politics

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.

Scun Yun aka scunny aka Hoof & Cycle, posted his questions to Mayor David Miller on Goldhalk Live and posted it to youtube.

It's a bit depressing to know that the most pro-cycling mayor Toronto had in some time was able to do so little in his two terms. It's all downhill from here, and not in a fun, wheeeeeee!!!! kind of way.

More photos here
A ghost bike was installed at old city hall earlier this week. As of Friday at 11AM it was still there and it has been seen by thousands... a very poignant protest, I thought.
This case will not go away i think until cyclists in Toronto get some form of justice.

Last week, riding home on College Street, I encountered a territorial idiot in the bike lane. This individual decided to open his car door into the bike lane, then stand beside it chatting on his cell phone. On seeing me, he closed his car door enough to leave me six inches to pass. I told him, politely but stiffly, that I needed more room than that, and he closed it almost completely. I rolled by him. From his comments about me not leaving the bike lane, he clearly thought he had the right to use it as a substitute living room.

Today, I ready the comments of Kerri from the CommuteOrlando Blog about "door zone" bike lanes, and I thought on one hand she has a point, but on the other hand, the term "door zone" seems to concede public space to the motorists who open their car doors carelessly, and leave them open.

Toronto does not have the road space available to give motorists who chooses to park on the street permanent control of the space a metre to the right of their cars. If we tried to exclude vehicles (all vehicles, including bicycles) from the zone three feet from any (legally or illegally) parked car, our traffic problems would go from bad to terminal. For that reason, the HTA quite properly places the onus on the person opening a car door or proposing to use a travel lane for chatting on a cell phone or looking for their keys, not the traffic trying to move.

Accidents in which cyclists get hit by car doors cause plenty of injuries and deaths. Good infrastructure design definitely plays a role in keeping cyclists safe. But in calling for better infrastructure design, it matters that we not use language that has the effect of conceding to motorists public space that the law does not grant them and which we cannot afford.

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

See more photos.

No Justice. No Peace.

I frequently find myself reading the comments section in a newspaper or TV network website after a bicycle story. Whatever the news, whether a gain for cyclists, a loss, or an outright tragedy, some person will almost certainly write in and demand we get with the program, notice what century we live in, and embrace the advantages of the personal automobile. Whether these people say so or not, their position implies that law and road policy should have no consideration for those of us who wilfully and stubbornly refuse the great gift of the automobile, and instead merely impede serious people with real errands and jobs by self-indulgently using our bicycles in public.

In reply, I have this to say: almost all the arguments for conformity that drivers now make, smokers could once have made. The argument that public policy should cater to the majority? The year of my birth, a majority of adult men smoked. "Serious" people smoked. People of all walks of life claimed they could not get by without smoking, just as many people now claim they cannot get by without driving cars. Motorists claim they should get special consideration because they pay excess taxes: smokers paid, and pay today, substantially more in taxes than people who have avoided addiction to nicotine.