Bike plan

No, Holland is no land of unicorns and candy cane trees, despite being below sea level, and filled with tulips, bicycles, and people who don't stop cycling for any kind of weather (except maybe if the polders fill up with water). This is why their expertise is particularly useful as an export, as the following videos demonstrate well.

Then (1950s):

Bicycle Rush hour now:

Rain doesn't stop them:

Nor winter:

What's so special about the Dutch? Not much. They just happen to have lots of cycling infrastructure and have built up lots of cycling expertise over the last 100 hundred years. And I've been informed by folks at the City that they'll soon be coming to Toronto to share their experiences with planners here with the inaugural "Toronto ThinkBike Workshops":

The City of Toronto will be working with the Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to host Dutch bicycle planners on September 20th and 21st.

The Dutch have established themselves as world leaders, in the area of bicycle infrastructure design. Toronto and Dutch bicycle professionals will form two teams for this event. Each team will be given a Toronto problem to solve, with results unveiled at a free public event Tuesday September 21st, 6-8 pm. Which team will develop the most exciting design solution? Come watch the presentations and vote.

El Mocambo - 2nd floor, 464 Spadina Ave. Tuesday September 21, 2010, 6:00 -8:00 pm
Free admission. Cash bar

I've been informed that the two "Toronto problems to solve" will include the Sherbourne corridor in a conversion to separated bike facilities and the other will be in finding a preferred east-west corridor downtown - likely Richmond or Adelaide.

Toronto transportation staff has been planning new bike-specific traffic control signals to go along the 30 km of new trails in our suburbs, and for downtown is planning bike boxes at five locations downtown on College, Bloor and Harbord.

The traffic lights will enable cyclists and pedestrians to more quickly cross the major arterial roads when on the trails and will allow cyclists to cross with their own crossing beside the crosswalk. If you happen to live near the new trails in North York and Scarborough, it wouldn't hurt to call your councillor to let them know you think this is a great idea. Let them know that you, as a cyclist, actually exist and happen to live in the suburbs. It's amazing how often councillors claim that no on cycles in their ward.

As for the bike boxes, take a gander at this video on how they work. Bike boxes allow cyclists to filter to the front so they can make quick left turns or merge easily back into the bike lane after the intersection instead of being stuck behind all the cars. There are no right turns on red allowed with bike boxes, but this matters little where there are lots of pedestrians crossing.

From transportation services:

After Councillor Howard Moscoe's prodding, City Council has released the previously confidential manual which explains who can get their parking tickets cancelled. I am glad that they did this, and it helps make things much more clear to everyone in this city. Many thanks to Councillor Moscoe, and the other councillors, who made this happen.

Before this manual was released, I had though that more enforcement would help to diminish the number of vehicles found parked in bike lanes. I had also thought that on-street separated bike lanes should be used sparingly and strategically.

I now realize how naive I was.

While I expect that some of the excuses to get one's parking ticket cancelled to be removed from the current manual, I have to expect that many, if not most, of them will remain. Because of this, I now find it necessary to add my voice to the many who are already calling for the conversion of existing bike lanes into on-street separated bike lanes.

The passive enforcement of barriers which would deter people from placing their vehicles in bike lanes seems to be the only remedy we have to keep those of us in this city who ride bikes safe from moving cars and trucks, and to keep bike lanes safe from becoming free parking or ad-hoc taxi stands.

And safer infrastructure will only encourage more people to ride.

George Smitherman, mayoral candidate, has published a "transportation plan", or, as I prefer to call it, a thinly veiled nod to motorists and patronizing approach to transit, cycling and walking. It may be easier in an era of a "war on cyclists" that a mayoral candidate can get away with a platform that does less for cyclists than what is in the Bike Plan already.

"Furious George" has adopted candidate Rossi's tactic of "supporting" cyclists so long as they get off all the major roads, by saying he'll provide "safer routes on less busy main roads" with a focus on bike "expressways". He seems to want to raise the ire of his past self who said weeks ago in response to Rossi's plan:

In terms of suggesting bicycles should be relegated to crescents and cul-de-sacs, this is akin to saying you’re not in favour of the city of Toronto being a modern city… I don’t think it’s leadership to take the language of the war on the car and flip it on its head and say, “The war on the car has had its go at city hall. I’m going to advance the war on the bike.”

So where's this modern city, George, while you're trying shove all the cyclists into the ravines and hydro corridors like so much garbage?

Here's the fine print on George's plan:

• Time out on construction of new bike lanes on arterial roadways, but move immediately to ensure current cycling routes are safer and better maintained

Proposed Lansdowne Bike Lane: Bloor St. to Davenport Rd.

As part of the Bike Plan, the City of Toronto is proposing the installation of bike lanes on Lansdowne Ave. between Bloor St. and Davenport Rd. This 1.5km stretch of new bike lane might not seem like much, but it will end up being a key connection between the Davenport Rd. bike lanes, Dupont St. / Annette St. bike lanes, and Lansdowne Ave. sharrows (black squiggles on the map). These all lead into other significant pieces of local cycling infrastructure such as the West Toronto Railpath (green line on map) and parts of the proposed West End Bikeways.

There will be a public meeting about this proposed bike lane on Thursday:

Thursday March 25, 2010
6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Wallace Emerson Community Centre
1260 Dufferin - Ambrico Room

In the recent past, there was some significant opposition to the narrowing of Lansdowne Ave. south of Bloor St., so there may be some community opposition to the installation of these bike lanes. It would be extremely helpful if cyclists, especially locals, came to this public meeting to show their support.

The approval and installation phases of this looks like it may happen rather quickly:

Following this consultation, City Staff will review any comments received. We plan to submit this project for consideration to Public Work and Infrastructure Committee (PWIC) meeting on April 20, 2010. We anticipate the Lansdowne Avenue bike lane project will be considered by City council on May 11-13, 2010. If approved, bike lanes on Lansdowne Avenue are planned to be installed in summer 2010.

If you can't make it to the consultation, be sure to the following addresses with letters of support and comments: bikeplan@toronto.ca, councillor_giambrone@toronto.ca, pwic@toronto.ca

More information about this public consultation can be found at:
http://www.toronto.ca/cycling/public-consultations/lansdowne.htm

The map is the City of Toronto's 2009 Bike Map, with some additions made with my own mad graphix skillz

I'd be hard-pressed to put a good spin on this, though mayoral candidate Smitherman is certainly trying his best. Smitherman is jumping on the rhetoric bandwagon and is calling for a 'moratorium' on bike lanes in Toronto. In the meanwhile the 2011 money for bike lanes will go to repaving the bike lanes that are deteriorating such as Sherbourne.

Smitherman is reading the polls and figures that it's better to appease the loud car-centrists who are getting a lot of play in the media, rather than accommodate the needs of 8-years and 80-years old folks on bikes.

One the one hand, Smitherman certainly understand the importance of bike lanes on arterials and isn't promising to remove them, but on the other hand, it becomes increasingly hard to maintain the already very slow progress on bike lanes and infrastructure when a moratorium is put in place. And it certainly begs the question: if this is mainly a communication problem, why not just communicate better (or work better at winning the rhetoric war in the media) while improving the cycling infrastructure?

Someone needs to call Smitherman on this bullshit approach. Mothers, children, elders and all, are you willing to get in the face of Smitherman and Rocco to let them know you exist and want to feel safe cycling on the roads?

I usually prefer to maintain some degree of decorum on this blog, but this pisses me off to no end. So I'll float this slogan as a rallying cry:

City staff revealed a politically ambitious bikeway plan for downtown to a very packed house, Monday evening at Metro Hall. Even though the plan includes a number of items which don't require council approval, including bike boxes on Harbord and bike sharrows along streetcar routes, the most politically controversial may be such items as bike lanes on University (as the Post predicts as well). See the whole plan on the City's website (pdf) [this links only to the announcement and not the plan. oops!].

Councillor Joe Mihevc commended the staff for their ambition (even if it may still be just a stepping stone since some activists pointed out that it was still a fractured network). Then Mihevc explained how it was a really politically tough year; if cyclists present a strong, single voice to politicians, we may have a chance of getting this program implemented.

Cyclists seemed to be divided on whether this represented a turning point or not, but it is apparent that even if some cyclists see this as too little, there is a certain segment of voters and certain mayoral candidates (Rossi, and possibly, Smitherman) who see this is way too much "coddling" of cyclists.

Yesterday the public works committee of the City approved a number of bike lanes; accepted the request by Transportation Services staff for "New Strategic Directions" for an updated Bike Plan, including studying a bike lane on Bloor/Danforth; and authorized sole source negotiations for a bikesharing program with the Public Bike System Company of Montreal that also runs Bixi. All these items now go on to City Council for approval.

Gloria Lindsay Luby wrote to council saying that she supported the bike lane on Rathburn, but not on The Westway. With no good reasons to not move ahead, both were approved by the committee. Her token effort was not enough to thwart The Westway's Bike Lines.

Councillor Peter Milczyn had a very good reason to delay the bike lanes on The West Mall; there's an EA going on to bring North Queen to intersect with the West Mall, and he asked staff to both continue this year's rebuild of the road to include the potential for bike lanes, and to include the bike lane planning and implementation as part of the EA process. While this will delay the bike lanes, as long as we continue our push, there's no reason why these won't go in next year. I would suggest contacting Milczyn's office to find out more about that EA.