One of the most powerful lobbies at City Hall are the helmet heads.
The city’s diehard cyclists are entitled, single-minded, tenacious and have a deep-seated hate for drivers.
They have regularly packed any meetings that are disguised as consultations for new bike lanes, though the decisions are already made by the leftist transportation czarina Barbara Gray and her cycling bureaucrats.
They try to bully politicians and other community residents who dare speak up against more lanes.
The war on the car is a reality in Toronto.
You only have to look at the stats.
The total kilometres of bike lanes have doubled in the three years since I wrote about them in the Toronto Sun.
Back in 2021, there were 335 km of bikeways – 240 km of bike lanes, 82 km of cycle tracks and 13 km of contraflow lanes.
According to a city spokesman this week, there are now 678.6 km of bikeways in Toronto.
I believe several of the bike lanes that have taken over major thoroughfares are unnecessary.
Yet it does not surprise the cyclepath lobby has reacted hysterically to Premier Doug Ford’s Reducing Gridlock Saving You Time Act.
That new law intends to monitor the epidemic of bike lanes in Ontario and to even rip out lanes, including three very contentious routes in Toronto: University Ave., Bloor St. and Yonge St.
The move will be “dangerous” for everyone, and will “increase congestion,” according to the cyclepaths and their acolytes in the left-wing media.
The bike lane obsessed – who never have any concern for spending on anything – also claim it will “waste tax money.” That one is absolutely hypocritical and absurd.
I write this as someone who bikes regularly around town – taking my new Micro e-bike to assignments and to do errands.
I do it for exercise and convenience, as I absolutely hate trying to find parking or negotiating gridlock downtown.
Admittedly, the bike lanes make me feel safer BUT I often see no one on the lanes I use other than the odd food delivery person.
There are plenty of alternative side streets.
There are also no controls over those riding electric bikes (powered by motors) that should not be in the lanes. They whiz by at a high rate of speed, making the separated lines extremely unsafe to regular riders like myself.
It’s like the Wild West.
Both Yonge St. and University Ave. bike lanes were built by taking out a lane of traffic causing non-stop back-ups and congestion.
I see it all the time.
In my Eglinton Ave. neighbourhood, the new lanes – which also took out a lane of traffic in both directions – have created a kind of gridlock I’ve never seen before.
Emergency vehicles regularly have a difficult time negotiating through such gridlock.
It is virtually impossible to drop off seniors in walkers to doctors and other appointments.
The endless uncoordinated construction on so many Toronto streets doesn’t help matters either.
I believe that the cycling lobby won’t be happy until bikes lanes tie up every major street.
It is not about what is practical. It’s about forcing an ideology down everyone’s throats.
Realistically, there is no need for bike lanes on so many major streets — such as hospital row on University Ave. — considering there are ample alternatives.
I haven’t even mentioned the fact that we are in a four-season city — meaning commuting by bike is appealing to most only from April to November (the latter month, dependent on how cold it becomes).
In other words, only the diehard cyclist uses the lanes in the winter months.
The city’s own figures support this thesis, although I don’t find them particularly reliable.
The city’s media people told me that on average 2,200 cyclists use the lanes on Sherbourne on a average summer day (June, July, August) and 4,100 on Bloor at Markham St. That dwindles down to 1,700 daily on Bloor St at Oakmount in Toronto’s High Park.
City stats show that those volumes dwindle down to 34% of the summer numbers during December, January and February and as low as 23% at Bloor and Oakmount (391 daily).
Predictably, they don’t have numbers for the other two contentious bikeways: University Ave. and Yonge St. — probably because they are so low they don’t want people to know.
The bike lane issue is really low-hanging fruit for the provincial Conservatives.
I wish they paid as much attention to the woke nutters in their education ministry and at many Ontario school boards.
Still I have no issue with Ford trying to get a grip on congestion in Toronto.
It certainly won’t happen under the watch of Marxist Olivia Chow, or the radical leftists from Progress Toronto and other activist organizations that prop her up.
Cars and trucks are dirty words for these socialists.
I guess we shouldn’t tell them that vehicles deliver their favourite soy milk and organic coffees to shops they frequent — and often park in bike lanes while they do their deliveries.
Heaven forbid they should find that out.
