More than 100 petitions from Markland Wood residents seeking to defer the installation of bike lanes along Bloor Street West and have the matter reopened at city council have flooded into Doug Holyday's office over the last few weeks.
According to Markland Homes Association President Donald Beggs, that overwhelming community response to the Etobicoke Centre councillor's office was born of a "really angry dislike" for the perceived lack of public consultation prior to the city's adoption of the bike plan in August. That plan, which Holyday voted against, calls for bike lanes to be installed along Bloor Street West from Kipling Avenue to Mill Road, and necessitates the narrowing of the vehicular roadway from four to two lanes.Calling the consultation process inadequate, Beggs said a city-run community meeting on the issue held early last summer was both ill-advertised and ill-attended. "The process stinks, to be quite frank. Despite their protestations about a June information session at the Etobicoke Civic Centre, which apparently occurred, nobody that I've been exposed to had ever seen any notices about it," he argued. "Everyone in the community is behind having (the installation of the bike lanes) deferred until proper consultation has been done." Confirming that only 14 people signed in to that June meeting, Holyday criticized the city's method of advertising the meeting - 11,000 flyers sent out as unaddressed mail."Even if they weren't thrown out without being looked at with all the other junk mail, people still might not have gotten too excited about it because it didn't say anything about lane reductions, it just talked about bike lanes being installed," he said.The kind of concerns the community didn't get the opportunity express at any formal meetings, Beggs said, run the gamut from traffic flow, to safety, to financial impacts on the city. While a slower flow of traffic along Bloor Street isn't entirely undesirable to Markland Wood residents, they do fear the potential diversion of traffic into their neighbourhoods that may result from commuters looking to avoid gridlock, he explained."We are aware of the fact that people sitting in that slower traffic will get awfully frustrated and will seek to get off of Bloor, and there is universal concern about people bleeding up off of Bloor through Markland on their way to Burnhamthorpe or on their way to Dundas," he said, noting there is also a concern that lane reductions could impede the response times of emergency vehicles to Markland Wood. In response to those concerns, the Markland Wood Homes Association held its own information meeting back in February to gather public information. Of the 99 questionnaires filled out at that meeting, Beggs said 75 were in favour of a deferral, 20 thought the changes were positive, and four were undecided. Armed with the knowledge of his constituents' discontent over the bike lanes, which are scheduled to be installed as early as this spring, Holyday is now taking two routes in an attempt to put a halt to the plans. Firstly, he's trying to get the matter reopened at council's next meeting on March 31 - a tough task, he admitted, given that he'd need a two-thirds vote in a council consisting of many a bike lane fan. "Over half of them are ardent supporters of these bike lanes and they're going to look at this request as a step backwards," he said, "but it's not democratic the way they've done it and I certainly think they'd be ill-advised to not listen to the residents and give them their say."On the second front, Holyday has teamed with neighbouring Etobicoke-Lakeshore Councillor Peter Milczyn, who voted in favour of the bike lanes, to request the city's transportation staff defer the installation of any new bike lanes until after the Ministry of Transportation finalizes its plans for changes to Hwy. 427. Those plans could potentially mean the closure of on- and off-ramps at five of its smaller interchanges, at Eringate Drive, Holiday Drive, Eva Road, Gibbs Road and Valhalla Inn Road. As part of those plans, the MTO has expressed a willingness to fund a variety of intersection improvements that will be required as a result of their changes - including a potential full reconfiguration of the Rathburn Road interchange, as well as improvements to those intersections at Bloor Street and The East Mall and The West Mall, and Burnhamthorpe Road and The East Mall and The West Mall. But those commitments, argue Holyday and Milczyn, are predicated upon the city maintaining current traffic capacity and lane configurations, meaning those monies would be lost if the Bloor Street bike lanes go forward at this time."What (the province) said to us is that they will pay all the costs except if we put in bike lanes - if we put in bike lanes they will not contribute anything," Milczyn said. "So, while we try to work this out, and negotiate - whether that's a matter of negotiating partial payment or just providing MTO with more information that might cause them to change their position - I think we should just defer. It's potentially a number of millions of dollars of work that, if the MTO refuses to do, we might have take on ourselves. We just need to be aware of what we're getting ourselves into before we go forward."In the meantime, Beggs said he and other Markland Home Association members are holding out hope they'll get their deferral, so that they'll have more time for consultation. "The motion to defer is our primary objective. This whole process needs to be stopped until proper community consultation and a proper study of the consequences for the affected communities are completed," he said. "If we're not successful in that, then we'll have to consider a back-up plan. We have to protect ourselves from traffic bleeding up into Markland."