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General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

Lake Shore curves far south, so if his end destination is Kipling/Queensway, I wouldn't recommend it.

The quickest way is to bike along the Queensway, and when I did this many moons ago, I always biked on the sidewalk. There are no pedestrians there.
 
I feel pretty comfortable biking on the Queensway. I occasionally bike to Sherway Gardens from downtown and use the Queensway. That road is wide enough that cars can easily pass bikes without feeling unsafe (past Park Lawn...the section between Humber loop and Park Lawn is a little scary). Bike lanes continuing from Humber loop to Sherway would be nice though.
 
Why do bike lanes run directly into car door zones?

door_zone_bl.jpg


This layout from Ottawa makes much more sense.

The-door-zone-it-exists-legally-in-Ottawa-Imgur.jpg


This could be achieved on narrower Toronto thoroughfares by reducing parking on one side, and having a parking and a marked DOOR ZONE on the other side.
 
But doesn't that Ottawa photo show sharrows instead of bike lanes?

A marked dooring zone would be great (I'd love to know if there is any studies on whether such zones materially reduce dooring incidents), but it's all a battle for space. It's hard enough to get bike lanes, let alone bike lanes and door zones. Reducing parking on one side is not always easily achieved. But, yeah, I agree that door zones seem like they would provide additional safety, assuming they are installed in conjunction with bike lanes, not sharrows.
 
I biked in Ottawa recently. I thought their bike lanes were wider than ours, but their roads are in terrible shape.
 
:) From The Torontoist, at this link:

3 Ford Nation vs. Dedicated Bike Lanes

In a quirky style reminiscent of Plants vs. Zombies, this game allows you to play as either the Ford Nation—whose drones furiously whip explosive Double-Doubles from SUVs in an attempt to turn Toronto into a giant parking lot—or as Dedicated Bike Lanes—whose community organizers slowly build up local support for their project over a period of decades until a large bike-lane network effectively turns Toronto into Vancouver. It’s time to pick a side because the battle for the GTA is on!​
 
the lemur said:
Or just put a (grade-separated) bike lane between parked cars and the sidewalk like Holland's been doing for decades. You could still get doored in theory but you wouldn't end up in a live motor vehicle lane.
Click to expand...
YES! I was just going to post that suggestion, except you don't have to look to Europe, just look to "the car crazy US" to see how much further they are ahead than us. This is popular in the SW, and now NY is looking to emulate it. In all fairness, Montreal and a few other Cdn cities do this:
http://www.streetfilms.org/physically-separated-bike-lanes/

Is there a risk of getting doored on the sidewalk side? Absolutely, but getting run over by a pedestrian after being doored v. a truck is a no-brainer.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Torontos doing that on Bloor this summer.
Click to expand...
There is a section on Hoskin (Harbord) passing one of the UoT fields just east of (St George?) where that has been done. I'm back in Toronto after being away for five years, I was pleasantly astounded!

We need more...

Does someone have reference for the Bloor experiment to do this? I thought it was a case of eliminating parking in areas rather than a lane between parked vehicles and the sidewalk.
 
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The bike lanes on Davenport between Bay and Avenue are awful because of the door zone. I usually end up just biking in the general traffic lane because the bike lane is so constrained that you're very close to hitting mirrors if you ride in the bike lane.
 
steveintoronto said:
There is a section on Hoskin (Harbord) passing one of the UoT fields just east of (St George?) where that has been done. I'm back in Toronto after being away for five years, I was pleasantly astounded!

We need more...

Does someone have reference for the Bloor experiment to do this? I thought it was a case of eliminating parking in areas rather than a lane between parked vehicles and the sidewalk.
Click to expand...
They are eliminating parking on one side of the street, so one side will run beside live traffic, and the other behind parked cars.

20049-68194.jpg
 
innsertnamehere said:
They are eliminating parking on one side of the street, so one side will run beside live traffic, and the other behind parked cars.
Click to expand...
Excellent! You've just made me a devoted supporter of the plan. I haven't been following the nuances of this, just the major issues as considered by the press, but this is a *huge* factor to making this work.

Wow!
 
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