Bike Lanes on Brimley Road

Do you travel on Brimley Road?

It is hard to believe but the City is proposing to shut down one lane of Brimley Road in each direction all the way from Lawrence down to Kingston Road and give it to people riding bicycles.

• The TTC runs the Brimley 21 bus from Kennedy Subway Station east on Eglinton then up Brimley to Scarborough Centre and on up to Steeles. Somewhere around 150 buses travel this part of Brimley every weekday. The latest info we’ve seen from the TTC, dated 6 years ago, but it showed over 9,500 people ride the Brimley bus every weekday.
• Every major street in Scarborough carries the trucks our businesses depend on.
• Meals on Wheels, WheelTrans, visiting nurses/health care services all use our major streets.
• All the parcel delivery trucks we have gotten used to depending on, Amazon, Canada Post, FedEx and more use our major streets.
• People who don’t own a vehicle/aren’t allowed to drive rely on ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and others or taxis.
• Not one of my favourites but it looks like a lot of people order prepared meals delivered to their homes via DoorDash, UberEats, SkiptheDishes and others.
• A lot of us use Brimley to drive family members and friends to the subway at Kennedy Station when the weather’s bad, during the dark days of winter when the sidewalks to the nearest bus stop are bad when it’s late and not necessarily safe to walk/wait for the bus.

If they get their way they’ll also ‘examine’ all the left and right hand turning lanes at an intersection to see which ones, if any, should remain for people making turns. You can bet, when they’re done, there won’t be many turning lanes left.

Sorry folks: we’ve seen some pretty harebrained schemes come out of City Hall in the last several years. This one is just patently absurd.

If you live on Brimley or travel it regularly you know how busy it is.

The last traffic report we have, for Brimley Road at Ellesmere last year, shows 1,900 vehicles on Brimley in the busiest hour in the morning and another 2,100 vehicles on Brimley in the busiest afternoon rush hour. We know ‘rush hour’ is actually 3 hours long in the afternoon and maybe 2 hours in the morning.

Taking away one lane in each direction doesn’t just reduce the road capacity by 50%. The congestion in the one remaining lane, where a single vehicle waiting to turn left or right holds up everybody for miles, actually knocks out way more than 50% of the street’s capacity.

It’s not just personal vehicles using Brimley.

Can you imagine what Brimley would be like if they pack all those trips into just one lane each way, with no left/right turn lanes at intersections?

We have asked our Councillor Michael Thompson to stop this lunacy. He’s not going to do so. He is going to support the cycling lobby and force everybody else using Brimley into just one lane each way. He calls it a ‘temporary’ measure to help people get around the city during the COVID flu crisis.

By the time they’ve spent the money to paint all the lines, put up all the special signs, install the special traffic signals for bicycles, eliminated left and right-hand turn lanes, you can bet the bicycle lobby will fight like mad to keep it.

We asked all candidates for Council in our Ward back in the October election a couple of questions to help our voters decide. One of the questions was:

If elected will you pay attention to and insist that any proposals for new bikeways, street railways express bus lanes, whatever shall maintain the number of traffic lanes we have today?

Michael Thompson’s answer was pretty clear. He said YES.

Here’s how you can contact Councillor Thompson to tell him what you think:

Toronto City Hall

100 Queen Street West, Suite B31 Toronto, ON M5H 2N2

Telephone: 416-397-9274

Fax: 416-397-9280

Email: councillor_thompson@toronto.ca

Iain McLeod
President

Glen Andrew Community Association