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I wish I had heard about this earlier so I could do more promotion, but nevertheless it's not too late to celebrate Bike Hour in Toronto! I heard about it on Twitter and the Star for the first time. Bike Hour originated in Australia this year with University of Newcastle academic and cyclist Steven Fleming.

Bike Hour will be held twice a year on the equinox and it is meant to be like Earth Hour but laid back. The genius part is that it automatically includes all the people who just happen to be on their bike and haven't even heard of it!

City Council on March 5th adopted the plan for Front Street with a more pedestrian friendly design that reduces the width to two wider lanes. Yet in the process they ignored the needs of cyclists by not including bike lanes, and even made access to Union Station worse by moving bike parking and BIXI stations away. What it did keep intact is loading and taxi zones and even places for cars to do u-turns, all of which meant something had to be compromised, namely bike lanes.

Since the Eglinton LRT is back from the dead, it looks like the bike lanes planned in the EA may also be back!

There is a public meeting Monday, March 19th at 6:30PM in the Northern District Public Library, 2nd floor meeting room, 40 Orchard View Blvd. (Just north of Yonge & Eglinton)

Goals: Identify opportunities for cycling advocacy created by the LRT, learn about planning initiatives under way, and set cyclist strategy.

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT is currently in the planning stages. Stretching for 25 kilometres from Black Creek Drive to McCowan station, the project cuts through 13 City wards and will transform the heart of Toronto. Multiple organizations are working on the project, including Metrolinx, TTC, and the City's planning and transportation departments. This is a once-in-a- lifetime opportunity for cyclists to advocate for complete streets across the entire city.

The changes along Eglinton will have numerous impacts on cycling, including:
removal of hundreds of buses and dedicated bus lanes from the street
changes to the crossings on Eglinton
changes to traffic patterns, car parking, bike parking, road surfaces
changed connections with off-road trails, ravines, and on-street bike routes
new bike lanes on the above-ground sections (Laird Dr. to Kennedy Station)
Eglinton is important to cyclists! Not only is it a major east-west corridor, with significant residential, employment and retail concentrations, but many bike routes cross it north-south.

It's been pointed out (by Streetsfilm here and by others) that the Dutch actually had to work at getting the best bike infrastructure in the world, it wasn't in the genetics. (If that were true I would have seen a lot more Dutch farmers biking everywhere while growing up in rural Alberta.) This film looks at a recent trip to the Netherlands by American city leaders.

Recenty Streetfilms joined a group of city leaders from Chicago, Washington, DC and Miami on a study tour of the Netherlands, through the Bikes Belong Foundation's Bicycling Design Best Practices Program. The program shows American transportation professionals and policy makers real life examples of what it looks like to invest in cost-effective bicycle facilities. This video takes you on a tour of the incredibly well thought out street designs in the Netherlands. You'll see the infrastructure, hear from the experts on the ground, and watch the tour participants react and imagine how they might implement similar designs in American cities.

I feel like I should explain (while also being a bit pugilistic, fighting the good fight). Being a volunteer blogger I have to rely on the goodwill of others who have gathered information for me, or who are actively involved in the issue and are willing to share with me what's going on. I think it's better to get the information out there while couching it in terms like "likely" and "maybe" rather than keep it locked up. Last Friday's post about Councillor Wong-Tam is a case in point.

That blog post presented information on how Councillor Wong-Tam had sent a memo calling for a "trial" on Sherbourne separated bike lanes to City cycling manager Dan Egan without a public announcement. Cycling advocates didn't know that she was planning to do so, and there didn't seem to be any public record of her planning to do so except for a passing reference in the Dandyhorse Magazine about "bike spotting" from across Canada.

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam sent a February 7 letter (pdf) to Transportation Services cycling manager Dan Egan requesting that the Sherbourne separated bike lane be made into a "pilot" saying there needed to be further "consultation". Surprisingly she sent this letter during the consultation period which ended February 17 and she didn't copy Councillor Pam McConnell whose ward shares Sherbourne.

During the consultation period staff consulted with residents and businesses along Sherbourne, working to address their concerns into the plan. They addressed issues of TTC Bus service, Wheel-Trans pick-up/drop-off, Fire and emergency access, Curb-side waste collection and Snow removal and street cleaning. The presented the results in the panels at the January Open House. The majority of people attending the Open House appeared to be supportive of the separated bike lanes. It's not clear what further consultation needed to be done.

By calling for a pilot Councillor Wong-Tam would preclude any coordination of the repaving with the bike lane plan and possibly forcing staff away from their current plan of a raised cycle track with a rolled curb.

Central Commerce, a school in downtown Toronto, has launched an innovative course for students to learn the basics of bike mechanics. Last week I met with the period one class and teacher Ravi Mohan-Sukhai to learn how the course is coming along.

I met Ravi in the otherwise unused basement of Central Commerce where he was happily moving from student to student, helping them with their bike project. Twelve students in each of three daily classes meet in the basement of Central Commerce Collegiate Institute in Toronto, learning the basics on donated bicycles and parts. During the course they will fix up not only a bicycle for themselves but up to five other bikes that will be sold off to support the program.

There is a waiting list and the students clearly love the change of pace from the usual sitting in their desks, listening to teachers talk. One eager girl, Fahmeda tells me she also likes the hands-on aspect of the elective class and that she'll get a bike out of it at the end of the course. Omar signed up for the course soon after starting at the school, eager to learn the basics of bike mechanics.

Ravi is supported by two assistants, Matt Draimin and Eugene Chao, both Curbside Bicycles mechanics, who both come almost daily to help students with their bike education.

The bicycles are stored in empty classrooms in the basement and in the empty swimming pool. The bikes were provided by the Cabbagetown Youth Centre (CYC) to Central Commerce, which in turn were donated by the government to CYC as a settlement in prolific bike thief Igor Kenk's court case. Many of his thousands of stolen bikes that he bizarrely stored in garages around the city were unclaimed and were eventually given to CYC so they could be refurbished for youth. The bikes are finally being put to a good use.

Ravi, Matt and Eugene have sorted the bikes into those which are more easily refurbished, the bikes to be used for parts in the appropriately named "Boneyard", and those to be dealt with at a later date. Despite the large numbers of bikes donated, there are still a lot of supplies to be purchased. For this Ravi's approach has been to sell some of the refurbished bikes back to the community (there will be a spring sale coming up) and to offer bike repair to school staff. Ravi registers each bike with the Toronto Police so they're aware that these bikes that were once stolen now have a legitimate life.

Each semester Kristen Schwartz from Culturelink teaches bike safety to the students, gives them a helmet and a bell. Many of the students might not have been aware of road rules. They will follow it with a ride.

The class got quickly organized last fall as the thousands of bikes were sent to be stored. Instead of just letting the bikes sit, the school principal, Iwona Kurman, quickly organized for Ravi to be hired and gave him space in the basement to teach the elective. Given that the focus of Central Commerce is commerce, the class will eventually have a broader focus that will also incorporate an interdisciplinary study of environmental issues, physical activity, business and science.

The class, the first of its kind in the Toronto District School Board, started last fall with just two students but quickly grew as word got around. Ravi has been designing his own curriculum to meet the particular learning needs of high school students and to keep the students on top of the quirky needs of bicycles in need of various levels of work. All the bikes will require overhauling the bearings, brakes and gears but some will have more serious issues with the frame, broken drivetrain or other issues. The students - with the help of Matt and Eugene - are taught to identify such issues.

The object is not to produce bike mechanics; some students may end up working in the bike industry, but some will use the hands-on mechanical concepts as a foundation for other technical trades. And others may find that they are using their new bike to go to school or run errands and be able to repair their own bicycles. The course can help student become more mobile, more self-reliant and give them an understanding of mechanical systems like the common bicycle.

Looking for parts in the Boneyard

Ravi's office

Working bikes

The parts of the wheel

Matt providing tips on front brake

The bike mechanics class

How to assess for damage

Working on brakes

Eugene teaching Omar

I attended a webinar on the "Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment" (BICE) study back in January. The BICE study examined which route types are associated with higher and lower cycling injury rates. The webinar covered a summary of their study's results, which will be available soon online. While some of the study concepts may difficult to understand without an academic research background I thought it was interesting to convey how this study approached the difficult area of injuries and cyclists from a new angle. And from their study we find some interesting results, the most interesting being that they have shown that cycle tracks and local streets that restrict through motor traffic are the two types of routes that reduce the risk of injury for cyclists compared to the typical arterial road with parked cars (exemplified by streets like Dundas, Queen, Bloor and so on).