News   Nov 25, 2024
 102     0 
News   Nov 22, 2024
 799     1 
News   Nov 22, 2024
 1.4K     5 

Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

From the Toronto Metro, at this link:

'Phenomenal success:' Group finds average of 6,000 riders use Bloor bike lanes a day

The numbers come as cyclists wait for the city's official tally, which will be released, along with staff recommendations on whether the lanes should stay or go, in October.

Bikes on Bloor just ignored a huge ethical issue. Should you distribute a video of people without their consent? (answer is no) It is legally OK since there was no sound but ethically wrong. They will use the "greater good" argument which is of course b.s.
 
It doesn't sound like there's any ethical issue, since the camera was on top of a building so I doubt you can tell anything about people other than the fact that there's a bike under them.
 
From the Toronto Metro, at this link:

'Phenomenal success:' Group finds average of 6,000 riders use Bloor bike lanes a day

The numbers come as cyclists wait for the city's official tally, which will be released, along with staff recommendations on whether the lanes should stay or go, in October.
.

There were also a bunch of events to get people to bike on Bloor St in Sept. I hope they didn't include these days which will skew the analysis.

https://www.yorkregion.com/events/7557730--bloor-bikes-west-/
http://www.blogto.com/radar/2016/09/the_top_5_free_events_in_toronto_september_19-25_2016/

I'll trust the city numbers over their numbers. Plus the decision will include if the Bloor lanes are not siphoning riders from Harbord.
 
I don't think local businesses would be running that passport campaign if the bike lanes on their own were a boon to them.

Yeah, why would any self-respecting business want to participate in a program that stood to potentially draw more people into their store? Real business owners go it alone.

(Right?)
 
Plus the decision will include if the Bloor lanes are not siphoning riders from Harbord.

The city's initial analysis showed that was not the case, and I'm sure their updated analysis in the fall will report back on any changes to that conclusion.
 
Bikes on Bloor just ignored a huge ethical issue. Should you distribute a video of people without their consent? (answer is no) It is legally OK since there was no sound but ethically wrong. They will use the "greater good" argument which is of course b.s.

You do know that photography and video taken from public space or from private property (with the right permission) is not illegal. It isn't unethical either, as long as it's not harassment, or voyeurism.

You're really grasping at straws.
 
There were also a bunch of events to get people to bike on Bloor St in Sept. I hope they didn't include these days which will skew the analysis.

Yes because when there are no events on Bloor nobody gets on their bikes. It's basically Sheppard.
 
Yeah, why would any self-respecting business want to participate in a program that stood to potentially draw more people into their store?

If the bike lanes were improving business on their own, they wouldn't need to spend money on contests and media campaigns to encourage people to come to their businesses - people would be coming regardless.

I keep saying this, but bike lanes aren't some magical thing completely free of drawbacks. A lot of businesses on Bloor are going to see a drop in revenue, because a lot of them depend on people driving into the area. That's perfectly fine! Any change is going to have winners and losers, and the existence of losers doesn't mean the bike lanes are bad. There are a lot more winners than losers, and that is what's important.
 
If the bike lanes were improving business on their own, they wouldn't need to spend money on contests and media campaigns to encourage people to come to their businesses - people would be coming regardless.

Yeah but that's just not true -- you're assuming that the people who ultimately make these decisions (city councillors) make them based solely on empirical data and sound logic. Cyclist advocacy groups fight and claw for every tiny bit of progress not because they should have to, but because they do have to.
 
Yeah but that's just not true -- you're assuming that the people who ultimately make these decisions (city councillors) make them based solely on empirical data and sound logic. Cyclist advocacy groups fight and claw for every tiny bit of progress not because they should have to, but because they do have to.

City councillors - the vast majority of them, at least - make decisions based on political expediency. The Bloor bike lanes are almost certainly going to stay because there's nobody who's vocally upset by them, and there are a lot of people who would be really pissed off if they were removed. Only a small handful (in the single digits) of councillors who vote based on ideology would want to take them out. It'll probably look a lot like the vote on the Richmond/Adelaide project, which was 38-2 in favour of making them permanent and extending them east to Parliament.
 
This is part verifiably false.

No, it's not. Nobody's running change.org petitions to remove the bike lanes or throwing pictures of their kids into local newspapers. Even the typical anti-bike lane people don't seem to be bringing up their usual traffic concerns like they've been doing for Woodbine and like they did before the lanes were installed. They're coming up with stupid theories about people riding around in circles instead.

There's hardly a single vote to be won by voting to remove the bike lanes, so the only people who will vote that way are the people who just don't like bike lanes. John Tory and the 15-20 votes that he whips are definitely going to vote to keep them.
 
No, it's not. Nobody's running change.org petitions to remove the bike lanes or throwing pictures of their kids into local newspapers. Even the typical anti-bike lane people don't seem to be bringing up their usual traffic concerns like they've been doing for Woodbine and like they did before the lanes were installed. They're coming up with stupid theories about people riding around in circles instead.

A very brief list to easily refute that (very strange) assertion:
- Multiple city councillors are actively expressing their desire to rip them out via social media and mainstream media channels
- Mammoliti's cries to "rip out all the bike lanes" at Ford Fest drew uproarious applause
- The Koreatown BIA is vociferously opposed to the bike lanes and is actively lobbying the mayor
- A number of business owners and residents are calling the local councillors to complain and, in some instances, demand compensation (for some unquantifiable harm)

Just because you're not personally aware of particular sets of facts doesn't mean they don't exist, and it's frankly strange to blithely assert their nonexistence in explaining the formation of your views.
 
I don't go to Ford Fest, and I'm not a city council. I just follow the media, and again, I haven't seen any significant opposition to the bike lanes from groups of voters.

I'll just say this again: John Tory and his council allies can't win over more than a tiny handful of voters by removing the bike lanes, and they can lose tens of thousands of votes if they do vote for that. The number of councillors voting to remove them is going to be in the single digits.
 

Back
Top