"Where minimal design work is required." Ontario's September 1, 2026 news release uses those five words to explain why the work on Bloor Street West starts at Clissold Road. The same phrase helps explain why the stretch past High Park and Runnymede stations has no date at all.
Crews begin removing protected bike lanes on Bloor on Tuesday, October 13. That's the day after Thanksgiving, on a 1.2-kilometer section in Etobicoke. For anyone in High Park North who rides, drives, or takes the bus along Bloor between Keele and Runnymede, the province is sorting sections by how much design work each one needs, and the order follows from that. This neighborhood's stretch is in the group that needs design work. The province has not decided what will happen there.
What starts on Tuesday, and where
The Ministry of Transportation's construction notice covers Bloor Street West between Clissold Road and Royal York Road, west of the Humber River. CBC Toronto reported the details on October 8. Crews will remove the existing pavement markings and the precast concrete curbs, then add new markings and signs to bring back one vehicle lane in each direction. Most of the work is planned for nights, but crews may work during the day depending on weather, operational needs, and staging. The notice warns of possible traffic delays and expects the work to finish in November. During construction, traffic on that section drops to one lane in each direction.
The legal path to this point was short. On August 14, 2026, Ontario's Court of Appeal ruled that the province can remove 19 kilometers of protected bike lanes in Toronto, reversing a lower-court decision from July 2025. The province's release says the court found unanimously that roadway design decisions are policy matters for the Legislature.
Why the High Park North stretch is not on the list
Bill 212, the provincial law behind all of this, gives one instruction about Bloor. The Minister "shall remove the bicycle lanes located on Bloor Street," University Avenue, and Yonge Street, and restore those lanes to motor vehicle traffic. The text of the bill gives no endpoints, no segments, and no order of work.
The order comes from the September 1 release, which sets up two separate tracks. The first is immediate work on "the west section of Bloor Street West starting at Clissold Road, where minimal design work is required." The second covers everything else. The province has issued a request for proposals to "study and provide design options" for restoring vehicle lanes on sections of Bloor, Yonge, University, Queen's Park, Queen's Park Crescent, and Avenue Road, and that study "will also identify options to retain or reconfigure bike lanes, where they make sense and do not make gridlock worse."
The lanes through High Park North belong to an older project than the Etobicoke ones. The City built cycle tracks on Bloor from Shaw Street to Runnymede Road in 2020 and 2021, with protected lanes on both the north and south sides. The release does not say whether this stretch falls in the "minimal design work" group. So far, only Clissold to Royal York has a published construction notice. As of October 8, the research turned up no published start date, sequence, or design result for Bloor between Runnymede and Keele. The only firm answer about the High Park and Runnymede station blocks is that the RFP process covers them, and that process allows for keeping, reconfiguring, or removing the lanes.
A compromise version already exists on Bloor
Bloor already has one finished example of a middle option. In December 2025, the province completed work on the 600 meters between Resurrection Road and Clissold Road that restored a vehicle lane and kept a bike lane. According to the Toronto Star, the province turned down a City-led proposal to do the same on the section where work starts Tuesday.
So the same road now carries two different provincial answers within a few hundred meters of each other. The design study will decide which one, if either, gets applied east of the Humber.
| Bloor St W section | When bike lanes went in | Status as of October 8, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Resurrection Rd to Clissold Rd, 600 m | 2023 to 2024 Complete Street Extension | Reconfigured in December 2025 with a vehicle lane restored and a bike lane kept |
| Clissold Rd to Royal York Rd, 1.2 km | 2023 to 2024 Complete Street Extension | Removal begins October 13, expected to finish in November |
| Royal York Rd to Runnymede Rd, through Bloor West Village | 2023 to 2024 Complete Street Extension | No published date, covered by the design RFP |
| Runnymede Rd to Shaw St, past High Park and Runnymede stations | 2020 to 2021 | No published date, covered by the design RFP |
What the City measured right next door
The design study will have local data to work with. In October 2026, the City published a post-installation data report on the 4.7-kilometer Complete Street Extension, which starts at Runnymede Road, High Park North's western edge, and runs west to Resurrection Road. The report covers that corridor, not the blocks past High Park station. It is still the closest measurement anyone has of a Bloor stretch with these lanes in place.
The report compares before and after on four measures:
- Serious injuries: an average of more than two people killed or seriously injured per year from 2016 to 2022, and fewer than one per year since installation began, counting 2023 through August 2026.
- Speeds: average vehicle speeds down 14 km/h at monitored locations from 2021/2023 to 2025/2026, a drop of roughly 20 to 35 percent. One of those monitored stretches runs from Durie Street to Windermere Avenue in Bloor West Village.
- Driving times: end-to-end trips between Resurrection and Runnymede took about 2 to 5 minutes longer from 2022 to 2025 depending on time of day, then got shorter in most segments from 2025 to 2026. The report says the increases match citywide congestion trends.
- Cycling: 411 to 562 more people cycling per day at the four count locations in 2026 than in 2022/2023.
The City adds that its findings "should be interpreted in light of the differing collection periods and data limitations noted in the report."
Who has said what, and when
The positions on record come from different points in a long debate, so dates matter.
Two quotes accompany the September 1 provincial release. Sam Pappas, owner of The Crooked Cue, said "the removal of the bike lanes on Bloor Street will restore access and beauty that was lost." Nadia Todorova of the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario called the approach of restoring vehicle capacity "while maintaining bike lanes where possible" a balance between mobility, safety, and accessibility.
The question has also reached the mayoral race. Toronto votes on October 26. At a CBC debate on October 8, Mayor Olivia Chow called the removal "outrageous" and said she would organize against it if re-elected. Councillor Brad Bradford said bike lanes should come out where they aren't working. He pointed specifically to the Etobicoke section from Resurrection Road to the South Kingsway, where he cited 38,490 cars and 197 bikes per day.
Older statements from the local councillors predate the court ruling. In October 2024, Ward 3 councillor Amber Morley said she was not interested in removing the Bloor West extension lanes. In his 2023 year-end newsletter, Ward 4 councillor Gord Perks described the extension as a major safety improvement. Neither statement responds to the current schedule. We found no public position from the Bloor West Village BIA on the removal plan.
Bloor this month, with the lanes still in place
Until a design result is published, the Bloor that High Park North residents use every day stays as it is. Line 2 runs one more short week of disruption. Service between Kipling and Jane ends at 11:59 p.m. nightly through October 9 for track work, with shuttle buses. High Park and Runnymede stations stay open, but westbound trips past Jane are affected.
Saturday, October 24 brings two things to the Village end of Bloor. At 9 a.m., local nature photographer Richard Bod leads a guided fall colors walk from Neil McLellan Park at 263 Beresford Avenue into High Park. The BIA's listings disagree on whether there's a fee, so check before you go. From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., the BIA runs Halloween in the Village, starting at its tent at St. Olave's Church, 360 Windermere Avenue at Bloor. Trick-or-treating runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. along a trail of more than 50 businesses. The BIA's 10th annual Santa in the Village is set for November 21, which is about when the Clissold to Royal York work is expected to finish.
The next document that will matter for the High Park North stretch is the design study from the province's RFP. It is the only thing that can give this section a date or a configuration.
If you own on one of the streets north of the park and want to understand what a change on Bloor could mean for your plans, the team at Kim Kehoe follows this stretch closely and is happy to go through what is known and what isn't with you. Contact Us.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
