My family lives in…

My family lives in Summerhill-Rosedale (north of Bloor, south of St. Clair) in one of the many "landlocked" neighborhoods that rely solely on Yonge Street as the only means of ingress and egress. Neighborhood pockets on the east of Yonge are blocked on the east by the Yellow Creek Ravine that runs parallel to Yonge while those pockets west of Yonge have intentionally closed off road access connections to/from Avenue Road in order to prevent cut through traffic between the major streets. There are no secondary north-south streets in this area where bike lanes could be installed. We have no choice but to take Yonge to go anywhere like dropping off our children to school or for my daily commute to the suburbs for work.

We have seen noticeable improvements in traffic flows from when the Yonge Street bike lane pilot was introduced with more dedicated left hand turns lanes or wider passing areas. I recall some advanced green traffic signals were added to help with high traffic left turns as well. However, there is still room for improved traffic flows where traffic planners and engineers can continuously address design issues based on constructive user feedback. For example, one of the main causes of northbound gridlock on Yonge is due to the left hand turn at the non-signalized intersection at Yonge & Delisle just north of St. Clair. A vehcile turning left here can cause cascading traffic back-up all the way down to Bloor. If this left hand turn is banned then traffic would flow much better during peak times. The traffic immediately north of Delise passing Mount Pleasant Cemetery to Davisville generally flows very well. A little bit of tweaking like this will make traffic flow better.

It is unrealistic for people to expect that the traffic will flow as it once did with two lanes in each direction but this comes at the cost of making Yonge Street much safer for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers. I believe the narrowing of Yonge Street to a single lane of traffic in each direction along with the visual and physical constrictions due to the bike lanes has had the effect of slowing down cars even outside of peak times. I rarely see vehicles dangerously speeding along this section of Yonge Street anymore like they typically do on Avenue Road or Mt. Pleasant.

We are a biking family. We often bike our children to school and, on weekends, we explore the city on bikes. It was terrifying biking on the old Yonge Street before the bike lanes were introduced. As a landlocked neighbourhood, we had no choice but to venture toward Yonge Street to get anywhere. We would always avoid Yonge Street itself and bike on the sidewalks instead. Occassionally pedestrians would yell at us to get off the sidewalk but it would be suicide to risk our lives biking on the old Yonge Street.

The Province and City needs to ensure that families like ours can get around the city safely on bikes, on foot and in our vehicles and I believe the Yonge Street bike lanes has achieved this objective for all three modes of travel.