Last week, the City of Toronto confirmed the West Toronto Railpath had finally reopened to the public; a closure which has happened for the past four years as part of improvements to Bloor GO station. I also found out from the Urban Toronto forums that a new multi-use path is currently under construction along the Barrie GO line which would connect with the West Toronto Railpath Extension. This afternoon, I checked it out as well as some other infrastructure in the area.
Last year, Toronto installed almost 27 kilometres of on-street bikeways; making it the second highest year ever after the 30 kilometres installed in 2020 during the pandemic. This includes 8.5 kilometres for Finch Avenue West which I deemed to be substantially completed per a site visit, but the City of Toronto didn’t count as Metrolinx hadn’t transferred the street back to the City. Even excluding Finch, 18 kilometres is still respectable compared to prior years. With Doug Ford’s Bill 212 limiting new bike lane installations and Cycle Toronto’s charter challenge win last month (which the Ford government formally submitted their appeal today), it made me wonder what the impact on new bike lane installations would be.
 |
| Bikeway construction on The Esplanade in May 2025 |
As Bike Month continues to pedal along, the City of Toronto has recently launched public consultations for three projects. Two of them are in Scarborough; those being the Alton Towers and Malvern neighbourhood connections. The third is a Phase 2 consultation for the Leaside Bridge to Danforth Avenue Cycling Connections. Let’s review these projects, as well as one recent installation I came across yesterday.
 |
| Neighbourhood greenway option for Ingleton Boulevard (via City of Toronto) |
This year has been a crazy one when it comes to catching up on all the cycling related public consultations happening in Toronto. For this update, there are six consultations to review and a seventh we need to demand for. These six are the Wallace Emerson Neighbourhood Streets Plan, the Peanut Streets Plan, Steeles Avenue Eat Complete Streets, Steeprock-Bathurst Manor Cycling Connections, Beltline Gap Connections, and the Centennial Park Cycling Connections. Let’s dive in to see what they are all about!
Tonight marked the second cycling consultation I attended this week after the West Parkdale bikeway one on Tuesday which was also well attended. There was some security present at this consultation; probably because of last week’s event in Etobicoke. Even so, I didn’t see any protest signs tonight and there wasn’t a petition against this project as far as I know of, while there were still some concerns to be had. I already discussed the project in an earlier blog post, but wanted to take this opportunity to provide some additional information, as well as highlight some other projects coming down the pipe.
