Bremner and Spadina

Bremner and Spadina

UPDATE: April 13, 2005: The white dots have been removed from the roadway, and the eastbound green light/northbound advance green now seems to cycle automatically.

The City has chosen to design the intersection of Bremner and Spadina in such a way that it works for drivers, but not for cyclists. If you sit on a bike in the eastbound lane of Bremner and wait for the light to change, you will wait essentially forever - or until a car comes along, activates the magnetic plate, or 'detector loop', buried in the street, and solves the problem for you.

This page is designed to explain why that's a real problem, why I think you should contact the city clerk and your councillor about it (and how to do this), and why the situation is not just a pain in the ass, but actually illegal.

1/4) Where is Bremner Blvd., anyway?
2/4) Why should Bremner Blvd. matter to cyclists?
3/4) The lights there don't work for cyclists. Why is that illegal?
4/4) What can we do about it?

1/4) Where is Bremner Blvd., anyway?

Most people haven't heard of it. It's the next street south of Front on Spadina, just south of the bridge over the railway tracks. It starts at the ex-golf course, now a construction site, west of Spadina, and runs south of the SkyDome. The Steam Whistle Brewery, the railway roundhouse brew-pub, has an address on Bremner. The irony is that the city's bike plan actually calls for a bike lane on Fort York Blvd./Bremner Blvd. once construction between Bathurst and Spadina is complete.

2/4) Why should Bremner Blvd. matter to cyclists?

If you ride from north and west of downtown and need to cross under the Gardiner, Bremner is the key to a fairly low-pressure route.

I ride every day from the area of Christie St. and Dupont St. to Yonge St. and Queen's Quay. One major problem with planning this route has always been finding a way under the Gardiner.

Most of the options, tested by what it would be fair to call exhaustive trial and error, are flawed. They are:

- Strachan Ave. Poor sight lines on the bridge over the railway; also using it forces me to the west of major arterials like Bathurst St., adding noticeably to commuting time.
- Bathurst St. I have used Bathurst regularly in the past, but lane restrictions during construction have made it not ideal for cautious urban cycling, where other options exist. A southbound cyclist must cross one lane of traffic to get out of the right-turn lane, negotiate a five-way intersection covered in streetcar tracks, then cross lower Bathurst to reach the left-turn lane. It's practical after a certain amount of practice.
- Spadina Ave. The problem here is that I have to cross heavy (car) traffic speeding up to get on to the Gardiner.
Waiting for Godot - Rees St./Lower Simcoe St. This is the best option, but it assumes having first made a two-part left turn at Spadina and Bremner, which now can't be done - cyclists are apparently supposed to sit and face the red light until revelation dawns - then a right turn on to Rees.
- University Ave. The problem here, again, is crossing lines of traffic speeding up to get on to Lakeshore.
- Bay St. The problem here is the need to cross two lanes of traffic making a compulsory right turn on to Lakeshore.
- Yonge St. Two problems here: 1) Being far enough east to use Yonge puts me in congested downtown traffic, which, given the route, is unnecessary; 2) Motorists speed up, in many cases dangerously, to make the right turn on to Lakeshore. One of these days, one of them is going to make a right turn through me; I've had a couple of close calls. I am also concious of the fact that I come out of shadow just before the Lakeshore turnoff.

Experienced cyclists will have noticed by now that I've ended up with a cautious selection of routes. That's probably accurate. I'll defend anybody's right to ride in a high-stress environment; I've done a lot of it myself. I just resent being handed that as the only option.

3/4) The lights there don't work for cyclists. Why is that illegal?

The Municipal Act, which is the main law that governs towns and cities in Ontario, provides as follows:

44. (1) The council of the corporation that has jurisdiction over a highway or bridge shall keep it in a state of repair that is reasonable in light of all the circumstances, including the character and location of the highway or bridge.

You can read all of Section 44 here.

My layman's reading of the law goes like this. 'A state of repair that is reasonable under the circumstances' means: safely usable by all lawful road users. Under Ontario's Highway Traffic Act, lawful road users include pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. That means that triggering a signal light by a magnetic pad in the roadway that only works for motorists is illegal.

(The fact that the City hasn't bothered to post a sign warning cyclists about this is just rude.)

As a piece of urban design, it's also ridiculous. The City's pseudo-bike lane on Spadina, installed after the 1998 death of cyclist James MacMillan south of King, not far north of Bremner, runs through the intersection. In other words: the City installed a bike lane on Spadina (sort of) then installed lights on a Spadina intersection that cyclists can't use. Left hand, meet right hand.

(Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists explains the problems with the Spadina 'bike lanes' in more detail here.)

4/4) What can we do about it?

Rattle the municipal cage.

The Municipal Act goes on to say:

Liability
(2) A municipality that defaults in complying with subsection (1) is, subject to the Negligence Act, liable for all damages any person sustains because of the default. 2001, c. 25, s. 44 (2).

Defence
(3) Despite subsection (2), a municipality is not liable for failing to keep a highway or bridge in a reasonable state of repair if ... it did not know and could not reasonably have been expected to have known about the state of repair of the highway or bridge

So: if a future accident can be linked to the Bremner/Spadina lights, the City cannot argue in court that it didn't know about the problem if lots of cyclists notify the city clerk of it in writing. One letter is legally adequate; lots of letters are obviously better. The one I wrote back in May of 2002 clearly didn't do any good.

The city clerk's e-mail is clerk@city.toronto.on.ca. Her snail-mail address is:

Ulli S. Watkiss
City Clerk
Corporation of the City of Toronto
100 Queen St. West
Toronto, ON
M5H 2N2

(Here's the text of the letter I sent.)

It's also helpful to write to the relevant councillors.

The intersection is in Olivia Chow's ward. She's co-chair of the City Cycling Committee, and would be a good place to start.

You can also e-mail your own councillor about it as a constituency matter. Not sure who your councillor is? Find out here.