Both sides wear blinkers in Toronto's bike lane war

Welcome back to the war.

Bike paths are the third rail of local politics, where everyone picks a lane. Ford rails against the supposed war on cars, but he sure knows how to drive a political wedge over bicycles.

In this endless battle of wills and war of wedges, spare a thought for the safety and security of all Torontonians — namely the cyclists, car drivers and pedestrians who cross paths with one another on the bike lanes and streets of the big city.

While adversaries argue in court over the niceties of constitutional law, an existing law banning standup e-scooters from the streets and paths of Toronto goes utterly unenforced and ignored — putting everyone at risk.

While both sides bloviate about the sanctity of safety, a declining percentage of cyclists are wearing helmets while Toronto’s Bike Share rentals are increasing. That’s because there is still no law requiring adults on bicycles to protect themselves from catastrophic brain injury if they take a tumble crossing busy intersections or traversing perilous streetcar tracks.

And while everyone argues about who most deserves precious road space, hulking e-bikes keep rumbling along those protected bike paths, delivering fast food at fast speeds while blazing past regular bicycles or hurtling past pedestrians. Which means that publicly funded bike lanes have been laid out for the benefit of commercial operators, undermining the expressed goal of safely segregating slow-moving bikes from high-speed traffic.

A recent spate of deaths and accidents from these incontrovertibly illegal e-scooters has sparked “thoughts and prayers” from politicians who are doing next to nothing about it — from Ford on down. Turns out that winning an argument matters more than saving a life.

How did we get here? The premier has long believed that his adversaries were cutting off drivers at the path — and not just the bike path.

As a municipal councillor, he railed against plans for light-rail transit, fretting it would crowd out cars by running at grade. Alongside his late brother, then-mayor Rob Ford, he insisted we dig underground for transit at far greater cost.

Empowered as premier, Ford turned his sights on cyclists, decreeing that Toronto should dismantle bike lanes laid out along Bloor Street, University Avenue and Yonge Street. Like all wars, this one escalated.

Cyclists counterattacked with a court challenge. They won a fleeting victory last year when Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas ruled that Ford’s plan was “a breach of the Charter.”

Schabas substituted his own courtroom judgment for the legislature’s judgment on what is self-evidently a question of political discretion, not legal direction. Who better to draw the line on bike lanes in a democracy — imperfect politicians or judges impervious to public opinion?

If Ford is foolish enough — not to mention imperious and impulsive enough — to bigfoot the elected politicians at city hall and impose his own views, backed by the democratic will of his voters, so be it. Next time, people can vote him out — except that he’s already been three times lucky at election time.

This time, he’s also won the day at Ontario’s Court of Appeal, which issued a thundering verdict that won plaudits from the premier (never mind his past badmouthing of judges whose judgments he disliked):

“We are governed by those whom we elect and they are accountable to the people for the choices they make, not to the courts,” Justice Grant Huscroft concluded. “The Charter has nothing to say about whether bicycle lanes are a good or a bad idea.”

This political battle pitting Queen’s Park versus city hall is best decided democratically, not judicially. Never mind that Ford took it upon himself to overrule the democratically elected decision-makers at city hall.

More importantly, our politicians studiously ignore the growing risks for helmetless cyclists, the threat of oversized e-bikes, and the peril of illegal standup e-scooters. With their small wheels ill-equipped for big potholes, those scooters are accidents waiting to happen — and they keep happening.

Lost in this decades-long war of wedges over bicycle lanes, and the legal battles that have come full circle, is the forgotten mantra of safety first. When both sides are wearing blinkers, they can’t see what’s coming straight at them.