For cyclists, a matter of life and death

Five have been killed in Toronto so far in 2024, despite the city spending millions on infrastructure in recent years

- MAHDIS HABIBINIA

With the summer season not yet over, Toronto has hit a grim total: 2024 is already the deadliest year in nearly two decades for the city's cyclists.

Five cyclists have been killed so far more than any other year since police started keeping such records in 2006.

Yet the mounting toll comes at a time when the city is pouring tens of millions of dollars into its cycling network as it pursues its safer-streets goals, which leaves some experts wondering: Is it possible to make the city safer for cyclists at a time when congestion, construction and a growing number of riders with varying skill levels have made the streets much more dangerous?

"Toronto is a very large, growing city that has many different forms, with the downtown compact, dense urban form, as well as the suburban scale," said Barbara Gray, the city's general manager of transportation services, adding that it's difficult to pinpoint a single reason why cyclist deaths have spiked.

Gray's department is responsible for overseeing Vision Zero, the city's strategy to eliminate traffic fatalities. The program is part of a global effort to make city streets safer by redesigning them to reduce the severity of any collision.

Though Toronto traffic fatalities for all road users averaged more than 60 a year between 2017, when Toronto adopted its Vision Zero program, and 2019, the quieter streets during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 reduced that number to 40 deaths. Since then, fatalities have trended downward, though Vision Zero data shows serious injuries creeping back up to pre-pandemic levels in 2023.

The notable exception has been cycling deaths.

"I think (Vision Zero) is realistic. But whether or not it's actually attainable, I'm not sure," said urban designer Blair Scorgie. "There are so many problematic segments of streets and so many problematic intersections in the city, it's going to be probably many years at the rate they're going".