The proposal for the bike lanes on Cosburn Avenue will be voted on at the September 14th, 2004 Toronto and East York Community Council meeting. The Notice of Meeting has been mailed out. It is also posted online. Notice of Meeting. This is the last opportunity to convince the Councillors on this committee to support this proposal.

The staff report recommends going ahead with installing the bike lanes from Broadview to Oak Park Avenue. It notes concerns raised by residents but addresses each of them to show that the problems they fear will not occur.

One example is the concern of traffic infiltration from Cosburn onto neighbouring Plains Road once the lanes are reduced from 2 to 4. Their concern is that Cosburn will not be able to handle the traffic and drivers will divert on to another side street. The staff reports states that there should be no infiltration from Cosburn. It explains that the extra traffic is comming from O'Connor not Cosburn. It goes on to say that when the lanes were reduced from 4 to 2 on much busier Dundas Street East there was no infiltration on to local streets. In fact the experience on other streets that saw lanes reduced from 4 to 2 to make way for bike lanes has shown that drivers on these streets were able to maintain the the same number of cars per day at volumes of 16,000 to 22,000 cars per day. Cosburn is much less busier than these streets with a daily volume of 10,000 cars per day. Cosburn with two lanes and bike lanes will be able to handle that volume with capacity to spare.

The staff report also shows that the bike lanes have a lot of community support. As a result of the second round of consultation in wards 31 and 29 requested by Councillor Ootes the city received 257 comments, the majority of them positive. In total there were 337 comments received, 267 in support and 70 opposed.

In the end the staff report recomends proceeding with the full Cosburn Bike Lane project and setting up a monitoring system to see if there are any problems that need to be addressed. The full report on the proposal is at the following link Cosburn Bike Lanes: Staff report.(PDF).

The Councillors will vote on this proposal on Tuesday September, 14th at the Toronto and East York Community Council meeting. You can still have your say as well. Residents can make deputations in person or by writing. If you want to make a deputation you can call 416-392-1879 or e-mailing teycc@toronto.ca before 12:00 noon on Monday September 13. Deputations are 5 minutes. The start time for deputations is hard to predict. It is listed as being on the agenda for 2:00 but that does not guarantee that the Cosburn Bike lanes items will be discussed then. You can also send in a written deputation by letter, e-mail or fax by 3:00 pm on Monday, Sept. 13. The contact info is as follows.

Administrator, Toronto and East York Community Council
Toronto City Hall
100 Queen Street West,
4th floor, West Tower
Toronto ON M5H 2N2
Telephone: 416-392-7033;
Fax: 416-392-1879
E-mail: teycc@toronto.ca

The Cosburn bike lanes run through the Wards of two City Councillors, Case Ootes - Ward 29 Toronto-Danforth and Janet Davis - Ward 31 Beaches-East York. If you are in either of these two wards contact your Councillor to express your support. Although the decision is made by the full Community Council on the views of the councillor in the wards where the project takes place carries a lot of weight. While the the installation of a bike lane is seen as a local issue it has an impact on the city wide Bikeway Network. Toronto residents of other wards should also make their views known. If your councillor is on the Toronto East York Community Council you should contact them and encourage them to vote for approving the construction of the Cosburn bike lanes.

Toronto and East York Community Council
Cesar Palacio - Ward 17 Davenport
Adam Giambrone - Ward 18 Davenport
Joe Pantalone - Ward 19 Trinity-Spadina
Olivia Chow - Ward 20 Trinity-Spadina
Joe Mihevc - Ward 21 St. Paul's
Michael Walker - Ward 22 St. Paul's
Kyle Rae - Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale
Pam McConnell - Ward 28 Toronto Centre-Rosedale
Case Ootes - Ward 29 Toronto-Danforth
Paula Fletcher - Ward 30 Toronto-Danforth
Janet Davis - Ward 31 Beaches-East York
Sandra Bussin - Ward 32 Beaches-East York

If this Committee votes to support this project the proposal then goes on to Toronto City Council for final approval and construction can start in October. We are approaching the end of a long road to get this bike lane in place.