Report on Monique Drepaul's Presentation to Toronto Complete Streets Forum

Monique Drepaul

Lessons learned from Eglinton Connects include BIAs considering customers’ preferred mode of transport
BIAs changed their perspective on supporting bike lanes after data discovery

City Centre Mirror
Rahul Gupta
As planners and cycling activists discussed how best to add protected bike lanes to Eglinton Avenue, Monique Drepaul was completely bewildered.

For the past two years, Drepaul had been invited to attend a series of Eglinton Connects community meetings alongside city planners and representatives from Cycle Toronto to discuss bike lanes – not a topic in which the small business advocate was heavily versed.

Representing the interests of local business improvement areas (BIAs) at the meetings – all resolutely against the idea of trading road or sidewalk space on Eglinton to accommodate cyclists – Drepaul quickly realized she couldn’t keep up with the jargon-heavy discussion.

“Someone mentioned adding bollards to deal with the cyclists, and I’m sitting there thinking to myself, please, someone ask what a bollard is,” recalled Drepaul, executive director of the Eglinton Way BIA, this week. “And nobody did. I felt like I was the only person who didn’t understand the terminology being used.”

Drepaul was part of a panel discussion during the 2014 Complete Streets Forum on Monday, Oct. 6, relating her experiences during the oft-contentious Eglinton Connects community consultations, which were completed earlier this year.

For the course of two years, more than 60 public meetings like those attended by Drepaul were scheduled. Along with feedback from online surveys, more than 5,000 people eventually weighed in on the study’s ambitious plans to revamp Eglinton in conjunction with the future completion of the 19-kilometre Crosstown LRT line, which includes encouraging more mid-rise development, creating green space and adding protected bike lanes.

Drepaul – who was joined by Eglinton Connects planner Paul Kulig, Cycle Toronto director Jared Kolb, meeting facilitator Alex Heath, and chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat acting as moderator for the discussion – told forum attendees gathered inside Daniels Spectrum in Regent Park she found the courage to speak up the more she learned about bike lanes. She asked for a glossary of planning terms to help understand the discussions and found out bollards are a series of short, vertical posts erected to cushion cyclists from car traffic. But Drepaul, who personally supported adding bike lanes, still couldn’t mollify the concerns of Eglinton Way and other local BIAs convinced having more cyclists on Eglinton would scare away customers in cars.

Not helping matters was what she felt was the planners’ tendency to apply a one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with the BIAs. She felt they didn’t understand the nuances of communicating with local business of which some were heavily involved with social media, while others didn’t even have an email address.

What finally swung the argument in favour of protected bike lanes was data published by the University of Toronto, which showed clear evidence merchants were over-estimating the percentage of customers who drove versus those who rode, took public transit or walked. In reality, there were far more cyclists and transit riders and pedestrians – and far fewer drivers – than thought.

“When my chair saw these numbers, it completely changed the perspective,” said Drepaul. Sensing the opportunity, she presented the figures in person to the BIA’s board of directors.

“It was like the light bulb had gone off and people were realizing cyclists also shop,” she said.

Armed with her employer’s endorsement for the bike lanes, Drepaul was soon able to get other Eglinton-area BIAs on side, she said.

Aided by the support of the BIAs, the study was endorsed unanimously by city council in May, which included adding protected bike lanes all along the Crosstown’s route between Jane Street and Kennedy Road.

Despite the success in getting the bike lanes approved, Keesmaat warned the issue is not yet settled, not in a city where politics invariably re-ignites council approval of projects and a large segment of the public remains hostile to opening up any road space for non-car traffic on Eglinton.

She warned there are many more battles to come before the vision of Eglinton Connects is fully realized.

“It’s critical not to assume that we’ve built capacity or understanding around an idea to the extent it’s going to move forward,” said Keesmaat. “That means having a lot of hard conversations, and they need to be sustained on an ongoing basis.”