Bus bike racks + Metropass = new paradigm
Most buses running around South Etobicoke now have bike racks. And I have started using a Metropass since going back to school. It takes a while to put the two together, though.
Today, I hopped on a bus--and threw my bike on the rack--twice. The first time was to get up to the vicinity of Islington south of Bloor. The pavement on both Kipling and Islington is atrocious, and they're busy streets. As it happened, a bus was coming when I got to Horner and Brown's Line, so I hopped it up to Islington and Advance.
After doing some shopping (and taking the back route south from Advance to Judson, including a bit of railway right-of-way) there was a Kipling South bus coming; I hopped it across the Queensway and Gardiner to Evans. Again, I bypassed horrible pavement as well as the Kipling/Gardiner ramps.
If the buses hadn't been coming, I would have just ridden my bike.
It's very quick and easy to use the bike racks. It's way less of a hassle to hop a rack-equipped bus than it is to take a bike on the subway, or even GO train. (It's unfortunate that the current streetcar fleet is very bicycle-unfriendly, since streetcars cover most of downtown.)
I wouldn't necessarily go to a stop expecting to take the bus, but if one comes along, and lets me cut off some unpleasant riding, why not? The errands I ran took way less time than if I rode all the way, and way, way, way less time if I took the bus and then walked hither and yon (I wound up riding another 5km, with various stops, to get home). I suppose it would have been quicker if I drove, but we don't want that do we?
It makes TTC palatable by eliminating time-consuming connections and allowing to bypass nasty stretches.
Great post, Ed!
I agree about Kipling and Islington - Kipling in particular, I used to commute that way to work, it's ridiculous. Even the Kipling bus headed South from the station feels like it's going to collapse in on itself with holes in the road, close to the side, almost evenly dispersed every 10m.
As a carless Torontonian stranded in Mississauga for the past two years, I have come to appreciate the new racks. Most summer days I'll just pedal down to TO and back, but I recognize that's not a 'general public' (especially 'general suburbia public' option), so the racks make the commute viable for quite a few people; plus when the weather turns or my legs give out, it's an amazing treat to be able to drop a token in a bucket and be miraculously lifted 20km down Eglinton or 10km uphill on West Mall. I also did a trip to Oshawa in June, where I biked to the Westernmost pick-up point (Renforth & Eg) and TTCed to the Easternmost drop-off point (near the zoo), and back again, and turned a 170km round-trip into a more-manageable 80km one. (I'd recommend everything about the route, except the destination, sorry Osh). I agree that streetcars could stand to get some racks (useful in bad weather situations, but given downtown bike density I bet they'd be packed a lot of the time) and that the trains have a bike car all the time, but for now most bus lines are remarkably convenient for the long-distance commuter. Keep the bike momentum going, TTC.