‘Premeditated Road Violence’: Toronto Protestors Block Bike Lane Removal

A version of this article originally appeared on Seattle Bike Blog and is republished with permission. As of publication, the protests in Toronto are still ongoing.

Hundreds of people stood with their bikes to prevent work crews from dismantling the protected bike lanes on Bloor Street last Tuesday evening. Work crews showed up, but after speaking with protestors who were lining both sides of the work zone, they decided to leave.

“To destroy Toronto’s complete streets, and to make it illegal to build them anywhere in the province is to guarantee violent, preventable deaths,” said Jess Spieker of Friends and Families for Safe Streets to the Toronto Star.

The decision to remove the bike lanes comes from the Province of Ontario despite opposition from the City of Toronto. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is continuing his late brother Rob’s anti-bicycle campaign and is overstepping local leaders to spend millions to tear out a set of bike lanes already installed and prevent new bike lanes from being created.

The designs of local streets are typically local decisions, and his overreach here from his provincial seat is very strange. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow called Doug Ford’s actions a “trampling of local democracy.”

As the chaotic and unstable Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford decried what he called a “war on cars” and ripped out bike lanes on Jarvis Street in 2012. Several people temporarily blocked that removal by lying down in the street in front of the paint-stripping machine. But the action Tuesday was far bigger. 

It’s unlikely people will be able to block work crews forever, but the protests are making a a strong statement nonetheless. While people are putting their bodies in the way to protect the lanes on the ground, advocates are also petitioning the Supreme Court of Canada to reverse a lower court decision allowing the bike lane removal plan to move forward. Cycle Toronto is leading the legal effort.

Doug Ford’s anti-bike-lane stance is also closely aligned with the Trump Administration’s campaign against “DEI” bike lanes, despite his public attempts to appear oppositional to Trump.

Bike lanes protect lives, and the stakes here are higher for people on bikes than they are for people who don’t like bike lanes. Content creator and former advertiser Tom Flood even created an image promoting the action that said “Ripping out bike lanes is premeditated road violence.”

We know through exhaustive study that building bike lanes prevent injuries and deaths; and the opposite is also true when we rip those lanes out. (Here’s a one-pager from USDOT that the Trump Admin is now trying to suppress). These protesters are also standing in the way of a tide of anti-bike sentiment that could reach beyond Toronto if bike-lane-hating elected officials in other areas are given a precedent to follow Ford’s lead.