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Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

turbanplanner said:
I'm going to park a car and leave my dashcam running on bloor street next week, this way we can get an idea of how many cars/bikes use the lanes throughout the day.

I'm thinking a Monday and Wednesday "session" should be pretty representative since it should account for anyone who doesn't go in every day.
Does anyone see any issues? If the weather is hot/raining I can re-try on a milder day.
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Probably best you park IN the bike lane so you get a better view?
 
nfitz said:
To what end?

Hasn't the city reported this previously?
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Yeah but the west end bloor bike lane is pretty new, the other newly added routes were added during covid when it was illegal to do anything other than work and exercise so the numbers skewed way higher than now, which is why I'm trying to do my own study and want to see what I should factor in to be valid
 
turbanplanner said:
Yeah but the west end bloor bike lane is pretty new, the other newly added routes were added during covid when it was illegal to do anything other than work and exercise so the numbers skewed way higher than now, which is why I'm trying to do my own study and want to see what I should factor in to be valid
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For your consideration, an updated data report for the Bloor Street West Complete Streets project: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/8fb5-BWCEDashboardFinal-AODA.pdf
 
turbanplanner said:
Wonderful document, thank you for the link! It seems the biggest increase was about 150 bikes per day (per direction) between 6am and 8pm, that's about 10 bikes an hour. It'll be interesting to see the fall numbers though
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"if you build it they will come"
6x increase in bike traffic from June 2023 to May 2024
This really is all that needs to be said.
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DSC said:
Probably best you park IN the bike lane so you get a better view?
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'
Now if you can get him to provide the exact date and time.............I can see if I can arrange a meeting between him and Erin..... ;)

nowtoronto.com

A Toronto parking enforcement officer is going viral for how she issues heavy fines day-to-day – She says angry residents can stay mad - NOW Toronto

Erin Urquhart has been going viral for giving people an inside look at her everyday life enforcing the law.
nowtoronto.com nowtoronto.com
 
generalcanada said:
soo literally just saying "they're lying"? interesting take
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Sorry, I should’ve said six times A small number is still a small number, it’s just funny if anybody in Scarborough for a Subway the usage is too low, but a few dozen bikes is worth cutting road capacity in half
 
turbanplanner said:
Sorry, I should’ve said six times A small number is still a small number, it’s just funny if anybody in Scarborough for a Subway the usage is too low, but a few dozen bikes is worth cutting road capacity in half
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So lets go back to that report. lets put theese numbers into perspective

The average vehicle traffic is 10k per day/24 hours. Thats 400 per hour or 7 per minute
The average bike traffic over 2 hour period is 427. Thats 3.5 per minute.

I wouldnt call either of those numbers small.
or in your words....

"is a few dozen cars worth people biking dying over"?
 
chinesehorse said:
For your consideration, an updated data report for the Bloor Street West Complete Streets project: https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/8fb5-BWCEDashboardFinal-AODA.pdf
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It also shows a 50-60% increase in vehicle travel times, with vehicle travel times increasing from about 8 minutes to 12-13 minutes.

About 20,000 vehicles a day use the road according to that data compared to about 400 bicycles a day, post-bike lanes.

So 98% of trips on the roadway experienced a 50-60% increase in travel times in order to better accommodate 2% of trips made on the street.

I'm not sure this report is as resounding as many want to make it out to be.
 
^That 20,000 number will go down and the 400 will go up. The way we build our streets has a big impact on how people use them, as has been shown with other similar projects.

In any case, I'm not sure what these observations are trying to prove exactly. It takes time for people's habits to respond to infrastructure changes. It doesn't happen overnight or even in a single year. And a single street having cycle tracks isn't going to get the same results as an interconnected network. The current cycling numbers are just the beginning.
 
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