As a food delivery courier navigating the streets of downtown Toronto, my daily reality paints a picture of both the promise and the peril of urban cycling. For me, protected bike lanes on main streets that connect me to restaurants, businesses, and to my customers are the only way I can do my work safely.
Recently it has felt like food delivery and bike lanes have become more of a matter of online discourse than the daily reality of thousands of Ontario workers like me.
It’s not the first time we’ve gone viral, though. Some might remember the vicious road rage a courier faced in 2013 where the Bloor bike lanes now give cyclists a healthy separation from cars. More recently, some may recall the tragic death of courier Ali Sezgin Armagan on Avenue Road, where newly installed bike lanes now offer a safe path of travel that was not afforded to Ali.
It’s easy to see that online, bike lanes and those who rely on them are a scapegoat for Toronto’s persistent congestion woes. The reality is, every food delivery courier on a bike is one less car fighting for parking spots and worsening our traffic jams. But if the bike lanes are removed, most of us will continue cycling, risking our safety in mixed traffic again.
I’ve been working as a full-time bicycle courier since 2016. Since then, the expansion of protected bike lanes on some of Toronto’s major streets has significantly improved my ability to work efficiently and safely. The lanes provide a physical barrier that keeps me safe from cars and other vehicles.
Of course, it’s not just couriers who benefit. All day, I ride alongside kids riding to school, commuters riding to work, and people out doing their daily errands by bike.
I have firsthand experience of the dangers of riding without this new protection. I was “doored” on Bloor a few years ago, before the bike lanes were installed. Had that stretch of Bloor looked then as it does now, I could have avoided the collision completely. The distance that cement barriers create between car traffic and the bike lane would have given me enough space to swerve to the right to avoid the door as it swung open.
After being doored, I couldn’t stop thinking about a fellow courier, Bill, I had befriended over the years who was killed just over a year ago in Scarborough on his way to work. He was riding on a road without protected bike lanes. His death forced me to rethink my mode of transportation and livelihood. It’s impossible not to question everything when you lose a colleague on the job. I’m positive that protected bike lanes could have saved his life.
Watching the provincial government legislate the removal of bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue has been both frustrating and scary.
I’ve ridden around this city enough to know there isn’t a network of secondary roads that could replace protected bike lanes on Bloor, Yonge, and University. By threatening to rip them out, it feels like the province is saying my safety doesn’t count and isn’t worth protecting.
Whether or not you use the apps a lot yourself, you almost certainly know plenty who do.
Every time that button is pressed to have something delivered to our doorsteps, somebody out there will be accepting the order. In an economy like this, with the cost of living crisis getting worse, more and more have been incentivized to spend their days making deliveries.
Wouldn’t we all rather they be safe while they do so?
__
Narada Kiondo is a food delivery courier working in Toronto. He is an applicant along with Cycle Toronto in a legal challenge against Ontario's Bill 212, which the Progressive Conservative government has said it will use to remove bike lanes in Toronto.
