A woman bikes along Harbord Street in Toronto on May 12, 2026.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
Sometimes you just have to let the stupid sink in. It’s the only way to cope. The stupidity is so strong and overwhelming you must surrender. You must let it soak you, the way you would if you were caught, without an umbrella, in a sudden August rainstorm.
Such has been the case with the “Great Bike Lane Constitutional Debate of 2026.” It’s a tale of histrionics and misdirection.
Our story begins in November 2024, when Doug Ford’s Conservatives passed the “Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act.” The legislation forced local governments to seek provincial approval to install new bike lanes (if it meant removing an existing car lane) and allowed the provincial government to remove bike lanes.
As we all can see, the 2024 “Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act” has been a rousing success. Traffic moves smoothly. Gridlock no longer exists. Traffic accidents and fatalities are at an all-time minimum. Mission accomplished.
But not everybody back then could see what magic lay on the horizon. Cycle Toronto, a bike advocacy group, filed a human rights complaint, trying to block the demolition of 19 kilometres of bike lanes along Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue in Toronto. It argued the “lane removal plan was an unconstitutional safety risk.” In 2025, Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas agreed, maintaining that it would violate their charter rights.
This caused politicos and pundits to lose their minds and Canadians were subjected to outraged articles in which outraged columnists expressed their outrage and displayed their admirable common sense.
But faster than you can snatch a bottle of American bourbon from the shelf, the decision was made null.
On July 30, three Ontario Court of Appeal judges overturned the ruling. “Removing bicycle lanes is in no way analogous to imposing a sentence of life imprisonment for spitting on the sidewalk or exposing citizens to a high risk of being murdered to prevent nuisances,” wrote Justice Grant Huscroft. “It is mere traffic regulation and cannot be described as ‘draconian.’”
This was the cue for bike lane advocates to write outraged columns expressing their outraged outrage.
All this angst and anger over the question of whether or not bike lanes are a human right.
They aren’t.
But they do prevent cyclists from dying. The avalanche of research is pretty much unassailable.
A study from the University of Colorado Denver found that “bicycling infrastructure – specifically, separated and protected bike lanes – leads to fewer fatalities and better road-safety outcomes for all road users.”
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has stated that bicycle lanes can reduce between 30 to 49 per cent of crashes on urban local roads (FHWA, 2022).
The joint study of temporary “pop-up” bike lanes in New Jersey found that bike lanes lessened the occurrence of “Right-hook turns (where a motor-vehicle turns right while a cyclist continues straight) which have been found to be particularly more hazardous for cyclists than other crash typologies.”
This is important, because a 2018 study from the University of Toronto, which studied the eye movements of drivers at busy Toronto intersections “found that more than half failed to make necessary scans for pedestrians or cyclists at right turns.”
Don’t bike? Well, you may benefit as well. Bike lanes have also been shown to lower the risk of pedestrian injuries and fatalities.
The question is not “Are bike lanes a right guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?” It’s “Do they save lives?”
If your position is: “I am comfortable with people dying if that will improve the flow of traffic,” then say that. Don’t trip out over it being a constitutional right.
I mean, that’s where we are collectively as a society anyhow. Every day you see news of more people killed in or by cars. If guns were doing the killing, we’d all be (pardon me) up in arms, but we accept traffic deaths as the cost of doing business.
As for cycling advocates who believe that bike lanes not only make people safer but can cure most illnesses and will usher in a new two-wheeled Utopia, your vehement unwillingness to accept that every road does not need a bike lane weakens an otherwise strong argument.
The bike lanes on Bloor Street should be renamed “E-bike Alley.” They achieve little and there are are close east-west alternatives through the middle of the city on Harbord Street and Wellesley Street. The Bloor lanes should be removed.
In Canadian cities, many bike lanes sit empty during the winter months, and these bike lane ghost towns can be frustrating to see when you are stuck in gridlock.
So much of the discourse around bike lanes is anchored in whether we “like” bicyclists or whether drivers are all fascists. This should have no bearing on the discussion. I dislike virtually everyone, but I don’t want them all to die or get injured.
“Liking” a particular group should not be the litmus test on whether or not you care if they get hurt. You should care because they are fellow human beings. Children all know this instinctively but somehow we unlearn it as we age.
The bike lane to hell is paved with pointless bickering.