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Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

I'll Google the source(s) later, but agreed, studies have shown if not improve, virtually match the rate of throughput but in a much more orderly fashion conducive to neighbourhoods and other users of the thoroughfare.

Every time I take a look again at the Bloor experiment, mentally and actually, the better solution is the double bi-directional lane one side, concrete curb (min a foot wide) and parking the other side. Drivers aren't going to stop or park in the moving lane, and passenger egress on the parking side will be as it was before bike lanes.

There is another solution, but I can't see the city doing this, nor should it: Bloor become one-way. That's why the NYC Amsterdam St works. Same width as Bloor, but one-way vehicular and cycle lane direction. Hamilton is trying to undo her one-way noose, but it is one of the reasons that the bike lanes on Richmond and Adelaide are so effective and relatively (note *relatively*) safe and fast flowing. The psychology of cycling on Adelaide and Richmond lanes is much more conducive to predictability and speed. There isn't a good amount of space to overtake, but ample, especially if following protocol of a minimal 'ting' from the bell while doing it.

As to Bloor being an experiment to judge further examples, the City had best take another look, and immediately. Bloor as is cannot be the example to use, it's compromised in so many ways, almost all of that down to very poor implementation and available space. There are far better examples to judge by in Toronto that are already extant.

One way travel works on Richmond/Adelaide because they're only a block apart and have very little retail fronting on them. Bloor is too far from other E/W arteries. I believe there is some criticism of bi-directional cycle lanes as well but I'm not familiar with the details.
 
I'll Google the source(s) later, but agreed, studies have shown if not improve, virtually match the rate of throughput but in a much more orderly fashion conducive to neighbourhoods and other users of the thoroughfare.

Every time I take a look again at the Bloor experiment, mentally and actually, the better solution is the double bi-directional lane one side, concrete curb (min a foot wide) and parking the other side. Drivers aren't going to stop or park in the moving lane, and passenger egress on the parking side will be as it was before bike lanes.

There is another solution, but I can't see the city doing this, nor should it: Bloor become one-way. That's why the NYC Amsterdam St works. Same width as Bloor, but one-way vehicular and cycle lane direction. Hamilton is trying to undo her one-way noose, but it is one of the reasons that the bike lanes on Richmond and Adelaide are so effective and relatively (note *relatively*) safe and fast flowing. The psychology of cycling on Adelaide and Richmond lanes is much more conducive to predictability and speed. There isn't a good amount of space to overtake, but ample, especially if following protocol of a minimal 'ting' from the bell while doing it.

As to Bloor being an experiment to judge further examples, the City had best take another look, and immediately. Bloor as is cannot be the example to use, it's compromised in so many ways, almost all of that down to very poor implementation and available space. There are far better examples to judge by in Toronto that are already extant.

It's interesting: on the subject of some of the design choices, there are some not immediately apparent imperatives that informed them. In speaking with the planning staff that designed the pilot, there were a number of considerations I hadn't anticipated. The width of emergency vehicles and the impact of that width on turning radius was actually a significant impediment to flexibility in design.

In some stretches of the pilot where there is no physical protection, that was the overriding limitation.
 
Use a junker if you do it. I take transit in the winter...and live to talk about my Summer exploits.
Or a bikeshare bike.

Both Toronto and Hamilton has bikeshare, good for the 1-way trips where you might not be in the mood for a return trip.

They are more ruggedized and heavy, and more sealed (e.g. casings around chain, or shaft-drive, etc), and being heavy upright bikes with much thicker wheels, are very easy to balance thanks to their extra mass/momentum -- balance-able on solid ice even -- and easily on rough packed snow.

In Hamilton last winter, they still had many days of 500+ bikeshare trips, on the good winter days where it wasn't too bad. I did not ride many times last winter, but everytime I did -- it was on a bikeshare bike instead of my owned bike.

In many cases it was just a short hop (between GO station and home). I got home sooner than the length of waiting for a bus in the cold. I am lucky enough that my home is within bikeshare coverage and both of the downtown GO stations are within bikeshare too. Both my first-mile (Hamilton hop) and last-mile (Toronto hop) are completely within bikeshare territory, so in theory I could get two annual bikeshare memberships -- something I am still mulling over, I would have done this if there was allday GO service to Hamilton already.
 
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I really don't get why Hamilton is trying to undo one-way streets.
I take your other points to issue, I'll detail later with reference, and in Toronto's case, there is no counter-flow possibility for Bloor even if it had/was/did become one-way.

As for Hamilton, there's reams on-line, but here's the City's status:
http://www2.hamilton.ca/NR/rdonlyres/E6784D5C-A139-439F-9A49-E1F940CD48B4/0/Dec0482PW13097.pdf

I'd quote sections, but would take time to reformat from pdf.

Here's the common perception in Hamilton (and some stretches have bi-directional cycle lanes one side, King St heading east into downtown immediately comes to mind, great for getting to the GO stop at Dundurn when coming off the TH&B and Escarpment trails):

Ironically, this is the Spectator posting WashPost copy, since the point applies to all cities with One-Way-Mania
pr 17, 2015 | Vote 0 0
Why one-way streets are the absolute worst
B821933195Z.1_20150417125216_000_GI51FEP6J.2_Content.jpg

ONE WAY STREETS
Scott Gardner,Spectator file photo
In John Gilderbloom’s experience, the notorious streets are invariably the one-way streets
Hamilton Spectator
By Emily Badger


WASHINGTON In John Gilderbloom's experience, the notorious streets are invariably the one-way streets. These are the streets lined with foreclosed homes and empty storefronts, the streets that look neglected and feel unsafe, the streets where you might find drug dealers at night.

"Sociologically, the way one-way streets work," he says, "[is that] if there are two or more lanes, a person can just pull over and make a deal, while other traffic can easily pass them by."

It's also easier on a high-speed one-way road to keep an eye out for police or flee from the scene of a crime. At least, this is the pattern Gilderbloom, director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods at the University of Louisville, has observed in San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in Houston and Washington, D.C., where streets that once flowed both directions were converted in the 1950s and '60s into fast-moving one-way thoroughfares to help cars speed through town. The places where this happened, Gilderbloom noticed, deteriorated.

"I thought about that for a long time," he says. "But we didn't have much empirical data on it."

Where he lives now in Louisville, he and fellow researchers have begun to prove the curious link between how we engineer roads and what becomes of the neighborhoods around them. Their research offers a lot more fodder for anyone who doesn't like one-way streets simply because they're baffling to navigate.

First, they took advantage of a kind of natural experiment: In 2011, Louisville converted two one-way streets near downtown, each a little more than a mile long, back to two-way traffic. In data that they gathered over the following three years, Gilderbloom and William Riggs found that traffic collisions dropped steeply — by 36 percent on one street and 60 percent on the other — after the conversion, even as the number of cars traveling these roads increased. Crime dropped too, by about a quarter, as crime in the rest of the city was rising. Property values rose, as did business revenue and pedestrian traffic, relative to before the change and to a pair of nearby comparison streets. The city, as a result, now stands to collect higher property tax revenues along these streets, and to spend less sending first-responders to accidents there.

Gilderbloom and Riggs have also done an analysis of the entire city of Louisville, comparing census tracts with multi-lane one-way streets to those without them. The basic pattern holds city-wide: They found that the risk of a crash is twice as high for people riding through neighborhoods with these one-way streets. The property values in census tracts there were also about half the value of homes in the rest of the city.

Some of these findings are more obvious: Traffic tends to move faster on a wide one-way road than on a comparable two-way city street, and slower traffic means fewer accidents. The rest of these results are theoretically connected to each other in complex ways.

To the extent that vice flourishes on neglected high-speed, one-way, getaway roads, two-way streets may be less conducive to certain crimes. If they bring slower traffic and, as a result, more cyclists and pedestrians, that also creates more "eyes on the street" — which, again, deters crime. A decline in crime and calmer traffic in turn may raise property values — which may also increase the demand of residents to police and care for their neighborhood.

"Back 10 to 15 years ago, we would have called it a 'broken windows' theory," says Riggs, an assistant professor of city planning and transportation engineering at California Polytechnic State University. That term, more recently, has gotten caught up in a broader debate about modern police tactics. In this context, though, Riggs is talking about the idea that a virtuous cycle appears in a neighborhood when signs of neglect — dangerous traffic, criminal activity, abandoned homes — start to disappear.

The argument that he makes with Gilderbloom isn't so much that all one-way roads are bad, or that they contribute to these problems in every context. One-way roads can be narrow and quiet, conducive to cycling and pedestrians. Plenty of them aren't wide enough for two-way travel anyway. It's also possible that wider, faster one-way roads might achieve some of these same goals without converting them into two-way streets but by installing other traffic-calming fixes.

Their point is that many cities decided to change these roads in the post-World War II era when we broadly re-engineered cities around the car — and that change over time came at a cost to the neighborhoods that we enabled cars to speed through.

"What we're doing when we put one-way streets there is we're over-engineering automobility," Riggs says, "at the expense of people who want a more livable environment."


Washington Post
http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5563613-why-one-way-streets-are-the-absolute-worst/

Btw: Here's a pic of the Spadina/Queen intersection that you made ridiculous, unfounded, and uninformed comments about:

upload_2016-8-15_11-11-5.png


Let me re-iterate: Cab stopped straddling cycle lane behind car stopped at light, passenger egresses by opening door onto right turn lane, hitting me with a (thank God that it wasn't end-on) glancing blow that deflected me onto sidewalk.

And then you ranted about mismatching socks, dwarves in Albania, and infected hangnails, because it was all my fault. "Me, me, me".

Anything to add to that?
 

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I guess you wanna bring that back, so two things I apparently have to reiterate:

1. Sharrows are not bike lanes. Taxis can legally stop on them to load and unload passengers.

2. Seeing a cab about to unload passengers and biking on its right, without slowing down in case the door swings open, is stupid. Really, really, really, really stupid. The fact that it's technically legal doesn't make it the right thing to do. If you wanna call it victim-blaming, I don't care. That doesn't make it any less stupid. "It was the other guy's fault" doesn't look very nice on a tombstone.
 
I really don't get why Hamilton is trying to undo one-way streets. Toronto is virtually alone as a city with a road grid but without predominantly using one-way streets. It improves traffic flow, and it makes more room for things like bike lanes. Imagine how much faster traffic would move if you flipped Church and Bay (for example) to three-lane, one way roads with a separated two-way bikeway. Or imagine if Queen and King were turned into one-way streets with two traffic lanes and a two-way streetcar, or two traffic-lanes, one-way streetcar service and a separated bikeway

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/5/6-key-perspectives-on-one-way-streets

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/8/4/farwell-prospect-one-way-two-way-streets
 
I guess you wanna bring that back, so two things I apparently have to reiterate:

1. Sharrows are not bike lanes. Taxis can legally stop on them to load and unload passengers.

2. Seeing a cab about to unload passengers and biking on its right, without slowing down in case the door swings open, is stupid. Really, really, really, really stupid. The fact that it's technically legal doesn't make it the right thing to do. If you wanna call it victim-blaming, I don't care. That doesn't make it any less stupid. "It was the other guy's fault" doesn't look very nice on a tombstone.
Sir, in all respect, you're an idiot. You've now proved it twice. It is illegal for a cab to entrain or discharge passengers when not at a curb on a public roadway, by both Municipal By-law, and for *any vehicle* by the HTA.

I *WAS* slowing down. Your tendency to presumption is only exceeded by your vacuous inability to understand the rules and nature of the road. I was about to make a right turn. Perhaps the concept is very difficult for you to understand, one has to slow to negotiate doing such a thing. I was coming to a stop.

Oh, I 'accidentally punched you when you walked into my fist'. That doesn't make you 'any less stupid for not slowing down'. It 'doesn't look very nice on the hospital report' for you.

The cops were called, thoroughly examined actions, and charged the passenger. I could have been at a standstill, and still hit by that door. But of course, that would take a degree of comprehension on your part sadly lacking. Passenger was found guilty and fined. Driver should also have been charged, and the City By-Law office attempted to gain the attending cop's notes to do it, but were unsuccessful.

Thank you for showing yet again how ready some are to blame victims.

[1. Sharrows are not bike lanes. Taxis can legally stop on them to load and unload passengers.]
Sharrows were not yet in use at the time of the described dooring in Toronto. Yet again, you prove your inability to read and understand. It was a dedicated bike lane, albeit narrower, previous to the city removing them on Spadina, and replacing them with sharrows.
October 13, 2010:
Ask Torontoist: What Happened to the Spadina Avenue “Bike Lanes”?
[...]Daniel Egan, Manager of Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure at the City’s Transportation Services division, told us in an email that sharrows will be coming to Spadina Avenue in late October, “weather permitting.”[...]
http://torontoist.com/2010/10/ask_torontoist_what_happened_to_the_spadina_avenue_bike_lanes/

But even if it wasn't changed, this law and the wording have been on the books for generations, the only change is that the fine has been increased, and will increase yet again:

[..]
HTA 165. No person shall,

(a) open the door of a motor vehicle on a highway without first taking due precautions to ensure that his or her act will not interfere with the movement of or endanger any other person or vehicle;
[...]
 
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I really don't get why Hamilton is trying to undo one-way streets. Toronto is virtually alone as a city with a road grid but without predominantly using one-way streets. It improves traffic flow, and it makes more room for things like bike lanes. Imagine how much faster traffic would move if you flipped Church and Bay (for example) to three-lane, one way roads with a separated two-way bikeway. Or imagine if Queen and King were turned into one-way streets with two traffic lanes and a two-way streetcar, or two traffic-lanes, one-way streetcar service and a separated bikeway
Lovely well-designed 1-way streets with large sidewalks and median trees, do exist. There's one in Montreal I like. Delightfully wide sidewalk, cycle track, CURB, parking lane, traffic lanes, then wide sidewalk again. With trees out of the wazoo for this route. Urban 1-way boulevards that are pleasant to walk along.

...BUT...

Unfortunately, the way Hamilton usually does 1-ways is only pleasant to car drivers. As a resident/cyclist, these routes are often atrociously terrible for non-car-users it is (A) narrow sidewalks, (B) nearly no cycle lanes on these (C) nearly zero sidewalk trees on 1-ways (D) fast moving cars, kept to speed thanks by synchronized green lights, with 60kph cars (50kph speed limit) inches away from baby strollers (E) no bumpouts or allday parking to create separation between pedestrian/bikes and cars. Many parts of Main-King are so fast-moving that many people don't like parking on the street due to speeding cars inches away.

The conversion to 1-way back in the 1950s and beyond, actually gradually hurt businesses over the years that progressed, as the streets became less attractive to pedestrians.

This is actually slowly changing in the downtown parts of Hamilton.

Back in the 1990s, James Street North was essentially a 1-way urban expressway, with many shuttered storefronts. After its conversion to 2-way and significant taming of the street, it became a very attractive pedestrian area. That street is now host to Hamilton's biggest annual festival, called Supercrawl. (Imagine a combination of Taste of Danforth, plus a music festival, combined with Nuit Blanche). It is much a work in progress (new condos, demolition of a structurally unsound mexican restaurant, etc) but is a far cry from the early 90s now. One of the many pieces to its revitalizing nature is reverting it to a 2-way street.

Many side streets function economically well as a 1-way street -- e.g. King William -- and can likely just remain 1-way.

IMHO, the days of using Lower City Hamilton as a shortcut/throughfare, should be de-prioritized and initiatives to make Hamilton more walkable/bikeable/transitable are well under way between now and the next 20 years... Overall, based on how well James St N is working out, I personally feel Main should be converted to a 2-way street in the next 10 years. The alternative is to narrow it to 3 lanes of traffic by widening the sidewalks, adding lots of trees, and adding permanent parking with bumpouts, with brick accenting and James-style braille sidewalks. Heck, even a cycle track. Then it's a more proper Montreal-style 1-way boulevard. If the LRT went on Main, then I'd have suggested a cycle track on King, keeping 2 moving-traffic lanes for Main/King respectively. The ideal time to have done this would have been right at the time when Red Hill Valley Parkway / LINC became contiguous (and traffic fell on Main/King for a while before it became busy again). But the City did not, and now we waited too long. The traffic diversions caused by LRT construction will be painful, but it'll be something we'll all have to live with for future benefits. Regardless, the Main/King corridor will be a totally different animal in Hamilton come 15 years.
 
The problem was more than the one-way streets. The solution, it seemed, for Downtown Hamilton, was to suburbanise it. Tear down half the commercial core for a new shopping mall and offices, and get the retailers off the streets and into the mall. Once the mall started to fail (sinking economy, fall of Eaton's), James and King fell decrepit. The one-way streets, meant to speed traffic through downtown, didn't help either. Who wanted to be in Downtown Hamilton, say around 2000, unless you're a student going to Hess Village, which, really was on the edge of downtown anyway?

Hunter Street needs to be fixed to allow two-way cycling along the entire route.
 
James Street, even beside the Crawls (I know Tim Petocic, was considering renting a studio across from Sonic Records from him and partners) has become *lovely*. It's like a juxta-posed Dundas or College Street, but with a unique flavour. Parts of Main and King are still...well...I wouldn't want a family member of lady-friend walking there alone. But that is exactly what Hamilton is trying to change.

The Arts, btw, as embodied by the James St transformation, are now the largest employment and wealth generating segment of downtown Hamilton. I think Medical Arts now comes highest over-all.

Part of Hamilton's unfortunate history is loss of magnificent buildings to fire over the last century or so, and not being replaced. Hamilton at one time vied with Toronto for being the most important city on Lake Ontario. Hamiltonians, rightly so, wish to restore what they can of those times. It was only later that Hamilton became an industrial city and lost the arts and much of their history. The centre shopping mall really doesn't help the downtown, albeit Toronto's Eaton Centre is not that much better, save for more money flowing.
 
It's interesting: on the subject of some of the design choices, there are some not immediately apparent imperatives that informed them. In speaking with the planning staff that designed the pilot, there were a number of considerations I hadn't anticipated. The width of emergency vehicles and the impact of that width on turning radius was actually a significant impediment to flexibility in design.

In some stretches of the pilot where there is no physical protection, that was the overriding limitation.
I meant to answer this earlier, got caught up on another tangent...lol.

Excellent points! As much as I'm being harsh on the City (and it is lives and future expansion at stake), it's essential to hear their rationale for the design. It's become obvious the more I delve that they base this on other 'best practice' models. The shortcoming isn't so much the model per-se, it's the *terms of implementation* and what you list only furthers the need for a second-look at that. I'm headed out to take a fourth look at it, to see what behaviours change or are amplified on a week day, and if there's any sign of policing it (which can be positive assistance, as well as ticketing). The lack of 'heads up' to motorists with temporary signs is disappointing. Most motorists have no idea the HTA for cycle sections has changed, even though the onus is on drivers to keep informed.

I'm especially concerned about one turn that epitomizes the frailty of this implementation: The turn north off of Bloor westbound onto Christie. A more prone 'accident waiting to happen' couldn't be presented than this. That I've seen two *very close calls* (within inches of impact) in three visits is indicative of more than just chance. It's the makings of a trend.

Discussion of Hamilton is pertinent to this string, as Hamilton has done some things very differently, albeit their (and Toronto's lesser) use of 'Bicycle Boxes' leaves me worried. I fully admit to 'losing my nerve' in recent years (completely contrary to the missives of one poster who likes to point fingers and go into convulsions) such that I can't *trust* motorists behind me to do what the law and common sense predicts. Ditto for "taking a lane". Even in aggressive moods (sometimes necessary to survive on the roads) I see it as being too risky. And so it is with bicycle boxes. And Hamilton has an even higher incidence of 'gasoline psychosis' than Toronto has.

What to do with Bloor? I'm tilting towards the bi-directional curb separated twin lanes with parking other side of street more and more, albeit my objectivity may be tinged by looking at pics with an idealized vision of where that's been successfully implemented.

I hope that Cycling Toronto and/or the City is viewing this string. We need some answers, not just conjecture, and most of us have a very real fear this 'experiment' is already biased by incompetence.
 

All those links about removing one-way streets seem to be from small cities. South Bend, Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, West Palm Beach, Sebastopol are all much smaller than Toronto. Only one of those cities is on par with Hamilton. The website itself is called "strong towns". What we see in other big cities - not small ones - is that one way streets work very well. Montreal, New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Vancouver, Washington, Austin, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Santiago, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Barcelona, Madrid... I could go on. Why is something that works very well for all of those cities wrong for Toronto?
 
The Case Against One-Way Streets
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/the-case-against-one-way-streets.19478/

In the event, Bloor is not now, and will never become a one-way street. I raised the point as one of the possible ways to make the present cycle lanes work more effectively. Where one-way streets are effective (with the attendant costs) is where a *grid pattern allows it*.

Bloor doesn't, been looked at closely many times, as *even for bike lanes* on two way streets, it would allow the maximum possible width for bike lanes to be one direction on one, with adequate passing ability and buffer, and opposing direction on the other paralleling street.

What we're stuck with right now is making the present Bloor 'experiment' work, and the present implementation is far too wanting.

What we do have as a positive factor, and this is important, is the *acceptance* that parking one side is as good as it gets for businesses as a compromise to benefit all. That actually provides grounds to make a much better model work, and in respect of the points ADRM raises (and the City inevitably has more, we need to know those factors) it would appear to me, at least at this point, that many concerns can be satisfied by twin bi-directional curb protected (low enough or provisioned for emergency vehicles to cross) lanes one side of street, with conventional parking on the other.

I initially thought parking the same side as a cycle lane is to the advantage of cyclists. It isn't, at least not with the amount of space to work with on Bloor. And since Bloor will remain two-way, we have to adjust the expectations for cycle infrastructure to maximize what can be achieved.

And with that limited space, that means parking on the *other side* of the street, which ironically, maximizes the amount of parking space provided! Businesses will be happy, cyclists will be better served, *predictability of both motorists and cyclists alike will be enhanced* and safety is given a huge plus, not to mention street view, both for driver/cyclist alike, but also for pedestrians and altruism. Clutter will be much reduced to everyones' benefit.
 
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It's interesting: on the subject of some of the design choices, there are some not immediately apparent imperatives that informed them. In speaking with the planning staff that designed the pilot, there were a number of considerations I hadn't anticipated. The width of emergency vehicles and the impact of that width on turning radius was actually a significant impediment to flexibility in design.

In some stretches of the pilot where there is no physical protection, that was the overriding limitation.
These are excellent points, as I stated in an earlier post, but I now have more information.

Did a fourth tour the length of the Bloor lanes and back. Parking today was *worse* than yesterday even. It's obvious that a lot of drivers can't drive. They're not off by inches, they're off by *feet*! One was parked, with bollards pushed over, half way into the bike lane. I made a point of talking to as many cyclists as I could. Many were oblivious, sheep for the slaughter, but some had gathered on the sidewalk next to the incredibly bad parking job waiting for the driver to return. It was a large, black SUV. This was on the stretch around Palmerston, where most of the astoundingly bad parking was.

Ran into a Parking Control Officer on a bike at Markham. Myself and others had an excellent discussion with him, all comparing views. He's very frustrated too. "I've been doing this for twenty years, and not once has anyone asked me or my cohorts for input on this".
Why am I not surprised?
"We've been told not to issue tickets for the next two weeks, just hand out warnings...but here's the point: I can't write tickets anyway for situations that don't conform to the law".
I pointed out the lack of segue in the solid white line at intersections (broken lines to allow vehicles to attain the lane before turning as the HTA prescribes).
"Exactly. I can't give a ticket for that, or for drivers inching into the cycle lanes before they turn, as the HTA states they must visually check that the way is clear before making their turns. I'm put in an impossible situation".

He gave us (there were five of us at one point crowded around, three of them to complain about the gross infractions west of there) each a copy of what he is handing out to motorists. The yellow sheet "No Stopping Zone Notice" (ostensibly to stick under windshield wipers to mimic a ticket) points out something I wasn't aware of, but makes good sense. Alternately, on each side of Bloor between Shaw and Avenue is a "No Stopping" zone. (It alternates six times) It is displayed in map form on the sheet. Note that! Many people I saw yesterday along the stretch were stopped, sitting in their vehicles, presuming that since they weren't 'parked', they were legal. Not the case! In two weeks, they will get tickets. That is one aspect that is simple and clear in the law, and they will get ticketed.

He almost pleaded with us to make our views known to City Hall, and the very difficult situation that enforcement is put in.

As for the rest of the 'experiment'...if some plebe from City Hall is reading this, for God's sakes, talk to those on the front line. *Especially the ones on bikes!* They have a wealth of observations, based on years of experience. A number of my concerns were validated by said officer including the Christie one, which is even worse than I thought viewed from the southern side of the intersection where the vectors of travel are more easily sussed.

I saw fewer red light jumper cyclists today, but still far too many. Generally speaking, and this was afternoon rush-hour, the lane was moving at a brisk pace. Demand and use is very apparent. As a rough approximation: In the league of College around Bathurst.
 
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These are excellent points, as I stated in an earlier post, but I now have more information.

Did a fourth tour the length of the Bloor lanes and back. Parking today was *worse* than yesterday even. It's obvious that a lot of drivers can't drive. They're not off by inches, they're off by *feet*! One was parked, with bollards pushed over, half way into the bike lane. I made a point of talking to as many cyclists as I could. Many were oblivious, sheep for the slaughter, but some had gathered on the sidewalk next to the incredibly bad parking job waiting for the driver to return. It was a large, black SUV. This was on the stretch around Palmerston, where most of the astoundingly bad parking was.

Ran into a Parking Control Officer on a bike at Bathurst. Myself and others had an excellent discussion. He's very frustrated too. "I've been doing this for twenty years, and not once has anyone asked me or my cohorts for input on this". Why am I not surprised? "We've been told not to issue tickets for the next two weeks, just hand out warnings...but here's the point: I can't write tickets anyway for situations that don't conform to the law". I pointed out the lack of segue in the solid white line at intersections (broken lines to allow vehicles to attain the lane before turning as the HTA prescribes). "Exactly. I can't give a ticket for that, or for drivers inching into the cycle lanes before they turn, as the HTA states they must visually check that the way is clear before making their turns. I'm put in an impossible situation".

He gave us (there were five of us at one point crowded around, three of them to complain about the gross infractions west of there) each a copy of what he is handing out to motorists. The yellow sheet (ostensibly to stick under windshield wipers to mimic a ticket) points out something I wasn't aware of, but makes good sense. Alternately, on each side of Bloor between Shaw and Avenue is a "No Stopping" zone. Note that! Many people I saw yesterday along the stretch were stopped, sitting in their vehicles, presuming that since they weren't 'parked', they were legal. Not the case! In two weeks, they will get tickets. That is one aspect that is simple and clear in the law, and they will get ticketed.

As for the rest of the 'experiment'...if some plebe from City Hall is reading this, for God's sakes, talk to those on the front line. They have a wealth of observations, based on years of experience. A number of my concerns were validated by said officer including the Christie one, which is even worse than I thought viewed from the southern side of the intersection where the vectors of travel are more easily sussed.

I saw fewer Red Light jumper cyclists, but still far too many. Generally speaking, and this was afternoon rush-hour, the lane was moving at a brisk pace.

I'm hopeful that one of the BIAs along this stretch will install planters a la Richmond and Simcoe. I think that'll be crucial to forcing drivers to park better or not at all; a bollard does no damage to one's bumper, but planters may.
 

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