Ontario’s transportation minister is defending his government’s decision to remove bike lanes from major streets in Toronto, saying just 1.2 per cent of people in the city commute by bicycle — but census data shows that number is higher in several areas where bike lanes actually exist.
The 1.2 per cent figure, recorded during the 2011 Statistics Canada census and mirrored by numbers in the 2021 census, comes from a survey of the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). The CMA stretches from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe and includes places like Richmond Hill, Oakville and Vaughan.
As a result, cycling advocates are raising concerns about using the CMA to assess bike use.
“It’s very misleading,” said Anthony Smith, a cycling advocate who creates and shares his own maps of Toronto cycling data on X, formerly Twitter, under the handle SafeStreetsTO.
“Cycling is a local issue. It’s really important we look at data within about five kilometers of where people live and work. And that’s really the downtown core of the city of Toronto.”
On Nov. 1 Sarkaria said bike lanes used by “only 1.2 percent of people” to get to work — specifically on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue — need to be removed as “70 per cent of the population travels to work by car.”
Not only does federal data show higher cycling rates within Toronto’s boundaries, the city also has its own data on cycling.
A 2019 city study found that 44 per cent of Torontonians bike in good weather to get to school, work, shop or visit friends. It also found 26 per cent of people bike for fun or fitness only, making 70 per cent of Torontonians cyclists in some capacity. The survey was conducted by Nanos online in May 2019, with a final sample size of 1,519 residents.
BikeShare Toronto is also seeing high demand. In 2015, the service recorded 665,000 trips. In September, its director said he expected more than six million trips by the end of 2024.
Percentage of cyclists higher where bike lanes exist
While Statistics Canada provides data on the number of people who primarily commute by bike for Toronto and its suburbs, the agency also breaks down the data by federal riding.
In the University-Rosedale riding, which includes Bloor Street from Ossington Avenue to Mount Pleasant Road, University Avenue to Dundas Street W., as well as Yonge Street from Bloor Street to Dupont Street, about 8.3 per cent of people bike and 36 per cent drive, federal data shows.
In Spadina-Fort York, where the University bike lane continues, nearly five per cent of people bike and 37 per cent drive, StatsCan says.
Toronto city manager Paul Johnson told Metro Morning’s David Common if the province legislates changes to bike lanes in the city, he wants reimbursement to include planning time and staff wages. When asked about that, Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said the province will “reimburse the removal.”
Where the Bloor bike lane cuts through the west end in Parkdale-High Park, about six per cent of people bike and 48 per cent drive.
And in Toronto-St. Paul’s, where the Yonge Street bike lane takes riders from Yorkville to Davisville, about three per cent of people ride and 46 per cent drive.
However in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, where the debate around bike lanes has been perhaps most intense, ridership aligns perfectly with Sarkaria’s messaging: it’s at 1.2 per cent, with nearly 70 per cent of people driving.
Asked if he felt he was misleading the province, the transportation minister said Tuesday: “The reality of the situation is that gridlock is the worst it’s ever been in the province.”
Why more lanes could lead to more cars
Sarkaria has said he’s coming after bike lanes because they are “taking away lanes of traffic on our most congested roads,” he said in October.
But Smith says in transportation planning, there is something called induced demand.
“The more lanes you have available, generally it attracts more drivers and it actually makes the problem worse. More drivers equals more congestion,” he said.
He said more lanes doesn’t mean people are getting home faster.
“It just means the cyclists who would have had a safe place to ride are now sitting there mixing in with the traffic, vulnerable to being injured.”
The Ontario government is planning to remove three sections of bike lanes in Toronto. At a news conference on Friday, Mayor Olivia Chow emphasized there have been several studies done in recent years that support the existing bike lanes.
The transportation minister has argued bike lanes should just be installed on side streets, but executive director of Cycle Toronto Michael Longfield said that wouldn’t make sense.
“Looking at the Bloor bikeway in Etobicoke, it’s crossing two ravines, two rivers, you know. The neighborhood side streets don’t make those types of crossings,” he said.
Longfield added that putting the Bloor bike lane in Etobicoke on side streets could add about two kilometres and 15 to 20 minutes to someone’s ride.
“That’s going to discourage a lot of people [from riding] bikes,” he said.