The surest way to make somebody instantly furious? Bring up the topic of priority bus lanes. It’s unbelievable, but no topic makes more people madder quicker than taking away any space from private vehicles.

On a macro level, sure, the idea that freeing up arterial routes to move people rather than accommodate the largest vehicles not moving (ie, parking) makes perfect and total sense. The Dufferin and Bathurst bus routes move 75,000 people daily according to Shawn Micallef’s Sunday op-ed in the Star, more than the entire transit systems in many North American cities move, yet they’re extremely prone to bottlenecks.

The idea is to remove street parking along Dufferin from Eglinton down to King Street, and along Bathurst, from Eglinton down to the Lakeshore. In no sane world does a system trying to move people devote about half the available street space to the largest vehicles not moving instead of working to help the packed vehicles doing all the heavy lifting.

What’s at play here is that many people accustomed to the status quo of abundant parking are livid and mobilized. Not all–some residents are eager for proper bus lanes–but a significant number. An anonymous website pledging to “Save Dufferin” has sprung up, as if freeing up the street so riders can travel on it is a threat.

Once again, a business owner worries that the inability to park in front of their stores will harm business. This happens every time a change to parking is proposed. Studies across time and space show that business owners vastly overestimate the percentage of customers arriving by car and underestimate how many arrive by transit, bike, or foot.

That studies show this over and over is so well known by now that I literally said that out loud in a room by myself while reading Micallef’s op-ed, before I saw him write it himself in the article. On the page opposite was a different article about some fears over the bus lane, where the local councilor Dianne Saxe also repeated what Shawn wrote and what I thought and also said. But people get into patterns and habits of mind and it’s hard to shake these. No amount of very real studies can make them believe the studies are real!

I don’t want to diminish their fears or antagonize them. Their voices should be heard and their anxieties quelled, but I worry that their fear will dominate the discussion and shut down any chance of progress on a simple aspect of modernizing the city.

The tens of thousands of riders who get routinely ignored, who struggle on underfunded and neglected buses every day, should also be heard from. In fact, their needs should be addressed without them having to say anything, which is what’s happening here now.

We’re talking about two bus lanes! That’s it. Without having to utter a peep, drivers get many billions to repair old highways and build new ones nobody even asked for. The Doug Ford government wants an underground mega highway beneath North America’s widest highway, and refuses to say how many tens of billions that alone will cost. It’s insane. He’s rushing to build the 413 highway, which his donors just happen to own great swathes of property alongside that will all rise in value dramatically if a highway is built.

And somehow two bus lanes are a mega problem?

For what it’s worth, I live a 3-minute walk from Dufferin now, and for years took the 7 bus up and down Bathurst when I taught guitar lessons along that route. I still take transit and drive up these roads, so I’m quite familiar with them. I was astonished to read a business owner at Dupont and Bathurst deny that roads get congested there, because they very much do! The bottlenecks are shocking and they happen nearly every day.

Try driving north up Bathurst from Dupont to St. Clair on a week day between 3-6 pm. A 3-minute drive can take 20 minutes or more. The Bathurst bus is a nightmare, and this is the stretch between the Bloor subway and the St. Clair streetcar.

They call the Dufferin Bus the Sufferin Bus for a reason. Doug Ford radically underfunds schools and hospitals but will proudly spend billions to save drivers 30 seconds on their commute? He’s micromanaging Toronto and screwing the city on a macro level too. He went from giving fellow conservative John Tory “Strong Mayor” powers when he presided over Toronto to running roughshod over Olivia Chow. The Dufferin bus lanes were first proposed by the TTC in 2019. Tory voted to nix them.

The speed of the average TTC bus has declined from 17.2 km/h in 2024 from 20 km/h in 2013. Meanwhile, the Bathurst bus averages 13 km/h. The problem is real, dire, and growing.

If it’s government overreach to consult citizens merely before potentially removing 138 parking spaces from major arterial streets to free up space for buses, what is forcing an astronomically expensive underground mega highway nobody asked for? I don’t see why people are relatively up in arms about the first, but silent about the second.

The details are always tricky. Dufferin and Bathurst are major downtown arterials but they also have homes on them and people reasonably expect a certain amount of parking near where they live. There are also laneways behind these homes with parking potential. Congestion is the bigger problem and that needs to be addressed first.

The city is doing more consulting and outreach for bus lanes than Doug Ford is for his outlandish and obscenely expensive underground mega highway, yet I’m seeing more people angry at Chow for pushing forward on what is undeniably a much, much smaller project than Doug Ford’s.

Has Doug Ford requested feedback from the public before trying to push his outlandish mega project? 

To me this illustrates the way our government instinctively coddles and pampers motorists while forcing transit riders to beg for scraps. The funny thing is that RapidTO is considering a bus lane on these streets mostly in anticipation of hosting a few 2026 World Cup games.

How will visitors without cars get around? Of course the city isn’t planning this because it’s a sensible thing for residents—if we do something good here, it’s usually for tourists.

De-prioritizing motorists is something every sensible modern city is doing now. It’ll be a fight because people get livid at the idea of taking an inch away from cars. The city is right to consult with people about their reservations, but it needs to move ahead on this. The data is too settled.