Bike lanes have been singled out by the provincial government as a leading contributor of congestion in Toronto’s streets — but a local columnist said he has identified a different culprit: traffic lights.
In a recent article in City Hall Watcher — a weekly newsletter about Toronto city council — nuclear engineer Damien Moule decoded why he believes the municipality’s many traffic lights are the main reason for gridlock.
While he recognizes traffic lights reduce overflow on roads as intended, Moule can’t grasp why certain streets like Lakeshore Boulevard and Queens Quay utilize so many when they could be geared towards long-distance, uninterrupted traffic flow.
Moule argued Toronto should be taking notes from other cities on how to use its roads effectively — including for drivers.
Referencing Copenhagen, Stockholm and Amsterdam, he wants the city to establish “priority roads” for cars that support traffic flow efficiently while maintaining separate bike lanes along the same routes.
Moule told TorontoToday he remains “deeply confused” over Premier Doug Ford’s logic behind tearing out bike lanes on major streets — including Yonge, University and Bloor — in the name of improving congestion.
Moule argued driving will always be slow on Yonge, Bloor and University because those roads run along subway lines.
Subway stations draw pedestrians, who need traffic lights to cross the street, he noted in City Hall Watcher, and tend to connect to bus and streetcar routes.
“Without a trunk full of lucky horseshoes, you will spend more time stopped at red lights than moving on University,” he wrote.
He pointed to the city’s traffic count data, which shows average daytime car counts have been declining significantly on major streets over the years. Traffic peaked on Yonge, University and Bloor decades ago and began dropping well before bike lanes were added to any of them.
Yet, “the bottlenecks still remain,” he told TorontoToday by phone.
“Taking out the bike lanes will make cycling a worse option for everyone, and it puts midtown on an island because there’s no other cycling connections between midtown and downtown. I’d expect bike counts to drop pretty rapidly.”
Raktim Mitra, a Toronto Metropolitan University faculty member with expertise in transportation and urban planning, agreed that streets like Yonge, University and Bloor are designed to be slow — and removing bike lanes won’t change that.
“Every intersection — signalled or not — means traffic has to slow down,” Mitra told TorontoToday.
Moule advocates for the adoption of intersection tools that aren’t traffic lights, such as medians that only let drivers turn one direction.
Because with the high number of traffic lights Toronto already has — and continues to add — turning bike lanes into car lanes will not allow traffic to speed up, he argued.
“The premier and minister of transportation are just shooting from the hip because they see the bike lanes while they’re stuck at a red light and get frustrated by that — but those two things just aren’t related,” he told TorontoToday.
“It’s a pure loss with no gain for anybody — it’s just bad public policy.”
