General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

[DSCToronto]

I think the fact that the Lower Don Trail has been totally closed for almost a year answers the question. Toronto is NOT bike friendly. (The trail was initially closed for several weeks, weeks became months and now almost a year ...) And what's worse, it is closed for Phase 1 of the (wonderful) Lower Don Trail Project. It will have to close again for Phase 2 and there really are no good alternatives. If it was a road for CARS I bet John Tory would have been 'on it' and had work going on 24/7. I can accept closures but this has taken FAR too long!

 

[Towered]

Yeah, I read that earlier and didn't know which forum would be most apt to post a link at.

Various theories as to why this increase is happening come to mind. The first one is perhaps too easy: Motorists are paying less attention than ever. Which is more than worrisome, because it won't get any better. I'd like to read what others think about that, it's pretty hard to be objective on this, I tense up just at the thought of getting doored.

Cyclist behaviour a factor? Possibly...but not to render this degree of increase in reports. Increased cycling numbers altogether? I don't know if these numbers have been weighted for that.

It's a very perturbing story...

I've been biking to work every day for the last 2 years, almost exclusively along Dundas or College, and I can tell you that not a day goes by without some mind numbingly stupid, selfish, inattentive behaviour from drivers. Rare is the day that I don't yell or gesture at least once.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Yeah, I read that earlier and didn't know which forum would be most apt to post a link at.

Various theories as to why this increase is happening come to mind. The first one is perhaps too easy: Motorists are paying less attention than ever. Which is more than worrisome, because it won't get any better. I'd like to read what others think about that, it's pretty hard to be objective on this, I tense up just at the thought of getting doored.

Cyclist behaviour a factor? Possibly...but not to render this degree of increase in reports. Increased cycling numbers altogether? I don't know if these numbers have been weighted for that.

It's a very perturbing story...

I'd imagine a big part is an increase in cyclists.

 

[steveintoronto]

I'd imagine a big part is an increase in cyclists.

Reading some other reports, but they're all based on the Cycle TO one that Lis linked.

[...]
Perhaps not surprisingly, dooring rates were lower on streets with bike lanes compared to streets without them, and were even lower on streets with protected bike lanes, such as Richmond Street and Adelaide Street.

Dooring "is a potentially life-changing injury. It could also result in death," Kolb said.

Separated bike lanes "are ideal, the best-in-class approach to protect cyclists," he said.

He encouraged the city to move quickly to install protected bike lanes on major arteries, such as Bloor Street, the Danforth and Yonge Street.

Talk of "education" but ya know, it won't make a bit of difference, either for motorists or cyclists. Separated bike lanes is the only way to address this.

Cycling TO offers this for cyclists:
[For cyclists:

• Avoid riding in the door zone by riding at least one metre from parked vehicles.]

Here's the conundrum. The two 'worst' streets, Queen and Dundas, don't offer that opportunity, there just isn't space, but what I see time and again is cyclists *oblivious* to the risk of the cars they're passing flinging open a door totally unexpectedly. I'm a very able and fast cyclist when I need to be, but when I can't control road conditions, I slow down, only to have idiot cyclists behind me ringing their silly bells at me. Ffff them. So at intersections, I pull to the right, and let them zoom ahead, and I've seen quite a few get doored as a result. They're left themselves very short of reaction time. Any savvy motorist knows to do this in the wet or snow, cyclists have to learn this when zooming past vehicles where they don't look for eye contact in rear-view mirrors, or even if there's a driver by looking through the rear window. Can't see? Slow down.

Getting back to "education"...it's a wasted cause. Neither cyclists or motorists will change their habits. The best that can be done to reduce this dooring number is physically separated lanes.

 

[Skeezix]

I think the fact that the Lower Don Trail has been totally closed for almost a year answers the question. Toronto is NOT bike friendly. (The trail was initially closed for several weeks, weeks became months and now almost a year ...) And what's worse, it is closed for Phase 1 of the (wonderful) Lower Don Trail Project. It will have to close again for Phase 2 and there really are no good alternatives. If it was a road for CARS I bet John Tory would have been 'on it' and had work going on 24/7. I can accept closures but this has taken FAR too long!

It really is appalling. The trail was closed with no notice, communications with trail users have ranged from poor to non-existent, and there seems to be no sense of urgency in respect of reopening it.

 

[ADRM]

It seems plainly obvious, but it's really worth repeating often and loudly until some actual progress is made, but a strong majority of what small amount of bike lanes we do have in the city is just flatly on the wrong side of parked cars.

Seems to me that we'd see a useful decrease in dooring incidents if, additional to the new projects included in the 10-year cycling plan (which kinda sucks anyways), we embarked on a citywide project to upgrade the most heavily used and most dangerous non-protected bike lanes. Best-case scenario would obviously be to construct physical protection but, this Council being this Council, I wonder if a more palatable (and undoubtedly quicker) approach would be to start with moving the painted lanes to the proper (passenger) side of the parked cars.

I never ride on the College lanes, for instance, because it's basically asking to get doored, and even just moving them to the right side would make it feel much safer.

 

[DSCToronto]

It really is appalling. The trail was closed with no notice, communications with trail users have ranged from poor to non-existent, and there seems to be no sense of urgency ...

It MIGHT help to email the mayor at mayor_tory@toronto.ca

 

[robmausser]

It really is appalling. The trail was closed with no notice, communications with trail users have ranged from poor to non-existent, and there seems to be no sense of urgency in respect of reopening it.

It adds insult to injury (literally) that the trails are so poorly maintained, not properly lit, properly plowed, connected to each other and the streets, labelled, communicated, managed when this administration at city hall seems to want to find solutions that don't impede car traffic and are hesitant to add bike lanes to the streets.

Here is a resource for bike connections throughout the city that don't impede on their precious car, and they completely neglect them. Hardly any of the trail expansions and upgrades from the 2012 plan have yet to be built. Its been 5 years, thats how long it should take to build a transit line, not a patch of asphalt.

It has nothing to do with the car, or finding solutions to their problems, they just don't care about bikes.

 

[salsa]

It seems plainly obvious, but it's really worth repeating often and loudly until some actual progress is made, but a strong majority of what small amount of bike lanes we do have in the city is just flatly on the wrong side of parked cars.

Seems to me that we'd see a useful decrease in dooring incidents if, additional to the new projects included in the 10-year cycling plan (which kinda sucks anyways), we embarked on a citywide project to upgrade the most heavily used and most dangerous non-protected bike lanes. Best-case scenario would obviously be to construct physical protection but, this Council being this Council, I wonder if a more palatable (and undoubtedly quicker) approach would be to start with moving the painted lanes to the proper (passenger) side of the parked cars.

I never ride on the College lanes, for instance, because it's basically asking to get doored, and even just moving them to the right side would make it feel much safer.

If there's no buffer between the car doors and the bike lane, then it doesn't feel safe. Left side or right side, it doesn't make much of a difference based on my experience on Bloor Street.

 

[Avenue]

If there's no buffer between the car doors and the bike lane, then it doesn't feel safe. Left side or right side, it doesn't make much of a difference based on my experience on Bloor Street.

Yes. At least on College you can steer onto the center/car lane if you sense potential dooring activity is brewing ahead. That's not possible on Bloor.

I feel like as long as there's street parking there will be dooring.

 

[salsa]

It MIGHT help to email the mayor at mayor_tory@toronto.ca

He cares so much about pedestrians and cyclists, that I have no doubt he will be outraged and hold a press conference.

 

[W. K. Lis]

I think the major problem is that the councilors assigned to the department are the automobile-addicted, suburban, anti-bicyclist politicians. Their number one priority is the car. Bicyclists and pedestrians may get noticed, but only get enough action just to shut them up.

 

[steveintoronto]

I think the major problem is that the councilors assigned to the department are the automobile-addicted, suburban, anti-bicyclist politicians. Their number one priority is the car. Bicyclists and pedestrians may get noticed, but only get enough action just to shut them up.

That's a good part of it, but even the councillors who are 'pro-cycling' more often than not don't really understand what being an avid and dedicated cyclist entails. Don't get me wrong, they do cycle, some of them claim to cycle every working day, and yet they seem oblivious to the severe safety shortcomings of many of the projects they champion. The Bloor lanes are a prime example, although many cyclists trumpet them as being so much safer. I have to question whether they can't be *vastly* safer with only a few tweaks, although I do think they need to be approached radically differently than they are now. (e.g: Double cycle lane one side, parking the other, no 'alternating blocks' for doing that). As a number of posters have stated, myself included, parking is the source of a huge amount of angst, but unfortunately it will not be eliminated on Bloor, so do the next best thing, two way cycle lane one side, parking the other.

I never ride on the College lanes, for instance, because it's basically asking to get doored

It's a toss up between College and Dundas, especially Bathurst to Landsdowne, as being a suicide run. I do use those routes as sometimes you need to go to various places along there, but constantly berate myself to slow-down. Try as one might, some doors just come flying open, and you can almost never assume it's safe to swing out to avoid them, albeit one should constantly check over the shoulder to know what's coming up behind in case you have to do that.

Unfortunately, many cyclists go flying along both those roads and others with no hope of avoiding a door prize. As Lis has pointed out, and others agree, a clear sightline is essential for safety, and that will never occur on those streets, but it can on Bloor, and should with twinned lanes.

There are exceptions to twinning, Sherbourne for instance, far from perfect, but it somehow works, even with unpredictable pedestrians, but at least you can see them to react in time. Same on Ronces, although door prizes are still a threat on the latter.

 

[steveintoronto]

UK Guardian today has an extensive article on China's domination of bike-share operations:

Uber for bikes: how 'dockless' cycles flooded China – and are heading overseas

On a 30ft-wide screen in Hangzhou’s public bike share office, the counter ticks up relentlessly: 278,812 … 278,847 … 278,883 … Another 40 cycle rentals every couple of seconds. The system will easily top 350,000 before this bitterly cold winter day is out.

On the left of the giant screen, the world’s 15 biggest public bike shares are ranked. Thirteen of them are in China. (Paris is No 5 with 21,000 bikes, and London No 12, with 16,500). Hangzhou – an hour west of Shanghai by bullet train – is slightly larger than London by population, but its share system is five times the size. It comfortably tops the table with 84,100 cycles, almost twice as many as its nearest rival.

In many other large Chinese cities, though, it’s not the sturdy, official public hire bikes that stand out. It’s the rash of brightly coloured “dockless” share bikes, haphazardly piled on the pavements in their thousands.

Many of these bikes are not working because nobody takes care of them – the city’s beauty has been destroyed

The way it works is simple enough in theory. Users download an app that tells them where to find a cycle, which they unlock by scanning a QR code on their phones or using a combination they are sent. Unlike traditional rental services, however, which require bikes to be returned to a fixed docking station, riders are free to leave the bikes wherever their journey ends. [...continues at length, detailed article...]

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/22/bike-wars-dockless-china-millions-bicycles-hangzhou

 

[W. K. Lis]

Bike Helmets - Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

From link.

TEDxCopenhagen - Mikael Colville-Andersen - Why We Shouldn't Bike with a Helmet