TCAT

TCAT has surprised me with two reports announced at the same time, the Benchmarking Active Transportation in Canadian Cities report and the Building Better Cycling in Cities: Lessons for Toronto report.

Benchmarking Active Transportation in Canadian Cities, compares the performance of active transportation in Toronto against other cities in Canada, the United States and Europe, and I've just started getting into its meaty content. Some of its results include confirming the "safety in numbers theory" - the more cyclists and pedestrians the safer it is for both; low active transportation mode shares equal high private automobile shares; low gas taxes often mean higher private automobile shares.

TCAT/Clean Air Partnership researcher, Kevin Behan claims there are many ways Toronto could improve conditions for pedestrians: “More people walk to work in Montreal and Vancouver than in Toronto. Both of those cities have pedestrianized streets and lower speed limits in residential areas. Toronto opened its first pedestrian priority streets after the conclusion of this study but doesn’t have lower speed limits in residential areas. "

Way back on May 28, Toronto had its Bike Summit. Better late than never. The presentations are now all on the TCAT website. You can also see a few photos on flickr. Instead of an exhaustive review, I'd like to provide a quick montage. There were other interesting speakers and ideas.

The above photo of a cyclists brain is from Keven Krizek's who emphasized the difficulty of getting accurate statistics of the benefits and costs of cycling infrastructure. The bike modal share in North America is just so low that a 100% increase would only bring it up to about 2%. There is no big impact on CO2 emissions or reduction in car use. The one statistic that we can be certain of (confirmed by Northern European experience) is that separated bike facilities increase the perception of bike safety --> which results in increased bicycle use --> which results in safety in numbers.

The big question (as we've learned with the fight for more bike lanes in Toronto) is: How do we convince the 94% majority that the effects are benign and allow better cycling facilities for the 6% that are going to use them? (Exact numbers may differ depending on location.)

The following event announcement comes from the Clean Air Partnership, who along with TCAT put together the recent study about bike lanes on Bloor St. in The Annex. Please note that registration is limited to 40 people, so you should register soon if you plan to attend.

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EVIDENCE SHOWS BIKE LANES ARE GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Upcoming webinar: March 25th, 2009 at 2:30 pm Eastern Standard Time

Is your community considering investing in its public realm through an improved pedestrian environment or increasing transportation options through the installation of on-road bike lanes? Often, such proposals involve removing some on-street parking and are met with opposition from merchants who fear that the reallocation of road space would hurt business.

A recent study in Toronto found that contrary to common public perception, the evidence shows that removing on-street parking to install a bicycle lane or widened sidewalk would likely increase not decrease commercial activity. The study – conducted in July of 2008 – surveyed the opinions and preferences of merchants and patrons on Bloor Street and analyzed parking usage data in the Annex area.

Among the study’s findings:

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Herb and Anthony (iBikeTO)
Bike Pirates win again!
TCAT wins iBikeTO Award
Albert Koehl wins iBikeTO Award

Herb and Albert Koehl

Photos by Vic & Anthony
Full set of photos by Vic
More photos here

Photo: Courtesy of Eye Magazine

The Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation released the Public Bike Forum report, summarizing the results of the public forum and of the stakeholders meeting with officials that was held this last September.

Highlights:

• one half don't want advertising on bikes
• with no public funding companies would search for a commercial sponsor
• bikesharing creates new behaviours and travel patterns
• the smart bike systems must still be accessible to people with various barriers
• most want around 5000 bikes to start off with
• target the downtown and dense nodes in the suburbs, clusters around transit
• needs to be modular like Montreal's Bixi
• the City needs to put forward a well-defined business plan
• the City should look seriously at Montreal's system for how to do it without advertising

Bixi the Montreal bikesharing system which will be launching Spring 2009, will be coming to Toronto to convince us all that Montreal knows what they are doing. Can Toronto imitate Montreal which is imitating Paris? I'm sure we can swallow our pride and do it. We did it with Nuit Blanche after all!

They are coming just after their own demonstrations around Montreal. Citizens there get a chance to try out the bikes and see how they will operate as you can see in the photo above with their bike squad (not sure if they're coming too).

They will be in Toronto on Friday, October 24, 10h00 (that's 10:00 am in French) on the south east corner of Bloor Street and Spadina Avenue (note the location change!).

The Toronto Community Foundation (press release) is distributing $231,922 to local initiatives, including to two active cycling groups:

• Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation and the Clean Air Partnership for a two-year project that includes research on bike lanes, on-street parking and the impact on commercial business, a comprehensive comparison study looking at how Toronto fares internationally against other cities implementing cycling and pedestrian-friendly policies, and laying the groundwork for N/S and E/W commuter cycling arteries.
• Toronto Cyclists Union - Toronto Cycling - a one-year project in partnership with CultureLink to research, write and edit a resource to encourage and support cycling among newcomers in Toronto.

I'd like to congratulate these groups for earning these awards, and I'd like to wish them the best of luck in fulfilling their obligations for them. These are worthwhile activities for these groups to be doing and I, for one, am happy to see that this grant money has been awarded to get them working on these projects. I'm excited about these projects and I think that all of these projects will help to support a stronger cycling culture on our roads, and will empower us to encourage more people to ride their bikes.

The Toronto Coalition for Active Transportation (TCAT), The Clean Air Partnership & The Community Bicycle Network are proud to present:

Bikes as a public good:
What is the future of public bikes in Toronto?

There's a funny story behind this. Back in February, I was approached by the ad company JCDecaux with an offer of money if we (CBN) hosted a bikesharing forum. I accepted with eyes open - I knew that JCDecaux was just looking for angles to convince the City of Toronto to buy into their bikesharing system (a la Velib fame). But I figured that couldn't be such a bad thing and even better at least it would offer some kind of public forum where people could debate what kind of bikesharing we want in this city. The funny part is that JCDecaux gave up and took back their offer, but we (CBN and TCAT) are still going ahead with the forum, but with a Transport Canada grant.