nevillepark.ca
Protesting the Bloor bike lane removal, day 2
(Adapted from this thread.)
Background 🎁 (just imagine this in a _Star Wars_ opening crawl): for longstanding grudges largely to do with petro-masculinity, Premier Doug Ford declared that not only would municipalities need provincial approval to remove car lanes in favour of bike lanes, the bike lanes that just happen to be on his commute from Etobicoke to Queen’s Park would be removed—starting with Bloor St. While a court injunction delayed the work for several months, it was overturned on appeal. A large crowd of cyclists deterred contracted construction workers the night the removal was to begin, but notwithstanding the permit limiting them to nighttime work, the contractors returned the next day…
**Quick rant:** First off, Facebook is a _horrible_ way to organize time-sensitive things. Not only is much content hidden behind a login wall, posts to groups are not presented newest-first but simply based on “engagement”. I have a dummy account to let me manage a Facebook page for work and was periodically manually checking David Shellnutt’s posts to the Toronto Critical Mass group, which was the only reason I learned that 1) despite the permit for nights only, work _might_ take place during the day on Wednesday, Oct. 14 and cyclists should “stand by”, and, less than an hour later (as I was on my way to Etobicoke just in case), that 2) work had commenced. Next time I am simply not going to bother. If they want more people to attend protests they should provide updates in a more convenient way. A social media account on a platform that presents updates in reverse chronological order and does not have any login wall. A Signal group. Mass text messages. A website or blog with an RSS feed. Hell, a fucking text file with an URL people can refresh. A town crier. Trained carrier pigeons. Whatever. Onwards.
Cyclists face off with police guarding construction workers removing the Bloor bike lanes.
Cyclists briefly blocked the road in front of one of the trucks.
A construction crew had already put up cones along the length of the bike lanes that were to be removed. When I arrived at Bloor and Islington at about 12:25 p. m., one of the contractors’ trucks, parked in the eastbound bike lane, was being hemmed in by a small crowd of people, some of them sitting on the ground directly in front of the truck. Several local news reporters and camera operators were milling around, and a long line of police officers was forming along the lane. (At least one Court Services “paddy wagon” was standing by.) There were also plenty of locals stepping out of shops or offices to watch the show. Geoffrey Bercarich posted this overhead view from a nearby high-rise.
A local resident comes out to protest.
Not all the protesters were cyclists. One, a young parent with a baby and a handmade sign reading “BIKE LANES SAVE LIVES”, lived in the neighbourhood and had just popped by. (They had to leave, but gave their sign to another protester; it changed hands a few times over the course of the afternoon.)
A few minutes after I arrived, word got around that the police would be making us clear out of the bike lane; we were threatened with arrest if we did not move. One person was arrested. I seriously considered it myself, and had written a few lawyers’ numbers on myself in Sharpie just in case (this ain’t your correspondent’s first rodeo), but decided against it.
Construction workers remove the parking curbs in front of their truck, which has the company name/logo hidden.
Attendees counted at least 30 police cruisers to block the lanes and intimidate protesters.
The contractors began pulling up the bolts that attached the concrete parking curbs to the road. They had covered up any names and logos on their truck and gear with tape. However, as Brian Tao posted on Facebook, according to the City website the firm is Verdi Alliance, PCPO donors, implicated in provincial land-grab shenanigans in Ottawa, and chummy with the Premier.
Protesters shifted from standing off with the cops to following the construction workers as they gradually proceeded eastward along Bloor. A forklift was brought out to stack up and haul away the concrete parking curbs; a City truck was piled high with removed bollardettes (you know what I mean; the flippy plastic things that cars run over).
Quite a few local news teams were on site.
News teams stuck around surprisingly long, interviewing locals. Some people approved of the bike lanes being torn out, some douchily (a loud, sleazy guy with a tacky belt buckle who emerged from a Firkin pub), NIMBY-ly in that “oh, I approve in principle, they just weren’t done _right_ ” way (a middle-aged woman who claimed she had cycled in Toronto for over 50 years but complained, just _this_ close to being self-aware, that traffic calming measures were “driver stressing”), or affably (a burrito joint manager who was buddy-buddy with the construction workers and was promptly interviewed by one of the TV reporters).
For once curious about the rest of the world’s opinion, I asked folks on the Fediverse from outside Toronto to weigh in. Reactions included:
* “nuts”
* “batshit mad”
* “backwards”
* “vapid”
* “extremely stupid”
* “bonkers”
* “objectively bad”
* “a brain-dead, mean-spirited waste of money”
* “bullshit”
* “absolutely bullshit”
* “obviously a horrible use of money/effort/time”
A few people from areas where municipalities have more autonomy remarked on the egregious provincial overreach. To other Canadians, it was sadly familiar.
Some people from other cities—Berlin, Edmonton, Vancouver, Christchurch—mentioned similar attempts, in the past or in the works. While the vast, vast majority of cities around the world acknowledge the reality of induced demand/traffic evaporation and the benefits of making it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get around safely, there are _always_ people trying to turn the clock back.
Cycle Toronto has announced:
> Protests resume 6 AM Thursday
> Meet at Tom Riley Park
> stay together, stay safe
