Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

[turbanplanner]

No one uses the park as a race track. You don't understand cycling or racing if that's what you think. Some ride fast, because that is how road cyclists train. Thirty or forty kph is normal for fit roadies on long rides. But no one is racing.This type of language (race track, Tour de France wannabes, yellow jerseys, Spandex warriors) is loaded and calculated to create fear and elevate the feeling of risk, and has little to do with the reality in High Park. Have some people been startled by a fast cyclist? 100% Has anyone been hurt by one? Never, to my knowledge. I wonder, in fact how much time you spend in the park, based on biased and fact-challenged posts like this.

Sorry I'm using the colloquial definition of race track.

I think any measures need to be weighed against how much they deter active transportation. Harassing cyclists for going 25 kph in a 20 zone or rolling a stop sign doesn't make anyone materially safer, and making cycling less convenient leads to less active transportation use and associated negative health outcomes.

If you have any clocks that might actually kill you, you may want to get those looked at.

The 25 in a 20 isn't even the issue, numerous times I've either cycled or driven out of the grenadier cafe lot and despite the top of the hill having a stop sign and me (and others) having right of way people run the stop signs....

 

[Undead]

I don't know about High Park, but there are plenty of near misses along the waterfront. And I believe there was an incident in recent year near HBS where a fast cyclist collided with a pedestrian, breaking the later's nose. There's definitely a need for better courtesy toward pedestrians from the lycra crowd.

 

[afransen]

I don't know about High Park, but there are plenty of near misses along the waterfront. And I believe there was an incident in recent year near HBS where a fast cyclist collided with a pedestrian, breaking the later's nose. There's definitely a need for better courtesy toward pedestrians from the lycra crowd.

In my experience, the Lycra crowd usually rides in the vehicles lanes.

 

[evandyk]

I wonder, in fact how much time you spend in the park, based on biased and fact-challenged posts like this.

Wait until you see his posts about safety on the TTC!

 

[turbanplanner]

Wait until you see his posts about safety on the TTC!

This is the most urban Toronto take, tell nearly half of torontonians they’re wrong to feel unsafe!

‘A Toronto issue’: Ipsos poll shows some TTC riders changing habits after violent incidents | Globalnews.ca

Among several findings, the poll suggests that 44 per cent of residents here feel unsafe riding transit alone, compared to 27 per cent of riders across the country.

globalnews.ca

Remember when the ttc themselves victim blamed a woman who was pushed onto the tracks for travelling alone?

 

[crs1026]

No one uses the park as a race track. You don't understand cycling or racing if that's what you think. Some ride fast, because that is how road cyclists train. Thirty or forty kph is normal for fit roadies on long rides. But no one is racing.This type of language (race track, Tour de France wannabes, yellow jerseys, Spandex warriors) is loaded and calculated to create fear and elevate the feeling of risk, and has little to do with the reality in High Park. Have some people been startled by a fast cyclist? 100% Has anyone been hurt by one? Never, to my knowledge. I wonder, in fact how much time you spend in the park, based on biased and fact-challenged posts like this.

That may be how cyclists train, just as One hundred and twenty is how people enjoy driving in well maintained automobiles..... on the expressway......but not in school zones. The hyperbolic descriptions are not about fear, they are meant to articulate that high speed bicyclists are a small and entitled sliver of the cycling population using crowded public parks, and they believe that their extreme use of bicycles should take precedence over the much greater number of people who use the parks either on bicycles at a slower pace... or walking. Without regard for the impacts the impose on the rest of us.
Have their been near misses in High Park ? Pretty much daily. Taking action before an actual accident ocurrs seems pretty reasonable to me. And I am regularly rudely crowded by fast moving bicycles as I plod along in my tubby, low speed way on my Canadian Tire Special.
Honestly, the cycling cause is harmed when the most vocal advocates refuse to look at the cycling mode as a whole and focus only on narrow high performance aspects. We get far more gain in this city by getting a thousand less able people out of their autos and chugging along at ten km/h than by helping a smaller number of keeners train for speed.
If you want to drive your car at high speed, get off the public thoroughfares and find an off road track. Same if you wwant to cycle at speed. Leave our trail and bikepath infrastructure for the greater population.

- Paul

 

[TwinHuey]

That may be how cyclists train, just as One hundred and twenty is how people enjoy driving in well maintained automobiles..... on the expressway......but not in school zones. The hyperbolic descriptions are not about fear, they are meant to articulate that high speed bicyclists are a small and entitled sliver of the cycling population using crowded public parks, and they believe that their extreme use of bicycles should take precedence over the much greater number of people who use the parks either on bicycles at a slower pace... or walking. Without regard for the impacts the impose on the rest of us.
Have their been near misses in High Park ? Pretty much daily. Taking action before an actual accident ocurrs seems pretty reasonable to me. And I am regularly rudely crowded by fast moving bicycles as I plod along in my tubby, low speed way on my Canadian Tire Special.
Honestly, the cycling cause is harmed when the most vocal advocates refuse to look at the cycling mode as a whole and focus only on narrow high performance aspects. We get far more gain in this city by getting a thousand less able people out of their autos and chugging along at ten km/h than by helping a smaller number of keeners train for speed.
If you want to drive your car at high speed, get off the public thoroughfares and find an off road track. Same if you wwant to cycle at speed. Leave our trail and bikepath infrastructure for the greater population.

- Paul

Totally agree Paul....as an advocate for more cycle infrastructure and someone who cycled within the city over 1,000 km last year....

LEVY: Active senior struck by speeding cyclist

Andrea Laughlen’s husband was hiking through Tommy Thompson park with his brothers and niece in early September when a speeding cyclist mowed him down.

torontosun.com

Toronto police looking to identify cyclist after 86-year-old pedestrian injured

Toronto police officers say the 86-year-old woman was trying to cross Queens Quay West at Bay Street on May 14 when she was hit by an eastbound cyclist.

toronto.citynews.ca

Elderly woman dies after being struck by bike in Toronto

An 84-year-old woman has died after being hit by a bicycle in Toronto on Saturday. Paramedics rushed to the Parliament Street and Spruce Street area around 1:1

www.durhamradionews.com

 

[Admiral Beez]

If you want to drive your car at high speed, get off the public thoroughfares and find an off road track. Same if you wwant to cycle at speed. Leave our trail and bikepath infrastructure for the greater population.

The best way to deter sociopathic MAMILS is through the trail/road surface. Ditch the ashpalt and replace the road and paths with medium packed gravel. It’s better for drainage. If we’re pretty much banning cars from High Park, there’s no need for a car-focused surface. Now, we’ll still need to content with mountain bikers, but it’s some progress.

That was one of the benefits of the rough, potholed condition of the Lower Don Trail - that it deterred fast road bikes. I expect we’ll have a lot of fast riders once the Lower Don Trail is completed, in 2028? This thread reminded me of…