typezed
Active Member
If it wasn't for Toronto's five months of winter we'd have golf courses and tennis courts and baseball diamonds and marinas and parks with picnic tables in them, just like other cities do. Damn our harsh winters.
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New Bike Lanes on University, Bay, Spadina, and Other Roads
- Thread starter barrytron3030
- Start date
jmacmillan
Active Member
People who drive motor vehicles seem to think they are entitled to the roads, and regard pedestrians and cyclists as nuisances. A case in point: a driver lamented that bike lanes on Jarvis Street would "ruin the only good street in the downtown." Cyclists could take a different route, perhaps Sherbourne or Church Street. When I suggested that removing the sidewalks to widen the road further, he was enthusiastic! Curious, though, it never occurred to HIM to take an alternate route.
I cycle all year, all over the city. On streets with bike lanes, I feel a little safer. I feel a LOT safer when the lane is physically separated, such as the Martin Goodman Trail. It really boils down to one of FAIRNESS. Yes, the drivers won't be able to go from A to B as quickly. Tough! They need to learn to share. In fact, I think it should be regarded as a privilege to drive in the downtown at all (excepting delivery and emergency vehicles), given the congestion, noise, and pollution they cause. Cycling is a healthy, environmental-friendly way to get around. I applaud every move to encourage safe cycling throughout the city. A good test of success if when we see families happily cycling along the streets, ALL of them.
I cycle all year, all over the city. On streets with bike lanes, I feel a little safer. I feel a LOT safer when the lane is physically separated, such as the Martin Goodman Trail. It really boils down to one of FAIRNESS. Yes, the drivers won't be able to go from A to B as quickly. Tough! They need to learn to share. In fact, I think it should be regarded as a privilege to drive in the downtown at all (excepting delivery and emergency vehicles), given the congestion, noise, and pollution they cause. Cycling is a healthy, environmental-friendly way to get around. I applaud every move to encourage safe cycling throughout the city. A good test of success if when we see families happily cycling along the streets, ALL of them.
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West End Boy
Active Member
Your point is well taken, I was a bit extreme in my posting.
My point is that if you don't have experience in all of the modes, then it's difficult to really understand the big picture and form a balanced POV. And yes, that includes people who never drive and don't understand how nerve-wracking it can be to have cyclists and pedestrians darting in and out of vehicular traffic.
I admit that I used to think that drivers were the ones mainly at fault, but now I find that there are just as many dangerous and erratic cyclists and pedestrians. Clearly, it's not one group that is in the right, so let's stop arguing like it is. Great cities have a great range of transportation options, and IMO Toronto is most lacking in safe cycling options, also lacking a full network of connected public transit options, and though it might be nice to have more highways/roads for cars, let's face it, there's a pretty complete network of roadways for cars that are covering our city.
I am one of those folks who would definitely bike more if there were safer places to do so.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
People would bike more if there was someplace to lock them up. Having just bicycle posts, limits the number of bicycles.
We need to add parking facilities for bicycles, like they have in Europe. Like this three tier parking facility in Amsterdam. They still overflow.
Or like this bicycle parking facility at a train station in Groningen, Netherlands.
Can you imagine the space needed if they were cars, at an average of 1.2 people per car.
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nfitz
Superstar
What??? Are you serious? Winter 2009/10 may have had record low snowfall, but winter 2007/08 and 2008/09 both had plenty of snow ... and more importantly snow that persisted for weeks, because it never got above freezing.
Statistically, it seems unlikely that we are going to have record low snowfall every year in the future!
Hipster Duck
Senior Member
There are some big obstacles to biking that are almost never discussed that I find even more annoying than the lack of bicycle lanes on major streets.
The first is the proliferation of minor one-way streets that are meant to reduce car traffic on side streets. These are particularly bad in the Annex and Grange Park; you basically have to disobey the road rules as a bicyclist if you don't want to circle around these streets. Slowly but surely, the city is introducing contra-flow bike lanes to some of these streets, but for the most part, bicyclists just cheat and travel against traffic.
The second is this city's notorious summer road construction with cuts into the road, pylons and sandbags blocking your path. Last summer, my girlfriend fell off her bike and onto the streetcar tracks because the construction site ate up the entire lane, forcing bicyclists to squeeze onto the streetcar tracks with its "groove of cyclist death". I was a little quicker in my judgment and just biked up onto the sidewalk, which is also illegal but (for me, at the time), less dangerous. Again, if the city had any idea of how to coordinate street construction so that various utilities would deal with their construction needs simultaneously, this would be less of a problem. Few things could be worse than bicycling along a road that is getting its water mains replaced or electrical work done which, sadly, seems to affect every major road, at least part of the way, every single summer.
Finally, I would say that, like transit ROWs without signal priorities, Toronto's bike lanes suffer from a very half-assed consideration of how to take an existing piece of infrastructure and optimize it for full use. Most bike lanes don't get plowed in the winter and are often filled with unswept debris in the summertime. Some bike lanes are on roads that are in such poor condition, that it makes more sense just to use a parallel street (I'm looking at you, Sherbourne). In many cities, the bicycle lane reroutes to the centre of the road at intersections so that right-turning vehicles don't block a cyclist's path. This last consideration doesn't apply downtown where the rightmost lane is used for through-traffic as well as right turners, but a very good exampe of this would be on the bike lanes of Sheppard Ave. East, near Morningside. A wide berth opens up for cars to turn right onto Morningside, but the bike lane just "disappears". It's up to the bicyclist to navigate into the space to the left of the car to continue going straight as the cars make a right turn on a green light.
The first is the proliferation of minor one-way streets that are meant to reduce car traffic on side streets. These are particularly bad in the Annex and Grange Park; you basically have to disobey the road rules as a bicyclist if you don't want to circle around these streets. Slowly but surely, the city is introducing contra-flow bike lanes to some of these streets, but for the most part, bicyclists just cheat and travel against traffic.
The second is this city's notorious summer road construction with cuts into the road, pylons and sandbags blocking your path. Last summer, my girlfriend fell off her bike and onto the streetcar tracks because the construction site ate up the entire lane, forcing bicyclists to squeeze onto the streetcar tracks with its "groove of cyclist death". I was a little quicker in my judgment and just biked up onto the sidewalk, which is also illegal but (for me, at the time), less dangerous. Again, if the city had any idea of how to coordinate street construction so that various utilities would deal with their construction needs simultaneously, this would be less of a problem. Few things could be worse than bicycling along a road that is getting its water mains replaced or electrical work done which, sadly, seems to affect every major road, at least part of the way, every single summer.
Finally, I would say that, like transit ROWs without signal priorities, Toronto's bike lanes suffer from a very half-assed consideration of how to take an existing piece of infrastructure and optimize it for full use. Most bike lanes don't get plowed in the winter and are often filled with unswept debris in the summertime. Some bike lanes are on roads that are in such poor condition, that it makes more sense just to use a parallel street (I'm looking at you, Sherbourne). In many cities, the bicycle lane reroutes to the centre of the road at intersections so that right-turning vehicles don't block a cyclist's path. This last consideration doesn't apply downtown where the rightmost lane is used for through-traffic as well as right turners, but a very good exampe of this would be on the bike lanes of Sheppard Ave. East, near Morningside. A wide berth opens up for cars to turn right onto Morningside, but the bike lane just "disappears". It's up to the bicyclist to navigate into the space to the left of the car to continue going straight as the cars make a right turn on a green light.
GenerationW
Senior Member
In November -- 1997. I remember playing in my touch football league the day after a major snowstorm. Had the game of my life as I recall.
TOareaFan
Superstar
And in January 1999 we called in the army to clear the snow.....what does picking one month at a time prove here?
For the record, again, I am not saying (nor did I ever say) you can't cycle in Toronto in the winter. What I am saying is that the vast majority of Torontonians don't cycle in the winter......what is more important, I guess, is that most cyclists also don't cycle regulalry in the winter months.
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js97
Senior Member
My first question is, why are they at bathurst station vs locked up somewhere on Univeristy? when you say filled, 40 bikes?
How many cars go through a lane of univeristy on any given day? thousands?! - further more, the demographic that live near bathurst (annex) is very different than drivers that come down univerisyt from avenue.
It's this whole implementation of ideology vs analyzing the data.
Again, I think bike lanes are good in certain areas but building bike lanes for the sake of bike lanes are a bad idea. People should look at the costs of implementing them.
College/ harbour are great bike lanes, it services the an important corridor for U of T and a large biking crowd, it doesn't take away traffic flow or cause excess congestion.
Univeristy is very different, it sounds like a great 'idea' , but how does it service the biking demographic? Their begining point vs their destination? People that lvie in yorkvile that need to go to Bay Street to work? (you think those are the drivers on univeristy?)
Mcaul is a better alternative, and it won't cause the congestion that it would on Univeristy.
How many of the drivers coming down avenue rd do you think will get on a bike, and more importantly, how many drivers do you need to get off the road to offset the pollution caused by the excess congestion?
typezed
Active Member
I wish the city could just say that one-way signs don't apply to bicycles on all the residential streets where the streets have been made one-way for traffic calming purposes. There's no need to be painting contra-flow lanes on tiny streets with local traffic, especially since it will take ten years for council to make the decisions for all those streets and issue the work orders. Making it easier for cyclists to travel through neighbourhoods without breaking laws would provide alternative paths for cyclists who don't feel safe riding on busy arterials, especially around Bloor/ Danforth. And using the slower streets is what Rossi and a couple others are telling us we should be doing.
mikeb
New Member
kettal
Banned
you are correct about everything here, except for McCaul street being a good alternative. Anybody who has biked on McCaul street will tell you why.
kettal
Banned
The toronto star: Nutty bike lane idea
nfitz
Superstar
The question that was posed was have you ever seen snow in November, and the poster said that they never had. GenerationW was merely answering the question. You can't then use that against him.