Ontario Premier Doug Ford is dismissing the City of Toronto’s estimates to remove bike lanes from three major Toronto streets, calling the $48-million price tag “hogwash.”
The Ford government is fast-tracking a transportation-related law that would give the province the power to decide where a municipality can install separated cycling infrastructure along with the authority to remove dedicated bike lanes at will.
The province has identified bike lanes on Bloor Street, University Avenue and Yonge Street as those slated for removal and offered to cover the costs of tearing out the infrastructure.
The promise to cover the costs, however, has triggered a new battle between Queen’s Park and city hall: the cost of removal and restoring lanes of traffic.
“The entirety of the cost is indicative of the fact that in sections that have been recently reconstructed, there are concrete curbs separating the bike lanes from the motor vehicle traffic,” Jacquelyn Hayward, the city’s director of planning, design and management, told a Queen’s Park committee hearing on Monday.
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“There are catch basins that have been moved as a result. In order to put back the lanes in some places, you would have to redo the roads.”
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria told reporters at the Ontario legislature that the city’s estimate of $48 million “just doesn’t add up” and said the price tag was double the installation costs.
On Tuesday, Ford also dismissed the city’s estimate.
“We know it doesn’t cost $50 million, that’s a bunch of hogwash,” Ford told Global News at an unrelated event.
“We’re going to show them how to do it for a lot less and get traffic moving.”
The province, however, has yet to present any preliminary work on how much Ontario taxpayers would have to shell out to remove bike lanes from Toronto roads.
As for safety concerns, Ford also dismissed those, saying, “We’re going to keep bike riders safe.”
The legislation to remove lanes doesn’t include any provisions for safety.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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