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Ontario’s premier and transportation minister have said for months that removing bike lanes is a necessary measure to reduce traffic in the GTA. But hundreds of pages of internal ministry documents, reports and emails show the government is aware the move may not have a meaningful impact on congestion and could increase collisions for everyone who uses roads.
The heavily-redacted documents were made public as part of a court challenge to the legislation — Bill 212 would see bike lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue removed — mounted by the charity Cycle Toronto in Toronto.
The documents were used in an argument for an injunction Tuesday to prevent any bike lane removal work until the court challenge is heard in full in April.
The documents include a presentation on a legislative plan for a “pro-driver package” and emails between Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) staff that cast doubt on the ability to achieve bikes lanes on secondary streets as the minister publicly promised.
There is also a report prepared by the engineering and urban planning firm CIMA+ for MTO that says collisions for all road users could increase by upwards of 54 per cent when bike lanes are removed, based on prior research.
“There is a medium risk that the proposed change will not achieve the desired outcomes,” reads a 2024 cabinet office committee briefing note.
“Given that current data and research does not confirm that removing bike lanes that occupy a lane of traffic would significantly alleviate congestion.”
The Ontario government’s plan to remove bike lanes in Toronto had its day in court on Tuesday. CBC’s Lane Harrison has what you need to know.
An October briefing that asks what sections of the Bloor, Yonge and University lanes should be removed notes that the MTO did not own the “data required to support a decision to remove a bike lane.”
The cyclists mounting the court challenge say the documents reveal that MTO has privately been aware of what many critics have been saying about the legislation: that it won’t solve Toronto’s traffic issues, will make people unsafe, and there is no readily available network of secondary roads to replace the targeted routes.
Province calls engineering report high-level
At the injunction hearing Tuesday, the lawyer for the province said Ontario will have lots of documents and evidence to argue its rationale when the court challenge is heard in full in April. On the CIMA+ report specifically, which outlines an increased collision risk, Padraic Ryan argued the report was a high-level commentary with no original analysis.
The CIMA+ work for the province is broken down into two phases, per the documents. The first phase, which is where the 54 per cent increase in collisions figure comes from, was a review of relevant research and case studies. A second phase of research, with site-specific safety analysis, is not included in the recently released batch of documents.
The report says based on previous research, bike infrastructure can reduce collisions between 35 per cent to 50 per cent. It notes the increase in collisions could be reduced if less people bike on the roads where the bike lanes are removed, but cyclists may start riding on sidewalks instead — increasing risk for pedestrians.
MTO staff cast doubt on replacing routes with secondary roads
“I want to make sure that the bikers are safe,” Premier Doug Ford said in November. “I have always believed that you don’t put [bike lanes] on main arterial roads, you put them on secondary roads.”
Ford and Prabmeet Sarkaria, his transportation minister, have repeatedly promised that ripped out bike lanes would be replaced by bike lanes on parallel streets to give cyclists another option. A solution that has been criticized by cyclists who say routes can’t be replaced on smaller roads without making someone’s trip significantly longer and less direct.
An issue MTO staff appear to be aware of. In an email exchange in mid-December, a MTO staffer says cyclists are sensitive to changes in trip length and will often choose the shortest route, which in a big city is often a major roadway.
Ontario’s transportation minister has defended his government’s decision to rip up bike lanes on Toronto’s major streets by saying just 1.2 per cent of people in the city commute by bicycle. But as CBC’s Lane Harrison explains, federal data shows the number is higher in places where the targeted bike lanes already exist.
“While I understand that there is messaging about the secondary roads, the extent to which that could be achieved and used in Toronto for example is an unknown/unlikely,” wrote the MTO staff member.
The report from CIMA+ echoes this concern, saying cyclists will likely continue using the most direct routes. It also says some major bike routes in Toronto have barriers like hills, ravines, bridges and rail lines that make a direct alternative route difficult.
It says there are a limited number of north-south streets that make sense for cycling infrastructure “without impacting existing vehicle lanes” on major roads.
Small businesses may suffer along routes
In a news release issued in January about the plans, an Etobicoke business owner among a group suing the city for installing bike lanes in the neighbourhood said the lanes are “hurting local businesses.”
Ford has said congestion costs the province’s economy billions of dollars, as goods and services are stuck in traffic “because they have one lane of traffic in the most congested city in North America.”
But ministry documents say the removal of bike lanes could be the thing to cause hurt.
“Evidence shows that bike lanes have a positive economic impact on local retail businesses,” reads a briefing from August.
