Jarvis is a win! Cheers, applause, pats on the back, happy dollars!

One of the big reasons why we should celebrate is for the many people who came out and did their best to speak on behalf of cycling and the many benefits and other reasons why cyclists should be included in the improvements. Usually I see the same people over and over again at city hall, but I saw many new people who spoke for cycling whom I did not know. We’re seeing more and more people coming down to city hall and speaking up on cycling issues. And we are being heard. The councillors are obviously running (at least a little) scared because the vote was ultimately unanimous in support of the bike lanes. We need to keep this pressure on at city hall to continue this momentum for advancing cycling within our city.

Another big reason to celebrate is this was a route that had never been on the Bike Plan, and came as something of a surprise that it was even winnable.

And yet I feel this win is loaded with regret, as does Councillor DeBaermaker.

On the one hand, somebody was able to fill the room with Moore Park and Rosedale residents who felt that the(ir) world would end if the city were to take away the reversible traffic lane from Jarvis. On the other hand there were several contingents: Local residents who don’t want their street to be used as a highway by the residents of other neighbourhoods moving through Jarvis on their way to someplace else while driving far too quickly, cyclists who felt that Jarvis needed cycling infrastructure included for tactical and strategic reasons, and staff who felt that making the street into something that could resemble a destination with significant pedestrian improvements would have the most profound effect on the street.

Councillors Glen DeBaermaeker, Shelley Caroll, and Gord Perks spoke most memorably to the motorists. Caroll stated that traffic downtown is never as bad as it could be, or as bad as it is in other areas of the GTA. Perks easily shot down the skewed environmental reasoning brought forward by the drivers, and DeBaermaeker said most plainly, "If you want to get rid of traffic congestion, then get out of your cars!”

Currently there is no cycling accommodation on Jarvis at all.

The lanes on Jarvis were narrowed a long time ago in order to accommodate having the five lanes that are currently on it. The sidewalks are so narrow in some spots that it is difficult for a wheelchair to go through, and on much of Jarvis it’s often too narrow for two wheelchairs to pass each other. Pedestrian improvements are needed and necessary, and the only option is to take away car lanes. The proposal was to take away one car lane which is 3.0m wide and add a total of 2.2m to the sidewalks, the remaining lanes would have been widened to 3.2m wide; probably suggested by traffic engineering guidelines, although I did see one option to keep the inner lanes at 3.0m and the curb lanes widened to 3.4m to "accommodate" cyclists. The reality is 4.0m is the minimum wide enough for cyclists and motorists to share, and anything wider than 4.0m is wide enough to accommodate a full bike lane. (Ideally, bike lanes should be 1.5m wide)

Business is attracted to areas with parking because owners often have the false impression that most of their customers will drive to their store. Parking also has the benefit of slowing down traffic by creating “friction” during parking manoeuvres, and acts a physical barrier for cyclists and/or pedestrians from the moving traffic. As well, the parked cars also add additional space away from moving traffic, and act as a something of a barrier to the noise created by moving traffic. And delivery spaces are required by many businesses for the pick up and/or deliveries of the goods that they sell; parking spaces often do double duty as loading zones. Parking, in and of its self, is not evil; an overabundance of cheap parking, however, is. There are other benefits to having short-term, on street parking. There is currently very limited parking on Jarvis: just a few spots, and only on one side. There could have easily been more, and if managed correctly, it could have added a lot of value to the street.

Many of our urban streets have four lanes, but operate as two lane roads because the curb lane is (almost) constantly filled with parked cars. These roads work, and we even run surface transportation (streetcar/busses) on these roads. These types of roads constitute the majority of the popular places we go to in order to shop, eat, meet, browse, and to hang out. These streets are not just thoroughfares to get from here to there, but are also destinations. This is what Staff was trying to sell, and what locals and pedestrian advocates were hoping for. There was an option to reduce Jarvis to three lanes, one for parking and two for moving. There was another three-lane option that would have kept the revisable lane. Both had more space for both pedestrians and cyclists, but were not looked at seriously, neither was proposed as an option by staff or by the councillors.

Most cyclists wanted to have both cycling and pedestrian improvements as well; we just wanted to add cycling infrastructure to the mix. We were trying to say, “Don’t forget about us when designing these changes.”

Somehow, at some point, Jarvis became a battle of "The Cyclists vs. The Pedestrians". And while the cyclists won this battle, it was never our intent to “steal” sidewalk space in order to claim our improvements; we wanted to reclaim some more of the space that had been over-allocated to the cars.

In the end this is still a win for Toronto’s cyclists, and we should celebrate!

But please excuse me while you’re celebrating; I’ll be over in the corner with my head down mourning for what should have been a beautiful Jarvis. And I'll also be wondering if this is the consolation prize that Councillor Rae handed us cyclists for not getting Bike Lanes on Bloor St.