If Toronto wants to ease the traffic choking its streets, it should consider removing bike lanes, on-street parking and curbside patios from its major thoroughfares, according to a new report from the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
The board’s task force on congestion released a report on Thursday in which it recommends a wide range of policies to tackle the city’s clogged roads, including reducing lane closures, enhancing traffic enforcement, unclogging arterial roads, clearing traffic on the Gardiner and implementing political “accountability mechanisms.”
“What the data makes clear is that Toronto’s congestion crisis is a crisis of management and inadequate planning,” according to the report. The task force commissioned engineering firm Parsons and infrastructure consultancy firm Steer to do the analysis for its report.
The report points mainly at construction — a finding supported by city officials — as the reason for the city’s congestion woes, but adds that it has been “compounded by competing street uses such as bike lanes, on-street parking and curb-lane cafes.” The report recommends removing those three elements from some of the city’s most heavily used roads.
Bike lanes, according to the report, should be on “secondary roads,” echoing statements from Doug Ford whose government has vowed to remove bike lanes on Bloor, University and Yonge Streets, as well as put restrictions on building new bike lanes.
The rationale, the report says, is to get “connector roads” like Bloor Street flowing more efficiently with more road space. That’s also the reason it recommends reviewing the city’s curb lane cafe program to take into account “the impact they have on our circulating traffic.”
In 2024, more than 1,400 businesses participated in CaféTO, including 304 curb lane cafés, generating $130 million in economic benefits for the city, according to the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas.
The report also recommended moving on-street parking from major arterials into private parking lots and store-owned spaces.
The report also gives a dollar figure for how much closing road lanes for construction is costing the city. Closing one lane can cost $1.7 million a month or $20 million a year. Closing two lanes of the Gardiner, as the city has planned for the expressway’s rehabilitation program until 2027, has socioeconomic costs of $200 million.
One way to help reduce offset the costs and speed the construction, the task force recommends, is to increase the price the city charges for lane closures equivalent to other major cities. Toronto currently charges companies $37,000 per month, compared with London, where the fee to close a 40-metre lane for 30 days is $139,000 or Singapore and Sydney, where the charges are more than $50,000.
The city proposed higher fees as part of a congestion management plan released in September, meant to incentivize developers to work faster. Those charges have been approved by city council, but the new rates have yet to be announced.
Raktim Mitra, a TMU professor and co-director of the school’s TransFrom Research Laboratory, said that some of the proposed solutions in the task force’s report don’t “recognize the complexity of current urban systems and local economies.”
“There’s a danger in converting lively urban streets into road spaces that are primarily moving vehicles from one place to another,” he said.
Mitra added that Toronto only has so much road, and pulling away from other road users isn’t a solution to congestion.
“We don’t want to build roads just for moving the vehicles, (but) streets that are also destinations where there are shops and local businesses.”
The report also calls for stricter enforcement of the rules of the road, including using red light cameras for blocking the box and more enforcement on stopping and standings violations. Blocking the box has been a hot-button issue at city hall, with council raising fines.
“Despite years of conversation and well-intended short-term fixes, we remain gridlocked,” said Giles Gherson, president of the board of trade. “Toronto’s streets are trying to do everything for everyone, and in the process, they’re failing to meet their fundamental purpose.”
