Bloor Street West Bike Lanes

[mdrejhon]

Great catch!

For some reason, the Twitter takes 45 seconds (today) to embed on UrbanToronto, so pasting a fast-loading image and City Hall link too:

 

[W. K. Lis]

How about a bicycle lane along Parkside Drive?

See link.

See link.

From link.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Exciting!

Now if the city can just get around to their planned 2019 upgrades already.. Adelaide was supposed to move to the north side of the street this summer and Blue Jays Way was supposed to get lanes.. neither of those has happened yet.

 

[Northern Light]

How about a bicycle lane along Parkside Drive?

See link.

See link.

From link.

What a hash the City made of so many roads with widenings. Reducing greenspace and front lawns, eliminating boulevards and inducing greater traffic and pollution. Sigh.

I'd be happy to support a bike lane on Parkside, but while we're at it, can we add sidewalk on the west side of the road?

I think a reconfigured Parkside should ditch all parking, and either have a tree-lined boulevard on each side of the road, or if that's not workable for lack of space, a median boulevard instead; elegant streelights, and bike lanes would finish a road worthy of its name and being adjacent to a premier urban park.

 

[Towered]

What a hash the City made of so many roads with widenings. Reducing greenspace and front lawns, eliminating boulevards and inducing greater traffic and pollution. Sigh.

I'd be happy to support a bike lane on Parkside, but while we're at it, can we add sidewalk on the west side of the road?

I think a reconfigured Parkside should ditch all parking, and either have a tree-lined boulevard on each side of the road, or if that's not workable for lack of space, a median boulevard instead; elegant streelights, and bike lanes would finish a road worthy of its name and being adjacent to a premier urban park.

As well as extend the 506 to an actual useful terminus - Keele station.

 

[W. K. Lis]

At one time, Indian Road had a Gray Coach "High Park Coach" route to downtown. That lasted from 1946-1952, when plans for The Queensway extension of Queen Street West cut off Indian Road from forking with Parkside Drive. Also the increasing use of on-street parking on Indian Road made using buses on Indian Road difficult to maneuver along. All the automobile traffic ended up being added to Parkside Drive. Parkside Drive shifted from a "pleasant scenic drive" to a want-to-be expressway.

From link.

 

[torontocolin]

Interesting that they trumpet that it will connect to the WTR. The current WTR-Bloor connection is extremely poor for bikes, I wonder whether they will actually improve the infrastructure at that connection.

 

[salsa]

Interesting that they trumpet that it will connect to the WTR. The current WTR-Bloor connection is extremely poor for bikes, I wonder whether they will actually improve the infrastructure at that connection.

I assume you're referring to the access on Bloor St that requires going up stairs. An alternative would be to turn onto Perth Ave and enter the railpath at either Randolph Ave (just north of Bloor), or near MOCA. The latter is a little further away, however there are developement proposals at the SW corner of Bloor & Perth that could result in a new entrance being added here eventually.

 

[Fred.S]

How about a bicycle lane along Parkside Drive?

That would be great. In addition to cycling, I also drive on Parkside Drive frequently, and I think it would work better with one lane in each direction, plus centre-turn lanes. When going southbound, the inner lane is always blocked by turning cars, meaning there's a lot of weaving between the two lanes. During rush hour, the northbound lane is rarely fully clear of parked cars as it's supposed to be, also leading to weaving. converting to a three lane configuration, you could put a nice two-way cycle track on the west side to avoid most of the intersections. There may even be room for a much-needed sidewalk on the west side if you narrow the lanes and cycle tracks, and/or a wider sidewalk on the east side (which is way too narrow, especially come garbage day). Probably the biggest obstacle is trying to permanently remove parking.

 

[facepalming_brooklynite]

How about a bicycle lane along Parkside Drive?

Would be great, but the local councillor Gord Perks seems to have a thing for "sharrows" instead of proper bike lanes.

 

[Avenue]

Parkside drive is such an aggressive almost-high way. The bike lanes would need to be protected by actual concrete to be safe.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Parkside drive is such an aggressive almost-high way. The bike lanes would need to be protected by actual concrete to be safe.

They should put in permanent parking laybys on the east side of Parkside Drive, and a two-way raised bicycle path (and heaven forbid, a sidewalk) on the west side. Still have nearside right-turn and farside bus stop laybys on the east side. Maybe add (oh-my-gosh) trees on the east side sidewalk projections.

From link.

 

[W. K. Lis]

There is a section of Parkside Drive where the roadway drops steeply into a ravine (opposite 411 Parkside Drive, see link). A few years ago, a section of Parkside Drive collapsed into the ravine. They may have to put in a deck to carry the bicycle lane (and sidewalk) over that ravine.

 

[crs1026]

Parkside drive is such an aggressive almost-high way. The bike lanes would need to be protected by actual concrete to be safe.

Reducing the roadway to two lanes (with turning lanes coming south) would actually calm traffic. The drivers weaving in and out are a huge problem, the short stretches of added lanes between parked cars (going north) and the open road in the center lane once one passes a left turning stopped car (going south) are just too tempting for lead footed motorists, who floor it to try to jump ahead by a few cars.

I favour the Bloor Street design where the bike lane is at the curve, then there is parking, then the roadway - similar to Bloor. Maximum shielding and separation for cyclists. Just gotta train people getting out of parked cars to look right so nobody gets doored.

- Paul

 

[torontocolin]

I assume you're referring to the access on Bloor St that requires going up stairs. An alternative would be to turn onto Perth Ave and enter the railpath at either Randolph Ave (just north of Bloor), or near MOCA. The latter is a little further away, however there are developement proposals at the SW corner of Bloor & Perth that could result in a new entrance being added here eventually.

Right. They're installing bike ramps on the stairways as a part of the fourth track installation, but those stairways don't even access Bloor directly, you need to walk a ways along the sidewalk first.

Routing via Randolph and the soon to be re-oriented Perth (which will include a WTR access point) could work eventually, but it's not necessarily as simple as putting up a sign. To the north, that section of Perth is narrow to begin with and constantly further obstructed by vehicles illegally parked while they wait for people coming from Bloor GO. It would be dangerous for cyclists in its current configuration. And then on top of that, the Randolph access point will be closed for a year beginning Spring 2020 for the station tunnel extension, so cyclists would actually have to go up to Ernest.

To the south, the Perth re-alignment hasn't happened yet, so that access point doesn't exist. The one at MOCA is a gravel trail -- not exactly ideal for cycling -- and the access point next to it requires cycling through the parking lot for the building with the Drake Commissary and Henderson. At that point you're also making a significant detour to cut off a very short portion of Sterling, so most cyclists would probably just take Sterling to Dundas, but that section of Sterling has the loading dock for Nestle and the parking lot for their employees, which results in lots of traffic, including heavy trucks passing through. And speaking of heavy trucks, both the first two properties on the south-west corner of Perth and Bloor are planned for condo towers soon, as you mentioned, which will mean lots of heavy vehicles coming and going from that corner for a while.

Long term, they could build solid connections in both directions, but in the summer of 2020, probably not so much.