“Changing the channel” is a well-known technique in politics. When a politician is in trouble for something, they make a big announcement on a totally different issue.
For example, a premier facing criticism for a housing crisis and also dealing with a land speculation scandal might one day try to change the channel by making a lot of noise about traffic. Maybe he floats the idea of a new highway tunnel and says he wants to remove bike lanes. Debate erupts, and there you go, the channel has successfully been changed.
Traffic is of course important, so the debate can’t be ignored. And bike lanes, which exist on four per cent of Toronto streets, are convenient and lifesaving for bike riders.
So we should engage in the debate, while also keeping the big picture in mind.
Traffic history
For most of the last century, transportation decision-making in Ontario has prioritized moving cars, as opposed to moving people.
In 1953, when Queen’s Park appointed Fred Gardiner as chairman of Metropolitan Toronto, a key task was to tackle traffic congestion. Road safety didn’t get much attention, with death and serious injury often treated as a cost of modern transportation. Road deaths peaked at 135 in 1964. That is more than double today’s annual toll, despite Toronto being a far more populous city.
“Big Daddy,” as Gardiner was known, vowed to “cut five or six feet off many sidewalks, shove the poles back and create two new lanes for traffic.” He added that “there are millions of dollars invested in useless concrete in this city in sidewalks that are hardly used at all.” Gardiner got his wish but not the desired result, ignoring what’s known as “induced demand.” When more car lanes are added, it induces or encourages more car travel, and the extra lanes quickly fill up.
When the Toronto By-Pass was built in 1953 as part of the new Highway 401, it had four lanes separated by a wide grass median. Today, the 401 has ballooned to as many as 18 lanes.
Premier Doug Ford’s move now to remove existing bike lanes on Bloor, Yonge, and University sounds a lot like Gardiner’s “solution” in 1953. What is noticeably absent from Ford’s Bill 212, titled the Reducing Gridlock and Saving You Time Act, is any supporting evidence that it will save anyone time.
What it will do is overturn two decades of community advocacy, city studies, and council debates.
The Etobicoke bike lane
At city council, a 21-1 vote in June 2023 approved the extension of the Bloor West Complete Street plan, including bike lanes, westward from Runnymede Road to Kipling Avenue. That bike lane is today part of a popular 21 km east-west route that connects Scarborough, East York, the old city and Etobicoke. It may stretch to Mississauga someday, which has been planning its own Bloor bike lanes.
The section in Etobicoke is opposed by several local business leaders and by Premier Ford. Around 80 per cent of the 170,000 people who traverse that corridor daily are not in cars, but travel using other modes, primarily the TTC subway. The 25,000 cars that use it daily have on average about 1.5 occupants, and even less during rush hour when congestion is at its worst. But those car users are getting most of the attention.
How the city moves
In Toronto, 59 per cent of residents say they walk, cycle or take transit as their primary mode of transport. With increasing population density, these numbers will only increase.
Ford and his transportation minister, Prabmeet Sarkaria, have been peddling outdated or incorrect numbers about bike use in the city, actually repeating figures originally touted by Balance on Bloor, a group of affluent businessmen who oppose the Etobicoke bike lanes. The city reports that bike use is far higher, in part relying on figures soon to be released by the Ministry of Transportation itself.
And Toronto’s deputy fire chief recently refuted claims about delays for emergency vehicles, saying response times have actually improved in Etobicoke where the bike lane extension is located.
Solving traffic congestion begins with greater investment in public transit. Obviously getting the overdue, over-budget Eglinton LRT going will help, but it also requires better bus service, bus lanes in the right spots, greater frequency of service, and an improved GO system for the GTA.
The enormous sums of money that Ford wants to squander on proposed highway megaprojects like the Highway 401 tunnel or Highway 413 would be more effectively invested in mass transit that will get drivers
out of cars.
These solutions must be supplemented by reining in car-dependent suburban sprawl, and giving people safe walking and cycling options, including bike lanes.
These solutions might not as easily be translated into votes, but they will actually address traffic congestion.
For more Toronto cycling history from Albert Koehl, check out his 2024 book Wheeling through Toronto: A History of the Bicycle and Its Riders, published by University of Toronto Press.
This article appeared in the 2024 Dec - 2025 Jan issue.