If Torontonians want to keep their bike lanes, they need to fight to keep them. And no, that doesn’t mean slacktivism on social media, retweeting words of hope, or liking a “save the bike lanes” Facebook page, or non-digital actions like wearing a ribbon on your shirt or putting a "Bike Lanes Save Lives" sign on your property to bring awareness to bike lanes. Nor will voting matter unless a province-wide campaign (or coalition of multi-issue campaigns) takes root that threatens the PC majority, since with few exceptions (namely the Fords) we already don’t have PC MPPs in the city. Nor will a few days of hundreds of cyclists riding up University in protest, ringing their bells and blocking traffic. This government doesn’t not give a fig about protests. No, if you want to keep the bike lanes, you need to physically block their removal.
Post-removal lawsuits will make lawyers rich with fees, but are irrelevant in keeping the bike lanes. It’s legal action now, before their removal, demonstrating the financial and legal risk to the city that may help.
What I find frustrating is that the city government has seemingly not prepared for Queen's Park's intervention whatsoever, even though Doug Ford has been complaining about bike lanes since at least 2018 when he
threatened to invoke the War Measures Act to remove bike lanes. If Toronto city hall had taken this experience as a lesson and thus prepared, we’d see Mayor Chow today on the media news presenting well-researched counter arguments to Ford’s claims that bike lanes do not in fact cause congestion. And why didn’t the city get buy in from the BIAs and neighbourhood associations where bike lanes were proposed? And especially in
Etobicoke where the Ford's rule? This seems the low hanging fruit that could be waved in the Premier’s face.
And while we’re all it, maybe our city government should not have strangled vehicular traffic of all types by permitting private sector developers (building investor micro condos that no one wants nor solved our housing crisis) to block lanes of traffic across the city. As it is, if the city argues that it’s construction not bike lanes that cause congestion, the obvious retort would be, but you also allowed developers to block the roadspace.
And why is the traffic warden initiative taking so long to expand? That’s what gets traffic moving.