The War on Bikes

Ontario's Bicycles Aren't the Problem. "Ford Nation" Is the Problem.

// At the end of the oughts, when I was working on my book Straphanger, everybody in the world of transportation and urbanism was horrified by, and obsessed with, Rob Ford, who was elected mayor of Toronto in 2010, with the promise that he would bring an end to an imagined "War on Cars." In his campaign, he'd declared streetcars enemy number one, with bikes following a close second. "I can't support bike lanes," Ford was quoted as saying. "Streets are for cars, trucks, and buses."

At the time, I wrote: "Central casting couldn't have come up with a more perfect car-bound suburbanite: the brush-cut, rubicund Ford, on the obese side of overweight, hails from the suburb of Etobicoke and is egregiously Caucasian in a city where 'visible minorities' are within a couple of percentage points of becoming the majority." (I probably wouldn't write it exactly that way today, but never mind...) Rob Ford served for four years, four long years in which Canada's largest city built nothing in the way of transit; he died, after generating many headlines about his drinking and drug use, in 2016. The expression "The War on Cars" became a rallying cry for motorists throughout North America, and also inspired the ironically-titled, and very listenable, podcast of the same name. (Hello Aaron, Doug, and Sarah, from this long-time listener to The War on Cars podcast in Montreal!) To my horror, Rob's older brother Doug then went on to be elected premier of Ontario, a position he's held since 2018.

Wait, can that be right? Oh, God, it is.

Doug's Twitter handle is "Ford Nation," which is how his followers style themselves. It's an apt name: just as The Lorax spoke for the trees of the world, the Ford Bros. speak for the cars—Ontario, as a huge auto manufacturing hub, is the Michigan of Canada—and all those who drive them. Now Doug, pandering to his very basic base, has decided that cars are being unconscionably inconvenienced by humans on bicycles. To respond to complaints about "gridlock"—gridlock here meaning cars stuck for a little while in longer in traffic (and of course, they are the traffic)—Doug has promised to not only prevent Ontario's cities from allowing new bike lanes to be built where such building would remove a lane of parking, but also to remove existing bike lanes on many thoroughfares, particularly in Toronto. His transportation minister, in his announcement of this move, singled out the separated lanes on Bloor St., Yonge, and University as most ripe for the plucking.

What Ontario's Conservatives are doing is declaring a "War on Bikes." It's a new front in a culture war, one that nobody wanted.

How ridiculous is this? God...where do I start? (And how much time do you have?)

First of all, let's address the very basic absurdity of the fact, unimaginable from a European perspective, that the affairs of a major metropolitan area could be dictated by a provincial authority. Toronto's mayor is Olivia Chow, the widow of the late Jack Layton, who led his NDP to record election results, and official opposition status in Parliament. Though she rode a bike to her inauguration, and makes all the right noises about bicycle infrastructure, her mayoralty has so far been a disappointment for cyclists: she promised, then cancelled, a weekly open streets event, and has set aside just $30 million over three years in her budget for cycling (less than her predecessor, anti-bicycle mayor John Tory).

Ford's threats wouldn't be an issue in France, where regional authorities have no say over what Anne Hidalgo does in Paris. (And what has Mayor Hidalgo done? She's made that city into a Mecca for cutting-edge transit and bicycle infrastructure, so that Paris is now spoken of in the same breath as Copenhagen and Amsterdam in terms of livability and green cred; thirty percent of all trips in Paris are now made by bicycle, and car use has plummeted.) Yet on this side of the Atlantic, suburbanites can step in—and step all over—the elected representatives of the millions who live in central cities, squashing hopes of less traffic-choked, and more livable, streets. It's a Canadian problem, going back to 1867, when provinces were given complete authority over cities that, at that point, were little more than towns in a largely rural nation. But it's also an American one—look at how the governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, killed the congestion charge that was New York City's best hope of taming the out-of-control traffic in Manhattan.

Second: Ford Nation rule is directly responsible for Ontario's "gridlock"—bicycle lanes have nothing to do with it. This province of nearly 14 million people has a woefully inadequate transit network. In the year 2024, Toronto still has a subway "system" that amounts to just two lines; though they've been talking about a "Downtown Relief Line" since before I was born, they have yet to build it. The Ontario Line, a 16-km east-west subway line through the downtown, is under construction, and that's a good thing. It was supposed to be completed in 2027, but the fact is, some of the tunnelling won't even begin until 2025. The Eglinton Crosstown has been designed to put light-rail vehicles underground, preventing them from interfering with automobile traffic, which makes it far more expensive than it should be—and naturally, it is also egregiously overdue. Metrolinx, the agency that oversees commuter rail and several big expansion projects, is famous for its lack of transparency, and is taking far too long to take care of fundamental business, like electrifying the Go Train network. (Something Caltrain in the Bay Area has just completed, and is reaping the rewards for in higher speeds and higher ridership.) Toronto's streetcars are slow, but that's because they move in mixed traffic—an absurdity that isn't tolerated in European cities, where most tramways, as they are known there, roll on dedicated rights-of-way, or on streets where cars are severely limited. Doug Ford complains about gridlock in urban areas, but that's inevitable when you devote billions to highway expansion, and fail to build transit that would provide people with an alternative to hopping into a car. Then, when Doug and other members of the so-called Ford Nation see cars moving more slowly on thoroughfares with bike lanes in Ottawa, and Hamilton, and Toronto, they whine about bicycles being the issue. It's old-school scapegoating, yet, for some reason, in the Toronto region it still gets traction.

Third: bike lanes are supposed to slow traffic down on the streets of big cities, you dope! That's a sign they're doing their job. All over the world, people are campaigning to bring down car speeds in cities, under slogans like "Twenty is Plenty" (as in 20 mph, or 30 km/h). In cities from Brussels to Bologna, that's the maximum, and it's been shown to save lives. What's more, bike lanes have been shown, in studies like this one, to make streets safer for all users—in fact, the presence of a separated bike lane decreases average maximum car and truck speeds by 28%, and the speed of cars making right turns by 21%. That translates into lives saved, and, as cities worldwide aspire to "Vision Zero," in which nobody is killed by cars, that has become an achievable goal. (Oslo, for example, had zero cyclist and pedestrian deaths in 2019.) Toronto typically sees 40-50 people killed by the drivers of cars and trucks every year; an increasing number are pedestrians and cyclists, among them this young woman, whose parents say her life would have been saved had she been riding in a bike lane. Ford and his cronies have argued that Toronto's bike lanes are slowing down emergency response vehicles. If ambulances and fire trucks couldn't move quickly enough to save lives, that would be very concerning indeed. But this hasn't been the case in other cities. And it's not the case in Toronto. According to Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop, emergency response times have improved since the bike lanes were installed.

Fourth: Bike lanes are good for business. Sometimes there's resistance when parking spots in front of shops are removed. But almost universally, from Copenhagen to Montreal to Paris, business owners change their mind when they see how much business—often from high-spending customers—bike lanes bring them. I asked Jan Gehl in Copenhagen about this; the pioneering urbanist was one of the first to keep surveys on bike use, providing data he could show to elected officials. "Sometimes, a shop owner claims his business was ruined because the city removed four parking spaces," he told me. "With surveys, our mayor can say: ‘6,000 more people pass your shop a day thanks to a new bike lane. Are you sure you’re a good businessman?’” The few businesses that don't like bike lanes are all about servicing cars—garages, auto-supply shops, those whose customers are car-dependent. In Toronto, businesses along Bloor St. are highly favorable to bike lanes—precisely because they bring in more clients. After walk-ins, the owner of one hardware store in the Annex (interviewed in this TV news report), reckons cyclists are now his leading clients, far ahead of those arriving by car or transit.

Fifth, and it's a point so obvious it shouldn't have to be explained, but here goes: If you're a driver, take a look at the people in the bike lane. If just a fraction of them were driving cars, or in a taxi, or in an Uber, they'd be in front of you, or maybe behind you, but definitely clogging the streets, and almost certainly making "gridlock" even worse, contributing to your aggravation. Look: it's beyond simple. The more people who use transit or bicycles, or are able to get around on foot, the more congestion is reduced for those who choose to remain behind the wheel of a car.

I was born in Toronto, and it irks me to see the city so far behind when it comes to sustainable and active transportation. I've seen how my adopted hometown of Montreal has been transformed, under the Valérie Plante administration, by the coming of bikeshare and the building of a 1,000-kilometer-plus bike lane network. Plante announced last week that she won't be returning for a third term, but nobody thinks the next administration is going to rip out bike lanes. Bicycles have become part of the identity of Montreal, in the way that they are now part of the identity of Paris. (And yes, this is a winter city, much more so than Toronto; but more and more of us are riding all year round, as I relate in this dispatch.) Removing them would be political suicide.

Toronto should be—and easily can be—one of the world's great bicycle metropolises. If really top-notch bike infrastructure were combined with the transit the Toronto area deserves, everybody—drivers, cyclists, straphangers, pedestrians—would be happier. They'd get where they're going more comfortably, and the city would be a more attractive place. The problem is the would-be bicycle-and-transit metropolis is surrounded by the self-styled "Ford Nation." (Note to Doug: Ford is an American brand, and Ontario is not a nation.) As long as the Ford Dynasty is calling the shots, nothing is going to change. No, scratch that: things are definitely going to get worse. As in, more Torontians are going to die, killed by the drivers of cars and trucks.

And Doug and his gang will have blood on their hands.

If you're an Ontario resident, you can make your feelings about Bill 212 (to remove existing bike lanes and prevent new ones from being built) by leaving a comment on this website. You can also sign this online petition on the Cycle Toronto site.

I hope you'll consider signing up for a paid subscription to Straphanger. So far paying passengers on this newsletter are far outnumbered by free-riders. By signing up, you'll encourage me to keep going, and boost the frequency between dispatches. The last thing I want is for this to become a dead line!