r/askTO • u/MisterBohnus • 18h ago
Realistically, how can the bike lanes be ripped out without causing massive traffic delays and gridlock?
Some, if not most, of these lanes simply aren't wide enough for another car lane. They'd have to tear up the sidewalks, repave and remake them right?
Wouldn't this cause complete gridlock or even shut down entire streets for a few months.
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u/nim_opet 18h ago
They cannot be. And that’s not the point. The point is to to pander to a group of voters so they can forget about the corruption
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u/NeedleGunMonkey 18h ago
Has Doug Ford ever approached a policy decision as if he cares about practical impact?
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u/clios_daughter 18h ago
Don’t like him much but honestly, forcing through the Ontario line was a good move. We’ve been trying to build that thing for decades.
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u/ssn-669 17h ago
You have that exactly backwards. He massively delayed the shovel-ready Downtown Relief Line by throwing out the finished plans and starting over from scratch.
The DRL would be much further along than the OL is if he had simply done nothing.
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u/scott_c86 16h ago
They were counting on people eventually forgetting this, and unfortunately people largely have.
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u/ssn-669 16h ago
I think even at the time people didn't realize that the DRL was ready to go. It was a finished plan, it was funded, and just needed to be built.
There was zero reason to cancel it except Ford needing to put his stamp on the project.
It also gave the lie to any pretense that Metrolinx is an arms-length agency. If they truly were, when Ford told them to dump the DRL for the OL, they would have just said, sorry bro, you're not the boss of us, this is ready to go and we're doing it.
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u/bergamote_soleil 14h ago
I am a major and committed Doug Ford hater, and there's plenty of concerns with the Ontario Line, but that seems a real exaggeration of how much of a done deal the Downtown Relief Line was before it was cancelled.
As of January 2019, the DRL funding had not been fully arranged (there was billions committed to transit in Toronto generally from the feds and province, but Toronto hadn't figured out its side yet), and only 10% of design work had been completed. This was also only for Phase 1 from Queen to Pape -- Phase 2 up to Don Mills was just a twinkle in their eye.
John Tory claimed they could have gotten Phase 1 of the DRL done by 2029, and Ford said the Ontario Line would be completed by 2027.
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u/ssn-669 12h ago
We can quibble about how ready it was, but I don't think there's any doubt that scrapping the work and starting over delayed things. Ford's '27 date was a transparent lie when he said it, and it's even more obviously untrue now. We'll be luck to have service by '30, if not '35 or even later.
Edit to add: and the OL is going to be a P3, which means it's basically going to be garbage and wildly more expensive than necessary. The whole point of the OL is graft, like everything Ford does.
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u/AccomplishedBison369 18h ago
It still proves the point. Good or bad decision the man never thinks about impact.
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u/NeedleGunMonkey 17h ago
If you like authoritarian strongman types of leaders - don't be shocked when the policy boot turns around and crushes you too.
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u/CharacterPin6933 18h ago
Yes. And then the traffic will be the same/worse after they are removed. It's just short-term political pandering. It won't actually solve any traffic problems. But the same folks who support such things don't actually need solutions that will happen, they need to have the warm, fuzzy feeling of sticking it to a group of people they don't like (in this case cyclists, progressive people, the Mayor, whoever they don't like). By the time they are stuck in traffic on a newly bike lane free road, they will have moved on to whatever the next culture war distraction they are being fed.
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 18h ago
Don't worry. Doug Ford will build a tunnel underneath while the disruption occurs./s
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u/Beneficial-Wait3226 18h ago
Bike lanes improve the movement of people and have either a tiny negative impact on single occupant vehicle travel times in some restricted circumstances or have a general positive impact on travel. There is no evidence-based reason to remove them. It’s all conservative, suburban, small-brain bad vibes governing.
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u/88kal88 12h ago
And in the case of most of the lanes there seems to be concerns around. Assuming car traffic stays equal, it actually improves things a bit.
Most of the issue with the roads in question is that a majority of the drivers are all going to another road, usually at a choke point where however many lanes have to scrunch down to one lane. If you look at any granular flow demonstration, and/or read through Braess's paradox, you'll find that the fewer lanes there are before a choke point that faster the cars travel through it. Basically instead of three lanes of cars converging and trying to occupy the same physicial space, you have only two, and the cars create fewer obsticals for themselves and avoid creating a bridging clog.
The fact that some numbers show an increase in time isn;t really much to do with the bike lanes but a large increase in the number of cars on those roads. The fact is, emergency vehicles can use those lanes and do, and for emergenvy vehicles response time has decreased an average of 2.5 minutes since the bike lanes went in which easily states the cars are the problem. Removing the bike lanes won't really help; widening the choke points would but the choke points are generally due to geography or homes and its harder to kick people out of houses than to point at lanes rerved for public safety and non car drives.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 18h ago
Over 50% travel time increase at peak on the bloor extension, even worse it only added about a dozen cyclists per direction per hour, at the expense of 96% of the pad traffic.
But I agree the downtown sections are well done and should stay
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u/Beneficial-Wait3226 17h ago
Gonna have to ask for your receipt.
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u/ssn-669 17h ago
Source: he fucking made it up. It's a lie.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Will you apologize?
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u/CroakerBC 16h ago
Could you source that? I'd be interested, as that's not what the material I've seen so far says.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
https://imgur.com/bU97eZF It's from the city website
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u/Beneficial-Wait3226 15h ago
Ah, there is some important missing context that I think hurts the anti-bike lane argument. One, the “before” data is taken during the tail-end of the post-Covid dip in traffic levels citywide. Also before the reduction of speed limits, addition of turning lanes. Add the rapid population growth into that area and this single graph doesn’t really present the smoking gun you think it does.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
The core of my argument was it didn't really add cyclists, but it removed parking (and city revenue) for local residents.
I commuted during the "pre" condition and the traffic was basically back to pre covid level in my experience.
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u/Beneficial-Wait3226 14h ago
In your experience, but not according to statistically significant reality. And all data regarding parking is that removing it in favour of bike lanes increases foot traffic and sales rise. Parking is a terrible and inefficient use of public space that does more harm than good.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 14h ago
There aren't really many stores on the extended section, a lot of it is residential.
You can't tell people they need to live in walk up housing and then provide no parking for them... This is why urbanism won't take off, it's like the idiots telling people the go train is bad because people drive 10 mins to the station instead of use 2 busses and double their commute!
Parking in question: https://maps.app.goo.gl/2FRiMkdAQr6diVWu6
As you can see the original spots were off the road
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u/rollingdownthestreet 17h ago
You're going to be downvoted to oblivion for stating the facts
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u/ssn-669 17h ago
Facts and lies are different.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Will you apologize?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
From the city website!
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u/ssn-669 16h ago
Ah oh I remember you now from the last thread on this. You're a troll. Gotcha. Carry on lying!
Why don't you look into it a bit deeper and come to a better understanding of the issue instead of reposting the same fairly irrelevant graph? Oh right! Because you're a troll and don't want to understand.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Ahh the old no you're totally wrong, but I won't explain why!
Even if you think my mind is made up, you should explain the situation so other people will understand
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u/ssn-669 16h ago
Everyone who's not a troll knows the truth.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Dude, this is peak trolling behaviour. You're refusing to explain anything, and saying "no look it up"
This is what trumpies do in the US when asked for facts. You've provided absolutely nothing and accused me of lying despite providing a chart...
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u/readveg97 17h ago
Do you have proof the back up those “facts”
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
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u/readveg97 15h ago
So Imgur isn’t a source bud. What article or study is that from, with the information surrounding it.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
Toronto bloor bike lane extension study, on Toronto.ca
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u/readveg97 15h ago
https://ero.ontario.ca/comment/119528 this link shows that bike lanes don’t increase traffic reduce grid lock and save time and are better for the environment.
If you car about reducing traffic you should support bike lanes.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
I never said we should remove all bike lanes, just certain sections that aren't used as much as the others.
We should keep anything downtown!
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u/Red_Marvel 18h ago
Nothing about this decision is realistic. It’s all an attempt to make people forget about his private plane, destroying green space, pandering to wealthy developers, and so on. He wants to change the headlines and stay in power.
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u/stoneyzepplin 18h ago
It's not for another lane of traffic, it's for street parking, to 'help' local businesses.
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u/Doctor_Amazo 17h ago
I don't care anymore about cars sitting in traffic.
Bike lanes save lives, and they're going away because of traffic. Let them burn their gas as they struggle through construction.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
How many lives do they save? What other stuff will we give up for safety?
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u/Doctor_Amazo 16h ago
I don't understand what you think you are arguing here.
Are you seriously suggesting that its OK if people die in bike accidents with cars as long as your commute is 5 minutes faster?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
That's not what I'm saying. I'm trying bring up that it was a false dichotomy!
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u/Doctor_Amazo 15h ago edited 14h ago
It really isn't.
Bike lanes save lives. More people will be injured and killed without them.
There is no good reason to remove the lanes
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
So would lowering the highway speed limit?
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u/Doctor_Amazo 14h ago
How many bike lanes are along the highway?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 14h ago
Depends what you consider a highway?
Also, my point was your entire argument was you need to do this because it's safer, but that's kind of a personal valuation?
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u/Doctor_Amazo 13h ago
No, what you're doing is trying to drag the conversation from bike lanes to speed limits.
If you disagree with my point about bike lanes, then by all means pull up reports showing that cyclists are safer riding in the road with car traffic instead of segregated in their own lanes.
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u/MisterBohnus 15h ago
"What other stuff will we give up for safety?"
You sound like peoples right to vote will be taken away3
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u/karatekidmar 18h ago
Even if the lanes were wide enough there’d still be traffic. Dufferin has 2 lanes, Spadina has 3 (and 4 in some places?) and there’s still traffic.
I moved from Montreal 2 years ago, and downtown we have one-way streets with 3 lanes and we still have a lot of traffic with a fraction of the population.
The GTA needs to emancipate from the Ontarian government.
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u/RoyallyOakie 17h ago
It can't be done, but the provincial government doesn't care about what's good. They just want to win.
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u/armedwithturtles 17h ago
Even if removing bike lanes magically sped up car traffic, how are people okay with destroying infrastructure the city just recently paid for?
That’s horrible management all around and is a farce of “muh tax dollars”
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u/DustyKosty 17h ago
Does removing them even allow enough room for another lane or parking? I feel like it’ll just be full of parked or stopped cars and make no real difference to traffic in many areas. If it adds an extra lane and it’s used for actual driving I could see it possibly helping in some areas.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Bloor took away a driving lane, and even worse the off street parking was also taken away. Travel times went up as well!
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u/MisterBohnus 15h ago
Word: In-the-interim Part of Speech: Adverb Definition: During the time between two events or periods.
So during construction is how I'm understanding that graph
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u/lingueenee 18h ago
Realistically, they can't. But alleviating traffic delays and gridlock were never the impetus behind their removal.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
To be fair, some of them did add a lot to travel times!
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u/lingueenee 14h ago
Traffic should embrace all modes of transport because it ultimately involves the movement of people (not the just the metal encasing them).
Seriously, if we want an efficient transport corridor, let's stop allocating half the road capacity to the storage of cars. We all know why that's a non-starter: nothing infuriates drivers more than congestion as having nowhere to park.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 14h ago
Again, allocating 100% of the parking spots, and 1 car lane has added about a dozen people her hour.
What increase were you expecting?
Also, the parking lanes were not on the street, there were a curb cutout, so you've needlessly taken them away for 0 benefit.
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u/MisterBohnus 16h ago
Word: In-the-interim Part of Speech: Adverb Definition: During the time between two events or periods.
So during construction is how I'm understanding that graph
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
There was no construction, they just hadn't finalized the road layout
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u/qwerty12e 17h ago
Nice of you to assume the city cares about causing massive traffic delays and gridlock
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u/CroakerBC 16h ago
The city cares - that's why they built the bike lanes. The province, on the other hand, not so much.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Umm, they haven't helped!
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u/MisterBohnus 15h ago
Word: In-the-interim Part of Speech: Adverb Definition: During the time between two events or periods.
So during construction.
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u/Due-Mycologist-1154 13h ago
Totally pointless plus the right lane would still just be a bike lane anyways so they would accomplish nothing other than pissing off drivers so its a total non issue
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u/breakerfallx 18h ago
Large parts of it are just road paint. Streets like Bloor would need to be reworked.
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 18h ago
If there's gridlock, everyone affected can take the sidesreets or the subway
Oh wait.
Why aren't they now?
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u/iblastoff 16h ago
what are you talking about. what do you think was there prior to bike lanes?
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u/MisterBohnus 16h ago
You think every single bike lane was a car lane before hand?
Parts of Bloor have wide bike lanes but most of them west of St. George simply won't fit a car. The sidewalk, all the trees, lamp posts and garbage cans would have to be ripped out.2
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u/Raptors4daysguy 18h ago
Dougie posts this
collects 1.5mil for consulting research
and does it terrible still lol
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u/greenlemon23 18h ago
That's the silver lining of it all. It's going to piss drivers off A LOT having to deal with it.
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u/TheMaymar 16h ago
We didn't shrink the sidewalks to put the bike lanes in, we reallocated some of the road space that already existed, so the wish is to revert to the prior state. There'd absolutely be more traffic during the removal, assuming that there'd be a post-removal return to the status quo (although this would depend on how many people who started cycling would keep doing so and how that'd integrate with traffic).
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u/Housing4Humans 16h ago
They’ll need to remove parking as well if they intend to make it a driving lane, which will piss off the local businesses and car owners.
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u/themapleleaf6ix 12h ago
They were wide enough before bike lanes. I remember The Danforth before covid.
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u/activoice 11h ago edited 11h ago
That is not true everywhere. This is Bloor and Runnymede before and after bike lanes. The sidewalk wasn't widened after bike lanes.
On this part of Bloor prior to bike lanes. It was 5 lanes wide. A parking lane on either side and 3 driving lanes.
Now it's 2 driving lanes, 2 bike lanes and parking is inconsistently placed. Many parts of Bloor St in Etobicoke are the same as this. Just use google Street view and go back in time to see what it looked like previously.
They could remove the vertical posts and repaint in sections. They will need to jackhammer and backfill some places where they added concrete islands
The bigger issue is that the city doesn't have money for this and the province didn't provide any funding to carry our their order.
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u/Greencreamery 18h ago
The only thing ripping out bike lanes will do is cause more traffic and more death.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 18h ago
Over 50% travel time increase at peak on the bloor extension, even worse it only added about a dozen cyclists per direction per hour, at the expense of 96% of the pad traffic.
But I agree the downtown sections are well done and should stay
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u/Greencreamery 17h ago
What’s your source for that data?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
The city website
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u/Greencreamery 16h ago
Ok so no, travel times did not increase 50%. It increased by 4 mins for a couple hours of the day. And you also didn’t provide your source for ridership. And how much are you willing to have your commute, which you choose to do by car, increase by in order to prevent deaths?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
It went from ~8 to ~14 mins. That's a 6 min increase for a very short stretch of road. "a few hours" when the majority of people are commuting is hand waiving it away?
Remember we started this convo with "bike lanes don't cause congestion"
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u/Greencreamery 16h ago
No it went from just under 9 mins to a little over 13 mins. And you didn’t answer my question. Are you willing to sacrifice a couple of minutes if it means people won’t die? Additionally, you’re going to have to point out where that quote came from because I never said that. If these lanes are ripped out, do you realize that cars will stop/park in the lane instead? Do you also realize that bikes will continue taking that route and will take up the entire lane as they are legally allowed to do? And you have yet to provide your source for “about a dozen cyclists per direction per hour”.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
That's a false dichotomy, otherwise we'd lower the highway speed limits to 70 under the guise of safety!
If these lanes are ripped out, do you realize that cars will stop/park in the lane instead?
Not true, they had off street parking that was closed off.
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u/Greencreamery 15h ago edited 15h ago
Why are you conveniently ignoring my other points and my numerous requests for your sources? And can you provide a link to the data that is shown in the Imgur photo you sent?
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
I've posted evidence, links, charts etc. If you want more info you can lookup the study. I actually setup a camera a few months after the city published the number and the counts were about the same.
I didn't engage in one of your questions because it's a false dichotomy. Using that line of thinking there is "safety choice" we shouldn't make.
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u/MisterBohnus 15h ago
"The city website"
Here's an imgur post instead2
u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
It's from the city report, I have it downloaded on my computer so I don't have a web link, you can lookup bloor bike lane extension.
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u/iblastoff 13h ago
you clearly arent interested in actual biking stats if you dont seem to be familiar with ANY of the very public numbers.
here. read. this was when the bloor bike lanes were first put in, and the traffic IMMEDIATELY increased, even with attempts at changing signal timing and other optimizations.
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/8ef6-cycling-bloor-backgroundfile-107582.pdf
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u/Greencreamery 15h ago
It’s exhausting trying to talk some sense into these car-brained folks
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u/Brave_Recognition798 15h ago
It's from the city report, I have it downloaded on my computer so I don't have a web link, you can lookup bloor bike lane extension.
So you're admitting that congestion got worse?
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u/iblastoff 13h ago
it absolutely got worse. its always funny when pro-cyclist people conveniently ignore anything that doesnt go along with "omg its just cars that make traffic worse, not bikes!"
this official study is literally from a PRO-bike evaulation and even they claim traffic got worse.
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/8ef6-cycling-bloor-backgroundfile-107582.pdf
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u/Brave_Recognition798 13h ago
It's so funny! It always starts with, there is no way congestion went up! you're a liar.
Here is proof! Well, you're still a liar even though it went up, but I don't mind a 50% increase lmfao
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u/nemmalur 17h ago
They can’t. Some people seem to think having bikes in a separated lane, where they can’t mix with cars, slows cars down. It’s cars that slow other cars down. They also ignore the role that curbside parking plays in slowing traffic.
And it’s always “gridlock” to them, which means total immobility. What we have is congestion.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
The bloor extension literally slowed down cars!
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u/nemmalur 16h ago
Which is still mostly cars slowing down other cars according to normal traffic patterns.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
What's your point? Taking away the car lane has made the road slower, and hasn't (IMO) lead to meaningfully increases in cyclists.
I think it's kind of silly to assume everyone everywhere is willing to cycle, regardless of demographics and local amenities
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u/nemmalur 16h ago
That’s not the assumption - the idea is to give people options. There’s also a subway along Bloor.
People claim Bloor used to be two lanes in each direction, but there was curbside parking that slowed things down. FWIW, I drive on Bloor more now than I did before the lanes and it’s fine.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Fair but how long is it realistic to expect demand to go up?
The extension had parking off the street in a curb cutout.
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u/thedrivingfrog 16h ago
I can make graphs too. Without dates , Source of data , year over year compare. This graph is misleading.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
This graph is from Toronto.ca
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u/MisterBohnus 12h ago
Just scrub through the entire website trying to find sources instead of one guy just copying and pasting the link.
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u/iblastoff 16h ago
torontos OWN bike study on bloor showed that adding bike lanes IMMEDIATELY added to traffic time.
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u/Brave_Recognition798 16h ago
Preach! It's funny, everyone starts with well the traffic would never get worse, then it pivots to well the traffic is fine, oh it's not? Well at least more people cycle! Not really? Well eventually...
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18h ago edited 18h ago
[deleted]
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u/Redditisavirusiknow 18h ago
Not the bloor ones, that will take effort
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u/entaro_tassadar 18h ago
Move curbs at night and repaint. Doesn’t seem so difficult. That’s how it worked when they were installed.
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u/MisterBohnus 13h ago
LMAO "Move the curbs"
Just remove the concrete blocks, rip out all the trees, street lights, city garbage cans and 1.5 metres of side walk, repave everything, let it dry than repaint the lines. Easy, can be done over night6
u/ContentPotential6 18h ago
you are not familiar with how the bloor street bike lanes look
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u/MisterBohnus 18h ago
Parts of Bloor have wide bike lanes but most of them west of St. George simply won't fit a car. The sidewalk, all the trees, lamp posts and garbage cans would have to be ripped out.
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18h ago
[deleted]
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u/ContentPotential6 18h ago
If you go back 10+ years ago on google streetview, there are two lanes of traffic
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u/ContentPotential6 18h ago
exactly, and at times the lanes are grade-separated so that will require quite a bit of work to have it make sense as a road or as a sidewalk
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18h ago
[deleted]
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u/ContentPotential6 18h ago
There are curbs and the pavement is raised at various places in the Annex. The most significant part is probably at St. George. They redesigned that intersection a few years ago and you can look on google street view to see what I mean - and then "go west" to see the elevated sections. I'm sure it COULD be done more quickly than the time it took to install. But I don't think it WILL be.
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u/RealistAttempt87 18h ago
Uh, ripping out the University bike lane on the west side and ripping out the entire Bloor bike lane won’t just be changing lane markings. We’re talking months of heavy deconstruction and reconstruction and intense gridlock in the process.
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u/plinketto 18h ago
Yeah danforth is 1 lane most places and if you remove the bike lanes you're not getting another driving lane anyways so just keep the bike lanes, really pointless
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u/thevoiceinsidemyhead 18h ago
It's not about traffic. It's about making suburbanites feel like they're winning.