2016, the city introduced its Vision Zero road safety plan, so called for its aim of eliminating traffic-related fatalities, including cyclist deaths. The next year, city council approved TransformTO, an ambitious plan to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. One of the goals of TransformTO is to encourage residents to walk, bike or take transit for trips to work or school that are less than five kilometres. Then, during the pandemic, the city introduced ActiveTO, a social distancing plan that involved making even more room for pedestrians and cyclists. Bike Share stations are also popping up everywhere. In 2020, the city-owned program had 465 stations and 5,000 bikes, and it logged 2.9 million trips. In 2024, the number of trips ballooned to seven million, and this year the number of bikes and stations is set to double. After our ride downtown, Longfield pointed out that much of the route we took didn’t exist before the pandemic. Post-Covid, cycling in Toronto is more popular than ever. Cycling Toronto, which has long advocated for Bloor Street bike lanes, wants to see the network grow even more.

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The chaotic state of Toronto’s streets is a breeding ground for bad behaviour

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With the city’s upgraded bike infrastructure, it would be easy to think we’re living in a golden age of cycling. And in a narrow sense, we are. But the pandemic didn’t just trigger an upswell of cyclists—it also coincided with a series of changes that have led to the worst congestion this city has ever seen. Traffic patterns shifted, TTC ridership declined and the population continued to grow. More people ordered food and other goods for delivery, sending more drivers into traffic. Toronto’s aging infrastructure, including public transit and heavy-use roads like the Gardiner Expressway, couldn’t keep pace. When construction was green-lit again after lockdowns, there was a mad dash to catch up. In 2024, we had more cranes in the sky than most major North American cities. The Ontario Line, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and the Finch West LRT are all underway. In the long term, the transit projects will help relieve congestion, but in the short term, combined with all the other construction, they create dense, sprawling, maddening gridlock.

Getting around the city today is migraine-inducing as cars, cyclists, TTC vehicles, Bike Shares and e-bikes all jostle for position. Driving along Bloor recently, between Bathurst and Lansdowne, I saw cyclists running red lights and an e-scooter weaving around pedestrians on the sidewalk. The flimsy white bollards demarcating the bike lane were bent and filthy. Pedestrians texted as they stepped into the bike lane, and drivers—so many drivers—snuck furtive downward glances at their phones.

The chaotic state of Toronto’s streets is a breeding ground for bad behaviour, and the results can be devastating. In 2023, I went for a jog on a clear, sunny day. I was a block from home when a car cruised right through a stop sign and hit me as I was crossing the street. I bounced off the hood and landed in the road. The driver slowed, then sped off. Although I could clearly see the car’s colour—red—­and licence plate, as well as the logo identifying its make, I couldn’t understand what any of it meant. I was in shock. I was, miraculously, physically unharmed, but I still haven’t completely recovered from the emotional impact of the experience. I’ve often wondered how the driver could have just left me lying on my back in the street.

If you ask Doug Ford, bike lanes belong on side streets, not major roads. And in a city like Toronto, there is some sense in that: many of the arterial roads here, like Bloor and Yonge, are four lanes, two in each direction. When bike lanes are Frankensteined onto old designs, those streets get reduced to two lanes, and bottlenecking is inevitable. Yet, in order to build a viable network—­modern, extensive, efficient and widely used—­we need bike lanes on arterial roads. A city-wide grid of uninterrupted, interconnected bike lanes would make cycling safer and more appealing, which is a critical part of encouraging people to get out of their cars.

Toronto has plenty of quiet residential streets, but many of them run for only a few blocks, then dead-end at a boundary road. It’s the major arteries that connect one neighbourhood to another. That’s why Bloor, in particular, has been the Holy Grail for cyclists for decades. It’s a direct east-west route, connecting neighbourhoods from Etobicoke to Danforth, and it has a subway underneath to relieve above-ground traffic. It also connects a long list of major sites—like the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum.

Madeleine Bonsma-Fisher, a post­doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, was the lead author on a study that used machine learning to generate maps of potential future bike lanes in Toronto. She told me that, in every scenario the researchers ran, a Bloor West bike lane that stretched into Etobicoke was deemed critical. Bike lanes on arterial roads are “absolutely necessary,” Bonsma-Fisher says. “There are no parallel side streets that are suitable.”

Business owners on major streets are often opposed to bike lanes outside their storefronts, at least at first. When bike lanes were installed through the Annex on Bloor, shopkeepers worried that fewer parking spots would translate to fewer shoppers. Then monthly sales went up, as did the number of customers. As it turns out, not all shoppers were arriving by car. Now, the Bloor Annex BIA estimates that about 8,000 people use those bike lanes daily. It wants them to stay.

Some of these same concerns are playing out now in Etobicoke. Before Bill 212 became law, I met with Cody MacRae, the founder of Balance on Bloor, at a Starbucks in the Kingsway. The controversial new bike lanes were visible out the window. Morning rush-hour traffic appeared to flow smoothly, but MacRae insisted that this was atypical. “I am a cyclist. We don’t want cyclists to die,” he said. “But we need to do a better job of putting bike lanes where they make sense.” For MacRae, that means getting them off Bloor West and putting them on residential side streets instead. Ty Owens, owner of the Old Sod pub on Bloor, agrees. “What I’ve heard time and time again is that commute times have tripled,” he told me, referring to car traffic. “The average commuter used to need 30 minutes to get from here to downtown. Now, they spend an hour and a half in traffic.” I asked Owens if it’s possible that his “Fuck Bike Lanes” shirts do more harm than good. “I think it’s less about motorists versus cyclists and more of a logic versus illogic conversation,” he said. “If you live in the area, you know these bike lanes do not fit here.” If the bike lanes get removed, he says he’ll host a party.

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By targeting bike lanes, Ford seized a ripe opportunity to play to his base and scoop up single-issue swing voters

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Congestion is a city-wide issue. If commuters’ travel times have increased, is one bike lane to blame? According to city officials, as of June, peak travel times for cars on Bloor West between Runnymede and Aberfoyle Crescent rose from about 2.5 to 4.5 minutes eastbound and from 1.5 to 3.5 westbound. For motorists, that’s irritating, even if it represents only four kilometres and not a full drive from Etobicoke to downtown. But data also shows that average speeds decreased from just over 60 kilo­metres per hour to just over 50. The speed limit is 40 kilometres per hour. In other words, Bloor West’s complete street redesign—which is meant to prevent cars from speeding—is working. Opponents of bike lanes also complain that nobody is using them, but the city’s data suggests that the number of cyclists on that strip of Bloor has grown by 60 per cent. It may be a perception issue: a stream of 200 bikes looks a lot different than a traffic jam of 200 cars. Bikes take up much less space, which leaves empty concrete that can make a bike lane appear underused.

Like everything else these days, transit is political. An Abacus Data poll conducted with the Star late last year surveyed 998 Ontarians. Their feelings about Ford’s new bike lane legislation were mixed. Twenty-five per cent thought the new policy was a good idea, 30 per cent thought it was acceptable and 28 per cent were against it. The remaining 17 per cent were unsure. For the most part, respondents’ point of view on bike lanes mirrored their political leanings. The majority of ­Ontarians—68 per cent—get around by car or truck. Only one in three said they regularly or occasionally cycle, but among Torontonians, that number climbed to 42 per cent. Almost half of those who commuted by car or truck tended to vote Conservative, whereas public transit users and pedestrians were more likely to vote Liberal or NDP. By targeting bike lanes, Ford seized an opportunity to play to his base and scoop up disaffected swing voters united by the sheer agony of getting around.

Nobody ever describes themselves as “anti-bike.” Among the residents I spoke with, there was palpable concern with being labelled “against” bike lanes. Even the groups that have been most vocal on this issue—like Balance on Bloor—are quick to point out that they have some cyclists involved with their efforts. Everyone wants Toronto to have bike lanes, they claim. It’s just about deciding where they should go. If they don’t belong on arterial roads, as many are arguing, they’d have to be on residential streets. But, even in cases where bike lanes are slotted onto side streets, not everyone loves the idea of having them in their neighbourhood.

Last summer, a new bikeway was installed in Parkdale–High Park, along residential streets from the Queensway to Brock Avenue. Its implementation altered the traffic flow in the area. Jamie Khan lives on Pearson Avenue, an eastbound residential street west of Roncesvalles. Ever since the city installed a bike lane on Sunny­side Avenue, every car coming north on Sunnyside or east on Parkdale Road is pushed onto her street. I sat with Khan at Sunnyside and Pearson one October morning. It was after 10 a.m., not exactly rush hour. A steady line of vehicles ground past us. The traffic was so loud that it was sometimes hard to hear her. The air smelled thickly of exhaust. “This is all day,” she said. “You should see it during Caribana or the CNE.” Khan says that she repeatedly raised her concerns about traffic flow in meetings about the project. She hasn’t seen any modifications as a result. To her, it felt like the city’s consultations were for show.

City officials say that bikeways are among the most thoroughly studied and consulted-upon forms of infrastructure. So why are residents feeling unheard? In Parkdale–High Park, public consultations included meetings with special interest groups, a public drop-in and a survey. Councillor Gord Perks, who represents the ward, insists that the consultation process was “thorough and vigorous.” In Etobicoke-Lakeshore, councillor Amber Morley held three town halls regarding the Bloor West extension. Her team was meeting with the city’s transportation planners every two weeks. “This is what the work looks like,” Morley told me. “We don’t just move on. We continue to listen and work closely with staff and the community.”

The Sunnyside bikeway is less than a year old. It will take time to become part of the neighbourhood. The city monitors each lane after installation—larger projects for up to two years—and makes tweaks. They might add more parking and accessible loading zones, build speed humps, or alter traffic signal timing. By late last year, some of these changes had been approved for Parkdale–High Park and Bloor West. With any new infrastructure, growing pains are expected.

Perhaps it’s a bit rich for these residents to say they feel unheard when the premier himself is taking up their cause. On the other hand, cycling advocates and city officials can sometimes seem dismissive of concerns, even well-intentioned ones. Some residents told me they felt caught off-guard by the scope of cycling infrastructure on their streets. They learned about bike lanes and related changes from neighbours on Facebook. Some mentioned having received mailers, which they perceived as junk mail and threw away. They didn’t know what a complete street was. But, now, some have grown so frustrated that they’ve resorted to counting cars and bikes on their streets to back up their concerns, observations and theories.

Bike lanes have profound effects where they’re installed. The city’s process of approving them can feel slow and opaque to residents, who are too often called anti-cyclist or NIMBYs for complaining. If bike lanes don’t work for the people who live alongside them, then the network will always be divisive.

The first ghost bike appeared in Toronto in 2006. Now, there are more than 100 of them scattered across the city, marking intersections where cyclists have been killed. They’re painted white, and many are decorated with plastic flowers or other trinkets. They serve as both a memorial and a warning.

There’s a ghost bike locked to a pole at the southwest corner of Dufferin Grove Park for Alex Amaro. A journalism student at Toronto Metropolitan University, ­Amaro rode an olive-green Fuji she bought second-hand on Kijiji. In December of 2020, when she was 23, she worked her shift at a flower shop, then biked to Dufferin Mall. Cycling south on Dufferin toward home, she turned left onto Sylvan Avenue, and a driver hit and killed her.

For years after her death, Amaro’s ­family—her parents, George and Karen, and sister, Rebecca—rarely spoke publicly about the tragedy. But, after Bill 212 was tabled, they couldn’t stay silent. “When it comes to congestion, I get it. I’ve been a commuter,” says George. “Sitting in traffic is no fun. But let me tell you something: I would sit on the 401 for the rest of my life if it brought my daughter back.” George and Karen fear that Ford’s plan to remove bike lanes will lead to more injuries and deaths. They sent two letters to the premier and another to his minister of transportation, Prabmeet Sarkaria, asking them to reconsider the legislation, but they never received a reply. (Between October and December of 2024, I sent six emails to media contacts affiliated with Sarkaria’s office and left a voicemail requesting an interview for this story. I didn’t hear back either.)

The recent spike in cycling deaths in Toronto is one unfortunate by-product of more people riding; the more bikes and e-bikes on the road, the more they’ll come into conflict with other vehicles. Of the six fatalities in 2024, two occurred in Scarborough. That’s where the Bloor-Danforth bike lane abruptly ends at Victoria Park. When I visited that spot, I saw an elderly man cycle slowly on the sidewalk east of Vic Park, where there’s no segregation of traffic, then cross to the west side and dip carefully into the Danforth bike lane. A food delivery worker on a hefty e-bike zipped by. ­Marvin Macaraig, who coordinates a community biking program called Scarborough Cycles out of the Access Alliance health centre, sees cyclist deaths as a slow-burning health crisis. “Six in a year,” he says. “We shouldn’t shrug our shoulders and say that’s the price of living in a city.”

Macaraig describes Victoria Park as an “imaginary barrier.” On its face, it separates a street with a bike lane from a street without one. But a place without cycling infrastructure rarely becomes a place without cyclists—it just becomes a place where cyclists are less safe. Even a temporary break in the cycling network can be catastrophic. Last summer, a 24-year-old woman was cycling through Yorkville. She was in the protected lane on Bloor when she approached a construction dumpster blocking her way. When she veered into traffic to get around it, she was hit by a driver and killed.

The solutions to Toronto’s congestion problem are obvious, but they’re expensive and glacially slow to implement. Building better transit is a major part of keeping cars out of downtown. Other cities, like London and New York, have implemented a congestion charge, which disincentivizes driving in the core. But these are notoriously unpopular, and no premier has been willing to risk alienating GTA drivers. Instead, Toronto is working on a patchwork of traffic measures that includes increasing fines for vehicles that stop in intersections, penalizing developers for prolonged lane blockages at construction sites and trying to expand the bike network. By some estimates, just five per cent of Toronto roads have some sort of cycling infrastructure. It stretches credulity to think that removing this infrastructure will do much to cure gridlock, and it certainly won’t get us closer to a future where downtown is easily accessible.

While we argue over infrastructure that’s already been researched and installed, new technology has arrived. E-bikes and other micromobility devices have the potential to further grow cycling culture and replace car trips. In 2020, FedEx launched a fleet of cargo e-bikes in Toronto—a first for the company in the Americas—and it has since dispatched more across the country. Today, FedEx has 18 e-bikes operating in Toronto, and, yes, they’re using bike lanes. But the relatively new vehicles come with potential dangers. Last July, Adrienne Lei, a lawyer and long-time Toronto cyclist, was hit by a food delivery worker on an e-bike. Lei was cycling on Dundas near Bathurst when the e-bike driver veered too close to her, catching her handlebars and dragging her along for a few seconds before throwing her into the road. Bloodied and road-rashed, she got up and tried to confront the driver, who sped away. “I basically got hit by a motorcycle,” says Lei. The next day, she called the police non-emergency line and was informed that her collision wasn’t reportable because e-bikes aren’t classified as motor vehicles under the provincial Highway Traffic Act. It’s possible to launch a civil suit against an e-bike driver over such a collision, but it’s unlikely to end in a payout: e-bike riders aren’t required to carry auto insurance or have a driver’s licence.

When it comes to road safety, e-bike riders are also vulnerable. According to police, at least nine people have died or been seriously injured while using micro­mobility devices in Toronto. The vehicles are also a potential fire hazard: last January, an e-bike burst into flames on a subway, injuring one person. In response, the TTC voted to ban e-bikes and e-scooters with lithium-ion batteries from its vehicles and stations during winter months.

Transportation planners often refer to bike lanes as future-proofing. The idea is that they’ll provide space not only for cyclists but for more Bike Shares, electric micromobility vehicles and delivery workers. One day, we might even see autonomous robots cruising down them. Right now, though, the regulations around e-bikes and the like are confusing and sparse, and we won’t be able to address them properly until we’ve finished arguing over the bike lanes we already have.

Nobody likes traffic. But congestion is a sign of a busy city, somewhere people want to be. Toronto is in a period of rapid change, which is never easy. If we stop expanding the cycling network—or, worse, reverse it—nothing will change. Five to 10 years from now, we’ll still be living in a city seized by gridlock, where road injuries and fatalities remain all too common, complaining that our infrastructure hasn’t matched our explosive growth. Bike lanes have proven to be effective. They’re a normal, even boring part of a city’s infrastructure. They shouldn’t be burdened with every single hope and fear surrounding climate change, congestion and road safety. Blaming these strips of concrete for our traffic woes may be politically convenient, but if we allow bike lanes to become the rope in a vicious tug of war, then everyone—not just cyclists—will pay the price.

This story appears in the February 2025 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.