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General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

WislaHD said:
Even North Korea is ahead of us on bike lanes. :D
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I can't help thinking that's largely symbolic and that someone inside the DPRK figured it would be a good way of appearing to be up to speed with Western ideas on urbanism.

It must be a bit surreal to ride those lanes: they appear to be mostly away from actual streets, which tend to be wide and largely empty save for a few cars, mostly driven by foreigners. Yet the bike lanes have sharrows?
 
I'm guessing that the sharrows and the green box may indicate that an intersection is approaching.

When I was in Barcelona, I hated the bike lanes mixed with the sidewalks. I didn't find them as clearly delineated as they could be and kept walking on them.
 
WislaHD said:
Even North Korea is ahead of us on bike lanes. :D

Despite their wide open roads, they build their lanes on the sidewalks. This is something I see in Europe all the time and I have to ask why can't we do that here? There is no reason our bike lanes should be separated from the road with only paint...
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They banned cycling on roadways in general--a regressive move--so they built the bike lanes to minimize bicycle-pedestrian conflicts on sidewalks.
 
WislaHD said:
Even North Korea is ahead of us on bike lanes. :D

Despite their wide open roads, they build their lanes on the sidewalks. This is something I see in Europe all the time and I have to ask why can't we do that here? There is no reason our bike lanes should be separated from the road with only paint...
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Maybe the citizens of Toronto should be re-educated on the rules of the road. Can you spell G-U-L-A-G, and use it in a sentence?
 
Interesting article in ibiketo.ca, at this link:

Can a bike be parked in curb parking on the roadway?

I recently got this excellent question about parking a cargo bike on a residential street's parking.

Hi,
My primary source of transportation is a bakfiats, and I've just moved to a new house where I don't have parking for it, and I've been parking it on the street (the back wheel has a wheel lock) during the day, then my husband helps me carry it up on to our front yard at night (because permit parking starts at midnight). I've just had a neighbour come and complain that I can't park a bike on the street. Do you happen to know anything about bylaws that would hinder a bike from being parked on the street during the day if no permit is required?
Thanks,
Angelique​

Angelique told me that she had also followed up with Councillor Paula Fletcher's office and her assistant Erica Wood investigated:

Dear Angelique,

This has proved to be quite an interesting question that bounced from Permit Parking to Transportation Services to the Cycling division. As you can see in the response below, Jacquelyn Hawyard Gulati of the Cycling Infrastructure & Programs division has indicated that bike parking is legal when the bicycle is parked parallel to the curb.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Erica​

Jacquelyn said that Chapter 950 of the Municipal Code actually does allow "bicycles to be parked on the street, parallel to the curb". Section 950-201 B:

"No person shall leave a bicycle on a highway except in such a manner as to cause the least possible obstruction to pedestrian or vehicular traffic."​

Now we know. Thank you Angelique for raising the question!

So, in terms of getting a permit, it would exclude bicycles under Chapter 925-4 D but Angelique was just hoping to park her bike during the non-permit hours. So looks like we're free to park where we want during those open times.

Mind you, it's still annoying that we can't just purchase a parking permit for our bicycles. Or even better, a permit to place a semi-moveable bike rack next to the curb so we can lock up a few bikes.
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I think a bicycle could also be parked on the street overnight, because while it is a vehicle, it is not a motor vehicle.
 
About a week ago there was a meeting at city hall with Cycle TO and city staff regarding the new 10 year bike plan. In the presentation made by city staff, there were some really interesting data obtained from the cycling app, as well as difference in priorities in downtown vs the suburbs. I've attached a pdf of the presentation, however I had to remove a few slides so that the file was small enough to upload.
 

Attachments

  • CycleTO Cycling Network Plan July 21.pdf
    3 MB · Views: 878
Noticed that some signal intersections have switched over to video detection at 29 intersections. See link.

The presence of bicycle Dots at semi-actuated traffic control signals allows bicycles to be detected by detector loops in the pavements. However, what about the video detection intersections? Will they continue to use dots, or how will they inform the bicyclist that they will or will not be detected?

bicycle-dots.jpg


Or will Ontario finally use bicycle symbols of some sort to show that the traffic control intersection will detect bicycles, somehow?

bs_loop.jpg
 
Now that the "streets are for cars" Mayor Rob Ford is out of office, why is it taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r to do something constructive about the bicycle? There are, of course, still automobile-centric city councillors (IE. Denzil Minnan-Wong, Rob Ford) who will continue to put up roadblocks, but shouldn't there be some better movement than before?

For example, the reconstruction on the Queensway between Claude and Roncesvalles Avenue was put off since 2007. The only information I could find was this PDF from this link from 2007. No mention of bicycle lanes. Probably will be in any new upgraded plans, unless they forget bikes... again.
 
Two great rides this weekend with my wife and tween daughter.

Friday - Cabbagetown down River to Timmies, back north, west on Wascanna, up Sumach to Wellesley, west on the seperated path Wellesley to UofT St. George campus circle then back to High Park, Wellesley and back to Cabbagetown.

Saturday - Wellesley path to Sherbourne path, north to Milkman's Lane to Brickworks then along Lower Don Valley trail to Bayview, return to Timmies Queen and River, then up again Wascanna and home.
 
WARNING! This video contains scenes of people riding bicycles. Adults should be wary that children may imitate scenes shown. People will be shown riding on the left side of streets, not to be repeated in Canada, please.


In the city of Cambridge, UK, just about one hour's train ride north of London, you'll find lots of people bicycling. In fact the official mode share is 22%, but advocates believe it's even higher and some say bicycling could make up to 50% of all trips in the city's center. What the most amazing thing about this accomplishment is it's been done without lots of fancy bike infrastructure and ubiquotous protected bike lanes.

Instead, Cambridge has reached that number thanks to the implementation of strategies to manage it's traffic. For one, it's cordoned off the city's center with a series of rising bollards that only lower for buses, taxis and some service vehicles. The private car is not allowed downtown but bikes and pedestrians are free to enter at any time - which creates an environment of safety and makes the bike the fastest mode of transportation by far!

Cambridge has done much work in their neighborhoods with what they call "filtered permeability" - taking some junctions and intersections and placing up physical barriers that force cars to take a longer route while allowing other modes to filer thru. This is important since it eliminates cars using residential areas for short cuts and encourages using a bike. Of course, this strategy has been used under various names for a long time throughout the best cycling cities like Groningen, Copenhagen & Amsterdam, and even here in the U.S. in places like Portland and Berkeley.

It is also the home to numerous universities where students are not allowed to own vehicles, so there is the constant buzz of people getting about by bike, walking and transit.

Recently, the city has also adopted 20 mph for most of its roadways and has begun implementation in earnest in order to slow down the pace of the city in the hopes to get even more people to try cycling. Cambridge is growing and some fear the've reached a plateau in the number of people that will ride a bike, so a new push is on to get the city to install much more robust protected cycle tracks in targeted areas where cycling feels less safe.​
 
W. K. Lis said:
Cambridge has done much work in their neighborhoods with what they call "filtered permeability" - taking some junctions and intersections and placing up physical barriers that force cars to take a longer route while allowing other modes to filer thru. This is important since it eliminates cars using residential areas for short cuts and encourages using a bike. Of course, this strategy has been used under various names for a long time throughout the best cycling cities like Groningen, Copenhagen & Amsterdam, and even here in the U.S. in places like Portland and Berkeley.​
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Bolding mine. This would be one of the easiest things to implement here in Toronto, and would be especially helpful on streets like Shaw which has heavy bicycle traffic in both directions with a contra-flow lane. Cars that are not local traffic could easily be forced to make turns so that it's not used as a through street. Instead, Ossington (200 meters west) can easily absorb any extra traffic. Just yesterday biking along it, I had a car honking at me and other cyclists to get out of the way in a part where there is no getting out of the way so that he could drive all the way from College to King on it. It would be safer for both bikes and cars.
 
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