64% decrease in CafeTO curbside patios
“The City is part of the congestion problem”
The number of curb lane cafés in Toronto has dropped by 64 per cent, City staff report. In 2024, there were 304 curb lane cafés as part of CaféTO, compared with 837 in 2022.
The previously-unimagined development of dining next to a live lane of Toronto traffic emerged during COVID-19: “The CaféTO program was launched in 2020 as a pandemic support measure for restaurants amid public health restrictions,” Communications Co-ordinator Imane Boussaid wrote Taxi News in an email.
The curbside patios are generally despised by Vehicle for Hire (VFH) drivers including Taxi and rideshare.
“I’ve never been a fan of CaféTO, it’s unsafe and unhealthy,” says veteran cabbie Jafar Mirsalari. “Having bike lanes next to them makes them a big hazard for people sitting there, or cars stopping to pickup or dropping off. If a restaurant has a patio in a clean area safe environment as they did in the past, sure.
“But they can NOT force these out on the road ‘patios,’ blocking live lanes of traffic and having long streetcars and cars trying to pass them! It’s unsafe, unhealthy, bad for traffic and costly for everyone.”
CaféTO and the traffic lanes they usurp were a source of complaints during the 2024 VFH consultations.
“I would like to bring up is the issue of this CaféTO,” Uber driver Victor noted on the June 25th Private Transportation Company (PTC) stakeholder consultation video teleconference.
“It takes a lane. This was introduced during COVID because of spacing, but COVID is gone. The City has made it permanent now, when you come to downtown, you find out a lane on the street apart from bicycle lane. Every street in downtown has a lane that has a CaféTO, that one takes another lane,” he described the situation which has frustrated professional drivers since the program’s launch.
“The City is part of the congestion problem. Apart from construction, CaféTO, it takes bicycle lanes, all those things. They are not constructing new roads, but the old roads existing. They are reducing the roads that were constructed 60-70 years ago.”
According to Boussaid, “In 2022, the City reviewed the traffic impacts of curb lane cafés as part of its broader evaluations of the CaféTO program. While some corridors were observed to have marginal increases in travel times during the curb lane café season, other concurrent factors, including construction, street events and the overall rise in road traffic as Toronto’s economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic also impacted traffic and it was not possible to isolate how much of the changes in travel times were attributable to any one factor.
“Additionally, the number of curb lane cafés has reduced since 2022, as was anticipated as Toronto recovered from the pandemic and as patrons returned to indoor dining. In 2024, there were 304 curb lane cafés, compared with 837 in 2022.”
