Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Michael Longfield, Cycle Toronto Executive Director: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1861

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

In this 1861st episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Cycle Toronto's Executive Director Michael Longfield about their court challenge against Bill 212, the appeal by Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative Party, and the role of Cycle Toronto in defending protected bike lanes in Toronto. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

My name is Michael Longfield. I'm the executive director of Segal Toronto, and I am super stoked and excited to be making my Toronto mic debut. Welcome to episode 1,861 of Toronto Mic'd. An award-winning podcast, proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at greatlakesbier.com for free local home delivery in the GTA. Enjoy the taste of fresh, homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palmaPasta.com for more. Fusion Corpsohn Nikaiinis. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Mike and Nick.

Podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recyclemyelectronics.ca.ca. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our lives. Electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921. Joining me today, making his Toronto Mike debut from Cycle Toronto.

It's the executive director, Michael Longfield. Michael, why are you not Mike Longfield? Why Michael Longfield? I need to know off the top. That's my mom. You know, a kid grew up in the 70s. I think like when I was born, like it was the most popular name for kids. I can speak.

It was the most popular name in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s for males born in North America. 80s as well. I didn't know that. Yeah. So I think just for some differentiation, it was Michael, not Mike. But my cousins, a few of my high school best friends still call me Mike. But, yeah. Okay.

You know, I got to ask the tough questions on this program, Michael. And as a fellow Michael who decided I was more comfortable being a Mike, I'm always interested when I meet a Michael. and I think, oh, maybe he wants to be taken, like, more seriously. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a very serious job, of course, bike advocacy. So, you know, you need every advantage you can get. Absolutely. We're going to cover it.

But first, I'm going to, who's the guy who used to analyze celebrities' wardrobes? Do you remember this? Back in the 80s, there was a guy who would, like, he would show up something black, maybe? I got to look up his name. Maybe somebody in the live stream. I remember he'd show up on, like, I don't know, entertainment tonight, and he'd criticize. is like, can you believe this celebrity was wearing that dress to this event or whatever? Do you have memory of this?

I don't. No, not that one. Okay. And Blackwood, I'm going to look it up while you tell us about two things. One is, let's start with the hat. What hat are you wearing? Vintage Montreal Expo's baseball cap. And you told me just before I pressed record that you spent some time in Montreal.

Is that correct? Yeah, I did. I spent a bit of time in the 90s in Montreal. after the lockout, so the, you know, a couple years after when Montreal was making that incredible run, you know, they were the best team in baseball, it looks like they were in 94. Yep. And then so was there in Montreal after that, after the city's heart was broken and, you know, the stad would be, oh goodness, pretty empty game after game, but it was just, you know, incredible atmosphere, incredible vibe. And, you know, Montreal is just, you know, Bangor City.

So, yeah, happy to be wearing this hat and, you know, eventually we'll get Montreal or baseball Montreal again. No, I don't want to sound like a broken record on this program, but when somebody mentions Montreal, I now feel I'm obliged to tell the world that my daughter lives in Montreal. And I'll be there late May for her convocation. She's graduating from McGill, and I can't wait to make this trip. Oh, congrats, yeah. I want to ask you about your t-shirt now. So you're wearing a cycle Toronto t-shirt. We've got some trash pandas riding bikes. Yeah, so this is one of our Sickle Toronto T-shirts. This was designed by one of our staffers, our organizing manager, Caitlin. And, you know, she's responsible for, you know, again, a lot of the organizing that we do and that sort of thing.

But she has, in her job description as well, raccoons as required. So does a lot of this graphic design stuff. It's a lot of fun. Love it. Very cool T-shirt. So I need to ask you, because you were running a bit late. Oh, boy. And you were blaming the TTC. Well, I mean, blaming the TTC is maybe a strong world. I was, I was explaining the TTC. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that was the reason, but you weren't putting blame on the TTC. No, they're trying. They're trying. The natural question I have is, you're such an advocate for cycling and we're going to get into it.

But why did you not bike here today? Oh, goodness. Well, because I'm still recovering from a broken leg. So I was doored back in December, goodness, 2024 and broke my finger. And you're still recovering. Still recovering. Yeah, it's not progressing quite as well as we had hoped. So I was back to commuting a little bit last summer,

but while the weather is a bit of fee, and especially while there's still, goodness, ice and snow out there, I'm playing it conservative. Well, the good news, Michael, I can tell you, I just took a ride to Trillium Park, and I can now tell you there is zero ice and snow on these trails right now. I think the weekend cleared it all out. Yeah, it's definitely looking promising,

so I'm hoping, you know, a couple weeks I'll be back to it, but yeah, not now, sadly. But can you mind, I should knock on wood, except I don't believe in jinxes. Like, I just don't believe in it. So I refuse to walk on wood, and I don't know what this IKEA table is actually made of, Michael. I'll be very honest with you. But could you tell me about this dooring incident?

I've never been doored. But I just assume every car I pass, I just assume that door is going to fly open. Well, that's a great way to be riding is to assume that. First day, I'll say, I don't recommend it. So, you know, if you have a choice. I'm going to cross it off my to-do list. Don't get door. Yeah, you don't need it on a bucket list for sure.

If it hasn't happened to you, don't. But yeah, I was, so this was like, you know, early December, you know, 2024, was riding my bike. I was actually riding on St. George, which has a painted bike lane. At the time, University Avenue was, there was construction. They're doing the TTC station. And so the cycle track was all, like, torn up. So I took a detour on the painted bike lane rather than the protected bike lane. And while I was biking past, someone, you know, ride chair slowed down in the travel lane.

person got out the back seat, they opened the door into the light lane. They don't even look. And pow, I was down on the ground, broken lake. I don't recommend it. This is a good time for me to ask you, because I ride Royal York. I have trouble saying the words Royal York. It's hard to come out of Royal York into York. But I ride Royal York a lot because it's really my only North-South artery in this neck

of the woods. And it's a painted bike lane. Am I safe? Is there any point, is there any safety at all in a painted bike lane? There's mixed research data on this. Conclusively, though, if you're on like an arterial road, the best practice is having a separated bikeway. So, you know, I mean, you could make the argument,

oh, is paint better than nothing? There's a lot of back and forth. Is it? Because I know the, what are those? Sherros. Yeah, I heard the Sherros are worse than nothing. Sherros are really not great. Sheros can be good wayfinding for like neighborhood routes, but like as infrastructure, they're not exactly awesome.

You know, I ride the painted bike lanes in Royal York, too, when I am riding, because it is the only north-south. You know, I personally feel slightly more comfortable because they're there, but is that just perception or reality? Yeah, I don't know. Well, I feel more comfortable because they're there. Otherwise, I think I just take Islington or something like, but I take rural York because there's painted bike lanes there. But I just thought I, you mentioned painted bike lanes. I thought I'd ask. So I want to say hello to everybody on the live stream.

You attracted quite the crowd, including a gentleman named Marcassaur. and Marcosor is the chap who said, you need to have Michael Longfield in the basement. And he's the one who kind of connected us back in the day. Yeah, no, I know Markasor by his non-handle. You don't know him as Markasor? No, it's just strangely now. That's his TMEU handle.

Okay. But he also got doored. Yep. And Marcosor, he says his hand is permanently mangled. Yep. And he's glad he's left-handed because I'm guessing it's his right hand that's mangled. I got to be careful. careful when I shake that hand of Marcosor, now that I know he's got a mangled mitt, thanks to being doored.

But can you tell me about the leg injury? Because December 2024, that's a long time ago. So, like, what are you able, like, tell me, like, what's happening with that leg that you're still feeling it? Oh, goodness. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, this is a... Take off those pants. Let me see what's going on down there. I've got a brace on right now. Look, you know, I'm going back to the surgeon, you know, this Friday to sort of see how it's going. You know, I can walk and I can kind of pedal, but still experiencing a lot of pain, don't have full range of motion.

And it's, yeah, it's just not great. You know, I mean, part of it is, you know, the human body doesn't like being thrown into pavement at speed, I guess, you know, that might sound weird, but apparently it's true. And, you know, I'm not as young as it used to be. How fast were you going? Not commuting speed, like, you know, 20? Yeah, 20-ish kilometers an hour. And it was just you against concrete?

Me against Cardor and concrete. Oh, yeah, Cardor. And so did the leg break when it hit the concrete? Oh, it sure did. Yeah, it was, yeah. I mean, I had that... I broke and bones hitting concrete on bike crashes, but broken femurs sounds pretty awful. Yeah, it was pretty awesome, yeah.

Okay, and I'm sorry to hear this, my friend. I mean, I mean, the good thing is, you know, we might talk about this later, is it ended up being part of a good, part of a good news story, because at the time Cycle Toronto was about to launch a legal challenge against the province for removing bike claims. And so, you know, we had, you know, case and point of why we need protected by claims and not just paint. Okay. I like the fact you said, we might talk about it later. Could you imagine we didn't get to that? Like, can you imagine I forgot to ask about your court challenge? I mean, you know, there might be more interesting things to sort of talk about it at this point.

We could talk about the expos. Yeah, I know. Lots to talk about. So let's do this. I'm going to get to that in a moment. Why don't we find out maybe you could tell the listenership. What exactly is cycle Toronto? Sure. So cycle Toronto is a member, a member support of charity. It's been a around since 2008 in the city of Toronto. It was originally the Toronto Cyclist Union. Some folks are still particularly fond of that name. And basically, you know, we're a group, you know, again, comprised of members, folks who live in the city and are just, you know, here to tell the city of Toronto, we support, you know, better cycling infrastructure, doing more to, you know, boost the culture of cycling in the city. And it's really a grassroots organization, you know, despite

us sometimes being portrayed as, you know, the big bicycle lobby. I mean, goodness, I wish I was making a lobbyist salary. It's ultimately, you know, we're here representing the folks of regular people who just, you know, want to be able to ride their bikes and want safe places to do it. I love all of this. I mean, I'm, what time is it? I've done two rides today. I'm at like 42K and it's 225, and I have one more ride left to do later.

But it is a, I will say, it is a beautiful day. It's fantastic. And we had a tough winter, as you know. So it just feels amazing out there. So I love all of this, but how do you become executive director, Mr. Longfield? Oh, goodness. How do you? Like, what is it?

Like, I have no idea how this works. But you are the executive director. That's a pretty big title over there at Cycle Toronto. Yeah. Goodness, how do you become executive director of Cycle Toronto? I mean, it starts by, I guess, in my case, starts by having been a Cycle Toronto member for, you know, 15 years at this point. I first joined the org back in 2010 when Rompe Thorn. Ford was elected mayor and him and Don Cherry gave that, you know, the war on the car.

The left-wing pinkos. Left-wing pincoes. And I think like that day, I signed up for a membership. So I've been in kind of the ecosystem for a while. And then was doing some volunteer work with the Ontario Cycling Association, a president of a bike club, a lot of overlapping space. And, you know, eventually an opportunity opened up with Cycle Toronto. And, yeah, here I am.

Well, I found the, I hope Marcus Sour is not. embarrassed by this. He's on the live stream here, but I'm going to read the email that made this episode happen, okay, and then we're going to get to the meat of it all. This is what Marcosor wrote, okay? You're both fierce cycling advocates, and it would follow others that have been on, such as Lanrick Bennett, Jr. Do you know Lanrick? I do you know Lanrick, yeah. I was listening to the episode earlier today. So when you said rural York, I was like, yeah, you guys spent a lot of time over the pronouncing Royal York, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, this is because I am consistent, I'm consistent, but, and I still struggle to say certain things.

things. Can you say the word brewery? Bury? Say it again. Brewery? I think that's right. I think you're a naturally gifted orator. But Lannrick Bennett Jr., he was the bicycle mayor of this city. And Allison Stewart, who came on as well. Was Allison Stewart Executive Director of Cycle, Toronto? She was acting co-executive director. Okay, acting, okay, I've got to keep track of all you cycling advocates here. And she's currently the bicycle mayor of Toronto.

Yes, she is. Okay. Maybe I should be. the next bicycle mayor of Toronto. Hey, the term's two years. What's that process? So reach out to Allison and sort of see about that. It is a two-year term. So her term's coming up soon, I think. I hear it's lucrative.

Oh, yeah, just like being president of the bike lobby. You know, you don't know what to do with all the money that's rolling in. That's funny. By the way, brewery, because you said brewery correctly, I'm just going to let you know right now, I'm sending you home with fresh craft beer from Great Lakes brewery. Fantastic. Love the Octopus wants to fight.

I can see one in front of me. Well, that's the light. So there's a, this one is actually the interesting thing. This is called fighting weight octopus. And it's the octopus wants to fight, but lighter. So you can have a couple without slurring your speech, which is nice. But it's seasonal. So like literally they brewed their last batch and they're going to replace it for the summer

with the Sunnyside Session IPA, which is a very popular summertime brew from Great Lakes. So just kind of some interesting inside baseball that you learn when you listen to between two fermenters, which is the official podcast of Great Lakes Brewery. I thought, for a moment, I thought you just made that up. And then it's like, wow, that's actually real. That's great. It's all real. No lies on this program here.

And just to give you one more gift before I ask you about Bill 212. You ever heard of Bill 212? Bill 212? It rings a bell, maybe. Okay, we're going to get you to tell us what that is, and then we're going to talk about exciting court stuff. I feel like I need to bring in Lauren Honnickman for these legal briefs. But I do have in my first.

freezer upstairs, Michael, a frozen lasagna from Palma pasta. Hey, fantastic. Do you enjoy Italian food? I do, yeah. Lausanne is great. You're going to get a lasagna. It's delicious. We actually had it yesterday.

No, yes, we had it yesterday. We had a little party for my youngest who's turning 10, but we had a little party for her yesterday, and it was catered by Palma pasta. Everybody can go to palma pasta.com, and Michael, you can let me know what you think of your lasagna. I'm confident it'll be great. Is this leftovers from yesterday? It's fine if it is.

You know, beggars can't be cheesers. You know what? That's not a bad idea because I have a couple of the veal parmesan. I still have some veal parmesan upstairs. And we could have leftovers while we talk about cycling and set up here. But I want you to set the table. Like I do talk about this quite a bit with Ed Keenan who comes on every quarter. But can you remind the listenership, what the heck was Bill 212?

Set the table for me. Michael. Yeah, and, you know, if I'm glossing over things or going too fast or whatever, please feel free to stop me or, you know, interrogate me on this. But Bill 212 was legislation that the provincial government under Doug Ford introduced back in the fall of 2024. And ostensibly, it was meant to basically propose that, you know, cities that have put by claims in that they would need to provide data to the province about how these bike lanes are being used to evaluate whether or not they should continue or not. And after sort of announcing the legislation this way, it very quickly pivoted to being like, no, Bill 2-1-2, we're just going to, we don't need the

data. We've just decided we're going to remove the bike lanes on Bloor Young and University. So that's about 19 kilometers. It's, you know, more or less the backbone of Toronto's cycling network. And yeah, just going to remove it immediately because, bike lanes in the premier's words and the minister's words. Bike lanes cost traffic congestion. We need to put bike lanes on side streets and we, gosh darn it, need to get Toronto moving. Now I'm going to ask you some dumb questions because I'm a dumb guy. Okay, listeners know that.

But is, like, how is bike lanes a provincial matter? Isn't that a municipal decision? Yeah, technically it's municipal, but technically it's also provincial. You know, we might, folks might remember, you know, back in whatever it was, 2018, 2019, when the province decided, hey, Toronto, we're going to adjust all the number of wards and cut them in half. Cities basically only exist by virtue of the province. Cities in and of themselves don't have any constitutional status. So they've been delegated a whole bunch of responsibilities, including roads and bike lanes. But ultimately, the province does still have control over it. So they kind of stepped in and said,

hey, Toronto, we don't like these bike lanes. And, you know, it's not hard to guess why. The three bike lanes in question are more or less the premier's commute to work. I don't think that's a coincidence. Wow. What are you suggesting here, Michael? I'm saying there are other protected bike claims in Toronto that aren't being subject to Bill 2.1-2. But funnily, the bike lanes that are part of, you know, North Otobico to Queens Park,

those are the problem ones. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but seems to be awed to me. remarkably petty. Yeah, very out of character, of course. You know, again, you know, Sechotrono is nonpartisan, so I'm going to be very careful on how I frame some of this. But, yeah, it's patently pretty ridiculous legislation. It's a gross overreach of, you know, local democracy, very much undermining, you know, multiple mayors, multiple city councilors. You know, these by claims were originally approved under Mayor John Torrey.

and when Mark Grimes was a counselor here, you know, we have a new mayor and you have a new city counselor as well, and they're very supportive of it. But, you know, these things happen through very long processes. They don't, the city isn't casual about where it puts by clients. I sometimes wish they were more casual,

but they're not. And, yeah, multiple times council voted on these lanes. You know, multiple counselors have been voted in favor of them. And, you know, they're here. And so, yeah, this attempt to remove them out, we basically, you know, despite garnering a petition with over 30,000 signatures, despite 20,000

plus people writing into the legislature and saying, you know, we don't want this, including, you know, lots of organizations that normally aren't even involved in bike lanes. They were just upset about this overreach. You know, they went ahead with it, and so we basically took them to court. Okay, so there you go. Let's not bury this lead here.

You, I want to get the terminology right, you launched a charter challenge to Ontario's Bill 212? That is correct, yeah. And who's you exactly? Cycle, Toronto, anyone else involved? So Cycle Toronto was the lead applicant,

and then there were two individuals as well. Eva Ross Sanger, who's a university student. I think it's the opposite. I think it's Eva Stanger-Ross. Oh, Eva Stanger-Ross. I should know this. I've spoken to Eva so many times. I'm here to Robert Lawson, you on the fact-checking here.

Sorry, the other name? And then Nerata Kiyando, who's a gig worker food delivery career. Okay. So what is the, like, where are we at with this? Yeah, so, and then we had lawyers as well from eco-justice and from a firm Pallier-R-Roland. And so we launched a legal challenge and we'll get into the nuts of it a little bit later. But yeah, we basically argued that, well, I'll just say it this way, we launched the legal challenge that basically argued that removing these bike lanes was actually a violation of Section 7 of the charter.

And because, you know, we argued that this was arbitrary and that would put people's lives at risk. And, yeah, so I went to a court over that. And, you know, it might seem a little odd about how are by claims and how does that get into the Constitution or the charter. But, again, you know, we can kind of talk a little bit about how this sort of applies to that as well. I don't want to get too ahead of myself. Okay, because I do like the details. Okay. Yeah, like don't hesitate to die.

If we lose the audience, I don't care because I'm interested. Okay, sounds good. Yeah, so basically within Section 7, we argued that because this legislation won't do what it claims to do, so that removing by claims will not solve traffic congestion. And we were able to show, you know, not only with our experts, but through government documents that came out through this legal challenge, that they knew they were advised both in terms of an internal cabinet briefing, in terms of consultants that they hired,

that removing these bike lanes would not solve traffic congestion and conclusively would put people's lives at risk. And so basically what we were sort of arguing is like, look, there's not some kind of like constitutional right to bike lanes, but that when governments make decisions, any level government make decisions, they have to be based in some kind of reality. And if that decision is then going to put people's lives at risk,

you know, that's where Section 7 comes in. And in our case, a judge agreed with us back in July. So we were actually successful. July 2025. Okay. So before we pick it up, so let me just review here. So, A, it also costs money to remove bike lanes. Oh, sure.

Yeah. So you'll pay money to remove bike lanes that will have little effect on vehicular traffic. It's not going to solve the traffic problem in this city, but it will make it more dangerous for cyclists. Yeah. And the city actually estimated that the cost of removal would be in the neighborhood of $50 million. And of course, in the short term, it actually would make, definitely make traffic worse because you would have these construction projects on Bloor Young University blocking up the roads to try to remove the bike lanes. Okay. And one other question I have regarding the bluer bike lanes.

It's not the entire blue bike lines. Is that right? Yeah, it is. So it's not like west of Jane or something. It's the entire stretch. It's all the bluer, all the young. I almost need to process it because because of where I live. I don't get as many,

I don't have as much time spent on the young and the university lines that are affected. Oh, I'm glad they're there, of course. But I actually do, sincerely, you can follow me on Strava, okay? I'm not making any of this up. I ride the bluer bike lanes every single week. And I got to say,

I actually have a mom who lives on Aberfoil, okay? Sure. And if I need, if I'm at, let's say I'm doing a gig at one Yorkville or something, and then I'm going to Aberfoil. I got to say that separated bike lane on Bloor Street is just amazing. Like I feel safe. I feel secure.

It's slick. I see lots of people using it. Yeah. So that's amazing that they would, for some reason I was thinking, oh, maybe they're just going to rip it up. And then now that's still not cool because I love it West of Jane too. But I thought, okay,

maybe they're going to rip it up West of Jane. Yeah, certainly in the lead up to all of this, there was a lot of controversy, as I'm sure you know, about the Bloor West Extension. I heard there's Sue and Amber Morley over it. Amber Morley and the city over this, yeah. So I think, I think that's due to be heard later this year as well, which is completely, again, ridiculous. You know, I think the counselor is, you know, pretty generous about it. Like, I think she'll say a lot. You know, that's their right. But again, just a pretty ridiculous waste of money, but, you know, whatever we're taking the problem.

You know, I can text. This is a friend of Toronto Mike. This is an FOTM, Amber Morley. I'll text her now and get the real talk on that one. Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, it'd be good. So, you know, poor, poor counselor. But yeah, so, I mean, very controversial. And I think, you know, that was something else that I think people found surprising as well, that, you know, this wasn't just focused on that, you know, controversial, uh, stretch. Right. A Bloor that had, you know, a lot of, like, very well connected local businesses, uh, to the premier's office. They were able to move this forward. It was actually no, all of Bloor Street, all of Youngstreet, all of University Avenue. That's incredible. Okay. And one more thing before we find out where we're at exactly with, you know, with this suit and everything. Because you mentioned something went down in the summer, but then I guess the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

province filed an appeal? They appealed, yeah. And have we, have we, you've made your appearance in court. We did, yeah. Yeah, so we had the, the appeal hearing was back at the end of, end of January. And so we're now in a waiting mode again, very likely be another couple months until we get a decision. Okay, so, okay, so we'll see if that appeal was successful. I'm personally hoping it's not successful.

Yeah, I, I, shocker there. I'm leading that way too, yeah. Geez, but, but when he talks about when, the premier of this province talks about, you know, we don't want bike lanes on major arteries. They should be on side streets. Okay, I live in this neighborhood and I bike like crazy and my kids bike.

And there is no such alternative for bluer, for example. No. No. No, and that was part of the evidence that we put in. Like, we actually, like, tried our best case to be like, if Lord didn't exist,

how would we map an east-west corridor from a Tobacco to downtown? And as you know, you can't do it without making the route almost 50% longer. and then having some pretty wacky elevation changes, especially as going in and out of the valley. Well, because before the bike lane, I was still, I would still just, I personally would just ride on bluer, but I don't actually like my 10-year-old daughter riding on Blue Earth.

There's no bike lane on this West End. I was so glad to see it here. I mean, it was a deal changer for how I bike of my kids from High Park to, to Royal York. Oh, goodness, it would be, yeah. Deal changer. But if people aren't familiar with the West End, and I don't mean to be like West End-centric,

but I sort of talk about what I know and touch and feel. every day. But like you have, it's a terrible street to cycle, but you have to the south of Bluer, you have a street called Queensway. And very south of Bloor. Yeah, it's 5K, 5K, I think. And north of Bluer,

eventually, I guess you have, I guess there's Dundas, which is like one of the scariest, you know, I don't know if you can put a bike lane, and then you get to Eglinton, and Eglinton's great, but that's really north of Bluer. So there is nothing even remotely close that is a east-west option if you're trying to bike from the west end to downtown, for example.

No, and you kind of said it too. Like sometimes people will say like, oh, well, you have the waterfront trail. Why do you need Bloor Street? And again, it's sort of thinking... That's 10K, I think. Yeah. And so it's sort of thinking about a little bit differently. Like when you're on your bike, like, you know, some people will bike further. And I'm sure, you know, you're pretty used to like doing, you know, 10, 12, 20K rides. But for most people, when they're using a bike for like their daily activities, it's like 5, 5, 6K is kind of the sweet spot, yeah. And if you're getting further than that, it's like, you know what, maybe the bike isn't the best tool. Like maybe you should be taking transit or maybe, you know, maybe that's a trip you should be driving instead.

And so if you build out cycling infrastructure, that's so spread out like that, you're basically telling people like, yeah, actually you can't, you can't bike. Biking isn't a good choice unless you're already really bought in and sold and already a self-described avid cyclist. And I'm totally glad you brought that up because I am well aware the typical community cyclist. he's trying to commute this city isn't putting in the 30 to 40K that I choose to do. Like I do it for sport. Sometimes I have a destination. But today I didn't have a destination. Oh, I had a 2K destination and I stretched it to 40K.

Okay, that's where we're at, Michael. But when you get, so when, how much notice do you get that the court's going to make its decision regarding this appeal? Oh, almost none at all. We'll just get it pretty quick. So again, it could be, could be soon. could be long. It's a pretty detailed charter argument now. Like, when the appeal happened, you know,

they can't basically argue, they can't retry it. Basically, what the province has to argue is that the lawyer made, or the lawyer, the judge made an error in judgment in his decision. So, basically have to sort of try to re-show, like, these are the errors that you know, Justice Chabas made in his ruling. And so you know, because I would sort of argue that

like this appeal real isn't about bike lanes anymore. It really is about how Section 7 does or doesn't apply to when governments make legislation. And so I think the appeals court is going to treat this very seriously knowing that, you know, there's potential, you know, ramifications

for how, you know, this legislation applies or not. But, you know, out of the gates, there was kind of concerns from, you know, some folks that like, oh, this is just going to open the floodgates to like every legislation that the government passes around traffic or

road safety is going to now be subject to charter challenges. But, you know, I'll sort of say after this, the province also told municipalities, hey, you can't have speed cameras anymore. That was something that also they only do because of the province. And there haven't been any legal challenges

around that. So again, you know, this is a very narrow argument that we're making around these three specific bike claims and the reasons the province gave for wanting to remove them. And I know that you mentioned this earlier, but, you know, you were able to confirm that there were these internal documents that the government had. And the internal documents had their own experts saying basically like, oh,

FYI, removing these bike lanes won't actually reduce congestion in downtown Toronto, which is supposedly the goal here. So how do you get access to those? Was that like because they had to disclose it? Like, how did you get the internal? They had to disclose it, yeah. So I'm going to say, I know you're one, you know, spoke in the wheel. See what I'm doing there?

That's good. Thank you. I'm going to say thank you. Like, I'm thoroughly impressed that you've got this far. And I'm holding, I'm holding out hope that the appeal, which, you know, that appeal was going to be a slam dunk. They were going to appeal it, I guess that's sort of part for the course. But I'm holding out that it fails, the appeal.

So I've got to say thank you. Like, you're doing important work here. I think, yeah. That makes, like, a difference. in my family for my 10-year-old who got a new bike for her 10th birthday and she's so excited. Like it makes a big difference how we get from A to B. Yeah, no, it's, thanks for saying so. It is very nice to be waking up every day and, you know, be doing a job that you passionately believe in.

And, you know, within a very narrow sense of the world, helping feel like you're making things better. And, you know, as you kind of hit it on this too, like even if, you know, you're someone who's, you know, not going to be riding a bike and not going to be relying on it for your daily transportation. like, you know, every car that you see stuck in traffic around you, you should be wanting everyone else to have the option to choose to drive. Right. You know, not every trip is bikeable. Not every person's going to choose to ride a bike. But the, you know, more we can make it safer and convenient for more people, the better it is for everybody. And it better it is for helping address traffic congestion. Okay. One less car on the road. And, and I know TTC is an option, but, you know, cycling isn't, I think, is it from if you can, not everybody can. You have a broken femur. can't right now, yeah. You know? Yeah.

And there are people who can't do it, and I'm sensitive for that. But if you can, man, it's good for the environment. It's good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health. It's good for gridlock. It just makes sense. Yeah. And good for your wallet.

Yeah. And again, even if you're not someone yourself who is choosing to bike, like the better it is for more people to bike, the better it is for you if you have no other options but to drive. Right. Right. So, okay, so this is obviously the most exciting. thing going on.

And I feel like when this appeal fails and we're cracking open the Great Lakes beer, this is a movie waiting. I feel like this is a film. You see films like this where, you know, they say you can't fight City Hall and you're like, watch me,

you know? Like, there's a, there's a movie here to be made. I mean, I would watch that movie. So they've got an audience of at least one, now two,

clearly so. I'd watch that movie. So, I mean, Hollywood, yeah, get going on this. And the good thing is,

they could shoot it in Toronto. And they wouldn't have to pretend Toronto was another city for a change. So it would be Toronto as Toronto. No, I love it. It's like Scott Pilgrim versus the world. It's like we're unashamedly Toronto. There you go. I feel like lately,

I do feel like the movement has been for Toronto to play Toronto. Like it was like I think we're of an age where we're used to like short circuit two or something. Like it's, oh, that's clearly Toronto, but they're going to pretend it's, I don't know, Chicago or New York or something. But I feel like it's become okay now for Toronto to play Toronto. Yeah, Scott Pilgrim was definitely one. I remember Take This Waltz as well, the Sarah Polly film, very Toronto. But it's funny, we had the Warren Cars podcaster folks in the city a couple weeks ago.

New York-based podcast, you know, a really great episode. They're New Yorkers, and they were saying, like, just how familiar Toronto looked to them because of the number of TV and movies they'd seen where Toronto was playing New York, yeah. That's funny. That's funny. So what's next? other than this obvious, big, exciting thing that's happening, and we await word that the courts made their decision on this appeal by the province and that you're successful in your, what do we call this, the Bill 212 charter rights,

what is this, the terminology, I get to call Lauren Honickman and figure out of it say, but you're doing good. Yeah, okay, I took a few notes here. I didn't want to sound too stupid. Okay, I'm trying to change my image here. But what else is on the radar? Like, what else is Cycle Toronto got brewing? Well, I mean, even longer term in terms of the province, you know, generally we don't get too involved in provincial matters. In this case, you know, the premier kind of forced our hands. But after passing Bill 212, they decided that wasn't enough. And so when they introduced Bill 60 back in this fall, so fall 2025, which ostensibly was a lot of, frankly, my opinion, pretty terrible housing pieces, would have made it very, a lot easier for landlords to,

evict tenants and make housing more insecure. But within that, they also buried in more bike lane things. So now under Bill 60, municipalities like Toronto can't install bike lanes if they wouldn't remove car lanes. So that in of itself is also a pretty big handicap for cities now. And that stands regardless what happens with our legal challenge. So our legal challenge has nothing to do with Bill 60 or how new bike lanes are being built. This is all 212. Just protecting the existing bike lanes that are here. Yeah. So that's something in the medium longer term.

We're going to spend more time and energy on as well. And then also doing, you know, what SecoTrono normally does is, you know, just ensuring the city keeps expanding forward with its existing bike network. Like this organization was founded back in 2008. Like I said, out of frustration that the city had a bike plan, it had been approved in 2001. At the time, Olivia Chow was like the, a counselor champion of it. It was back Mel Lastman days. The city had just been amalgamated,

and they put together this bike plan that was meant to try to grapple with a amalgamated city, city-wide cycling network. And so this was like, hey, not just the old city of Toronto. How do we deal with, you know, all the boroughs and create a cycling network around that? And so, you know, a couple years later, you know, David Miller's elected mayor. And, you know, despite a lot of really good talk, things have been kind of progressing very slowly. And so a fellow, named Dave Meslin basically just went to the U.S., did some auditing of, like, other cycling advocacy org, and sort of realized came up with this model of like, hey, if we have a grassroots cycling org, that's how you make progress in other cities. And so Cycle Toronto comes out

of frustration of the city not moving forward, having a really good bike plan and not moving forward with it. And a lot of what we do now is similar thing. The city passes rolling three-year bike plans. They're often pretty good or pretty ambitious. And then, you know, we're just there to help hold them accountable to doing that. And, you know, they almost always fall short of the number of kilometers we're supposed to do. But, yeah, just making sure that keeps happening. So.

Okay, so Bill 212 and Bill 60 notwithstanding, okay? We put those aside for now. How is the city doing in terms of cycling infrastructure? Fine. Better than it has been historically. Like, you know,

I think one of the things that's really easy to take for granted is just how much better cycling is in the city post-pandemic. Toronto, like a lot of cities during the pandemic lockdowns, really accelerated a lot of cycling infrastructure. And, you know, after, you know, Cycle Toronto had campaigns, but a lot of projects that were kind of in limbo for a while. And it seemed like, bam, overnight, they were all kind of done.

So, you know, certainly within the old city of Toronto downtown, we have a decent grid of bike lanes that have a decent grid of bike lanes that started extending into Scarborough and Otobico and North York much better than it was. Current progress has been a little bit slowed because of provincial things. And I think overall we're also just seeing that bikes are becoming increasingly polarized. You know, there's a lot of a bad faith culture war out there that I think the premier is really leaning into. And, you know, we're kind of seeing it in, you know, municipal politics as well, that bikes are

becoming kind of a bad word right now and kind of an easy scapegoat to, you know, rage bait folks. Okay, well, you've opened the floodgates here, Michael. I was wondering when we'd segue over to this. And I know you said something about cycle Toronto is bipartisan. Nonpartisan. Nonpartisan. Nonpartisan. Right.

Okay. You know, it's fun of us. Yeah. What was the three amigos where the guys said, yeah, I'm infamous. Like, what does that mean? It's like really famous. Or is, anyway, shout out to three amigos. But okay.

By way, three amigos is a movie. be I absolutely loved when I saw it in the theater when it was brand new. And then when I had my first born, he was now 24. I was excited to watch it with him. And I was completely underwhelmed. And I wonder why I ever liked it in the first place. Like it did not hold up to me as I matured. That's and what did James think? I should call him up now and ask him. I was hanging with him yesterday. But I, I was like, oh, I loved this movie and it doesn't look very funny or very good. That's, yeah, I hate when that happens. Revisiting a loved classic and it doesn't live up to it.

Do you have a movie you loved as a child that did not hold up, or maybe all of them? I mean, held up really well. I can't watch E.T. without crying. Like, I just burst into tears. It's way too intense. I love that film when I was a kid, and still, it just hits me way too hard. I probably told this story. Maybe I should save it for my one-man show at the Elma Combo and Made 21st.

Did you know I'm doing a one-man? Well, one man, but I do have a keyboard prodigy named Rob Pruse on stage with me at the Elmo, but tickets are now available, and the listenership should go to TorontoMike.com and click the link at the top that says Elmo gig and buy a couple of tickets. This is happening on,

it's happening on May 21st, but I'll tell you very quickly that I saw ET at a drive-in theater. Oh, nice. Because we're old enough to remember that off the 400. And I got to say, like, I didn't understand. Like when I'm watching the movie, you know,

spoiler alert everybody if you haven't seen E2, but E.T is flatlining, okay? He is dead. Yep. I'm kind of mad because, you know, I just applied human rules to this alien, which in hindsight was naive of me, okay? But I was pretty young, pretty damn young.

I don't know, six or seven or something, I don't know. And I was bawling. Like, I was traumatized. E.T. was dead, and I just couldn't, I was really having to, tough time in that car weeping openly that ET was dead. And I'm still kind of mad at the fact that Spielberg fucked with me like that because he could make up the rules for ET because he's not human. Yeah, no, Spielberg's incredible though. Like he's just, he's, he's playing us all like a

violin. It's great. And, you know, again, just as a good example, too, we're sort of talking about bikes and cars. Drive-ins, really great use of cars. Like, like approved. Like, that's a good use of cars, drive-ins. And ET, great use of bikes. Yeah, great use. Oh, my God. Yeah, great use of bikes, yeah. Thing about that, since you remember the 80s, and I remember the, you remember the 80s,

right? Although you look young, because you were dropping, like, references to your age earlier, and I was like, oh, he's older than I thought he was. It's all the biking that's keeping me young looking. That femur break worked for you. Yeah. But I did not, no helmet touched my head until 2012. Oh, wow.

Interesting. I know. And I should point, there's like a 15-year break when I'm not biking a lot. So I bike like crazy until I'm in my early 20s. And then for 15 years, I'm not sure why. I didn't bike. I worked far away and I drove to work. It was out of my lifestyle.

We can get into why, whatever. And then I start biking again in 2012 and I buy a helmet because it makes sense to wear a helmet in 2012. But that was the first time a helmet touched my head. In the 80s, bike and 90s, biking like crazy, it didn't even occur to me to put a helmet on my head. Yeah, I'm trying to think now too. I don't know if I wore a helmet either in my teens and 20s. Like early 90s, when I'm clocking major clicks, biking downtown like crazy, my bud Ed, my bud Chris, my bad Andre, none of us wore a helmet.

I mean, you know, at the end of the day, like, sure, I recommend people wear a helmet. I've had a couple concussions. I don't want to have another, you know, recommend a helmet with something called like a slip liner or MIPs to prevent the or reduce the chance of a concussion. But, you know, at the end of the day, if you're going to be hit by, a car traveling 60, 70 kilometers per hour. Helmets's not going to do very much.

You're going to probably end up in toast. But you broke, you talked about your leg broke because you hit the concrete. The helmet wouldn't have fixed my, I was wearing a helmet, it didn't help my knee. So I should, I need a refund on that helmet. If the angles are changed. I can tell you I had a bike crash in 2020

and my helmet split into two and I got a CAT scan and they said it was fine. I won't tell you what happened a couple years later with my brain. listeners know, but I swear, I feel like that saved my life. Like, if it split my helmet, what would have happened if I wasn't wearing a helmet? I strongly recommend people wear helmets and also understand why helmet laws aren't mandatory. I don't, I'm not even advocating for helmet laws to be mandatory.

I know that for kids, it's mandatory. And I guess it's like 16 plus. It's up to years. And e-bikes and... But your raccoons are wearing helmets on your T-shirt. Yeah, helmets are great and cool. Like, I, you know, I love my helmets. They're like great accessories.

I guess I think it's just like an interesting mindset and I know an ET they're not wearing helmets either right but like it's just an interesting mindset how I I can't imagine going for even a 5K ride right now without wearing the helmet like I just wouldn't do it it's like wearing a seatbelt yeah I wouldn't chance it either but we didn't think in the 90s when we're flying around and downtown with no bike lanes I'm going everywhere downtown of the cars and whatever it didn't even cross my mind oh I should put something to protect my brain I think we had just overall different sense of values around bodily safety in the 60s, 70s, 70s. We just didn't give a rat's ass back then. Okay.

So I was going somewhere with, we got on an ET tangent. Oh, right. I was thinking, funny how we got there. But I'm personally, I think I'm not, I don't think I'm alone, but I'm personally frustrated at this politicization of cycling. Yes, you should be. And I am, I'm no idiot. Like when Doug Ford goes off on bike lanes, and there's Bill 2-1-2 and there's Bill 60.

And I know this is red meat for his base, who also seem to hate cyclists and cycling infrastructure. How did cycling get so politicized? That's a great question. I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. You know, the one thing that I take a little solace on is that this isn't just a Toronto thing. I think it's something that we're seeing, you know,

around cities around the world. You know, even, goodness, I mean, it hasn't gone as far as Toronto, but, you know, even in the case of Montreal, like recently elected a new mayor who promised to audit all the existing bike claims. So, you know, Montreal has obviously moved way further ahead of Toronto into its cycling, arguably the best city in North America for cycling.

But, yeah, now they have a mayor who's going to be like, maybe we need to pause, maybe we need to look at this. So this is something that's happening in cities worldwide. It just has its own unique Toronto pizzazz and flavor to it right now, in part because of the legacy of the Ford brothers. So, but okay, yeah. But when I think of cycling, right, like I'll think of like European cities, like Amsterdam, for example, or I was, look, I was been to, you know,

even Berlin or Copenhagen, a lot of these cities. So is it that left, like, what is it, Don Cherry? You quoted the Don Cherry, or maybe I quoted it, but you brought up the Don Cherry. I don't know. Is it an inauguration? What happens when a new mayor comes in? Is that an inauguration?

I don't know if it is, but I think we all call it an inauguration. I'm going to call it the Rob Ford inauguration. I had a T-shirt, and I can't remember who made it, but it was a left-wing Pinko's bike T-O. When Bike T-O was a thing back in the day, yeah. Okay, I had a couple of bike-tio t-shirts, but I definitely had the left-wing Pinko,

and I remember that line, stick that in your pipe and smoke it or whatever. And, you know, let's lean, lean in here. But cycling has definitely been, politicize and here we are in 2026. And it's like, even though Olivia Chow has not officially announced she's running to be re-elected for mayor. So she hasn't officially

said she's doing so. But it looks like it might be an Olivia Chow versus Brad Bradford showdown for to be mayor in this coming election, 2026. Brad Bradford, also an FOTM and also a cyclist like us.

Yeah, Brad's a Vicalot. Yeah. I follow him on Strava. He, he, he he loves to bike, but he, what's the term? He supported Bill 212 in removing these bike lanes, right? Well, I mean, municipal officials couldn't support or not Bill 212, but yeah, I think he has a vote against the Bloor West piece when there were some counselors who were trying to open it back up

while Bill 212 was kind of being discussed, and so C-Hall voted again, like, hey, are we going to remove the Blur-West extension? Now again, you'll have to, do some speculation and guesswork here because we can't read these minds. But is it simply we learn about wedge issues when it comes to elections and that Brad needs to be the anti-Chao vote? Like Brad Bradford to win this election needs all the people who are against Olivia Chow to

vote for him. This is the path to victory. And, you know, Olivia Chow is a bike lane friendly person. I recently met her at Christy Pitts and she had her beautiful bike with her and she had bike there and she also kayaks by the way do you know that i did yeah is there a kayak toronto group that i should know about kayak t oh yeah you're got to get on that okay but is it simply brad needs to be he needs to be anti bike lane in order for that that same red meat the the same crowd that loves dug for taking away bike lanes to get that vote like simply politically has to be

anti-bikeling oh goodness i wouldn't even pretend to guess i think one of the things i'll just sort of let you know is i am very happy i am not a politician I am the son of a politician. My mom was a member of city council in Whitby and a former member of parliament. And so I grew up around politics my entire life. And I am very happy with the cruise race I have made right now and that I am not an elected official. I think something that we sort of see that, you know, this is maybe adjacent to kind of what you're talking about is like, you know, cycling and cyclists, it's not a monoculture. You know, folks who ride bikes don't necessarily all have all the same, you know, values, political pieces too. And people ride bikes

for different reasons. And I think something that we saw a lot in Atopico around the debate around the Blur West piece is a lot of folks who, you know, self-described as avid cyclists, were maybe riding a lot recreationally. You know, I hate using the word mammal, you know, for a middle-aged man of Lycra, even though I am sometimes one. But, you know, we're riding their ride, road bikes for sport. And, you know, we didn't like this infrastructure because it wasn't conducive to riding at speed on a road bike. And it's like, well, of course not. This is not meant for you to be able to go out on your, you know,

specialized S works. And, you know, at 40K an hour, this is meant for people of all ages and abilities to be able to get from point A to point B. And so there is some of that piece too that a lot of the people that are like most opposed to cycling infrastructure are self-described avid cyclists or will then default to a,

you know, I'm not opposed to bike lanes, but just where they make sense. And, you know, I think for a lot of folks, that was Blur West that became a bit of a flashpoint. Although they can never tell you,

I was a taste of the Kingsway event, and somebody of a camera, I don't know who they were representing, but they had questions for me on camera, and they were clearly baiting me into being against the bike lane. It was like the leading questions. And I actually, and I don't know where this footage ever went, they probably deleted it because they didn't suit their narrative,

fit their narrative. But I said, I said, look, I said, do you know this area? And they go, yeah, I said, okay, when you get west of Jane, tell me the street. Like, what is this magical street west of Jane that'll actually get you to a Tobacco? And there isn't one, of course, right?

There isn't one. We had this conversation. We won't repeat ourselves. So where it makes sense, I don't, there is no other option. And I know we're repeating ourselves now, but I'll tell you I don't own any Lycra. I do.

Yeah, it's great stuff. So am I missing out? Like, yeah, it's good stuff, yeah. I did. So I, this is a memory I have. In 2013, I did the ride to conquer cancer. for my buddy, my kick, we lost kick, too young to cancer. But I did the ride to conquer cancer.

And I did note as I was riding this, we go to, there's a long route, but you end up in Mohawk College in Hamilton. Everybody had like the padded shorts and the clipless pedals. Like, and I had neither. Like I was just, just, I was just, I know, I had neither. And everybody had it. And I'm like, oh, like, it's almost felt like they were like, oh, they're kind of cheating. Well, it is in a certain way.

Like, you know, when you're, the faster you ride, the more aerodynamics becomes a factor. So if you're wearing, you know, Lycra, spandex, it really does help. And again, it shouldn't be like, it shouldn't be like necessary for like every ride. It's, you know, a bike is a tool. And, you know, and you pick the right tool for the job. And if you're riding on the weekend for five, six, seven hours plus, clippless pedals and Lycra works out pretty well. Yeah, and those are long rides. but I'm not those kind of guys.

I know those guys, yeah, they got the $10,000 bike, and they go out for the long ride on the weekend. Two time-consuming here. Okay, so just give me a little. You mentioned your mom was an MP in Whippy. That's pretty rad, actually. But, like, when you became executive director of Cycle Toronto, who were you?

Like, just give us a taste of who was Michael Longfield when he joins, when he becomes an executive director of Cycle Toronto? Oh, goodness, who was I? Who the hell are you? Who am I now? Jeez, Louise. Yeah, I sort of, you know, have had a pretty eclectic, you know, career path. It's kind of a neat thing having, you know, staff working for me who are much younger who sometimes are questioning, like, you know, like, oh, goodness, what am I doing with my life?

And I'm like, man, you are so much further ahead than I was when I was your age. But, you know, I spent time, you know, I actually went to film school. I thought that's what I was going to do. Yeah. You know, went to UFT, studied film history, went to Vancouver, did some film production out there, came back, worked on film sets, worked at a movie theater, worked for TIF, worked at the Pan Am Games, and Aga Khan Museum. So, like, kind of a little bit all over the place.

All the while, though, I was doing a lot of volunteer work in, like, the sport cycling side of things. So I'm a very mediocre bike racer. I love it. I'm not very good at it, but I really enjoy the feeling of going fast and really kind of pushing myself. And so I was involved in a lot of that space. And one of the things that I've really noticed within the cycling communities post-pandemic, or even in the lead-up or even those first months of the pandemic, is just how much younger and more diverse and frankly more female the sport side is now.

And a lot of those people that are riding bikes on the weekend or riding for, recreation and sport. They're also using their bikes for transportation as well. So there's less of this mammal versus advocate divide that there maybe was 10 years ago and more people are just realizing right, like bikes a tool and you pick the right tool for the job. Did you ever make a film? I made one in film school.

Yeah. Documentary about the Vancouver Zoo. Okay. You know, you could combine these passions. I'm looking for that. I'm checking that out on the Torrance. Where the hell is it? but you could combine these passions.

Like you could make little, you know, Toronto cycling films. I don't know, there's got to be a way to cross over these passions. Well, I mean, the thing that's nice about it now is, you know, bikes take up so much of my, you know, life. It's, you know, it's my job. Sure. I still, you know, ride a bike generally for transportation. I'm still, you know, riding on, you know, normally I'd be riding and training and racing as well. So I actually kind of like that movies are this non-bike thing right now.

it really is my getaway from kind of everything two wheels related. Absolutely. Except, you know, if you're watching E.T. or good knows what. And I'm like, oh, there's another bicycle. A lot of cycling. Oh, my wife is watching a series. And I've caught, like, she'll watch it in two ways.

Like, she'll literally have it on her phone and with headphones on and she'll go about doing stuff in the weekend. And then I'm not watching. Yeah. You know, but then once in a while, she throws it on the actual living room screen, the TV in the living room. And if I'm there doing something, it's, it's now on in the room. and I'll catch parts of it.

So I have seen a good chunk of this. It's called Love Story, and it's the story of JFK Jr. And Carolyn Beset. Oh, yeah. Okay? And it's, I was, I saw a scene where a JFK Jr. in New York City, he bikes everywhere.

And he, so he's cycling the city. And I thought that was pretty rad that this, that his, you know, transportation of choice in the city of New York was to bike. That's very rational choice in a city like New York, yeah. So, yeah, although it's kind of ridiculous. And I guess I don't know if, you know, if these biopic things, half of it's real, half of it's made up or whatever, that's just the way it is. So I don't know if this is real now, but he would have a nice bike and he would, like, leave

it in New York, he wouldn't lock it and then he'd go have dinner or whatever, and he'd come back and he'd be like, oh, my bike was stolen and then go buy a new bike. Like, he just, you know what I mean? So he's still living this other, like, kind of life, yeah, yeah. So he bikes everywhere. Disposable bikes. You know, he's like, yeah, they're disposed. Which is kind of nice if you think about maybe somebody who needs it more is getting that bike now.

And he can just replenish his supply because he's got, he's JFK Jr. It's like the forefather of bike share really. He's like, yeah, like, here we go. I will personally. Yeah, exactly. Kind of beautiful as I think about it in that context. If I were a multi-millionaire, I may also, you know, do that as well. Right.

Just buy a new Fuji feather or whatever when, when I need it. Is it the perception I had as a guy who's, been going hard at the cycling since 2012 and this rebirth of mine. It seems like we got major awesome infrastructure thanks to the Pan Am Games. You mentioned the Pan Am Games in

2015. So, especially where you are, the lakeshore waterfront trail really got a nice rent out because of the Pan Am Games. And that's a big legacy of that project for sure. And then the other big one was the pandemic.

Right. Like people just started cities across the world. People just started riding bikes. They realized like, holy crap, this is a really good way to get around and get outside and, you know, physical mental health. And, yeah, the number of people we would see outside, you know, gosh, do you remember, like those active Tio weekends

when Lakeshore West would be closed to cars and you get $20,000? Very well. Yeah, that was a freaking dream. Loved it very much. I still remember when Tori was mayor, of course, the Rogers request of maybe we don't do this on game day. Oh, the Blue Jays, yeah. And technically active TEO is still on the book.

So when they had the last vote on it, it was supposed to be like, yeah, transportation staff will recommend when to do it again. And just it's never come up since then. It was fun, though. It was great. You know, one to just kind of go back to something. You were kind of hitting, you know, with Council Bradford and Mayor Chow. And you know, what's coming up with the election as well.

I think, you know, something like I kind of keep reminding myself is like, you know, despite the fact that we're, again, biking kind of in this culture war thing. Secondly itself isn't really a left-right issue. Like, you know, I think a lot about what happened in London under Boris Johnson, who was like a conservative, you know, politician. And, you know, London's network of bike lanes really explodes under Boris Johnson. And, you know, in the case of Toronto, you know, I don't think, you know, Tori would like to sort of see this as one of his legacies.

But, you know, Toronto has its biggest expansion of, bike lanes under a, you know, centrist, right of center mayor under John Tori. And I think more or less what you can say with under Olivia Chow is there's been more or less a continuation of the Tory level of infrastructure. We haven't had more new bike lanes. Under Tori, you know, by the end of his terms, Toronto was building, you know, a decent amount of bike lanes. And I think what we've seen under Mayor Chow is sort of a continuation of that Tory era plan. That's interesting. That is, that's, actually an interesting point. And then I often wonder, and this will tie,

yeah, I'm going to put a pin in this because it's going to tie into something I want to ask you about this past winter we had. Oh, boy. And I am going to give a little love to recycle my electronics.ca. Because Michael, if you have an old drawer, and there's a drawer at home, maybe two, or a closet. Many more. You've got old cables, old electronics, old devices.

Don't throw that in the garbage. Because those chemicals end up in our landfill. go to recycle my electronics.ca, put in your postal code, and you can find out where you can drop it off to be properly recycled. That's good. It's interesting we're talking about, you know, Brad Bradford and Olivia Chow, because Nick Iieny's has a podcast. He's got a couple that I help him produce,

and Nick Iienes is actually hosting a fundraiser for Brad Bradford. And Nick as a sponsor of this program, He can direct the messaging as he desires. So I find it interesting that I'm going to tell everybody, and I don't have the details, but in the future Toronto Mike, I'll have the specifics. But I can tell everybody on April 2nd,

there will be an event with Nick Aeney's chatting up Brad Bradford. It is a fundraising event for Bradford. So Nick Aeney's would like me to pass that on to you. What a world we live in, Michael. I think it's a fascinating world. And I'm going to give my last bit of love to Ridley Funeral Home. They're a hyper-local. They're at 14th in Lakeshore and Brad Jones there has a podcast called Life's Undertaking.

And he sent over a measuring tape for you, Michael. I'm allowed to use this on non-cadavre purposes, I assume, right? Use as you desire. This isn't sort of saying, you've been hit by a car a couple times, Michael, like just like keep us in mind. oh my wife's going to hate that I was making that joke well is your wife going to hear this episode I mean I'll make her so yes I don't love I'll make me the review when you reviewed the lasagna

make sure you let me know what she thought of this episode here okay Marcusaur by the way who made this episode happen I'm just gonna he made a point here I think it was I want to get the person right it looks like it was deleted or actually like a reply was deleted But I read moments ago here that maybe it was Leslie, but somebody noticed, to your point,

that more women seemed to be cycling, and I noticed with my wife, she is cycling, and the reason she started cycling to work when the weather is, she likes her temps over 20, to each their own. She bought an e-bike. That's my wife too, yeah. And that's, I love the fact that e-bikes are getting people on a, the bike trails on bikes who would not typically bike?

What are your thoughts on the resurgence of the surrogens? The esurgents? The esurgents of e-bikes. A-a-plus. E-bikes are freaking phenomenal. E-bikes asteris, let's say. We can talk about that a little bit later. But no, e-bikes are great.

They're real game changers. My wife's the same. We had a subscription with a company called Zig for an e-bike for a while and loved it so much. We ended up buying the bike. and it's been a real game changer for her. You know, our, um, our, uh, her brother and our niece live, you know,

three kilometers away and like, that's a great distance to you ever go and bike with. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. E-cargo bikes phenomenal. Um, again, can just, real game changer for,

uh, shopping and a whole bunch of other things for a lot of families can replace, uh, you know, a car if you're a two car household. Um, uh, you know,

I think there's a lot of challenges right now with lots of things that are unregulated, you know, things that are like more like, you know, mopeds or motorcycles that are being sold or marketed as bicycles. I know what you're talking about. Especially, there are food delivery people who go buy me on the bluer bike lane, usually, because that's where I'd be downtown or whatever in the bluer bike lane. And I guess they're e-bikes. I always wonder sometimes, some of these e-bikes look more like little motorcycles or something.

They might actually, they might still be legal e-bikes. The provincial definition for an e-bike is like really amorphous. It can include vehicles up to goodness. I think 120 kilograms can still be considered e-bikes. And even if they have those little vestigial pedals, they can still kind of move. It could still technically be. I will say those pedals never move. No.

I watch these guys go by me. When e-bikes first arrived, a woman passed me going up the hill. Where's that hill where you have the on the waterfront trail, where you have the Legion where that five-year-old with the five-year-old was killed. Xavier Morgan.

Yeah. But I said a woman, I was biking my ass off and a woman passed me and this is like years ago when e-bikes first started to show up on the trails and I had that moment of like

God, she's, she just passed me like I was standing still and I'm like, she's not even pedaling. Like it was quite a moment where you realize, oh, she's motorized. Yeah.

It's, it's, you know, again, the C. a lot, like you said, see a lot of gig workers using these things. And on some level, like, it's way better than, you know, another car on the road. You know, as long as they don't run me over. And, but I think a lot of these things are actually being bought, you know, in good faith. Like, you can walk into Future Shop, not to disqual, anyone, but you can walk in there and buy like a Segway scooter, which is legal to buy.

Wait until I tell you future shop's long gone, brother. Oh, yeah, sorry, Best Buy, Best Buy, Jeez, that's aging me right now. You can delete that part. Much love to Future Shop, no. We love Future Shop, though. Best Buy. But yeah, you can, you know, grab one of those. It's legal to buy.

It's legal to use, but not on public roads in the city of Toronto or not on bike lanes. And there's just a lot of confusion out there. Three levels of government can't get the racks together on this. And, you know, it's just creating, I think it's contributing to this kind of culture war on this thing. And it's very easy to blame racialized people as part of this as well that are sort of relying on these devices. That's an interesting point. I didn't consider. Yeah.

You don't run me over. I'm happy to share the lane with you. Okay, I know how I want to close here. So, yep. It's kind of related to Livya Chow, but it is my observation that we just had a very tough winter, I'd say. But this is Toronto.

Like, it's not a shockingly tough winter, but we had this double hit that I, because I tried to bike through it every day. And it was tough because we did have the one day with a crazy amount of snow. It might have been a record, I think. But we had a lot of snow one day, But we also, surrounding that major snowstorm was like deep freezes.

Like it was, I found it tough for the cycling. Brad Bradford went on social media and suggested that the city was prioritizing snow removal in the bike lane versus the streets and the sidewalk. Did you see this social media post by the airport? I saw it, yeah, yep. Okay. So, like I mean, you should have seen the mountain that you mentioned that the Pan Am games gave us that nice new infrastructure here.

It was a game changer too for my kids, which is that First Street to Norris Crescent. We used to have to ride on Lakeshore. And then with the Pan Am Games in 2015, there was a separated bike lane between First Street and Norris Crescent. Huge deal to the, like a missing link was clean. It was perfect. But there was a giant mountain of snow in that bike lane

for a very, very, very long time. And I can tell you, was a guy who was trying to go to the bike to the junction to see my son, that the streets were far better to ride than the bike lanes. Part of that bluer bike lane were filled with snow, unbikable. Yeah, it seemed like what happened. And like, so that, again, not to nerd out, but I will nerd out. The city does have.

The place to do it. I know. The city does have service standards for how they're meant to treat sidewalks, bike lanes, roads, and then roads based on type of categorization is an arterial, is it a side street, da, da, da, da, da. and bike lanes too within that. And certainly early on, like folks might have seen in the first couple days or the first couple of hours of this, like, oh, there was maybe a plow clearing a bike lane before the road

or the sidewalk was done. And it's also different equipment that used to clear a bike lane. So they can concurrently happen. It's not like they said, clear that bike lane before you get Lakeshore. And there are fewer kilometers of bike lanes. So in some ways, it can be easier to start doing it. But certainly what we saw how. happen was after the first maybe pass or two that happened with a lot of these vehicles,

they stopped clearing bike lanes. And a lot of the bike lanes seemed like they became either intentionally or not, basically storage dumping grounds for sidewalks and roads. And through this process of freezing, they basically became unusable and they couldn't be plowed anymore. And you then needed to go into this massive snow removal process that took many, many weeks. And I think left a lot of people feeling really frustrated.

that, you know, we've had two years in a row where our infrastructure hasn't been a maintainer prioritized with no clear communication plan. I think that's the other thing that a lot of folks found really frustrating is like, what's the plan? When is this going to get done? When will I know it's going to be safe or not? And that wasn't communicated at all. Now, I'm a reasonable man, Michael. Like, I don't have some kind of expectation where we'll get the biggest snowfall in recorded history and I expect 48 hours later. Yeah. Next moment. I don't expect the next day or two days later for all my bike lanes to be clear so I can get my ass to the junction or whatever. I don't have that. I actually am, I will give it a week. I'll give it a week, which I think is

fair. I'm not unreasonable. I think that's what you saw with, uh, not think with. It's as if I don't know, cyclotrana was pretty much the same. Like for the first week, we were pretty quiet about it. And then as it was a week, we started talking more about it like, hey, what's the plan here? When is this getting done? Um, and started encouraging people to, you know, send in 311 requests. That's still his is the best way to kind of almost anything done in this city. And yeah, you know, frankly,

I don't think the city did a great job. I don't think they did a great job either. No. Partly, again, it's talked a lot about these contracts that, you know, the mayor is inherited.

And, you know, one of the things in the snow, the winter maintenance contracts that we have is we haven't really prioritized snow removal. There's lots of snow clearing, but not as much removal. And I think,

you know, we've had two winters in a row where there's just been snow, so much snow that removal alone won't deal with it. And, you know, I think we maybe need to come to terms with the reality of like, hey, with climate change and more extreme seasons, maybe we need to be better prepared for removal and be prepared to pay a little bit more in advance so that everyone can move effectively and safely, you know, at least within a week after a major snow event like that. I agree. So what do you think of this? I'm curious for your thoughts on this theory I'm holding right now. Okay. So,

I feel like possibly, this is pure speculation on my part. Lauren wants me to emphasize that. But the Brad Bradford social media noise about the city prioritizing bike lanes over streets, which I thought was ludicrous. I texted him as much. And I showed him photos of these mountains that were showing up on my bike lanes. Birmingham's got these bike lanes, separated bike lanes that I used for a variety of purposes that were unusable.

Unusible. Okay. what if the optics from that caused the city to possibly, I don't know, not clear these bike lanes appropriately for a fear, it would look like the bike lanes were being favored over the streets and the sidewalks? That's a hypothesis for sure, yeah. That is a hypothesis.

I think though this goes to the culture war aspect of this, right? It's like, fucking hated, Michael. It's like we can't have, are you allowed to swear on your own podcast? I just did because I find it, I find it. And literally I'm not a, I don't know, I don't know.

I find it frustrating that we politicize cycling to a point where all my conservative, even I mentioned Nikainis, but I had to talk him, I had to explain to him that I would like my 10-year-old

to be safe cycling the city. Is that a radical request from this bleeding heart lefty Toronto Mike? But it is so, and I like to think, by the way, if I were a huge, peer-Polyev fan,

I would still love cycling because it's good for my mental health, my physical health, and it's good for my wallet, and it's fun. Oh, yeah, no. But I hate this culture war, cyclists versus the right.

I hate it. Yeah, and again, I'm not even, I'm not even sure if it's as left, right as that. It just, it seems like it's just this, it's just become this, like, easy-to-use wedge issue on kind of like anything, to amplify a kind of populist sort of mess.

I think it's just actually more like a red meat thing we talked about earlier. Yeah. And it then makes it hard to actually have reasonable conversations about things. Like to your point, yes, maybe after a major snow event, like, you know, bikeways, maybe it's understandable. They're not completely clear and passable within 48 hours, 36 hours or whatever. But like we can't even now talk about like what is a reasonable service standard for this. Or even now, to your point about like, you know,

Oh, I don't want the bike lane on Bloor. It's like, well, where do you want it then? And let's have like an actual real conversation about what is or isn't possible and what this looks like. It's now just, now I hate you. You're an idiot. Pinko, soy boy. Or the one I hear a lot.

And Lanark likes to, has also heard this and likes to, you know, pointed out on his blue sky account, I see. But this whole false notion that nobody in Toronto bikes in the winter. Right. You just look at, look at, oh my goodness. Do you follow those bike shares? automated social media accounts where they sort of tracked daily.

I saw one, well, this past weekend was beautiful. But I do follow, I do see them sometimes. Yeah, and like days after the blizzard, there were still thousands of people using Budshare. And that was not only with so much infrastructure impassable, but a lot of the stations themselves kind of snowed

in and still, thousand people still trying to get it done. Thank you for all you're doing at Cycle Toronto, Michael. And I need you to text me the moment you find out that that decisions coming down from the court on that appeal

by the PC party here. Oh, definitely, yeah, yeah. Thanks so much for having me here. This was a lot of fun. And again, so sorry, TTC kept me a little bit late and we couldn't keep chatting more. I probably, you know, got to schedule my trip home, you know, for the next

you guys start planning that now to get home before dinner, so, yeah. I hope that FEMA heals up and you can, on a nice day like today, I think it's a high of 12 today. I think it's pretty clear out there. And no, or snow on the trails. I hope that femur heals up and you get back on two wheels.

Well, let's go for a ride for the spring. How's that sound? Wanna go for a ride. What kind of tunes do you like? It's just going to be the last thing I say on this. Music. Are you? You like music.

I didn't know. I just was singing some smashing pumpkins and I was thinking, is Michael a pumpkin head? What's going on here? It wasn't a huge smashing pumpkins fan. No. What about when you're a teenager? what radio station are you listening to?

I was listening to a lot of classical music as a teenager. See, I'm learning more on the way out here. That's very cultured of you. But actually it was Nirvana that got me into pop music at the time, too. So I started making the switchover around that point. Again, we can do the pop culture episode next time. Talk more about Spielberg and Grunge music and everything else under the sun.

I love it. Thanks for being here. You were late, but I did say we'd have to wrap. 330 because I have to do another recording, but we're going to have a sequel to this episode, because I love to hear what's going on at Cycle Toronto, and this is a issue near and dear to my heart. Thank you. And I'll just say in the last part of this, if you love cycling infrastructure in this city,

like tell your city counselor, tell your city councilor you want more. We have a municipal election coming up. Tell the mayor you want more. Just let them know, you know, just reject this culture war, and let's have real grown-up conversations about how to move through our city. absolutely and with Ed Keenan we're going to discuss what's going on with that lawsuit against Amber Morley

I think that's a terrible precedent if you can sue a counselor for crooked cue guys right who am I angry at in this tourstice that's my understanding fuck that place you know I'm not accepting their money if they want to sponsor Toronto Mike I'm getting angry over here okay Michael you were

you were great in your Toronto Mike debut we're going to take a photo by Toronto Tree I'm going to get you a Palma pasta lasagna you got your beer. Maybe one day we'll kick out the classical jams. Who knows what's in store for us. And that... Oh, and thanks to Markasaur for connecting us and making this happen.

That's how it works in the TMU, the Toronto Mike universe. So much love to Markasor. Thanks, Mark. And that brings us to the end of our 1,8601 show. Go to TorontoMike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Nikainis, Recycle My Electronics.C.A.

And Ridley Funeral Home. Let me see who's coming up here. Oh, tomorrow it's the return of Dan O'Toole. We'll see how Dan is doing. And then on Wednesday, it's a double-headed. It's unbelievable to me. They're not together. They're going to be ones at 1 o'clock.

That's Stu Stone. And then that evening, at about 6.45 p.m. Cam Gordon drops by to talk about his new book. Track changes. A lot going on in the TMU this week. See you all then.