General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

[the lemur]

Not everywhere. And the more bike infrastructure is built, the more that will continue to change, especially in the more densely populated parts of the city.


Calling cars more efficient than bicycles is a bit of a stretch. Bikes outnumber cars on College Street in peak hours, yet 81% of the street is dedicated to cars. Doesn't seem very efficient to me.

Also, being the sole occupant of a vehicle that is very much larger than yourself and which is mostly empty most of the time is hardly very efficient either.

 

[mdrejhon]

Not to mention, College can only push about 600-700 cars per hour per traffic lane.

That's only 10 cars per minute.

Far more than 10 bikes often pass you during that minute during good-weather bike peak.

Increasingly, even controversial Sherbourne is actually looking busy at very specific times of the day (finally).

Growing up in car suburbs, I myself was mixed about the pricey Sherbourne bike lanes at first, maybe wondered it was a waste of taxpayer money. But now, in retrospect, it looks like a wise advance use of public money. I now rank it in the "prescient use" department: a respected rank like building that subway deck on Prince Edward Viaduct. That was a considered white elephant boondoggle a century ago, decades before the deck was used. It saved huge amounts of money later when Bloor subway was built. Now this decision is feted as an amazing foresight. I now consider Sherbourne in the same feted category, thanks to Regent Park / PanAm Village / QueensQuay / Bloor / Condo Boom / Adelaide+Richmond cycle track extension. Sherbourne is now finally viable, and will be far more popular later. The business case for Sherbourne didn't seem to make sense back then at first. But it finally surged this year with the Regent Park / PanAm village, Queens Quay, and the new Richmond/Adelaide cycle track, increased awareness, and all. All those bike paths finally connecting to each other, now shows a surging bike peak (even if quiet at offpeak times), but with those pesky condos creeping nearer Sherbourne now and later... wise move!!

I'm now totally convinced as a car owner.

Downtown roads can't get wider. But condo boom is unstoppable.

We need far more bike infrastructure downtown Toronto in all those condo, business, and university corridors, full stop.

 

[the lemur]

Amsterdam. 1972.

Car City. No bike paths.

They really did just park anywhere in those days, didn't they?

Nowadays there's room for everything (even cars, within reasonable limits) in a restricted space https://goo.gl/maps/KmsuvhRY3US2

 

[salsa]

Many commuters travel further than the distance between Malvern and Rexdale. People drive into the city each day from as far as Ajax and Newmarket.

A lot of those commuters also take the GO train from those cities. Efforts should be made to encourage them to bike to the train station instead of driving, just like how some people park their bike at a subway station.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Before the 1920's, streets were used by everyone, people walking, people on horses, people on bicycles, people on streetcars, people in automobiles. Look at this video and look at the pedestrians and bicycles.

"Jaywalking" was invited by then to discourage people from walking on the streets, and to expropriate the streets for the automobile only.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I agree we need bicycle infrastructure but roads aren't just for commuters. Buildings and businesses need to be serviced as well and this servicing will not be done by people cycling. As we densify the core allocating road space to cyclists may convince commuters (including cycling commuters) to ditch the car but it may also have the unintended consequence of driving up servicing costs and inflating general costs in the downtown area. That's fine but it certainly isn't the kind of progressive change many cycling advocates are thinking about.

P.S. while I primarily drive (as my vehicle is work related) my bike just got stolen!

 

[the lemur]

I agree we need bicycle infrastructure but roads aren't just for commuters. Buildings and businesses need to be serviced as well and this servicing will not be done by people cycling.

It's not currently being done by single-occupant private vehicles either, which make up most of traffic. We've really made things difficult for ourselves by not providing service entrances/access to many major buildings downtown.

 

[Daniel Tripp]

may also have the unintended consequence of driving up servicing costs and inflating general costs in the downtown area.

At the same time, surely more trips taken by bikes reduces costs elsewhere, such as wear and tear on roads or the healthcare system.

 

[allabootmatt]

Before the 1920's, streets were used by everyone, people walking, people on horses, people on bicycles, people on streetcars, people in automobiles. Look at this video and look at the pedestrians and bicycles.

"Jaywalking" was invited by then to discourage people from walking on the streets, and to expropriate the streets for the automobile only.

I really love to see stuff like this. Far too often the pro-car, pro-sprawl crowd get away with talking about the way North American cities have (mostly) developed in the last century as some kind of inevitable state of nature, which only the naive would question, let alone challenge.

In fact of course these conditions are all the result of specific social, economic or political choices -- not right choices or wrong ones, necessarily, but choices all the same. Not to mention the fact that in many places, there's a huge amount of highly prescriptive regulation, of the sort the right generally claims to oppose, which makes urban areas car-friendly.

The bottom line is, our cities were built the way they were because decisions were made by public and private actors. Different decisions, different results. There's nothing inevitable about it.

 

[salsa]

Now is probably the greatest time of the year to do a bike ride on the Humber River .

 

[salsa]

Toronto is blessed to have such an extensive network of ravines that allow you to escape into nature without having to go somewhere far away. In Houston TX for example, this is their equivalent cycling experience:

Isn't that just awful?

 

[Napoleon]

Now is probably the greatest time of the year to do a bike ride on the Humber River .

Agreed! I did a beautiful 50 km bike ride up the Humber and another 50 km loop around the city including the Don Valley this weekend. Great fall colors starting to appear.
As a bonus, the salmon run up the Humber is great right now. Crazy watching the fish trying to jump and swim over the dams.

 

[W. K. Lis]

We'll see if this really happens... from this link.

New provincial rules make it easier to build bike lanes

Toronto will be able to build bike lanes in less time for less money thanks to new provincial rules, says the city's manager of cycling infrastructure and programs.

Toronto will be able to build bike lanes in less time for less money thanks to new provincial rules, says the city's manager of cycling infrastructure and programs.


Toronto will no longer do provincial environmental assessments (EA) to build on-street bike lanes. The assessments have been blamed for holding up projects such as the Richmond-Adelaide cycle track.

Eliminating the process will save at least six months and sometimes years in the approval of those projects, said Jacquelyn Hayward Gulati, who called Thursday's announcement by Environment Minister Glen Murray "fantastic news."

The changes won't prevent the public from having a say when the city wants to convert a traffic or parking lane to a bike lane. Toronto will still do public consultations, detailed design and traffic analysis, said Hayward Gulati.

"There's still due process but it's not subject to putting together that same documentation and filing it with the ministry," she said.

It isn't clear whether the city ever needed to do EAs for bike lanes. According to Hayward Gulati, the EA rules weren't explicit.

Some cyclists have suggested Toronto has used that ambiguity to try and stall bike lanes on important stretches such as Bloor-Danforth. In 2008 cyclists were among a group that lost a court battle to try and force the city to do an EA on the $25 million Bloor St. beautification project between Avenue Rd. and Church St., which did not include bike lanes.

"The studies are done instead of implementation. It just delays councillors for a number of years. It puts decisions off into the distant future, and the huge cost means there is another reason for inaction if the money isn't there," said lawyer and cycling activist Albert Koehl.

The province has also reduced EA requirements for building off-road bike trails costing more than $3.5 million. Instead of a full, independent environmental assessment, those projects will now be subject to what's called a municipal class EA, a less stringent process.

"It was just a very rigourous, time-consuming and costly process that you would have to go through for the Western Rail Path, the East Don Trail, any of these major trail projects that the city has done," said Hayward Gulati.

The Municipal Class EA will be faster and less costly, said Murray.

"It will be the same as laying a sewer pipe or laying a sidewalk now, which happens every day in our city with less fuss," he said.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC:

 

[Napoleon]

Meanwhile, in Washington, DC:

Very interesting...I haven't noticed that in my last few visits to DC. I quite like the center of the lane approach, eliminates all of the right turn conflicts. I do wonder a bit how cyclists make right turns to get out of the cycle path.