Ontario’s bill to remove certain bike lanes to be tested with Charter challenge

A cyclist rides in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto on Friday, December 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor

TORONTO — The Ontario government’s “irrational and dangerous” bid to remove three major Toronto bike lanes should be ruled unconstitutional, a lawyer for a group of cyclists said in court Wednesday, arguing the province’s own internal advice and experts suggest the move won’t accomplish its stated goal to ease congestion.

Lawyers for a Toronto cycling advocacy group and two other cyclists are asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to strike down parts of a law empowering the province to remove the 19 kilometres of protected bike lanes on Yonge Street, Bloor Street and University Avenue, and replace them with vehicle lanes.

“It’s a narrow challenge to what we see as the irrational and dangerous ways that this government has chosen to remove these bike lanes,” said lawyer Andrew Lewis.

The challenge was brought by the advocacy group Cycle Toronto and two other cyclists — a university student who relies on the Bloor Street bike lane to get to school and a bike delivery driver who uses the lanes daily.

They argue the province’s bid to remove the lanes violates their constitutional right to life and has no connection to its stated objective to reduce congestion. The bill could even make traffic worse, they suggest.

A lawyer for the government argued Wednesday that removing bike lanes does not violate the Constitution.

Bike lanes were put in place under provincial law to reduce the danger posed by drivers, lawyer Josh Hunter said, and the government could choose to take away that risk-reduction measure for other reasons, such as to ease congestion.

“No one’s saying the government is causing the harm. It’s the drivers on the road that’s causing the harm,” said Hunter.

Six cyclists were killed in Toronto last year, all on roads without protected bike lanes, a lawyer for the cyclists said.

Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has said that the law passed last year, which also requires municipalities across Ontario to get the province’s approval for bike lanes that cut into vehicle traffic, was a bid to fight traffic gridlock.

Lewis used the government’s own internal documents to try to undercut that claim.

He said a document signed by the minister of transportation on Sept. 9, 2024, advised that the government’s plan “may not reduce congestion.”

He said a Ministry of Transportation briefing note dated Oct. 28, a week after the government introduced the bike lane bill, stated that “removing cycling infrastructure may not have the desired goal of reducing congestion.”

Lewis also cited an engineering report, commissioned by the government and finalized earlier this year, that found while removing the bike lanes might increase vehicle capacity, the actual alleviation of congestion may be “negligible or short-lived.”

The same report also found bike lanes are predicted to reduce crashes involving cyclists, pedestrians and motorists by between 35 and 50 per cent, Lewis said.

“Those facts were kept from the public until produced here, while (the government was) engaging in a public relations campaign to the contrary,” he said.

Hunter, the government lawyer, argued the law was connected to its purpose: to increase the space available for cars.

“Two lanes is more than one,” he said.

In response, Justice Paul Schabas suggested some traffic experts may question whether adding more lanes would just induce more traffic, and congestion could wind up just as bad as it was before the bike lanes were removed.

Hunter suggested a study prepared by a Toronto Metropolitan University professor and submitted as evidence found travel times worsened after the bike lanes were installed.

But Schabas took issue with that report, too, and how it compared travel times in 2020, when “hardly anybody was on the road” due to the pandemic, with times in 2021, when it was “a little busier”.

“I found that very odd,” he said.

The bike lane issue has sparked protests by the public and pushback from the City of Toronto. Mayor Olivia Chow and the city have proposed a solution to the province that would allow for a car lane to be returned to those roads while also keeping a bike lane.

A spokesperson for Chow said the mayor is committed to achieving a “win-win solution with the province.”

“Discussions with the province are ongoing,” Zeus Eden said in a statement.

Earlier this month, a spokesperson for the provincial transportation minister suggested the government was open to collaboration with the city, provided it funds its portion of infrastructure needs.

Ford’s recent re-election campaign included fresh promises to reduce traffic congestion. He has cited the bike lane on Bloor Street, not far from his own home, in describing the issues he hopes to address.

The premier has said he’s not against bike lanes but prefers them on secondary routes.

Lawyers for the cyclists argue there’s no evidence that cyclists would avoid arterial roads and cite Toronto’s city manager as saying there’s no feasible parallel alternative that wouldn’t cut into traffic lanes.

The initial stretch of the Bloor bike lane was installed in 2016, then extended several times since the start of the pandemic. It stretches around 13 kilometres from near Islington Avenue to Castle Frank.

Temporary University Avenue bike lanes installed in 2020 were made permanent in 2021, the same year the Yonge Street lanes were installed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 16, 2025.

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press