On Monday, July 29, at 7:30 a.m. cyclists will meet to mourn on Bathurst Street, just north of Queen. Exactly one week previously a truck killed a 25-year-old woman as she rode her bike through this intersection. The occasion is one of outrage, as well as sadness. Bathurst is a Metro road and we place this death at their doorstep.
Metro Transportation has fought cycling facilities at every step of the way--refusing to consider bike lanes on their streets, claiming to 'treat all users equally' while consistently planning only for car facilities. If any intersection in the city qualifies for special attention, it is Queen and Bathurst. It is the third busiest bicycle location in Toronto. Would a bike lane on Bathurst have helped? We don't know. But we want to know. And we believe that a coroner's inquest is the only way to find out.
Toronto was recently given a prestigious award by Bicycling Magazine as the number one bicycling city in North America. The event received a lot of media attention and was a source of pride for our city. And yet Toronto cyclists are killed every year, many of these by trucks. Trucks have killed at least five cyclists in Toronto in the past three years. Cyclists are fed up with transportation planning that seems designed to frighten us off the roads. We want to ride. We have a right to ride, and we demand that it be safe to ride.
We need to know how this kind of tragedy can be prevented.
It's time for a serious examination of how best to accommodate cyclists on Toronto streets. The death of this young woman should have been avoided.