After predicting section could be ready this year, committee chairman now says effect on traffic, parking needs to be studied first

BYLINE: Jeff Gray
NEWSPAPER: The Globe And Mail
SECTION: Toronto News; Cycling; Pg. A10
DATE: MAY 29, 2009

Controversial plans for a crosstown bike lane along Bloor Street and Danforth Avenue appear to have hit a speed bump, as the city now plans to hire an external consultant to study the idea.

Just last week, the councillor who chairs the city’s cycling committee, Adrian Heaps, said a first, eastern phase of the city-spanning bike lane could be installed as early as this year, if approved.

But yesterday, Mr. Heaps said a third-party review of the parking and traffic problems and the benefits and costs to local businesses was needed before going ahead.

“We want to make sure that when this lane goes in there, it’s not only a transportation benefit, it’s an economic benefit as well,” Mr. Heaps said, adding that if the study showed the lanes would hurt local businesses, he would not support them.

The city’s works committee had been expected to debate a feasibility study of a Bloor-Danforth bike lane from Kipling Avenue to Victoria Park Avenue next week, with Mr. Heaps originally suggesting a section from Victoria Park to Sherbourne Street could be installed this year.

But instead, a staff report released yesterday includes just three paragraphs on the concept, saying a consultant would be hired to conduct a study and consult the public.

The report says city staff had completed a “preliminary evaluation” of parking and traffic conditions and concluded that “it is not feasible” to install uniform bike lanes on the entire route without sacrificing parking or rush-hour traffic flow. Some wider stretches, however, “have the potential to accommodate bicycle lanes with minimal impacts.”

The report also says the city will continue studying the idea of a protected or buffered bike lane, possibly with a physical barrier, on University Avenue and Queen’s Park Crescent.

Essentially, installing conventional bike lanes is a matter of deciding whether to sacrifice on-street parking or rush-hour traffic capacity. For example, installing them on the busy Greektown stretch of the Danforth would make it impossible to ban parking on alternating sides of the street in the rush hours, which the city does now to open up extra traffic lanes.

After a report in The Globe and Mail last week, many business owners along the popular Danforth stretch of mainly Greek restaurants expressed anger at the idea of losing parking spots to bike lanes. However, a few welcomed the idea.

Mr. Heaps said an external consultant would be seen as more objective than city staff, and would be able to study how bike lanes might actually improve business along the Danforth and attract customers, as well as look at parking and traffic flow.

“I want people to buy in, from the ground up,” Mr. Heaps said.

Word that brakes appeared to have been applied to the project come after a week of fights at city hall over transportation issues.

Plans for bike lanes on Jarvis Street, a redesign for streetcar stops on Roncesvalles Avenue and a proposed test of banning right turns on red lights at 10 intersections were all linked by some of Mayor David Miller’s critics as a “war on the car,” yet still passed by council.

The committee will also debate another 24 kilometres of smaller bike lanes (including a 3.4-kilometre stretch of Bloor Street West) and plans to bring in a 3,000 bike “bike share” or bike rental system, similar to Montreal’s Bixi system, next year.