Toronto City Council votes to scrap Jarvis bike lanes

CANADA - Yesterday in a 28-9 vote Toronto city councilors voted to spend more than $400,000 to erase bike lanes on Jarvis St. downtown as well as Birchmount Rd. and Pharmacy Ave.

This isn't going to change the habits of cyclists however, who use those routes on the way to work. Myself included, I take Jarvis several times a week so the stupidity of spending thousands of dollars to REMOVE a bicycle lane is just silliness and a complete waste of taxpayers money.

It will also mean mapmakers will have to redesign their maps of Toronto's bicycle lanes and paths.

Toronto city councilors also agreed to physically separate 14 kilometres of bike lanes on downtown streets — two of them north-south, two east-west — at an unknown cost - and in an unspecified way. It is unknown exactly how cyclists are supposed to get into these new cycling lanes from intersections... and furthermore, what if situations arise where cyclists refuse to use these protected cycling lanes because its better (perhaps even safer) to be using the normal road?

Cycling advocates got one concession — the two-kilometre Jarvis lanes won’t be removed until AFTER new separated cycling lanes on Sherbourne St. are separated from other traffic, expected by December 2012.

In which case what is the cost of building these new separated cycling lanes on Sherbourne? One city councilor estimated the cost at $200,000 but I think he is full of ****. If it costs $400,000 just to remove bicycle lanes just made of PAINT, how can it cost less to create new separated bicycle lanes made of CEMENT?

Rob Ford's gravy train apparently goes to the Land of Stupid Wastefulness.