Ontario presses ahead with Toronto bike lane removal plan after court win

TORONTO – A stretch of bike lane on a major Toronto road is set to be removed, Ontario’s transportation minster said Tuesday as the province pressed ahead with its plan to overhaul the cycling network over the city’s objections after a recent court win. 

The province said it had put out a bid request to study and design options to restore vehicle traffic on bike lane sections of Bloor Street, Yonge Street, Avenue Road and around Queen’s Park.

The successful bidder will also be expected to look for ways to retain or reconfigure the bike lanes, “where they make sense and do not make gridlock worse,” the province said in a news release.

In the meantime, work will begin “almost immediately” to remove a stretch of the Bloor Street bike lane east of Islington station, minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said. He did not say how much would be removed and his office did not immediately respond to a request for details. 

“Getting these bike lanes out of the way, restoring vehicle lanes, will allow us to get people moving quicker and faster in one of the busiest cities in the world,” he said at a news conference. 

It comes after Ontario’s top court earlier this month overturned a ruling that blocked Premier Doug Ford’s government effort to remove the bike lanes. 

Cyclists who brought the legal challenge argued the government pursued the plan even though its own advisers and experts agreed it would not accomplish its stated goal to reduce congestion, and could possibly make it worse. They pointed to an engineering study commissioned by the province that suggested removing the targeted bike lanes could increase collisions for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians by 54 per cent. 

Ford’s government has said it wants bike lanes moved to secondary roads. Critics say that’s untenable for many sections of Toronto’s targeted lanes without creating disconnected stretches more dangerous to cyclists.

Work to restore a vehicle lane while also keeping the bike lane along a stretch of Bloor Street between Kipling and Islington stations was completed last year at an initially estimated cost of $750,000. 

Mayor Olivia Chow has called that work a win-win solution and her office has in the past issued statements that avoided direct confrontation with the province on the issue. 

But on Tuesday, she struck a more combative tone. Chow, who is running for re-election, said the provincial government should focus on dealing with U.S. tariffs, “not picking endless political fights with the city of Toronto.” 

“I believe strongly in Toronto’s autonomy and right to govern itself,” Chow said in a statement. 

The city has pegged the cost to remove the province’s targeted bike lanes at about $48 million. The province has disputed the estimate without providing its own. Asked at Tuesday’s press conference how much the work would cost, Sarkaria said he would wait for the bids. 

A spokesperson for Chow said the city had repeatedly put forward designs with both bike lanes and restored vehicle lanes, including options without road construction. 

“You will need to ask the Ministry of Transportation why they decided to ignore these solutions that keep all road users safe,” Chow’s press secretary Braman Thillainathan wrote in an email. 

The Canadian Press has reached out to the transportation ministry and Sarkaria’s office for comment.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 2026.