At the first meeting on the Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee (TCAC) Transportation Services Division staff presented an update on the status of the bike lane projects that had been proposed for 2007. A total of 14.7 km of bike lanes have been approved to this point. An additional 10.9 km of bike lane projects will be coming forward to the Community Councils before the end of the year. If these are all approved that will be a total of 25.6 km of new bike lanes approved for 2007, close to the 27 km of bike lanes that Councillor Adrian Heaps, Chair of the TCAC, promised would be painted in 2007. However the majority of those won't get painted until 2008.

Painting of the Greenwood bike lane is well underway as can been seen by this photo taken on October 30th, 2007

To date 4.7 km of new bike lanes have been painted in 2007. The most recent is the Greeenwood bicycle lane from Queen to Danforth which had the lines painted this week. The staff presentation indicated that a further 7.7 km would be in place by the end of November giving a total of 12.4 km, just over a third of the promised bicycle lanes. Staff attributed some of the delay to the fact that a request for proposals to paint the bike lanes did not attract any bidders so the projects had to be included into other painting contracts. This delayed their schedule by a month. Another factor is that the approvals for the bicycle lanes is coming so late in the year there will not be time to work on them before construction season ends. The bulk of the projects approved in 2007 will have to wait till the spring of 2008 for installation.

On October 30th the four Community Councils met, but only one had a bike lane project on its agenda. The Etobicoke York Community Council will consider the report on the Royal York Road bicycle lanes from Delroy Avenue to the bridge over Mimico Creek which are 1.5 km in length. Councillor Milczyn who blocked the installation of the bike lanes on Royal York Road north of Mimico creek in a previous year does not appear to be against this project so it looks like this proposal will pass. I haven't heard the outcome of this yet and will update when I do.

Six more projects totaling 9.4 km will be on the November and December 2007 agendas. The approval of the final 2007 project mentioned in the update, a bike lane on Dawes road from Danforth Ave to Victoria Park Ave, has had its approval deferred into 2008. Other projects that were on the 2007 project list that was on display at the July 2007 Bike Plan consultations have been put on the 2008 potential project list.

There are two other 2007 cycling infrastructure projects that don't require council approval that are slated to be completed this year. Sharrows are a new type of cycling infrastructure for Toronto where a wide traffic lane has a marking that indicates a space where bikes can travel safely. These don't require a by-law to restrict vehicle access in the bike lane or change parking by-laws so no Council approval is needed. Sharrows have been installed along .9 km of Lansdowne between College and Bloor as part of a road reconstruction project. Vic Gedris has reported on these complete with pictures in his iBikeTO.ca article . The other sharrows project is on Lappin and Hallam between Lansdowne and Ossington a distance of 1.5 km. These first projects will give cyclists a chance to try them out and see if they do make cycling safer.

In addition to the report on the status of the 2007 bike lanes and sharrow projects the staff gave a preview of what 2008 may hold for bike lane projects. They presented a preliminary list of 38 projects that were being contemplated for 2008 and 2009 that totaled 119.6 km. The cycling committee was warned that this was more than the city could do in 2008. Of those 37 projects staff are already doing the design work on 15 projects totaling 39.8 km. Staff promised to present a revised list of projects to the TCAC at its next meeting which is now scheduled for Monday December 10th, 2007.

The other piece of information that was provided to the Cycling Committee was the overall total of bicycle lanes that have been completed to this point and the number remaining to be completed to realize Mayor David Miller's promise to complete the Bikeway Network by 2012. As of September 1, 2007 Toronto had 69 km of bike lanes. A potential 25.6 km could be added to that total once all the bike lanes up for approval in 2007 are constructed. The total number proposed in the Bike Plan is 466 km. That would leave about 371 km yet to be build in the next 5 years or an average of just less than 75 km per year. (The rest of the proposed 1105 kms of bikeway network is comprised of off-street paths in parks and hydro and rail corridors - 301 km, park roads - 20 km and shared roadways, 318 km. There are 135 km of off-street paths and 200 km of shared roadways to be competed.)

To get to an average of 75 km a year of bicycle lane projects completed the the City of Toronto is going to have to redouble its efforts. 2007 was an improvement on previous years in terms of bike lane approvals and capital funding, but still the number of projects approved and the capital funding was less than half the level of what is necessary. In terms of implementation much less than that was achieved. This will have to be rectified in the 2008 Budget setting process which got underway yesterday with the initital budget presentations.

I have updated the chart below. Some of the data on the projects have been changed based on the information provided at the October TCAC meeting. Let me know if I have missed anything or if you see any of the projects have been completed.