Last week Mayor John Tory announced that some city streets, to some extent, will be opened for walking and bicycling. Our sidewalks and (the often imaginary) curbside spaces for bikes were narrow before the pandemic; the virus has made them narrower still. Social distancing obligations mean the debate about how we share space, especially public roadways, has become more pressing and the space more precious.

The way our city looks today owes much to another crisis, the Second World War, and the recovery. Governments spent fortunes on roads and highways to accommodate a surging number of cars. Many people who had walked, cycled and used transit became motorists.

Cars have a monstrous appetite for public space, which governments have tried, but never managed, to sate. Cars, typically with a lone occupant, devour massive space for driving and parking. There are far more efficient, and safer, modes of travel.

In Toronto’s downtown today, half of households don’t own a car, while 47 per cent of residents commute to work on foot or bikes. The change goes beyond downtown — in the city as a whole a majority of people commute to work or school on foot, bikes and transit.

True, the pandemic has diminished the use of mass transit, but a return to cars is not an option. We would be wise to avoid replacing one crisis with another, instead aligning the pandemic recovery with action to rescue our climate.

For decades, City Hall has stubbornly resisted any incursion on motoring space. In dealing with bicycles, council has eagerly pursued any scheme, no matter how fanciful, that gets cyclists out of the way of motorists, especially on arterials, even while the city’s own studies recognize a simple fact: people on bikes use the same roads as people in cars on their way to the same places.

With safe infrastructure in place for walking and cycling, thousands of short car trips can be replaced by active modes. This objective will require safe bike lanes and the widening of sidewalks to invite, instead of frightening, pedestrians. Mayor Tory is right to be considering the installation of temporary bikeways that mirror transit routes. This will give residents a viable alternative, or draw some passengers onto bikes, freeing up space on buses and trains for essential workers headed to more distant locations.

Bloor-Danforth and Yonge St., the busiest transit routes, are an ideal starting place for temporary, cross-town bikeways, while providing an economical opportunity to test design features for permanent spines of a real cycling network. The busiest bus routes are similarly obvious choices for bikeways. Reallocated curb lanes for pedestrians on a network of downtown streets, including Yonge St., is likewise an inexpensive way to pilot short term measures that will inform our recovery strategy.

The pandemic has put new demands on our roads. Since we’re all in this together, it’s time to share the public road like it belongs to all of us.