bike parking

Thanks to some warm winter weather and possibly to a bit of persuading on my end (by directing some emails to Street Furniture and to Councillor Vaughan's office), City staff have installed post and rings along Portland and Richmond next to the new Loblaws.

As I noted in the other post, Councillor Vaughan and Jennifer Chan of his office were quite helpful in pursuing the case of the missing bike parking to get it solved. Lisa Ing of Street Furniture was also helpful in spelling out the details of this location and the limitations of her office.

It's super that we now have some bike parking for Loblaws. Now what about the rest of the stores along that block on Queen? Short-term bike parking should be no more than 15 metres from the entrance of destinations, according to the Bicycles at Rest design guide. Are post and rings just not "aesthetic" enough to get installed there?

The "season" for installation of bike parking ends in the fall - it gets too difficult to install with lots of snow and the City ends its contract with the company that installs the bike rings. It is remarkable, then, that these post and rings appeared. Who installed them? There were plans in the works to install them but not until the spring. Did public pressure on City staff quicken that process?

The new Loblaws, Winners, Joe Fresh at Queen St West and Portland have been open for a few months. In the inscrutable ways of the City, the stores opened with absolutely zero bike parking. The sidewalk was finished, trees were installed out front but no one felt the need to install bike parking anywhere surrounding the building. I like trees but wouldn't it have been even more important to install bike parking? Now we've just got people slowly killing the trees by locking to the trees.

I followed up with planner Lisa Ing of Street Furniture at the City, the area which is now in charge of post and rings (you can email your bike parking request to them). They are still figuring out how they will deal with post and rings. Lisa Ing told me about this location by email:

The post-and-ring locations were approved as part of the Site Plan Control process for this development. Our staff are typically not involved in this process. However Forestry and Urban Design staff do take into consideration bike parking issues.

I do not know the reasons why post-and-rings were not identified on Queen Street West as part of the site plan process. I am presuming there may be other street elements proposed or it could have been for aesthetic reasons.

Anyways, we can list this location in our database for future review.

Post and ring bike parking is lacking in many heavily cycled parts of Toronto. The City of Toronto was once in the forefront of supplying short-term parking for cyclists and this may help explain why so many people bike despite the poor cycling infrastructure otherwise.

We've got to hold onto the parking we've got and push for more. Currently the City is slow to re-install the parking removed when sidewalks are reconstructed (or for other construction). And they seem slow to put in enough parking otherwise.

Here's a neat website, SeeClickFix, that allows people to post issues with their city and to get crowd-support. If people mark down where they think bike parking is critical, use the keywords "bike parking" or "post and ring", or vote on an existing issue then we can gather all this information to send to councillors and staff.

It's clear that there's more demand for parking than is being met. If the city doesn't want cyclists to lock to gas meters, trees or fences then we want them to take bike parking seriously.

Try it out! And while you're at it also submit your suggestion directly to the City through their online suggestion form. It would be good if they also get flooded with requests.

As is common with BIAs in Toronto the Bloor-Yorkville BIA was given a lot of control to decide the public realm priorities in the redesign of the stretch of Bloor between Church and Avenue. This included in letting the BIA decide if and how they would accommodate cyclists on their territory: how they would lock up their bikes and how they would bike along the roadway. The BIA chose to remove cyclists from the equation in the name of a minimalist and modern-looking design. Their choice, predictably, backfired.

The Bloor-Yorkville BIA's initial position during the redesign was to provide zero bike parking along this stretch of Bloor, presumably because bicycles are considered ugly and would take away from their preferred minimalism, much like the provision of bike lanes would have taken away from the wide marble sidewalks. The BIA was eventually forced by the City to at least provide some kind of temporary bike parking along the sidewalk, but they were given some control over the type of bike parking. Predictably they chose a design more for its aesthetics than usefulness; a design that cyclist to lock their bikes in awkward ways.

There's been a flurry of alarm among cyclists after this last week's Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting, that a vote on harmonizing of street by-laws seems to be banning cyclists from parking their bikes to anything in the public realm, unless authorized by the General Manager. If something is locked for more than 24 hours then it may be removed (it's not clear from the the text if the 24 hours applies to post and rings as well as "illegal" parking.

It's not clear if the alarm is justified or not, though understandable given the anti-bike bent of those in control of city committees. Councillor Mike Layton was frustrated by the vote:

As part of the streets bylaw, PWIC voted to make it illegal to park a bike anywhere but a bike post. How much bike parking will this lose?

Though city staff have said that in practice things won't be as bad as cyclists fear. Christine Bouchard of of Transportation Services said on Facebook:

Andrew Leinonen has a passion for bikes and recently created a locking design that goes beyond our commonplace perception of what a bike lock is and how it should work. Andrew's inspiration was trying to solve the "endemic problem" of bike theft in Toronto. His StayLocked bicycle is a working concept that has yet to be proven as a real product but breaks the mold by making a part of the bike do double-duty as a bike lock. If a thief tries to break the lock, they also make the bike unridable.

Putting my mind to the endemic problem of urban bike theft, I realized that in a big city like Toronto or NYC, any lock (no matter how bulky or heavy) can only serve as a deterrant for a determined thief with the right tools. This challenge was the inspiration for the StayLocked bike, a design that integrates the lock directly into the frame. The bike's seatstays have been replaced with a U-lock on a pivoting joint. This is a 'scorched earth' approach; any thief that breaks the lock breaks the bike as well, rendering it unrideable and without value.

A reader contacted me to get my advice on retrieving her bike that had been swept up by the City in its yearly round up of abandoned bikes parked at post and rings throughout the city. My reply is below:

Hi Caroline,
I'm sorry to hear you've lost your bike. Your best bet would be to call 311 and find the official answer. From what I know the City staff put the notices on all bikes parked on ring and posts in the spring. The notices state that they will return a week later (or so) and remove the bikes that remain. Presumably they only take the ones with the notice still attached. From what I've been told by the City these bikes are either given to the police to be sold at a police auction or put into metal recycling.

I'm sure the City discussed this with their legal department before going through with this. There are always lots of abandoned bikes so the City is keen on keeping the streetscape clean. If you want to prevent this from happening in the future you will first need to remove the notice and perhaps ensure that your bike doesn't look abandoned by ensuring that it's in reasonable working order.

-- Herb

Hi there,

I was wondering if you know anything about the city's right to claim
someone's bike; specifically my bike that was parked at a ring and post on
my street.

I parked my bike outside all winter. I recently received a paper stapled to
my bike telling me to remove my bike. I didn't. And now my bike and other
bikes I noticed that had this notice attached are gone.

Source: Toronto Cyclists Union

Toronto's taken a small but big step into catching up to cities like Portland and Montreal by installing 16 bike parking spots in a "bike corral", taking over 2 car parking spots in front of the 215 Spadina building, workplace to many cyclists. A lot of credit goes to the tenants at 215 Spadina, including Matt Blackett of Spacing Magazine and Yvonne Bambrick of the Toronto Cyclists Union. Their nagging and pushing Councillor Adam Vaughan and city staff helped to push this into reality. Instead of only 2 people having the privilege of parking their vehicle, now 16 people have it.

Over 75% of 215 tenants bike to work in the summer, according to Matt at Spacing. Many of them being forced to lock up to any sign, tree or gas metre in the vicinity. The extra post and rings installed this spring are already overloaded. It appears as if even the bike corral is full most of the time. Time to install even more!