Ford government ordered to keep hands off Toronto bike lanes until court ruling

Jordan Omstead · The Canadian Press

· Posted: Apr 22, 2025 1:36 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Premier Doug Ford's authorities has been ordered to support its hands disconnected 3 large Toronto motorcycle lanes until a justice tin determine whether a program to region them is unconstitutional.

The injunction handed down Tuesday was heralded arsenic a triumph by the cyclist radical challenging Ontario's bid to rip up the lanes connected Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue.

"It's decidedly a triumph for anyone who wants fact-based and data-driven decisions," said Michael Longfield, Cycle Toronto's enforcement director.

"I anticipation this gives the state an accidental to possibly intermission and reverse this authorities and alternatively enactment connected existent solutions that volition support Torontonians and Ontarians moving."

Ford's Progressive Conservative authorities gave itself the powerfulness past twelvemonth to region 19 kilometres of protected motorcycle lanes, implicit the objections of the city. It passed a instrumentality that besides requires cities to question provincial support to instal caller lanes that chopped into conveyance traffic.

The state suggested that targeting motorcycle lanes connected the 3 large roadways would assistance trim Toronto's postulation congestion.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas, who heard a situation of the instrumentality brought by Cycle Toronto and 2 cyclists, appeared to beryllium skeptical of that justification.

"There is grounds that their removal volition person small oregon nary interaction connected the professed objectives of the authorities arsenic stated by the curate of transportation," Schabas wrote successful Tuesday's injunction ruling.

The ruling said contempt the government's assertion that determination was an urgent request to chopped congestion, it presented nary grounds astir the process to region the lanes oregon plans connected what would spell successful their place.

Not granting the intermission would mean the authorities could effort to dismantle the motorcycle lanes earlier helium has clip to determine the case, Schabas wrote.

"It is apt that the motorcycle lanes are much easy removed than rebuilt oregon restored," his ruling said.

Tuesday's injunction ruling said the ineligible situation raised "important and analyzable law issues" and helium had not yet formed a "final presumption connected the matter."

But the grounds earlier him aft past week's hearing, helium wrote, is that removing the motorcycle lanes could origin accrued collisions, injuries and adjacent deaths of cyclists.

The authorities did not instantly respond to a petition for remark Tuesday afternoon.