Willowdale Community Ride with Councillor Lily Cheng

Lily Cheng is the Toronto city Councillor for Willowdale. She has been working with Toronto BikeShare to bring stations to Willowdale. The area is getting nine stations in 2024, and three more in 2025.

To encourage Willowdale residents to try biking and BikeShare, Councillor Cheng held a Community Ride on September 14, starting at Avondale Park, near Yonge and the 401, with a route that wound its way through quiet Willowdale residential neighbourhoods to the Don Mills Trail, to the Don Trail, with a brief stop at Evergreen Brickworks, finishing at The Esplanade for a ride of 25km.

Robert Zaichkowski and Jun Nogami both blog about cycling matters in Toronto, but neither was available to cover Councillor Cheng’s event, so Robert asked if I was available. I always enjoy riding in new places, and meeting other cycling advocates and community members, so I agreed. They were also looking for somebody to do video of the event, so I brought along my fellow Brampton cycling advocate Barry Lavallée.

You can watch Barry’s video here.

Barry rode his bike from Georgetown to my house in Brampton, then we loaded the bikes in the car, and drove to Willowdale. It would have made for too early a morning to ride all the way there.

Councillor Cheng‘s office arranged with BikeShare to have 50 bikes brought to the park. I counted about 65 to 70 human participants,  more than half of whom used the BikeShare bikes, and one dog. 

The group gathered to hear a brief address from Councillor Cheng, and Cai de Ridder from BikeShare.

I met Lanrick JR Bennett, Toronto’s first Bicycle Mayor. From the website: “Bicycle Mayors can accelerate the changes we need to see by uniting all citizens to take action. They bring creative diversity with new insights and approaches, from both inside and beyond the world of bicycle planning professionals or the political establishment. They are the human face and voice of cycling in a city. By connecting these changemakers across a global network – creating greater visibility, rapidly sharing ideas, challenges and solutions, – we can create a truly radical shift.”

Community Bikeways, is a “volunteer advocacy group that believes municipal transportation priorities must be urgently re-ordered toward better cycling, transit, and walking facilities”.  Members of Community Bikeways  provided volunteers to lead, marshal, and sweep the event. Here we are ready to go right at 9:30 as scheduled.

It was a very large group to travel all together, but the volunteers did an excellent job keeping the group safe, and ensuring that other traffic wasn’t held up too much.

Peter Low was our leader and route planner. He got the group under the 401 In a relatively low risk way. There is no safe Active Transportation crossing of the 401 anywhere near Willowdale. The nearest would be on the Betty Sutherland Trail on the east side of Leslie, but it has been closed for construction on the 401 for a couple years, and will remain so for a while yet. 

There were several children on the ride ranging from 6-10 years old, who were tremendously energetic, and happy to be along.

The marshals did a great job guiding the group through intersections.

Here we are stopped for a short water break.

Toronto Councillor Cheng, Ward 18, rode one of the BikeShare bikes.

Peter routed us behind a plaza  to get to the north end of the  Don Mills Trail. Most of the route was flat or downhill.

The route then turned down the side of an office building and out to Leslie, just north of a traffic light, which we used to cross Leslie, before briefly taking the lane on Leslie, a short distance from the driveway into Wilket Creek Park.

We stopped briefly to ensure the group was all together, then continued on the Don Trail across a bow string bridge, and then across Pottery Road, which is a bit tricky due to the  crossing location near a blind corner, but it does have a refuge island.

There is a bi-directional cycle track on Bayview approaching the Evergreen Brickworks, which continues to Corktown Common.

We made a brief stop at the Evergreen Brickworks where there were lots of interesting bikes in the bike racks. 

There is also a bi-directional cycle track on Mill Street which passes The Distillery District.

The ride finished in a park on the south side of The Esplanade at George Street. Councillor Cheng and Cai made some brief final remarks. 

These impressive children are 7&6 years old proving that, if given the opportunity, children can travel great distances on their own outside of a private motor vehicle. We should encourage them with safe infrastructure, education, and community support.

People who rode bike share bikes were provided with instructions on how to return to Willowdale by Public transit. Peter led a group on their own bikes back up along Don Trail.

I took a couple pictures of Barry and myself with our intrepid ride leader Peter, and Councillor Cheng, before Barry and I headed back north using streets to cut the distance from 25km to 15km on the return.

We had a raised unidirectional cycle track on Sherbourne. We were briefly on the Bloor bike lanes, then the Yonge Street bike lanes to just past Davisville.

The Summerhill LCBO is in a train station that closed after Union Station opened in 1929. 

There was  no cycling infrastructure for  the last 8km or so, but the traffic wasn’t too heavy. The descent into Hoggs Hollow was a blast and the climb out, not too bad. We could see this pair of towers as an end-of-ride landmark from south of Lawrence.

I had fun attending and documenting this event, and met many great people. I am so appreciative of Councillor Cheng devoting  her day to this ride and encouraging her constituents. I look forward to returning to Willowdale and seeing the cycling infrastructure bloom.