ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Premier Ford’s Upcoming Bike Path Legislation Must Ban Bike Paths from Being Built on Top of Sidewalks because they Endanger Pedestrians with Disabilities
October 15, 2024 Toronto: Since the Ford Government said it’s bringing forward provincial legislation to regulate new bike paths in Ontario, a widely recognized grassroots disability coalition is calling for that legislation to include a ban on building bike paths on sidewalks rather than at street level. A harmful new trend, exemplified in Toronto, has been to build new bike paths on sidewalks rather than at street level. This endangers blind pedestrians who won’t know they are walking in the middle of a bike path when they think they are on a sidewalk that is reserved for pedestrians.
A widely viewed online video that the AODA Alliance made public last fall shows how a bike path on Toronto’s Eglinton Avenue, built at sidewalk rather than road level, seriously endangers people with disabilities. Toronto has not agreed to fix those dangerous bike paths despite bad publicity they have received due to their dangers for pedestrians with disabilities.
“Ontario’s Disabilities Act requires the Ontario Government to enact and enforce mandatory accessibility standards that will lead this province to become accessible to 2.9 million Ontarians with disabilities, and a ban on bike paths built at sidewalk-level would really help,” said blind lawyer, law professor and disability rights advocate David Lepofsky, Chair of the nonpartisan AODA Alliance. “Over 15 months ago, the Ford government-appointed Independent Review declared that Ontario has an accessibility crisis. We need provincial legislation to ensure that the design of new bike paths doesn’t make that crisis worse.”
For any level of government to build a new bike path right on the sidewalk and not at road level obviously endangers blind pedestrians who have no way of knowing they’re straying into a bike path. It also endangers pedestrians and cyclists without disabilities.
The AODA Alliance video shows that building bike paths at sidewalk rather than street level is illegal. It violates the right to equality for people with disabilities in the Charter of Rights and the Ontario Human Rights Code. It is illegal to create new accessibility barriers like this, which is all the worse when it is done using public money. Yet that hasn’t stopped some municipalities from building them.
The AODA Alliance heartily supports the need to build more bike paths. It does not take a position on the Ford Government’s other planned regulations regarding bike paths. It simply contends that the provincial government must ensure that any bike path be designed to be safe for cyclists and all pedestrians, including vulnerable pedestrians with disabilities.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
For more background, visit
- The AODA Alliance’s widely-viewed November 2024 online video about the dangers of building bike paths on a sidewalk.
- AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s May 2, 2024 deputation to the City of Toronto Infrastructure and Environment Committee, balling for a ban on building bike paths on sidewalks. That Committee took no action in response to this request.
- The AODA Alliance website’s Built Environment page.