WATCH: Photos of a garbage truck blocking and pushing snow into a bike lane after driving over flexi-posts draws criticism from cycling community. Mark McAllister reports.
TORONTO – The city is facing pressure to make its garbage pickup more cyclist friendly after a series of photos of a garbage truck driving along one of the downtown core’s newest bike lanes, hitting separation posts and caking the lane in snow and slush drew outrage as it circulated online Thursday morning.
The photos, taken by cyclist Luca Perlman Thursday morning, show a garbage truck travelling eastbound along a bike lane on Wellesley Street near Parliament Avenue. In its wake it leaves what was cleared snow covering the lane.
“It had just been plowed 24 hours before and there was a garbage truck driving right down the cycle track flopping over the flexi-posts crushing them and driving all of the snow back in to that had just been plowed out,” Perlman told Global News.
“I’ve already put a request in to the general manager, to waste management, to look at how we can operate differently so we don’t block bike lanes,” Councillor Jaye Robinson told Global News.
“Your picture really shows and demonstrates that we need to address this. Snow being shoved back into a bike lane is unacceptable.”
But the trucks are allowed to drive through the bike lanes:
For the first time the city is spending nearly $650,000 – about 0.76% of its $85 million snow clearing budget – to clear a couple of the city’s bike lanes that have at least 2,000 cyclists a day during the winter.
Jared Kolb, executive director of Cycle Toronto, said he’s not surprised to see city vehicles ignore the city’s own bike lanes.
“There’s no depth that people won’t go. No idiocy that people won’t do to drive just a little bit closer to their destination,” he said. Ultimately the city’s still got to do a better job of clearing cycling infrastructure or bike lanes and cycle tracks of snow.”
The city has 558.4 kilometres of bike lanes, most of them in the downtown core. A 2009 survey of found concern about road safety keeps many Torontonians from cycling to work rather than driving or taking the TTC.
The survey said up to 40 per cent of recreational cyclists could be motivated to bike to work if the roads be safer and lanes cleared.
“We really want to see four season-cycling unlocked in the city of Toronto,” Kolb said. “But to really do that we’ve got to stop storing snow in bike lanes and really get down to plowing them.”
– With files from Mark McAllister
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