Toronto will move ahead with a $7.5-million Parkside Drive bike lane project even in the face of the Ford government’s efforts to limit how cities expand their cycling networks.
Just over two-thirds of councillors voted in favour of the motion to continue studying how Parkside could be reconfigured to accommodate bike lanes.
Some of those who voted against the motion raised concerns about the city wasting money on the study given the lanes could be blocked by provincial legislation. Others said cycling traffic should be encouraged to go through High Park, which wouldn’t require removing a car lane from Parkside.
Parkside Drive sits just east of High Park. It’s a major north-south thoroughfare connecting Bloor Street to Lake Shore Drive and the Gardiner Expressway.
Residents have long lobbied the city to make the street safer.
“Narrow and missing sidewalks, lack of bikeways, excessive vehicular speeds and aggressive driving” are commonplace on Parkside Drive, staff said in a report.
Three people have been killed and five seriously injured in nearly 1,500 collisions in the last 10 years. It’s also the speeding ticket capital of Toronto. Since April 2022, an automatic speed camera has issued over 61,000 tickets.
Council didn’t technically greenlight constructing new bike lanes along Parkside. Instead, the vote gave staff the go-ahead to continue planning.
However, the vote margin all but means when the topic comes up again after the planning phase, the lanes will be officially approved.
As it stands, staff are proposing a two-kilometre stretch of bike lanes that would require removing a car lane, which means the eventual project could be killed by the Ford government’s bill.
Staff said construction won’t start until 2026 at the earliest.
