The Innocents Aboard (a bike)

“Not good, not good, very bad!” the delivery guy on the e-bike said to me gesturing to the state of the bike lanes beyond. He was going the wrong way down the westbound bike lane on Bloor St. The eastbound lanes had been obliterated by piled snow. Though harrowed, his cyclist-to-cyclist advice was auspicious.

I ride bikes a lot. I’ve commuted more than 1,000 kilometres by bike every year since 2018 when I moved to the city. I bike more than 300 days a year, even in the winter. My Toronto Bike Share stats say I’ve commuted more than 28 hours and 336 km since November. Over the years, I’ve been hit by cars three times, doored once and had near misses too numerous to count. Biking in Toronto is important to me. It’s how I get to work as a resident physician, how I see friends, how I get groceries, how I move furniture. I don’t have a car; I do everything by bike.

Much criticism has been levelled at Bill 212, provincial legislation to remove the bike lanes on Bloor and other major thoroughfares as a way to “reduce car congestion,” including the induced danger of the plan to cyclists, the research suggesting that it will not succeed, and that even the provincial government itself doesn’t believe in what it’s doing. The legitimacy of the larger provincial and local political motivations of the plan aside, the bill was passed and the plan is going ahead though groups are seeking court injunctions to stop it.

We know that newly re-elected Premier Doug Ford commutes on Bloor by car. My plan was to ride from Queen’s Park to Ford’s MPP office in Etobicoke and back again. What would life be like for the Premier if he started biking to work?

With the start of planned bike lane removals just a month away, I took advantage of a sudden break in the weather and set off from Queen’s Park. After a week of heavy snowfall, I suspected the bike lanes would not be cleared, offering a preview of the near future.

I set off down College St. with a route planned to take me up to Bloor, connecting to the Humber River Trail, up to Etobicoke and Ford Nation. Most of Toronto’s bike lane network is a mix of genuine divided bike lanes and bike “lames,” painted arrows posing as infrastructure. Bloor is no exception.

On Bloor, the bike lane had become the dumping ground for snow, rendering entire sections unrideable. So be it, I merged with the slow afternoon traffic, stopping and starting. Pleasantly surprised to find some sections cleared, I followed the bike lane and was soon speeding past slow-moving car traffic.

Not for long. I approached an intersection with four reds. The walk sign came on in my direction and pedestrian traffic started off. About to enter the intersection, I looked left and saw a white SUV now coming toward me, running the red. He was going to hit me. Brakes screeching from car and bike, I veered right, deflecting the front of his car with my front wheel and crumpling a little of the front bumper. He’d stopped. I’d stopped. Somehow, I was upright.

Voices rose behind me. Asking me if I was OK. If I was hurt. I shook them off. Incredulous. I had gotten hit, again. And on today of all days.

I looked at the driver. Pale. Wide-eyed. I looked up at the red light hanging ominously over us. A pedestrian was yelling at the driver. Asking people to film this for social media. Someone asked me if I wanted to call the police. I shook my head.

I wheeled my bike over to the driver. He asked me if I was OK, said he was sorry. He said, “The light, the light, I tried to beat the light.” I asked him if he was OK, he said he was. I told him to pay more attention. He nodded. I rode away. Happy to be in one piece.

I thought about how I would frame this absurdity. Here I was riding to write an opinion piece about bike lanes and I’d gotten hit for the first time in four years. I thought I had become smart enough, savvy enough, safe enough. Not the case.

I continued on Bloor, now hyper aware of my surroundings. I felt angry. Angry at the driver, the city, the government and all the snow in the bike lanes. Angry that everything was changing for the worse. I wondered if I should have allowed the bystanders to call the police. Make a big deal out of it. Get myself some attention on social media. Save the bike lanes! Yeah, right.

At Runnymede, I turned north. I glanced down Bloor West, the seeming ground zero for the whole bike-lane issue. As The Trillium reported last year, the local advocacy group Balance on Bloor managed to get the ear of Ford on the issue despite not having success with the city. A local pub printed T-shirts saying “F** Bike Lanes” and sold them as 40 businesses on Bloor St. W. filed a lawsuit against the city, calling for their removal. I hear their concerns about congestion, business effects, delays for emergency services. It is just that none of them can be proven. Removing bike lanes will likely not reduce congestion; the Bloor-Annex Business Improvement Area says business is up since installation of the bike lanes; emergency services have denied bike lanes have increased response times.

Wet, cold and feeling my anger turn to dejection. I decided to call the ride here. I figured I had gathered enough information. Reflecting on my planned story, it did not seem as funny or as interesting. Gently faced with my own mortality, I thought of the six cyclists who died in the GTA last year.

The 24-year-old woman killed by a dump truck in Yorkville on Bloor in July came to mind. Forced out of the bike lane by an illegally placed bin, she was killed by a passing dump truck.

This type of incident will become commonplace and the government knows it; in November, the government added provisions to Bill 212 to prevent lawsuits from being filed against the province related to accidents or deaths that occur on roads where lanes are removed.

When asked about this directly, Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria dodged the question, saying “I think the safer thing for a cyclist to do would be to make a decision to go on streets that are safer, with less volume.”

I suppose if you never get hit, you will never have to sue. But we know this is not the case. Accidents will continue. Our brains fail; we simply are not paying as much attention as we think we are when driving. So, if we are going to shift responsibility to cyclists to choose safer paths, shouldn’t we ask those drivers to make those paths safer and be held responsible when they don’t? How many minutes saved commuting is a life worth? Well about two minutes, but likely less. Less than two minutes for a life.

I rode back on Bloor and a few more close calls. A car pulled out in front of me just east of High Park; clearly the driver was not expecting to see a cyclist. I imagine this is what it will be like for drivers when bike lanes are gone and seeing cyclists will be a surprise. As a physician, I worry I will be the first to see the aftermath of these decisions. I think about all the people that tell me I am insane to bike in Toronto, I get that now.

I made it back to Queen’s Park in one piece. Falling short of my goal but learning much. The words of the e-bike rider ringing in my head, “Not good, not good, very bad!” I can’t think of a better summary for the future of biking in Toronto. I hope I will be proven wrong.