I attended the Public Info Session on the Sheppard Avenue East Complete Street Project hosted by Lily Cheng and the Toronto city staff on July 26th 2023.
The info session was regarding the addition of bike lanes on Sheppard Avenue East between Bonnington and Bayview Avenue. This project will also improve pedestrian infrastructure and safety on Sheppard as well as remove some of the central turning lanes for cars on part of the corridor to make place to the bike lanes.
Councillor Lily Cheng requested this info session to happen because she felt that the city had not done a good job of informing the residents of Willowdale about the project (which many would disagree has 2 consultation sessions occurred in 2021 and 2022). However, as much as people in the room wanted to submit feedback, there was absolutely no point to it as the consultation process is already complete, the design is complete, contractors are hired, and there is absolutely no change possible. The construction is starting in Summer 2023.
So what was the point? Well I suppose now that people are more informed about it. The reason I went was just to show my support to the project because I felt that a lot of our famous NIMBY and pro-cars advocate in Willowdale would be present.
And they were! We heard it all. They can’t use a bike to do their groceries, how will ambulances reach the North York hospital and how disastrous it will be to try to drive to Tim Hortons at Willowdale/Sheppard. There will be changes at this intersection in how we enter the plaza at the South East corner and this was surprisingly the biggest point of contention that seemed to worry many people. Now you will be able to enter this plaza through 2 entrances, instead of 3, the horror. What a lot of people forgot is that there is also a large condo being built across the street (South West corner) and a safe entrance to the plaza is required as those people will walk and not drive to Tim Hortons.
An important reason why it’s important to go to those City of Toronto info sessions and consultations, is to ensure that your councillor can hear your voice. At the beginning of the meeting, Lily Cheng seemed to think that there was only a few supporters for this project. Well in fact, we had many people speaking in favour of bike lanes, in majority younger people (younger means less than 50 years old because those city consultations tend to shift toward the much older demographic). We did have a senior resident telling us that he is a driver, but he is also a cyclist and a pedestrian, and he loves this project because he hates walking on Sheppard as it is quite unsafe and inadequate right now. He still drives! And won’t stop driving, this project is not even removing car lanes (only central turning lanes). He gathered a lot of applause.
I was quite disappointed with our councillor Lily Cheng through this meeting. Not only did she look quite sympathetic to the pro-car advocates arguments, she also mentioned more than once that she wish she could press the reset button on this project and restart consultations. She believes the previous ones were inadequate because they happened through COVID and nobody was informed. I don’t quite buy this argument, this was well advertised through many councillors newsletters (not just in Willowdale) and the project has been well explained on the city of Toronto website for a few years now. At some point it is your responsibility to be informed about city politics and 160 people did join those online consultations (more people than there was in the room).
The most surprising to me is that she did not seem aware that this bike lane would eventually continue East until Leslie (and not Fairview Mall), which is part of phase 2. I wonder how she could not have known that knowing that…she voted in favour of it at council on June 14th. She was also not aware that there was no trees to be planted between the bike lane and the sidewalk. City planners said this was a compromise as this would have required to cut car lanes in order to make space for it. But how did she not know? The design of this project is of course on the City of Toronto website, did she actually read those documents before this meeting? She felt very “disappointed” about that fact, even thought, we know she would have been a much stronger opponent of this project if they had not done this compromise and cut a car lane to add trees (sounds a bit hypocritical to me).
Nevertheless, Lily Cheng did make a point of mentioning that walkable cities are the future. She would like to have access to everything at walking distance and a more vibrant Sheppard would allow to do that. She knows that the younger generation does not tend to want a driver license and will be big users of this infrastructure. She also did a very decent job at cutting some people in the crowd that tried to get ahead of their turn for speaking (older white male, always), and it was absolutely refreshing to see it.
I’m attaching some of the slides that were shown during the information session. See you all in July 2024 at the bike lanes openings!
Jérôme Gagnon-Voyer 