Toronto Lower Simcoe Ramp | ?m | ?s | City of Toronto

EastYorkTTCFan said:
Why do we have to keep catering to people that want to ride bikes everywhere. We give them marked parts of roads but they still ride on the sidewalk. We give them a shared path and they ride like maniacs on it and want to ignore lights. They ignore crosswalk signals and give you a dirty look well they ring there bell at you. They have no respect for the pedestrians.
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If driving a car and hitting people didn't result in injury or death (or illegal), I would guess drivers would be aggressive around pedestrians as well.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
Why do we have to keep catering to people that want to ride bikes everywhere. We give them marked parts of roads but they still ride on the sidewalk. We give them a shared path and they ride like maniacs on it and want to ignore lights. They ignore crosswalk signals and give you a dirty look well they ring there bell at you. They have no respect for the pedestrians.
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Part of me wants to answer you with some mockery, part with some outrage, and part with some disbelief—because your post is triggering all sorts of responses in me———but the part that is winning out is the more sane, straight answer part… even if the response cannot be a short one. (I will try though.)

You are partly right: there are cyclists out there who disobey traffic laws, cyclists who are jerks. One of the areas of this city where I see bad cycling behaviour most often is, ironically for this thread, on the Martin Goodman Trail alongside Queens Quay. This is an area where we have a lot of people—walking, cycling, riding transit, driving— who absolutely throng this stretch of public space on beautiful days, especially on weekends.

The weekend is a particularly complicated time because, not only is it busier than normal, it includes a higher percentage of people who visit only on occasion and who are, therefore, less familiar with area. Compounding their general unfamiliarity with the area is the atypical layout of Queens Quay: from north-to-south it's sidewalk, roadway, poorly marked* streetcar right-of-way, Martin Goodman (multi-use) Trail, sidewalk. We don't really have that order of uses anywhere else in town yet, so introducing it in a particularly busy area has meant that newbies have to figure it out on the fly.

*The streetcar right-of-way should have, at minimum, painted concrete, to indicate to car drivers that there is something different going on here and that this is not part of the road space that they are allowed on. Because it looks a little bit like most other pieces of streetcar infrastructure in Toronto, it confuses drivers who are unfamiliar with the setup on Queens Quay.​

This past Saturday evening I cycled downtown from where I live near the mouth of the Humber to get to a friend's party. I took the MGT along Queens Quay because A) it's safe when used correctly despite the crowds, B) there is no safe alternative close by—especially with construction on Lake Shore and Harbour at the moment, and C) it's fun. I slowed down but did not dismount at the pinch point at Portland Slip because pedestrian traffic was not particularly heavy, but I followed every other rule along the stretch, stopping on the blue-painted pads for traffic lights. One cyclist came from behind those of us who were stopped at one of the lights (Rees?, can't remember exactly) and blew past us and across the road and through pedestrians. There were no cars for him to deal with, but he was a jerk. Stopped at the lights at Simcoe, I saw a southbound driver turning eastbound onto Queens Quay stop and have to back up when he drove onto the streetcar tracks. He nearly had an accident with a driver leaving the parking garage under Ontario Square. Already biking more slowly than I do on other parts of the trail, at various points along this stretch I had to slow down and ring my bell at pedestrians spilling over the sidewalks and onto the MGT.

Many pedestrians tend not to look left nor right when crossing onto the MGT despite the change in pavement. I blame the fact that our sidewalks are so patchy in so many places in town, that they are not conditioned to care about the pavement. If we were more rigorous about where we use particular materials for sidewalks and cycle ways, then more pedestrians would understand where they are not supposed to stroll carelessly.​

All that said, if there were an alternative to the MGT through the area, whenever I felt pressed for time, I would take the alternative. As a cyclist, as a driver, as a pedestrian, as a transit rider, we all want to get where we are going in a reasonable amount of time, and in relative safety. The problem is that we do not have endless space into which we can separate all the modes, where none of the modes mix. We have more drivers than we have road space to make commutes congestion-free, more transit riders than we have dedicated infrastructure for delay-free journeys, more cyclists than there is safe cycling space, and pedestrians let down by our lackadaisical attitude towards consistently paved sidewalks. It all leads to slow downs and competition for space and aggression, and no one group—drivers, cyclists, transit riders, pedestrians—is without blame when it comes to following the rules.

When it comes to cyclists in particular, and your questions as to why we should cater to them, I want to ask why you don't consider cyclists to be important to properly protect from cars, whose drivers kill cyclists again and again and again. Is it just because you don't cycle, so you don't care about cyclists? Cyclists take up less space than drivers, are cheaper to provide infrastructure for than transit riders, they don't pollute, they're more fit so they are less often a drain on health services (unless they're hit by a car driver or an inattentive car-door-opener). Seems to me to be a group that we should (and will) be catering more to as people become more eco-conscious and health conscious. In ever denser cities and in a warming world, we need to give over more space on our roads to modes of transport that cater to more people and to cleaner tech. That's why you're going to see more space for cyclists, pedestrians, and transit riders in coming years, (and the majority of that space is going to come at the expense of the least efficient and most threatening form of transport.)

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EastYorkTTCFan said:
Why do we have to keep catering to people that want to ride bikes everywhere. We give them marked parts of roads but they still ride on the sidewalk. We give them a shared path and they ride like maniacs on it and want to ignore lights. They ignore crosswalk signals and give you a dirty look well they ring there bell at you. They have no respect for the pedestrians.
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Every shred of this post is very dumb and is veering off-topic; if you want to continue it in one of the cycling threads, I'm more than happy to debunk every element of it there.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
Why do we have to keep catering to people that want to ride bikes everywhere. We give them marked parts of roads but they still ride on the sidewalk. We give them a shared path and they ride like maniacs on it and want to ignore lights. They ignore crosswalk signals and give you a dirty look well they ring there bell at you. They have no respect for the pedestrians.
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Why do we have to cater to people who want to drive their cars on every street? And yet with a very few exceptions that's exactly what we do.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
Because it's part of the law aka the highway traffic act. which also say that bikes should be on the road.
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That is an extremely gross and frankly incorrect oversimplification and you either know it and are being a dick or don't know it and thus shouldn't be spewing this shit.
 
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ADRM said:
That is an extremely gross and frankly incorrect oversimplification and you either know it and are being a dick or don't know it and thus shouldn't be spewing this shit.
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That's what I was taught when I was in school when they used to have bike rallies put on by the Tronto police they would instruct anyone to use the "sidewalk" they had set up for a crosswalk if their bike was essentially a kids bike. If it was an adult bike you used the road. I have always gone by that whenever I have ridden a bike. I don't fweel tah sidewalks or anyuthing sahred with a pedstrian is good place for bikes unless it's a little kid. Ther are many poel who use the sidwalk taht can't get oput of the way of abike, like somone with a strolier, or a person in a wheelcahir or . If we want to have sperte bike lanes then fine they should be spete and have something to blck both cras and pedestrains from them. Ther are many different people that use sidewalks and not all of them are able to get out of the way of a person on a bike, like for example the elderly, p[oel in wheelchairs, people with scooter or strollers. assuming that everyone can get out of the way of a bike is incredibly wrong. Just like how People who ride them think that don't have to watch for drivers opneing ther doors becuse they want to ride fast and pass a car or make the light before it turn or they decided that they want to use the sidewalk to cross the street so they don't ahve to wait for a light.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
That's what I was taught when I was in school when they used to have bike rallies put on by the Tronto police they would instruct anyone to use the "sidewalk" they had set up for a crosswalk if their bike was essentially a kids bike. If it was an adult bike you used the road. I have always gone by that whenever I have ridden a bike. I don't fweel tah sidewalks or anyuthing sahred with a pedstrian is good place for bikes unless it's a little kid. Ther are many poel who use the sidwalk taht can't get oput of the way of abike, like somone with a strolier, or a person in a wheelcahir or . If we want to have sperte bike lanes then fine they should be spete and have something to blck both cras and pedestrains from them. Ther are many different people that use sidewalks and not all of them are able to get out of the way of a person on a bike, like for example the elderly, p[oel in wheelchairs, people with scooter or strollers. assuming that everyone can get out of the way of a bike is incredibly wrong. Just like how People who ride them think that don't have to watch for drivers opneing ther doors becuse they want to ride fast and pass a car or make the light before it turn or they decided that they want to use the sidewalk to cross the street so they don't ahve to wait for a light.
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Huh?

Did you happen to miss the lesson in school where they taught you to proof read your work? Your post is largely unreadable - not to mention fails to address anything @ADRM or @dowlingm mentioned.
 
EastYorkTTCFan said:
Just like how People who ride them think that don't have to watch for drivers opneing ther doors...
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That's because they don't have to. It's against the law to open your car door in front of a cyclist. And has been since 2015.

For all of the "what I was taught in school" garbage that you've been spewing, you seem to be woefully ignorant of the actual laws and regulations.

Dan
Toronto, Ont.
 
smallspy said:
That's because they don't have to. It's against the law to open your car door in front of a cyclist. And has been since 2015.
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That law is incredibly one sided it puts all fault on the car drivers and none on the cyclist just like the ones regarding pedestrians too. If a pedestrian crosses a street in front of a car and gets hit because it wasn't at an intersection they should be at fault and not the car driver.
 
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