G20

By Tino.

By thewaitingroom

By katalogue

By joerayment

By dgriebeling


By harrychoi

G20 Critical Mass. By Tino.


By nouspique

See more at Treehugger.

Photo credit: Stu Chan

Fences make good bike parking! A friend emailed this photo and I thought of the G20 fence. But no, these bikes are actually locked to the fence at Iggy Pop's concert last weekend in Dundas Square. But it could just as easily be bikes locked to the paranoia wall surrounding the G20 meetings, except that the G20 fence would only have the parasitic bikes until the police came to clean them off.

All the same, this photo points out the depressing lack of bike parking downtown as more and more people get to events by bike. Here's a call for these established events to hire the bike union for valet parking!

As for the G20, I've been biking downtown and hearing and seeing how this whole weekend police state is just a big minus for Toronto cyclists, and actually driving me to go for a weekend bike trip out of the city.

Us cyclists must bear the annoyances and brutishness of the G20 paranoia as much as any Toronto citizen. Some of the ways we pay are in restricted access to the zone. Another way is the lack of bike parking in a huge part of downtown. I've heard that anyone locking up in the area during the G20 will have their bike removed. A manager at Mountain Equipment Co-op told me that even in front of their store (at King and Spadina) bikes will be removed. I wonder how many threatening bikes I've locked next to all this time.

According to the May edition of the City's Cyclometer newsletter, the G20 security zone will require that all post and rings will be removed 2 weeks before the event and installed afterwards.

The G20 Summit security requirements mean that all street furniture within the 'security zone' must be removed temporarily. This includes bike parking rings, of which about 1000 must be removed two weeks prior to the event. The area effected runs from Yonge Street west to Spadina Avenue and from Queen Street south to the lakefront.

Every effort will be made to replace the rings quickly once the summit has concluded by the final week of June. Posts will remain intact so re-installation will be simpler.

The security zone may still be a huge area, potentially going as far north as Queen St, as far east and west as Yonge and Spadina, and maybe as far south as the Gardiner. The actual size is all top secret.

I hope the feds and the G20 will reimburse the City for removing and re-installing all the street furniture; and while they're at it, reimburse all the cyclists for for having to walk blocks out of the way because there isn't any parking anywhere.