The Ontario Court of Appeal has at long last broken the cycle of ramming bike lanes wherever the petulant cyclepaths, aka the aggressive bike lobby, deem they should be in Toronto.
Their ruling — which came down late last week — overturns a decision by activist Judge Paul Schabas to prevent the Ontario government from removing bike lanes on busy, traffic-gridlocked streets. Schabas declared a year ago that the helmet heads have a constitutional right to bike lanes wherever they are rolled out.
That Court of Appeal decision means intrusive bike lanes on three major streets in Toronto — University, Yonge and Bloor — could soon be ripped out, never to hamper the flow of traffic again.
Score 1 for common sense. 0 for cycling ideology.
For years, the loud and aggressive bike lobby in Toronto has acted like they own the city’s streets.
They have repeatedly tried to intimidate weak-willed councillors — most of whom would never be seen atop a bike of any kind (e-bike or classic) — into ramming bike lanes onto busy, already gridlocked streets.
They have constantly guilted the politicians into believing bike lanes will keep cyclists safe.
But really, their approach is anything but balanced. It’s mostly about a war on the car — that is, eliminating the car as a premier mode of transport in Canada’s largest city.
There’s very little I support when it comes to our Premier Doug Ford as of late, but when his government passed the Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act in 2024 — that is, to remove bike lanes on Bloor St., University Ave. and Yonge St. — I was in total agreement.
These streets have all been a disaster in the making.
I wrote extensively about the fight over the initial installation of 5.2 km of bike lanes on Bloor St. in 2017 while at the Toronto Sun.
Of the local businesses surveyed, 51% were against the bike lanes, knowing full well that they would drive business down.
And they did.
The city’s leftist transportation gurus rammed them through anyway.
Despite what these gurus will tell you with their highly skewed studies, all three sets of lanes have slowed traffic because one lane of traffic in each direction has been removed. It just makes perfect sense.
The city has done pilots, skewed the numbers, and then claimed all is well with the world, and voila, the lanes were installed.
The Yonge St. bike lanes were piloted in 2021 and were made permanent in 2023. Not that anyone expected them to be ripped out.
The University Ave. bike lanes were snuck in under then-Mayor John Tory when no one was paying attention during the COVID lockdowns.
They have greatly impacted the traffic on Hospital Row and are hardly used. Ditto for Yonge St. I know because I have used the lanes to get downtown on my e-bike.
I have regularly had to veer to the side to let food delivery people — sometimes on motorized bikes — whiz by.
In fact, in my own neighbourhood where bike lanes were also installed on Eglinton Ave., the food delivery people are the only ones who use them.
petulant bike lobby got incensed with Ford’s legislation; however, it made sense, and they took it to court, where activist Schabas gave the cyclists a huge win last summer. He ruled that removing the bike lanes would violate the safety and constitutional rights of cyclists.
Late last week, the three-judge Court of Appeal came back with its own ruling and a slapdown of Schabas.
They said there is no constitutional right to bike lanes and that the Ontario government is free to create them and to remove them.
Judging whether the bike lanes are wise or unwise policy, as Schabas did, is not the business of the courts, they said.
”The bottom line is this: there is no constitutional obligation to regulate the use of roads in any particular manner — no constitutional obligation to build bike lanes or to retain any that have been built,” the judges wrote.
The Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization has been on an active campaign to fight bike lanes where they make no sense.
They held a party Tuesday night to celebrate the ruling.
Spokesman Dana McKiel said Schabas went far beyond his guardrails and Charter rights in his ruling.
He said DCCO legal team’s persistence with the Ontario transportation minister — along with his legal team — “paid off” with a unanimous decision for common sense.
“This sends a clear message to current Mayor Olivia Chow, activists on Toronto city council, Cycle Toronto, to rabid bike lawyer David Shellnutt and Progress Toronto that their days of wild ideologies have reached the end of their political bike tracks,” says McKiel.
Exactly.
Let the helmet heads keep spinning their wheels.
Common sense is back on track.