Earlier today, Toronto city council has approved 25 km of new bike lanes as part of ActiveTO by a 23 to 2 margin with Stephen Holyday and Denzil Minnan-Wong being opposed. Chief among these new bike lanes include an extension of the Bloor bike lanes from Shaw to Runnymede, the addition of bike lanes on Danforth from Broadview to Dawes, and the completion of the Bloor East gap from Avenue to Sherbourne. This will effectively create a 15 km continuous east-west cycling corridor along Bloor-Danforth!!! A dream which has been more than 40 years in the making with many groups including Take The Tooker, Bells on Bloor, Bells on Danforth, Cycle Toronto, and the David Suzuki Foundation all playing a role in making this moment a reality; all of which I thank sincerely for their efforts.

Some of the other projects approved in this ActiveTO motion include bike lanes on University from Adelaide to Bloor (with a possible extension to Eglinton), extensions of the Bayview multi-use trail and the Dundas East bike lanes, and new suburban bike lanes in Scarborough (e.g. Brimley, Huntingwood) and in North York (e.g. Wilmington, and Faywood). The extension of bike lanes on Eastern Avenue west to Broadview and east to Coxwell will be considered in the fall, while the Lake Shore East weekend closures will be extended from Coxwell to Leslie next weekend.

While we can definitely declare this petition a victory for making a continuous Bloor-Danforth cycling corridor a reality and for getting 5,478 signatures by the time it was submitted yesterday at noon – thanks Councillor Perks for delivering the petition to City Council this morning – the fight is not over yet. The approved motion did not address the need for bike lanes on Yonge, while nothing was proposed for Etobicoke and Midtown. The number of kilometres falls short of what other cities such as Montréal have been doing, while the bike lanes will return to council next fall to determine whether to make them permanent.

As for next steps, I would like to suggest the following actions:

1. Please send a quick e-mail to Mayor Tory (mayor_tory@toronto.ca) and your city councillor to thank them for supporting the new bike lanes including on Bloor-Danforth.
2. As a way to build support for bike lanes on Yonge, please sign and share Cycle Toronto’s Yonge Loves Bikes pledge. If you are interested in helping with that campaign, you can reach out to info@cycleto.ca to find out more. You can also look up Toronto Centre Cyclists and Cycle Toronto Midtown whose groups are focused on Yonge Street.
3. When the Bloor and Danforth bike lanes get put in – hopefully within the next few weeks – I encourage you to visit some of the local businesses by bike to remind merchants bikes mean business. Don’t forget to wear a mask and practice physical distancing, of course. ;)

Last, but not least, I want to thank all of you for signing and sharing this petition, as well as to the over 110 community organizations that signed onto the open letter. Today’s victory wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible amount of support you have shown over the past two weeks with some of you having worked on the Bloor and Danforth campaigns for years. Let’s celebrate tonight and roll up our sleeves tomorrow for the fight that continues ahead.

Cheers!