Blind advocates say a bike lane design on this Toronto street spells danger

David Lepofsky was shocked to learn he was about to cross from the sidewalk into a bike path during a walk with a friend earlier this month — something he only learned because his sighted friend pointed it out.

A section of bike lane on Eglinton Avenue, beginning east of Avenue Road, is at the same grade as the sidewalk.

"I was shocked," said Lepofsky, who has been completely blind for decades and uses a white cane to navigate the streets of Toronto.

"Then I was disgusted … how on Earth did they do this with such callous disregard for the safety of blind pedestrians?"

He says his friend told him there was a line of dark stone pavement seemingly indicating the transition to the bike lane. 

The surface of the bike lane and the sidewalk were different colours from each other — something that's irrelevant to people like Lepofsky, who use a cane to feel out the difference in the ground's texture to get around.

"The texture of the ground of sidewalks in Toronto changes from one metre to the next," said Lepofsky. "There's no reliable pattern. You can't depend on it."

He says even if a change in texture is detected, it doesn't tell people unfamiliar with this marking that it's a path for cyclists.

Lepofsky is calling on the city to make changes to this bike lane immediately, placing it lower than the sidewalk for the safety of all blind pedestrians and cyclists who shouldn't have to worry about hitting pedestrians or their canes. 

The City of Toronto told CBC Toronto in an interview it held "accessibility site visits" throughout the city that included people with disabilities and found the type of dark pavers used were detectable by participants. 

However, these accessibility visits, among other factors, resulted in a bike lane design different from the one put in place on this section of Eglinton Avenue. 

"Our preferred design today is to have the street and then the bikeway to be 50 millimetres above the streets, and then the bikeway to be 50 millimetres below the sidewalk… so everybody's raised," said Becky Katz, manager of cycling and pedestrian projects for the City of Toronto.

In the case of the section of Eglinton described by Lepofsky, she said the street was designed at the same time as the Eglinton Crosstown project — a design over 10 years old. However, she said the bike lane was completed recently. 

She says there are several instances throughout the city that use the design of concern to Lepofsky, and more are still occasionally constructed using this design.