Back to Reimaging Yonge/Beecroft/Doris,....
With new stage looking at cycling infrastructure along Beecroft and/OR Doris,....
City Staff and Consultant's currently leaning towards cycling infrastructure just on Beecroft since Yonge-401 proposal is on west side of Yonge like Beecroft and Beecroft is likely to be extended north to Drewry/Cummer then Steeles much sooner than Doris.
Doris is tougher to do and they claim require more property acquisition in southern segment from Greenfield Ave to Avondale, otherwise they "HAVE TO take out a proposed traffic lane of Doris south extension" (really BS since Woodbine was done with combination of protected bike lanes, unprotected bike lanes and bike sharrows!!!,... if needed they could use bike sharrows here without fear of eliminating traffic lane). OR they can even eliminate sidewalk along lower density house side of Doris at this southern segment if space need for bi-direction cycle track or off-road multi-use trail - technically Doris is "Collector Rd" and thus City standard is sidewalk on both side of Collector Rd but higher Major Arterial Road like Finch West eliminated sidewalk on both side of Finch West between NorFinch & Weston for off-road multi-use trail along south side only! That mean, City Staff can technically replace one of the sidewalk along this southern segment of Doris for proper cycling infrastructure.
Issues with avoiding cycling infrastructure along Doris are:
- There's 4 area schools (community hubs) along Doris (McKee elementary, Cardinal Carter Secondary, ClaudeWatson School for Arts and nearby Earl Haig Secondary)
- There's much more residential condos East of Yonge at along Doris, so local residents are missing out on the benefits of cycling infrastructure
- Beecroft has more offices and government buildings than Doris, so cycling infrastructure here service them (including City staff!) more than locals!
Ideally, add cycling infrastructure to both Beecroft Rd and Doris Ave,....
but City & Consultant seems only focusing on adding one - just Beecroft Road, more towards as part of Minimum Grid VS building active infrastructure to benefit local residents and workers.
Here, they butchered my proposal of more inclusive (for cyclist, jogger, runner, rollerblader, etc,...) Off-Road Multi-Use Trail along open green space, parkettes and parks along west side of Beecroft where cross-section would be Off-Road Multi-Use Trail then sidewalk then tree buffer then road,.... instead they proposed bi-directional CycleTracks as part of buffer between pedestrian and road but this mean pedestrian have longer distance of extra 10-15 feet (of CycleTracks) to cross when they cross Beecroft Road!
Their preferred solution for Beecroft now is their standard Complete Street cookie-cutter solution of uni-directional Cycle Tracks on both sides. Problem is east side of Beecroft has about 3 times as many cyclist-vehicle conflict points if you only count intersecting roads but including driveway exits from condos it's 6 times as many cyclist-vehicle conflict points!!!! Wow, and these are the same folks in charge with designing for Vision ZERO - to protect cyclist & pedestrian safety!
Finally, I gave them a earful for the lack of east-west connectors to link to destinations along Yonge.
Walk along Yonge Street,.. where are bikes parked? At subway stations entrances, yet, neither of their 2 proposed east west connectors link to North York Centre or Sheppard-Yonge Subway station! Their east-west connector though the cemetery is stupid since the cemetery is closed as soon as it get dark! Arghhh,....
