Tonight, Thursday, January 26, 2012 is the open house for "upgrading" the Sherbourne bike lanes to provide better separation between cars and bikes. Please drop by from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, 444 Sherbourne Street (at Wellesley), to provide your feedback.

Back in 2010 Dutch cycling consultants came to our city for ThinkBike, to work with urban professionals to rethink our cycling infrastructure and promotion is done in Toronto. Luckily they chose Sherbourne as one example and one of the teams produced a presentation, which you'd do well to preview before providing your feedback tonight.

A couple thoughts in response to their online notes:

1. It would be good if they continued the separation north of Bloor. There is really no reason why not since as far as I recall there isn't any on-street parking for the first couple blocks. The first block is a bridge over Rosedale Valley which would benefit from better separation from cars, at least to prevent cars from parking in the bike lanes.
2. From Bloor to Gerrard (a good portion of Sherbourne), there is no major roadwork scheduled so staff have suggested that more temporary installation take place, including flexible bollards and painted buffers. Likewise the work from Front to Queens Quay will be figured out in 2013 to coincide with road reconstruction.

Thanks to some warm winter weather and possibly to a bit of persuading on my end (by directing some emails to Street Furniture and to Councillor Vaughan's office), City staff have installed post and rings along Portland and Richmond next to the new Loblaws.

As I noted in the other post, Councillor Vaughan and Jennifer Chan of his office were quite helpful in pursuing the case of the missing bike parking to get it solved. Lisa Ing of Street Furniture was also helpful in spelling out the details of this location and the limitations of her office.

It's super that we now have some bike parking for Loblaws. Now what about the rest of the stores along that block on Queen? Short-term bike parking should be no more than 15 metres from the entrance of destinations, according to the Bicycles at Rest design guide. Are post and rings just not "aesthetic" enough to get installed there?

The "season" for installation of bike parking ends in the fall - it gets too difficult to install with lots of snow and the City ends its contract with the company that installs the bike rings. It is remarkable, then, that these post and rings appeared. Who installed them? There were plans in the works to install them but not until the spring. Did public pressure on City staff quicken that process?

Montreal separated bike lane - probably not exactly how Sherbourne will look

You are invited to an open house to review designs for separated bike lanes on Sherbourne, likely to be approved and installed this year.

When: January 26 5:00 PM-8:00
Where: Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School Gym - 444 Sherbourne St. (at Wellesley)

You can read up on City's info on separated bikeways. What is likely to be a contentious aspect of the separated bike lanes is the removal and offsetting of all on-street car parking, some of which will be moved to side streets. Hopefully this won't hinder it.

If you can't attend you can call the cycling infrastructure voicemail: 416-338-1066 or email: bikesherbourne@toronto.ca

From City's page:

The existing Sherbourne Street bike lanes were installed in 1996. On July 12, 2011, City Council directed City staff to proceed with detailed design and consultation to upgrade the Sherbourne bike lanes with the aim to better separate cars and bikes and improve safety for cyclists. The construction of the upgraded bike lanes is scheduled to start in summer 2012 in combination with the resurfacing of Sherbourne Street.

Separated bike lanes have been implemented in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver and are popular in hundreds of other cities around the world. Sherbourne is the first of a series of separated bike lanes approved by Council to improve the cycling network in downtown Toronto.

City Hall is back in business after the holiday season, but the gifts keep on coming. Parking on busy streets during rush hour, or blocking a bike lane any time has been increased by $150 fine if passed by city hall.

Public works and infrastructure voted 3-2 Wednesday to hike the fine from the current $60 for parking in a no stopping or standing zone and $40 for parking in a no parking zone.

The two dissenting votes were cast by councillors Shiner and Parker, who worried the hike is a “feel good” motion when the real problem is enforcement.

Tickets are issued by parking enforcement officers who work for Toronto police.

Shiner said their quota system — called “targets” by police — that sees parking officers expected to issue a certain number of tickets per day means they hit lots of cars at expired meters or on side-streets, rather than one car blocking busy traffic and causing a huge headache.

Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, the committee's chair, agreed with the dissenters and said city staff will talk to police about better enforcement.

“We are moving forward in trying to address congestion,” said Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong chair of the public works committee. “This is a positive step forward.”

The increased fine is one part of attacking the problem, he said, and proper enforcement is another.

The fine hike would need to go to council for approval before coming into effect.

Photo: Herb. Bells on Bloor 2011, popular as ever, even though City Council voted to stop the Environmental Assessment

Cycling and politics were a hot item in 2011, from the vote to remove Jarvis Bike Lanes, the vote to install protected bike lanes, the launch of Bixi, and the politicians who took cheap shots by trying to make cyclists into urban terrors. Here's a recap of 2011's top 11 blog posts, ranked by the number of comments. It's not the only way to rank blog posts, but the easiest to come by.

1. Separated bike lane proposal and battle heating up
   Bixi bikes are on the streets and the fight continues to get separated bike lanes approved for downtown. Some lefty councillors oppose, some support.
2. Few bike lanes: the cause of most sidewalk cycling
   A pedestrian dies after colliding with a cyclist in North York. There is a strong call to crack down on cyclists yet the pedestrian's family say he was an avid cyclist and understood how bad cycling infrastructure is in the burbs. And where are the critics when a pedestrian is killed by a motorist?
3. Public Works committee votes to take out Jarvis bike lanes: total -8 km bike lanes this year
   The vote to take out the Jarvis bike lanes made international news. What big city in this era votes to take out bike lanes?

The new Loblaws, Winners, Joe Fresh at Queen St West and Portland have been open for a few months. In the inscrutable ways of the City, the stores opened with absolutely zero bike parking. The sidewalk was finished, trees were installed out front but no one felt the need to install bike parking anywhere surrounding the building. I like trees but wouldn't it have been even more important to install bike parking? Now we've just got people slowly killing the trees by locking to the trees.

I followed up with planner Lisa Ing of Street Furniture at the City, the area which is now in charge of post and rings (you can email your bike parking request to them). They are still figuring out how they will deal with post and rings. Lisa Ing told me about this location by email:

The post-and-ring locations were approved as part of the Site Plan Control process for this development. Our staff are typically not involved in this process. However Forestry and Urban Design staff do take into consideration bike parking issues.

I do not know the reasons why post-and-rings were not identified on Queen Street West as part of the site plan process. I am presuming there may be other street elements proposed or it could have been for aesthetic reasons.

Anyways, we can list this location in our database for future review.

True words by Albert Koehl in Rabble of how Mayor Ford is doing more harm to drivers than good with his archaic, anti-city approach to moving people:

Don Cherry has a lesson to teach Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Cherry has spent a career promoting the hockey fighter, sometimes known as the enforcer or goon. The problem is that the science of brain injuries has caught up with (and passed) his assertion that the violence of these bare-knuckle encounters doesn't really hurt anyone, and helps the game. Indeed, the very fighters whose role Cherry has championed are increasingly turning out to be the game's victims.

The cause that Ford championed most loudly during the election was that of motorists. On taking office he declared that the war on the car was over. He eliminated a small vehicle registration tax, then moved forward on his congestion relief plan by getting transit out of the way of motorists. Two of three streetcar lines approved by the previous administration were shelved and a third line would go underground at significantly higher cost. He even promised to build a new subway line. Cyclists, too, were targeted. The council he leads voted to eliminate three bike lanes at a projected cost of $400,000.

Science, and experience, makes it clear that Ford's solutions won't work -- and the main victim will be the motorist.

John Taranu, volunteer of the Bike Union, provides some tips in helping to reduce bike theft. John also introduces the isthisbikestolen.com app created at the Random Hacks of Kindness / Open Data Hackathon on December 5-6 in Toronto. It lets you check if the bike you're buying has been stolen.

More on fighting bike theft, see bikeunion.to/theft

How to find the serial number of a bike:

How to register a bike: