Episode 182: Doug Ford Versus Toronto’s Bike Lanes 

 

Doug Gordon: Sarah, I feel like you’re always talking about how you remember to bring your Cleverhood everywhere you go.

Sarah Goodyear: I do. I’m really good at remembering that, and I’m proud of that.

Doug: I have less success.

Sarah: Really?

Doug: I feel like I am one of those people where if I bring my Cleverhood, it doesn’t rain, and if I don’t bring my Cleverhood, it does.

Sarah: Well, I’m very sorry to hear that, Doug. Is there some kind of a solution that we can come up with to help you remember your Cleverhood?

Doug: Probably what I need to do is just buy more than one and have one stashed in my bike. But I have lots of bikes, so that would be like N+1+Cleverhood. I don’t know if that would be a good idea.

Sarah: Okay, so I’ve got an idea. You can just remember the discount code for this month for Cleverhood, and that code to get 15 percent off all Cleverhood products at Cleverhood.com/waroncars is RAINBRAIN.

Doug: Oh, I definitely have rain brain, for sure, because something happens, the barometer drops, and I don’t think I really think about what I need when I go outside. So this is good. I should use the discount to get more than one Cleverhood, the Rover Rain Cape being my favorite.

Sarah: Yeah, and just remember that code, RAINBRAIN. It’s good through the end of October. So get on it, Doug.

Doug: The rain in my brain falls mainly in something. I don’t know.

Sarah: Okay, we’ll leave it there.

Doug: Sarah, we live here in New York City where life after cars is indeed possible.

Sarah: Indeed.

Doug: Can you think of some of the things that make that possible?

Sarah: I would say, let’s think about bike share is a big part of that.

Doug: Citi Bike, yes.

Sarah: Yeah, and our wonderful public transportation system, the buses in this city.

Doug: Getting faster all the time.

Sarah: That’s right. And the public plazas and pedestrianized parts of the city.

Doug: Protected bicycle lanes as well that make those bike-sharing trips and personal bike trips that much safer and easier. And what if I told you there was one person who kicked it all off?

Sarah: One person? Who could that be, Doug?

Doug: Well, there was a whole team behind her, but really, Janette Sadik-Khan was the visionary. She was the leader, the former Department of Transportation commissioner during the Bloomberg years, who really got New York City rolling on this road towards life after cars. And we wouldn’t be where we are today, this podcast wouldn’t exist without her visionary leadership.

Sarah: What a coincidence that Janette Sadik-Khan is going to be our guest at our show at Hunter College on Friday, November 6.

Doug: It’s almost as if you knew I was setting you up to make that announcement. This is gonna be a huge, huge night for our movement. It’s sort of both a victory lap for her to say, you know, after all these years with a new mayor coming in who’s fully on board with making our streets world-class, she kicked it off. And we wouldn’t be in the position of having Mayor Mamdani wanting to speed up buses even more, to make more protected bike lanes, if she hadn’t started what she started back in the 2000s, 2010, that era. It’s also gonna be a way for us to look forward to what we have to expect in the next few years of the Mamdani administration. And I think we’re both really looking forward to hearing Janette’s thoughts on what’s possible now that the politics and the culture have changed so much since she started what she started.

Sarah: Yeah, I really want to hear her throw down a challenge to the current administration to advance the city as much in their term as she did in hers.

Doug: If not more. We are so excited to be at Hunter College on Friday, November 6. Go to LifeAfterCars.com. That’s where you’ll find the link to buy tickets. Thanks.

Doug: This is The War on Cars. I’m Doug Gordon.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: And we are on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. Head on over there and sign up to support the podcast.

Doug: So we’re gonna get right to it. Toronto is the spiritual home of The War on Cars. After all, the title of this podcast comes from former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, may he rest in peace, who vowed to end the war on cars in the Canadian city back in 2010. Now, his brother, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, has been waging a war on Toronto’s bike lanes. As we record this, crews are removing bike lanes on major streets in Toronto. This comes after a lengthy legal battle that, at least a little while ago, looked like it might succeed in denying Doug Ford the culture war victory he clearly wanted. Those removals have been met with massive protests as people continue to take to the streets again, even as we record this.

Doug: So we’re gonna talk all about what’s going on in Toronto. What does this mean for the future of bike lanes up there? There’s a lot at stake beyond bike lanes as other Canadian provinces look to Ontario, and as we here in the US face a government that’s also hostile to anything that is not a car. With us to discuss where things stand now and what happens next are Michael Longfield, the executive director of the advocacy organization Cycle Toronto, and Bronwyn Roe, who’s an attorney with Ecojustice. That’s a nonprofit law organization, and she is part of the team that’s been leading the legal fight against the provincial government. Michael, Bronwyn, welcome to The War on Cars.

Michael Longfield: Thanks.

Bronwyn Roe: Thanks for having us.

Doug: Okay, so we were in Toronto in February for book tour, and at that point, all that had really happened was there was a new law on the books that was allowing the province to kind of interfere in local city government. We had not yet really geared up for the bigger, bigger legal fights. That sort of was happening then, but it really escalated after we left. I wonder if you could give us a quick summary of sort of what happened between February and this summer.

Michael Longfield: Well, I’ll just say right off the bat, Doug, at that point we were kind of knee-deep in a lot. You know, we had had—the legislation had been introduced, you know, almost a year and a half ago, and at that point we were on a bit of a honeymoon because the previous summer we had been successful in court in stopping this legislation. And I think, you know, maybe a couple weeks before, Bronwyn, you can correct me, we had just been at the Court of Appeal to try to defend that victory last summer. So it seems, like, bonkers to think of it now, just given how much has happened so quickly and where we are now, but it was still a pretty big moment when you guys were here back in the winter.

Doug: Can you talk about that law? It’s Bill 212, correct? Like, can you just explain exactly what that did?

Michael Longfield: Bill 212 was legislation that was passed by the provincial government—a province is like a state. It originally was meant for the province to be able to look at data about bike lane usage that had been built during the pandemic. Toronto, like a lot of cities, had really accelerated their cycling network build-out during the COVID years, and so this legislation was meant for the province to be able to look to see how well those bike lanes were really being used now and how much were they maybe contributing to traffic congestion. Bike lane advocates were pretty concerned with that framing. We thought it was all an excuse to start removing bike lanes. And it didn’t take very long for the province to make that explicitly clear.

Michael Longfield: They quickly rewrote the legislation while it was in committee and basically made it to remove 19 kilometers in bike lanes, the three main arterials, arguably the spine of Toronto cycling network along Bloor Street, University and Yonge Street. There was a big campaign launched by Cycle Toronto, a petition that received, you know, 25,000 signatures or more, tens of thousands of submissions to the province against the legislation, but they have a majority. It passed very easily, and Doug Ford got what he wanted: legislation that would give the province the power to rip out 19 kilometers of Toronto bike lanes. But that was until Cycle Toronto was in conversation with Ecojustice and Paliare Roland, another law firm, and we launched a legal case against that. And I guess, you know, I can kind of throw to Bronwyn to sort of talk a little bit about that.

Bronwyn Roe: Yeah, so Bill 212, as Michael mentioned, the changes that it made were new provisions that were added into the Provincial Highway Traffic Act. Prior to these new provisions, bicycle lanes were a matter for local municipal jurisdictions to handle the way that they design any city streets. So this was really the province coming in and taking over municipal powers over bike lanes. So we launched our legal challenge pretty quickly after that legislation was enacted. The legislation was enacted, I think, November 25, 2024. And by mid-December, mid- to late-December, we’d filed our application challenging the removals. And we targeted specifically the provision that requires removing existing bike infrastructure.

Bronwyn Roe: And we framed it as a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of our Constitution and sets out guaranteed rights and freedoms that everyone in Canada has, including rights under Section 7 of the Charter to life, liberty and security of the person. So we focused our challenge on the rights to life and security of the person. In a nutshell, our argument is that removing existing protected cycling infrastructure, key parts of a connected cycling network that were put in by the city specifically to enable safer cycling, requiring those removals will increase risks of collision and therefore increase risks of injury and death for cyclists, but also for pedestrians and drivers. And that these removals, this legislation requiring these removals, is arbitrary and grossly disproportionate, which are two recognized principles of fundamental justice that our Supreme Court of Canada has recognized. Any infringement of a Section 7 right must be in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Michael Longfield: Yeah, so Bronwyn, you were sort of saying, like, oh, it was early December or mid-December. I remember exactly when it was when we launched it, because in a bizarre twist of fate, I was in the hospital because the day prior to the announcement, I was doored while riding my bicycle in a painted bike lane. Actually, one of the painted bike lanes that runs parallel to one of the target bike lanes from the legislation. At that time, the protected bike lane was under construction, there was, you know, TTC—that’s our transit system—work that was happening. I knew the bike lane was blocked, so I chose not to take that route and took the painted bike lanes. I thought, like, that’ll be safer. And I was doored by somebody trying to get out of a rideshare vehicle, and I broke my femur. Quite a serious injury that I’m still rehabbing from.

Michael Longfield: And so, yeah, so while Bronwyn and our board chair were doing the press conference about the legal challenge, I was in the hospital getting surgery on my leg, and much to my wife’s chagrin, still taking calls from reporters explaining the legal case and what we were doing.

Doug: Wow.

Sarah: And let’s just make a note that that bike lane that you were in is precisely the route that the premier is saying bicyclists should be taking instead of the protected lanes on Bloor Street that are being ripped out.

Michael Longfield: Of University Avenue in this case, yeah. And in this case, the bike lanes on St. George, for folks that are aware of Toronto’s geography, they’re painted bike lanes, they’re not protected. They kind of run through the downtown campus of the University of Toronto. It’s not a terrible cycling route normally and, you know, this is one of the few actual alternatives that there are to the 19 kilometers of bike lanes, and I was still doored there. And so it was a, you know, terrible reminder just how important this safe and protected infrastructure is. And it’s definitely made the rest of this fight feel very personal.

Doug: At a certain point, Bronwyn, the legal challenge that you all filed was successful. You got this blocked, the premier’s plan, but then that was overturned later, August of this past summer.

Bronwyn Roe: Yes, that’s right. So the lower court, the Ontario Superior Court, had sided with us and had found that based on the evidence that we’d put forward and expert evidence, evidence from the City of Toronto that established that taking out the protected bike lanes would increase risk of injury and death, and that it would not achieve the goal of reducing traffic congestion. And so we succeeded in having the Superior Court declare that the provision mandating the destruction of these 19 kilometers of bike lanes does violate the Section 7 Charter rights to life and security of the person. We had that victory. We celebrated.

Michael Longfield: It was a good day.

Bronwyn Roe: [laughs] It was a good day. Ontario appealed and their appeal was heard last January. So when you were in Toronto in February for your book tour, we had just recently argued the appeal at the Ontario Court of Appeal and we were waiting for their decision. So they released—the Ontario Court of Appeal released their decision in August, and they decided against Cycle Toronto.

Michael Longfield: You know, something that I think is important for folks to keep in mind, too, is you might sort of wonder, how does a province have the power to do this to the City of Toronto? Like, doesn’t the City of Toronto have its own autonomy over its roads? And, you know, in Ontario, cities actually don’t have any constitutional status of their own. They exist, I think the saying is, at the whim of the province.

Bronwyn Roe: Creatures of the province.

Michael Longfield: Creatures of the province, yeah. So the province can almost do anything it wants with cities. We saw this earlier with Premier Ford as well with the 2019 municipal election where he basically cut city council in half during the municipal election. And this went to the Supreme Court of Canada. And the court sided with the province, and our number of councilors we had was cut in half. So we sort of knew going into this that the province did have a lot of authority to do this in theory. And I think what was really ingenious was this Charter argument that kind of circumvented the authority issue and made it more about these kind of fundamental rights that the Canadian Charter establishes for people, and that removing this infrastructure in an arbitrary way because it would not solve traffic congestion, and it being reckless because it would put people’s lives at risk, was this violation of Section 7.

Michael Longfield: And I think, too, one of the big game changers in our case is, you know, like, obviously we had our transportation experts and professors being able to talk about all the data around road safety and bike lanes and that piece, and, you know, get really great testimonies from Linda Rothman and Shoshanna Saxe. But the real game changer was we got access to the government’s internal documents and their briefings. And there were cabinet briefing documents to the ministers ahead of the legislation being introduced, basically from MTO staff and bureaucrats saying, like, guys, this isn’t gonna work. There’s no evidence this is gonna work. In fact, it might make traffic worse. People are gonna get killed and injured. None of the data backs this up.

Michael Longfield: And then once the legislation had been passed, but before our first court date, the province had commissioned an independent report by an engineering firm, CIMA+, to kind of analyze the feasibility of, like, ripping out 19 kilometers of bike lanes. And they basically wrote back, like, this is a really bad idea. Bike lanes, you know, do not contribute to traffic congestion. Here is a whole bunch of additional expert evidence on that. Bike lanes make things safer for all road users. They reduce collisions not just for people on bikes, but by all road users by 50 percent. And so it wasn’t as if the case was about the government’s evidence being hey, traffic’s really bad, we got to rip out the bike lanes, and here’s the data backing that up, and our evidence saying something different. All the evidence was saying the same thing, and I think it made for a really compelling argument that when you looked at the data and you didn’t just think about this in terms of vibes or, you know, kind of a culture war, that the evidence has sort of backed us up. And so yeah, it was a really great victory, but it was based on the facts, and the government’s own facts were really helpful in our side of the case.

Doug: So that’s actually a great transition to what happened with the Ontario Court of Appeals ruling, because it did seem more vibes-based, which was shocking to me based on what you said about all the evidence from the province itself. So Justice Grant Huscroft, who wrote the Ontario Court of Appeal ruling, said, “Common sense suggests that increasing the number of lanes available for motor vehicles must, at least to some extent and for some period of time, be capable of contributing to reducing traffic congestion.”

Sarah: This is the “add another lane, bro” doctrine, or at least …

Doug: Or just put it all back, these 19 kilometers. I mean, that’s what’s crazy to me is we’re talking about 19 kilometers of bicycle lanes. If our listeners are not that familiar with Toronto, it is a very big and sprawling city. We’re just really talking about the downtown core. The traffic’s terrible everywhere you go, and removing 19 kilometers of bike lanes is not going to fix traffic. But this quote from the judge, you know, “It’s all just common sense,” which it’s not common sense, actually. Like, common sense would say more lanes equals less traffic, but traffic doesn’t behave according to common sense. It occurs according to human behavior.

Michael Longfield: Well, and the other piece, too. So Toronto, compared to New York and Montreal, certainly, you know, doesn’t have a lot of protected on-street infrastructure. The good things about the pandemic among a really terrible time was that Toronto really did accelerate building out a lot of new bike lanes, and it’s specifically protected bike lanes. So we have about 110 kilometers of on-street protected bike lanes. So removing 19 kilometers of that is gutting, like, almost a quarter of that network. And even more than the number of kilometers it would be removing, just the amount of network connectivity it would effectively eradicate and render a lot of that remaining cycling infrastructure, I wouldn’t say useless, but way less usable for people as well. So it would really cut Toronto cycling off at the knees if they were to be successful in removing all of this.

Michael Longfield: Yeah, and again, these are bike lanes that have been approved by City Council under multiple mayors, multiple councils, over a decade of planning and consultations and community feedback and studies. You know, Toronto is not casual in terms of how it builds its bike lanes. Sometimes I wish it were more casual, but certainly none of these lanes were put there randomly, or it’s not just a matter of, you know, our current mayor Olivia Chow pointing at a line on a map and saying build the bike lanes there. Most of these bike lanes actually had been built prior to our current mayor Olivia Chow being elected, even though she’s now often blamed for every single meter of bike lane in the city.

Doug: So you lose the appeal, and then in September, the Toronto Star reports that the city was willing to compromise and offered a compromise to the provincial government that said basically, we will restore traffic lanes on a 1.5-kilometer section of Bloor Street. But the provincial government basically said, no. No compromise. Tell us what’s interesting about that section of Bloor Street.

Michael Longfield: So the mayor’s offer to the premier on that section of Bloor wasn’t just to restore the car lanes, but that city staff had done designs to restore car lanes and keep the bike lanes. You know, that stretch of Bloor is actually fairly wide, and additionally, the car lanes were removed as part of a deliberate road diet, you know, to slow things down, to maybe create more parking, a little bit more loading. So it was a feature, not a bug, to remove the additional travel lanes. So the mayor said, hey, we can make this deal. We’ll restore the car lanes but still keep the bike lanes. And for reasons that nobody has articulated, the province did not accept that offer despite their claims their entire time that they’re not against bike lanes, they just want to restore car lanes, they just want to, air quotes, “get traffic moving.” And so, you know, already the premier’s words might say one thing or might be expressing one thing, but clearly in their actions, it’s very different. They just seem intent on ripping out the bike lanes.

Doug: You mentioned the transportation minister. That’s Prabmeet Sarkaria. He’s sort of a villain in this, too. And talk about vibes, because his office was asked about this compromise, and the only thing that the office said was, “We’ve always been clear: bike lanes should go where they make sense,” which to me sounds very much like any run-of-the-mill NIMBY at a community meeting saying, I’m in favor of bike lanes, just not where they don’t make sense. And he said that bike lanes shouldn’t come at the expense of vehicle lanes, commuters’ time or our economy, as if cyclists are not commuters as well.

Sarah: As if bicycles are not vehicles as well.

Doug: Exactly. Talk about Minister Sarkaria. He also has this ideological opposition to bike lanes, otherwise he wouldn’t have been appointed by Doug Ford. Tell us a little bit about him.

Michael Longfield: Uh … [laughs] It’s hard to know what’s actually motivating the minister on this or not. Certainly it feels—and I think we’re all correct in assuming this—that this is very personal for the premier, that these are bike lanes, you know, in his part of the city. They’re bike lanes that he would see most days as part of his commute. He has connections to local businesses that are very upset about this, a few of the local businesses, and it’s been reported on as well, those actual conversations that have happened between businesses and the premier’s office. But yeah, I don’t really know what’s motivating the minister on this the same way as I think we all do with the premier. And on some level, this is kind of built into who Doug Ford is. I think we all sort of know this. He has grudges against the city. I think he still feels some degree of frustration about how the city treated his brother and certainly his brother’s legacy. I think the mayor has tried to create a new relationship with him and try to find ways to honor his brother that I think a lot of Torontonians find a bit sour but, you know, kudos to her for trying that diplomacy anyways.

Michael Longfield: But I don’t know what’s motivating the minister on this. And in some ways I find his reaction or his stance on this even more disappointing, if that’s the word I can use. I feel like someone in his position who doesn’t maybe have the same personal history with all this should know better. He has senior staffers who would be telling him this is a bad idea. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s really frustrating about this, not to make comparisons to, you know, what you’re dealing with in the US with Trump, but certainly watching it from afar, I find it more frustrating when he has enablers around him who know better, who seem to be pushing these things forward. And I think there’s some parallels there with what we’re dealing with in Ontario.

Bronwyn Roe: A couple things. One is that the comments that the Minister of Transportation has made recently about “these bike lanes are coming out and we’re doing it to get Toronto moving, get traffic moving,” these are the same types of comments that the Minister of Transportation was making back in 2024 when they introduced this legislation. One of the great parts of the Ontario Superior Court’s decision is the judge had an entire section with a heading, “Ontario’s Advice Contradicts the Government’s Position,” where he lays out that at the time that the Minister of Transportation and the premier are making statements about bike lanes causing traffic congestion, about moving them to secondary streets, and that will be better and safer for everybody, about how many people bike versus how many people drive, that the evidence that we put forward from Ontario showed that the Ministry of Transportation had given advice to the contrary.

Bronwyn Roe: And the Ministry of Transportation also has documents, like every ministry has to have a statement of environmental values. The Ministry of Transportation statement of environmental values talks about the importance of transitioning towards active transportation, including cycling, the importance of cycling networks and active transportation in helping Ontario achieve its climate goals. So the statement that the Minister of Transportation makes really doesn’t align with the Ministry of Transportation’s own positions and evidence.

Sarah: Let’s bring ourselves up to present day and what’s happening now. There were some big rides demonstrating against the removal of the bike lanes in advance of the removal. Thousands of cyclists turned out in the streets of Toronto. And then when the removal started …

Michael Longfield: Even before that, there were many rides. There were—you know, Toronto had two critical masses. I think we saw over a thousand people come out to each of those nights. Cycle Toronto organized a Cyclists Aren’t Secondary Side Streets ride. We took a couple hundred people out, and we tried to ride the side streets that the premier and the minister had been implying these are suitable replacements for the arterial bike lanes on Bloor. And it took us through park ravines where a kid fell off a path and, you know, had to be digged out of the ditch. And then at one point where we had to bike out of Humber Valley, and the hill was so steep, half the people had to walk their bikes up there. So clearly, like, very practical routes that everybody would use as part of their daily transportation piece.

Michael Longfield: So we did all that, but then on the morning when it seemed like removals were gonna start, and it was very vague. Normally when this type of roadwork happens, the City of Toronto will publish the permits on their website that, hey, there’s roadwork scheduled, and here’s the details and here’s the contractor and that piece. And we were getting rumors that something was coming and it was probably coming Tuesday, but nothing was posted in an official—but that Tuesday just happened to be the same day where we formally announced that we would be seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, that we would be taking this case to the next level of government. And so that was the morning—and we can talk a little bit about that and that kind of argument—but then it was that evening when we thought removals were about to start, and hundreds of cyclists came out to that section of Bloor and were out and were riding. And then sure enough, the construction equipment—or the first trucks showed up and cyclists circled around them, and we can talk about that.

Sarah: I mean, I saw this on social media, and it was just a really incredible sight that these construction trucks were there, and the cyclists were preventing them from doing this destruction. And eventually, they left, right? Eventually, those …

Doug: The construction crews left.

Sarah: The construction crews backed off. I mean, it’s an incredible level of organization. And then the next day, the construction crews showed back up. But as I understand, that’s not the time of day that they were permitted to do this work. They showed up, as I understand it, with duct tape over the name of the construction company as if they didn’t want to be associated with this work.

Michael Longfield: Verdi Alliance. Yep.

Sarah: Yeah. And as we speak, I think still there are people demonstrating and making themselves present at this scene. I mean, this is an incredible level of organization that you all are demonstrating here. I just want to say that how it looks from here, first the Critical Mass rides, then the actual blocking of the work, and then continuing to show up even as the work is progressing, is just really inspiring to see that. Can you talk a little bit about how you organized this? What is at the heart of your ability to turn out these kinds of responses? And is this something that you are going to attempt to keep going while the work is ongoing? And how is that going to dovetail with the legal fight that you’re doing?

Michael Longfield: I really do want to, right off the top, say Cycle Toronto can’t take sole credit for this at all, for the number of people who showed up, the passion of people, supporters, families on cargo bikes, people on adaptive scooters. You know, I need to give credit to groups like Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists, for Friends and Families for Safe Streets, for the Bicycle Mayor of Toronto and for the Biking Lawyer LLP as well for helping really be …

Doug: Full disclosure, he’s a sponsor of the podcast, but we’re very happy that he was involved with what was going on.

Sarah: But go ahead, Michael.

Doug: Yeah, go ahead. Keep going.

Michael Longfield: So, you know, very much a broad community movement. And I think almost inspired by these images or memories of when Doug’s brother Rob was mayor, when Rob Ford was mayor, and he did start removing bike lanes in Toronto, and most notably a bike lane on Jarvis Street. And there were protests back at the time. There’s some photos where you can see a person lying down in front of the truck that would scrub the paint off of there. And there was about a dozen, maybe two dozen people there as part of that protest. It ultimately resulted in the lanes getting removed. It wasn’t a huge turnout, but commend those people that were there. And I think a lot of us had that picture in our mind of, like, fuck, what would I do if I were there? I certainly thought about that. And so I think hundreds of people felt the same and we didn’t want the same thing to happen.

Michael Longfield: And so when we showed up on Tuesday and were riding, and then when the trucks first started showing up—and it was only a few trucks at that point. They did have their logos, parts of their logos duct taped over, which is actually a violation of the Highway Traffic Act. I think also is indicative of their shame of doing this. You know, we surrounded, and then it took a while for the police presence to really coordinate as well. So there were a lot of protesters very peacefully surrounding these trucks before the police could kind of also come in and create an additional barrier. And so we were in this kind of standoff for about 45 minutes, basically before their permits were about to allow them to start doing work. And we were kind of all there in this holding pattern when, you know, eventually the workers just kind of said to the police and said to the protesters, like, look, we don’t care, we’re just paid to do a job, we’re gonna go home. And the protesters, you know, sort of backed off. They were escorted out by the police, the crowd sort of chanting, you know, “Get home safely,” and applauding. And it was really one of the most incredible moments I’ve been around. And I think the euphoria that, you know, people felt and the cycling community felt and even people just frustrated about this ridiculous provincial overreach, was incredible.

Michael Longfield: And then yet the next morning, construction crews were out. And at that time, it didn’t seem like they had permits to do work during the day, but it’s the Ministry of Transportation, kind of do what they want. They quickly got the permits updated, and the attempted removal started before folks could really organize to be out en masse like we were the day before. And very deliberately. Like, there’s no doubt in my mind at all that this was a deliberate sneak attack to start doing work before protesters could organize.

Doug: It is Trumpian in that sense of, like, tear down the East Wing of the White House, cut down the trees on the golf course before the injunction can go through, before the papers can be filed at the courthouse. So it is similar in that regard. We’ve briefly touched on Mayor Chow. She practically rode to office in 2023 on the back of a bicycle. You know, she really was seen as, like, this great correction from the Rob Ford years, and this real great promise of good things were gonna happen for safe streets under her watch. From where I’m sitting, I never felt like she was all that vocal about this stuff until rather recently. This is a huge waste of money, also. $48 million to rip out these bike lanes, not to mention the police presence and all the legal filings that are happening. There is this issue of sort of the fuzzy existence of cities, you know, in your country’s constitution. So where’s Mayor Chow with all of this?

Michael Longfield: You’re correct in terms of literally riding a bicycle in. On her first day of office, Cycle Toronto did a group ride with the mayor, and we had hundreds of people who gathered, and we all rode down to City Hall together on her first day in office for her swearing in. So, like, quite literally riding in on a bicycle. And I think for a lot of people, I mean, Olivia Chow has been a political figure in Toronto politics for a very long time. Her husband was also a very noted politician. Her stepson is also—was a city councilor as well who’s running again, and was someone who was sort of known for—the whole family known for being cyclists, and being not just “cyclists,” air quotes, but fully embracing bicycles as a normalized way of getting around town. You know, it didn’t have to be their whole identity, just an extra meaning of hope for a lot of people that this might lead to Toronto kind of getting into the same space that, you know, Montreal under Valérie Plante or Paris under Anne Hidalgo might sort of be where you would see this real embrace of active transportation, of urbanism, of reclaiming streets for people.

Michael Longfield: And even before this legislation was introduced, we didn’t see cycling really be a very big priority for her office. We didn’t see a regression of cycling, but we didn’t see any more of an acceleration that we had under John Tory. And because John Tory wasn’t anybody’s idea of a cycling advocate, I think folks were expecting more. And then when these provincial shenanigans around Bill 212 happened, I think a lot of people did feel frustrated that the city wasn’t doing more despite kind of being boxed in. And, you know, I can be honest too, I think there was an open question with Cycle Toronto and when we were talking with Paliare and Ecojustice about who was gonna be launching this legal case? Like, was it actually gonna be Cycle Toronto, like, as this charity, this advocacy group that would be doing it, or would it be the City of Toronto itself that would be launching it, or would the City of Toronto join in our case as an intervener to help it? But instead, they were very hands-off. We had access to all the wonderful staff reports that had been put together, so they were still helpful that way. And city council passed a motion symbolically opposing the legislation. That was helpful for our case as well. But yeah, it was maybe not as much as I think people had hoped. I will say the mayor has been very outspoken recently, and especially, I think, her disappointment or frustration with the premier’s refusal to accept this win-win deal is quite palpable. And it’s definitely—I think there’s kind of a fire in her now around this issue that we maybe didn’t see before.

Sarah: If the city does recognize that bike lanes protect safety, that they’re good for the economy, that they serve the people of Toronto in an effective way, is there, Bronwyn, some legal recourse, some legal mechanisms that the city can use to create safe bike infrastructure without the interference of the province?

Bronwyn Roe: The legal situation for the city is challenging, because they don’t have an independent constitutional status separate from the province. The province can take back any powers it has delegated to municipalities, and it can pick and choose what it takes and what it leaves the city burdened with. So here, the Highway Traffic Act provisions do limit what the city can do in terms of removing lanes available for motor vehicle traffic and replacing them with bike lanes. But certainly there will be some portions of the city where that can be achieved. Bike lanes can be added. I think also certainly there is a lot of our cycling network that isn’t protected lanes yet, so those could be upgraded and improved and made safer.

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Doug: So Bronwyn, what’s next for the legal part of this fight? You’re gonna maybe bring this all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court. What’s the argument that you’re gonna make this time?

Bronwyn Roe: We’re hoping to take this to the Supreme Court. We’ve filed our application for leave to appeal. So most cases don’t get an automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court, the court has to grant leave. So we’ve submitted that first application and we’ll await their decision. If we do, we have a few issues that we’ve highlighted as issues of public and national importance that the Supreme Court can weigh in on and that their guidance would be useful to the lower courts. The first is a question about the scope of Section 7 and what kind of state action it can apply to. At a very high level, the Ontario Court of Appeal said that Section 7 of the Charter isn’t even engaged in this case, because leaving aside the evidence of increased risk of injuries and death, there’s no positive constitutional right to a bike lane, and therefore taking out a bike lane can’t even engage the Charter. So there’s an overall legal question about the scope of the Charter.

Bronwyn Roe: And then going back to that common sense issue, one big issue on this potential appeal is exactly that. Can a government simply rely on an asserted “common sense” presumption about what the effects of legislation or state action would be, or can an applicant put forward evidence to establish what the legislative effects will be? So in our case, we had ample evidence. The Superior Court judge said it was uncontradicted evidence about the safety impacts and congestion impacts of bike lanes. And the Ontario Court of Appeal said that that evidence essentially wasn’t relevant because a common sense presumption is enough to show that the legislation was not arbitrary.

Bronwyn Roe: And then another issue that we are hoping to address is this issue of, you know, what role does a person’s choice to engage in a potentially risky activity have in the Section 7 analysis? The Supreme Court has given guidance that an individual’s choice doesn’t affect the Section 7 analysis. It’s the government’s role in causing or contributing to an increased risk of harm or death that’s relevant. And an individual’s choice to engage in a potentially risky activity like cycling doesn’t vitiate that causal connection. When the Court of Appeal was considering this principles of fundamental justice question about are the effects of the legislation grossly disproportionate to its aims, it found that the harms that cyclists will suffer, they’ll only suffer them if they choose to continue biking on these roads after the bike lanes are taken out. And so it can’t be said that the legislation is grossly disproportionate.

Doug: So I want to move on to the political side of this. I wonder if what we’re seeing right now is a little bit like the proverbial dog who caught the car, right? The Ford brothers have been railing against bike lanes for almost two decades. They’ve been a very convenient flashpoint in the culture wars for both of them, for Rob and for Doug. Now they caught the car. You know, Doug has all of the power he needs to rip out bike lanes in a way that even his brother couldn’t have dreamed of as mayor. And he’s doing it, and he’s been saying forever, these cause traffic, they’re a pain in the ass, et cetera. So now the bike lanes, all 19 kilometers of them, are gonna be gone. But traffic, as we know, is not going to get better as a result. This is costing $48 million. What’s gonna happen when the dust settles and things are the same, if not worse, than they were before in a political sense? Like, okay, you got rid of the bike lanes, Dougie. Like, what’s next? My commute still sucks. I’m stuck in traffic on my way from the Toronto suburbs to the downtown. Who is he going to blame everything on then?

Michael Longfield: I’ve been thinking about that too, in terms of even just, you know, comparing it again to what it is y’all are facing under President Trump is, you know, when you have somebody promising these outrageous things and a company that will accomplish these even more outrageous things, how do you spin it when it doesn’t achieve what it said it was going to? And I think we’re in this very interesting moment where I don’t want to say we’re, like, post-facts, but one of the challenges certainly I’ve been finding within my role at Cycle Toronto is trying to talk to people about these bike lanes, and we can’t even agree on the facts of what’s here or not. We can’t agree on, you know, traffic congestion. We can’t agree on whether or not EMS response vehicles are delayed or not, of how much travel time impact has been there, too. And, you know, Toronto’s in the lead-up to a municipal election in a couple weeks, and it does leave me a bit nervous about the future of democracy if we can’t even agree on the facts of what we’re trying to solve. You know, it’s one thing to maybe have proposed different solutions to those problems, but we don’t seem to be able to agree on what the problems are. And so maybe it makes it easier to spin whether or not that problem has been solved or not to your base, and to be able to keep gaslighting, for lack of a better word, folks around this.

Michael Longfield: Like you said, we’re in the midst of these removals on Bloor Street right now. The whiplash that we went through of stopping the removals on Tuesday, and then, you know, Wednesday morning, Dave Shellnutt and I were among other protesters that were sitting in front of construction vehicles and being warned by the police, you have five minutes to get up or you’re going to get arrested. And then the whiplash, kind of what we’re going through and the reality of these lanes, you know, being ripped out and crews still being there today and protesters still being there today chanting, and an army of police officers having to be there to ensure that the workers can proceed and keep clearing out protesters. The amount of traffic that’s being caused right now because of the amount of police and because this is happening during the day, I don’t know what the premier supporters are going to say when this is all done, or if they’re just gonna convince themselves yeah, it’s better because the bike lane’s not there, or I’m still stuck in traffic, but at least there’s not some annoying cyclist moving faster than me anymore. Like, I don’t know—or if it’s just enough to, like, air quotes, “own the libs” on this, which I think makes me a bit nervous about how democracies actually function. You know, I’m choosing to be optimistic about it. I wouldn’t be in my job if I wasn’t. But this is kind of giving me a pause of the bigger questions, even just beyond this 1.2 kilometers of bike lanes in Etobicoke.

Doug: On that note of optimism, I saw the practically full-page, front-page headlines on the Toronto Star when you did successfully stop the crews from removing the bike lanes. And I wonder if this isn’t gonna backfire in the long-term sense, in that what Doug Ford has done is elevated this rather small issue—19 kilometers of bike lanes for downtown cyclists largely—into a provincial story. And I would imagine that there are a lot of people reading the paper or paying attention to the news who weren’t paying attention to the ins and outs of bike lane politics, who are now thinking wait, this is what the premier is concerning himself with? You know, we’ve got tariffs decimating our economy, high fuel prices, you know, causing all kinds of headaches for people all over North America, and this is what Doug Ford is spending $48 million of our taxpayer dollars on? And so maybe you weren’t so keyed into the bike lane fights, maybe you didn’t care one way or the other, but now you think all these people want to do is bike to school, bike to work, bike for recreation. And so now you’re maybe negatively polarized against Doug Ford.

Doug: I think we saw something like that happen here in the early bikelash era where a lot of people weren’t paying attention. The NIMBYs just said more and more ridiculous things about bike lanes, and it just galvanized more and more people to the cause. So if I can offer you some optimism and some hope, it’s that, you know, you might be losing some battles here, but I think the larger war might be winnable.

Michael Longfield: Yeah. I think for a lot of Ontarians right now, like, we want our premier focused on actually dealing with this apparent trade war that we’re in, and trying to, you know, address real issues that we’re having with our healthcare system, with our education system. The $48 million—that’s $48 million Canadian—could be going to, you know, hospitals, schools, roads outside of the City of Toronto. And yet if I wasn’t a Torontonian, in some other rural part of the province, I’d be really pissed off that the premier keeps wanting to pick fights with the city and waste tens of millions of dollars to do it when clearly there are, you know, bigger issues to face.

Bronwyn Roe: I think one thing I would say is that we’re about to have municipal elections in Toronto, and even though the province has seized control over bike lanes in the city, it still is an issue in the elections. So it’s certainly become top of mind for a lot of Ontarians who otherwise wouldn’t have been thinking about bike lanes, and even people who might not care about bike lanes or they might even be mildly annoyed by them. I agree, I don’t think they would find this to be a great use of the premier’s time and the province’s money at a time like this.

Sarah: One of the things that I really admired about the action on Tuesday night—it’s Thursday today—was the chant that you mentioned, Michael, “Get home safe,” right? Get home safe. Which is something that we say to each other in New York as well. And, you know, this is a public safety issue. And the tragic thing is that people are gonna be hurt, they’re gonna suffer life-altering injuries, and people are gonna die because of this. And so this really isn’t about cyclists versus drivers, war on cars. This is a safety issue. And, you know, how do we convey to people that this is about public safety?

Doug: Let me jump in here because there’s someone who’s very good at explaining how bike lanes contribute to public safety. And that person is Doug Ford.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Doug Ford: You’re nervous when there’s not bike lanes—at least I was. Someone dings you from behind, and we have to do everything we can to make sure there’s never a death in the city. One death is way too many when it comes to bicycle riders. We have to make sure that they’re safe. And I felt so much safer when it was separated.]

Doug: So that is a clip of Doug Ford from nine years ago explaining—apparently you took him on a bike ride, and he felt a lot safer when he made it to a protected bicycle lane. So something happened in the intervening nine years that changed his mind.

Sarah: So it’s actually we have to get Doug Ford to explain it to Doug Ford.

Doug: Exactly.

Michael Longfield: One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is, you know, trying to reframe the issue around cycling and road safety about it being a public health issue, not a safety issue. I think for a lot of people, safety implies law and order and police officers, and certainly protesters are feeling the other side of that with law and order right now, where people are actually getting arrested in these bike lane protests. I think at least three people have been arrested so far to date trying to protest these removals. So, you know, I think a lot of people aren’t feeling that the police are on their side. But, you know, in Toronto, more people are killed as a result of car collisions than gun violence. And I think if we frame these things as like, this is a public health issue, it’s not just a safety or a law and order issue, I think it does change people’s minds on it, too.

Doug: We’ll definitely have you back to talk about this and where this goes. I think there are so many other things we could talk about. I mean, as goes Ontario, so goes, let’s say, Alberta, which is currently flirting with the exact same kind of laws that would take control away from Edmonton and Calgary, not just for bike lanes, but for infill housing as well, exploiting this sort of fuzzy status that cities occupy. So we’ll have you back. We wish you all the best. Thank you so much for explaining this to us. The fight’s not over.

Sarah: Solidarity from New York.

Doug: How can people get involved if they are not already involved in the fight to save Toronto’s bike lanes?

Michael Longfield: Certainly, if folks are in a position to give, Cycle Toronto is a registered charity. So if you go to CycleTO.ca/join, you can become a member. And if you pay Canadian income taxes, you can get a tax receipt for that. Even just signing up to our newsletter as well at CycleTO.ca, stay abreast of what we’re doing and follow us on social media does really matter.

Bronwyn Roe: If you’re interested in seeing what Ecojustice is doing on this case and our other public interest environmental work, you can find us at Ecojustice.ca.

Doug: Well, Bronwyn, Michael, thank you for joining The War on Cars. You are nothing if not veterans in this already. So thanks again.

Bronwyn Roe: Thanks so much.

Michael Longfield: Thank you. And I’m glad that we had the chance to meet in person and you got to see a bit of our city firsthand. And so I’m sure this is resonating with you differently than it might have otherwise.

Doug: I think I can speak for both of us when we say we have a special place in our hearts for Toronto. It’s a great city filled with great people that is not served well by the provincial government. So keep up the fight.

Sarah: Yeah, we’re there in spirit with you now, even if we can’t cross the border easily. [laughs]

Doug: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Thanks again to Michael Longfield and Bronwyn Roe for joining us.

Sarah: Remember, please support us on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod.

Doug: A big thanks to everyone who supports The War on Cars, including our top contributors, Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund, Virginia Baker, Brandon DeCoster, Amy Morgenstern, and of course, Dave Shellnutt, founder of The Biking Lawyer LLP up there in Toronto, Canada. Dave, keep it up.

Sarah: Pick up a copy of our book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, wherever you get your books. Go to LifeAfterCars.com for more.

Doug: And don’t forget our show at Hunter College on Friday, November 6, with our special guest, Janette Sadik-Khan. It’s gonna be a great night. We will put a link to buy tickets in the show notes.

Sarah: Thanks to our friends at Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent on the best rain gear for cycling and walking now through the end of October with code RAINBRAIN. Just go to Cleverhood.com/waroncars.

Doug: Thanks also to Bunch Bikes. If you’re looking to replace car trips and explore a new and fun way to get around and get a free set of party lights for your bike, go to Bunchbike.com/thewaroncars.

Sarah: The War on Cars is produced with the generous support of the Helen and William Mazer Foundation.

Doug: This episode was recorded at Public Sound Studios in Brooklyn, New York, by Ryan Woodhull and Jack Braun. It was edited by Yessenia Moreno.

Sarah: Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. Our logo is by Dani Finkel. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon, and this is The War on Cars.