Study finds streetcar tracks to be a major culprit in Toronto cycling injuries

In Toronto, streetcar tracks have a notorious reputation for disastrously tripping up a pair of wheels. Some intersections, local riders say, are worse than others. Queen Street, Bathurst, Spadina—the list goes on—these are places where injuries are more likely to happen, local lore warns.

Lore, however, is no longer the sole source of that knowledge. This week, with news of the findings of researchers in Toronto and British Columbia, the troubled cycling reputation of the city’s streetcars has more to stand on than the bruised, battered accounts of riders who have taken hits.

Speaking with the CBC, study co-author Anne Harris explained the findings she and her colleagues unearthed.

In all, Harris said, about a third of the city’s cycling crashes—something that has prompted calls for a minimum grid of bike lanes on Toronto streets—have been caused by streetcar tracks, pieces of infrastructure that involve grooves just deep enough to snare or obstruct a pair of 700c wheels. The study looked at collisions that happened in Toronto between May 2008 and November 2009, focusing on crashes that were serious enough to require hospital care for those involved. Published in BMC Public Health, the study reached a troubling finding: out of 276 wipe-outs, 87 were the result of tires stuck in the tracks, or having skidded across their precarious, sometimes slippery surface.

And as Harris added, those crashes happened most often on parking-heavy streets that had no bike lanes.

“We’re hoping that putting some numbers [against this] will help set priorities,” Harris, referring to civic policy-making, said in conversation with CBC’s Here and Now. “Training and attention, these are all good things to advocate for, but one good thing that really offers protection is physical protection—a separated bike lane.”

“Cyclists who are injured on these tracks reported circumstances like having to manoeuvre around other road users,” Harris told the CBC. The result, she explained, is that their tires get snagged in the grooves surrounding the tracks—flangeways, they’re called—and with a rider’s momentum, calamity results. That many of these intersections are a web work of such tracks, she added, is a further problem. “[It can be] really difficult to cross at the recommended 90 degree angle,” Harris noted.

So are fatter, cross country tires a remedy?

Perhaps not so much. Harris noted that most urban bikes—hybrids or road bikes—typically use tires with a width narrower than a streetcar track’s flangeway. Using larger tires, though, may not be a solution, as experts with Toronto’s Bikes on Wheels told the CBC. “People think a big, fat tire is going to be OK,” said Ross Lyle, the head mechanic at the shop profiled by Canadian Cycling Magazine. “A streetcar track is way wider than you think and it’ll accept anything. So there’s really no bike that’s better for it.”

The solution? Keeping one’s head up and eyes peeled for the dangers, Lyle said.