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Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

k10ery said:
I have to disagree there. Government subsidies for high Culture are clearly just welfare for the upper middle classes. And, these days, a way to get Richard Florida to shut up, probably. They are pretty hard to justify, but at least they are a very small part of government spending in North America.

I say this as a guy who got a $10 ticket to listen to a top international opera singer last night at Koerner Hall. (By the way, the hall was far from sold out. I bet there were plenty of rush tickets left. Check it out!)
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It depends on what aspect of culture we're talking about. Some areas are lucrative for the private sector; others are important to a national culture and require subsidies. Popularity and market demand isn't set in stone, either. Richard Florida identified a sector ignored by those with a 1950s view of the world, one that is generating new wealth and looking quite good while doing it. If you walk around King West area, it's clear that economic development has happened, with these former industrial areas cleaned up and vibrant with new activity. The activity is creative production and design, not manufacturing, and some people can't seem to accept it as legitimate, as if these professionals are just fooling around and having a good time while they do serious work in traditional factories or corporate offices.
 
I think King West is fantastic, but it's less obvious subsidies to high culture made it happen. I'd credit Jane Jacobs, not Florida.

Chris Selley had some interesting numbers in the Post last week (and he's no crazy rightwinger, despite the affiliation):

Killing some of the big-ticket grants needn’t be fatal. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s $1.1-million grant amounts to $4.79 for every ticket it sold in 2009-10. The Canadian Opera Company’s $1.3-million grant works out to $9.61 a ticket, and just 15% of its fundraising. Giving $800,000 to the Toronto International Film Festival is like subsidizing a Maserati dealership.
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I think College street is a good candidate for separated bike lanes, given that it already has well over twice as many cyclists as Laurier Ave. According to the 2010 Toronto bicycle count, College sees about 4700 cyclists from 7AM to 7PM.

West of Bathurst street, College goes from 7 lanes to 4 lanes at a point where little traffic is entering or exiting (so there's no justification for a lane appearing/disappearing).

Here's my idea for reallocating that extra space to benefit all road users.
The cross street on the left is Manning Ave, and the one on the right is Euclid Ave. (Here's the location in Google Maps).
The silverish blobs are streetcar platforms.

6030126763_2ccdda764a_b.jpg


There would be 3 phases for the traffic light at College and Euclid. Yellow lines are pedestrians, green lines are cyclists and blue lines are motorized vehicles. Dotted lines indicate yielding
The default phase would be for College street.
6030126791_c0f330b7b2_z.jpg


When a car arrives on Euclid Avenue and there is no streetcar arriving within the next 30 seconds or so, Euclid would get a phase.
6030126819_72828b07ae_z.jpg


When a bike or pedestrian presses a crosswalk/crossride button on Euclid, this phase gives a green light to cyclists and pedestrians in every direction. This is possible because the design of the cycle lanes effectively turns the street into a roundabout for cyclists whenever car traffic is stopped.
6030681512_cbaf6800d5_z.jpg


Here are the benefits:
Cyclists:
- Faster: more green time due to scramble phase
- Faster: now able to pass stopped streetcars
- Faster: no longer need to stop when turning right on red
- Safer: buffer between cyclists and door zone
- More comfortable: more separate from traffic
- More convenient: fully protected two-stage left turns
- More convenient: new contraflow lanes on Euclid Ave

Streetcars:
- Faster: no more getting stuck behind left-turning cars
- Faster: signal priority
- Faster: reduced car volumes
- More pleasant: Larger waiting area
- More pleasant: No more walking across traffic to board streetcar
- Accessible: level boarding platforms

Pedestrians:
- Faster: more green time due to scramble phase
- Faster: shorter wait for crosswalk signal because the scramble phase does not need to wait for a pedestrian countdown before it starts.
- Safer: shorter crossing distance

Drivers:
- More comfortable: no longer have to change lanes around left or right turning cars.
- Faster: less traffic
 
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All these drivers in favour of separated bike lanes will be in for one nice surprise when the lanes are installed. There will be no more parking in the bike lane. It seems like it's impossible to bike on Wellesley without coming across somebody with their flashers on (or off), whether it's a UPS van making a delivery, somebody at a condo tower loading their car while illegally parked in front of their building, etc. UPS will have to find somewhere new to make their illegal stop and car drivers will suddenly realize they have nowhere to park while loading.

As much as I'd rather have bike lanes on Jarvis, at least separated bike lanes will resolve the problem of cars parking in bike lanes and maybe drivers won't be so quick to criticize unseparated lanes in the future.
 
reaperexpress,

That's a fantastic layout (and good rendering, too). I agree with your idea for that intersection; the only drawback, of course, is that it would cost millions to rip up and move the streetcar tracks to the side at every intersection. Your layout, however, is superior to our current left-lane hogging configuration we currently have and is actually the way they're building the new streetcar lines in Washington, DC. It's too bad that we're almost done all of our streetcar track replacements for a generation, because that's the way it should be done from here on in.
 
I agree that the problem with the streetcar tracks are the left-turns that hold everybody up. The configuration above also does away with the taxi cut-off lane if applied elsewhere. I would love to see College built entirely in this fashion when it comes up for renewal, as it has flexibility that no other street has, and the wider section is also nicely the part used by fire trucks and ambulances to and from the fire hall on Bellevue and the nearby hospitals (Western, TGH, etc).

But what I would really like to see are more bike contraflow lanes and/or relaxation on one-way street restrictions for bikes. Toronto's grid of streets isn't that great like Vancouver's is, and what's there is designed to keep out through motor traffic with labyrinths where it is nearly impossible to go straight at many intersections and one-ways designed to dump out cars onto arterials at traffic lights. There's some potential great "bike boulevards" that are ruined by (often opposing) one-way designations.

Let's start with contra-flow lanes on Simcoe Street (all the way from Elm to Front to feed into the underpass), and other, through, streets like Euclid or Palmerston, Grace, Brunswick, routes through Kensington Market (Augusta, Nassau), Baldwin, Ontario.
 
Hipster Duck said:
reaperexpress,

That's a fantastic layout (and good rendering, too). I agree with your idea for that intersection; the only drawback, of course, is that it would cost millions to rip up and move the streetcar tracks to the side at every intersection. Your layout, however, is superior to our current left-lane hogging configuration we currently have and is actually the way they're building the new streetcar lines in Washington, DC. It's too bad that we're almost done all of our streetcar track replacements for a generation, because that's the way it should be done from here on in.
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Thank you! Moving streetcar tracks are an obvious issue with the design, but the current locations of Toronto's streetcar tracks are often really inconvenient. So moving the tracks would benefit just about everyone, and take away much of the opposition to streetcars. It probably makes sense to consider realigning tracks whenever they're up for reconstruction. It's fine that there aren't many reconstructions coming up right away, because I doubt any of my designs would appeal to the Ford administration anyway.

Actually, on this particular segment, moving the streetcar tracks is not strictly necessary. There isn't too much left turning traffic anyway, and left turn restrictions are possible. The main reason I put in left turn lanes is to placate the car drivers about losing a lane per direction. It could then be argued that the design would actually speed up car traffic.

ShonTron said:
I agree that the problem with the streetcar tracks are the left-turns that hold everybody up. The configuration above also does away with the taxi cut-off lane if applied elsewhere. I would love to see College built entirely in this fashion when it comes up for renewal, as it has flexibility that no other street has, and the wider section is also nicely the part used by fire trucks and ambulances to and from the fire hall on Bellevue and the nearby hospitals (Western, TGH, etc).
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What do you mean by the taxi cutoff lane?
 
The intersection between College and Dundas bothers me because although there are bike lanes on Dundas and on College, there is no easy way for cyclists to get from one to the other (Here is the location in Google Maps).

collegedundas.jpg


I think the intersection should be signalized to facilitate the use of an already-popular cycling route.

Narrowing College and Dundas to two lanes east of the split shouldn't negatively impact traffic, because the sum of the capacities of the two streets still exceeds the capacity of Dundas before the split.

6055015542_14e69b5f8b_b.jpg


I included access for cyclists to St. Helens Ave, because it could become a bicycle boulevard with the construction of a bike path through the yard of the former West Toronto Collegiate. The south exit of St. Helens Ave has been closed to cars and bidirectional paths allow easy access to St. Helens from College or Dundas.


The default phase is pretty much the same as the current setup.

6055015620_894486693c_b.jpg


The second phase would be triggered by the arrival of a 506 Carlton streetcar, or a cyclist or pedestrian wishing to cross Dundas.

6054465245_789b37499a_b.jpg


A third phase would be triggered in the unlikely event of a streetcar wishing to turn left from College to Dundas. It would pretty much stop all traffic except for right turning cyclists.
 
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From The Grid TO, regarding the Dundas/Sterling intersection, where a woman was killed in 2011 by a turning truck:

Dangerous Curves:

Two years after a tragic cycling death, the city’s safety improvements at a notoriously bad corner are complete. What took so long?

[...]

Wilson claims that the existing changes aren’t improvements at all, asserting that their only real benefit is to lift potential liability off the city’s shoulders. “Fundamentally,†he says, “their ‘fixes’ don’t do a thing for bikes.†The tightness of the corner where Morrison was killed remains unaddressed, he argues. And why, if safe-cycling infrastructure is the guiding principle, is there no secure route for the Dundas bike lane to connect with College—an equally precipitous turn barely metres away?
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It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that a design such as in the post above isn't just a fantasy, it's a necessity for safe cycling.
 
"Separated bike lanes" are a fad. One of the many dumb things that city council wastes money on. Riding a bike in Toronto is extremely dangerous with or without separated or unseparated bike lanes.
 
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