advocacy

City Transportation staff presented their vision of an improved Sherbourne Street for cyclists. The cyclists were pleased and there did not seem to be much political opposition from any group with the left mostly on side and with Councillor Minnan-Wong on board. You can view all the presentation slides now.

When determining how to best separate cyclists from motorists, City staff needed to take into account that it would still need to be permeable. Their design considerations included:

• A rolled curb will separate the bike lane from the vehicle lanes
• Bikes may enter and exit the cycle tracks
• Emergency vehicles and Wheel-Trans can access cycle track when required
• Garbage collection maintained as usual
• Cycle tracks will be maintained all year

Sherbourne, North of Gerrard

Typical Intersection - the separation narrows bringing cyclists into clearer view with motorists. Note the indirect lefts, which I covered in a previous post..

Cross section in mid-block

Montreal separated bike lane - probably not exactly how Sherbourne will look

You are invited to an open house to review designs for separated bike lanes on Sherbourne, likely to be approved and installed this year.

When: January 26 5:00 PM-8:00
Where: Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School Gym - 444 Sherbourne St. (at Wellesley)

You can read up on City's info on separated bikeways. What is likely to be a contentious aspect of the separated bike lanes is the removal and offsetting of all on-street car parking, some of which will be moved to side streets. Hopefully this won't hinder it.

If you can't attend you can call the cycling infrastructure voicemail: 416-338-1066 or email: bikesherbourne@toronto.ca

From City's page:

The existing Sherbourne Street bike lanes were installed in 1996. On July 12, 2011, City Council directed City staff to proceed with detailed design and consultation to upgrade the Sherbourne bike lanes with the aim to better separate cars and bikes and improve safety for cyclists. The construction of the upgraded bike lanes is scheduled to start in summer 2012 in combination with the resurfacing of Sherbourne Street.

Separated bike lanes have been implemented in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver and are popular in hundreds of other cities around the world. Sherbourne is the first of a series of separated bike lanes approved by Council to improve the cycling network in downtown Toronto.

Photo: Herb. Bells on Bloor 2011, popular as ever, even though City Council voted to stop the Environmental Assessment

Cycling and politics were a hot item in 2011, from the vote to remove Jarvis Bike Lanes, the vote to install protected bike lanes, the launch of Bixi, and the politicians who took cheap shots by trying to make cyclists into urban terrors. Here's a recap of 2011's top 11 blog posts, ranked by the number of comments. It's not the only way to rank blog posts, but the easiest to come by.

1. Separated bike lane proposal and battle heating up
   Bixi bikes are on the streets and the fight continues to get separated bike lanes approved for downtown. Some lefty councillors oppose, some support.
2. Few bike lanes: the cause of most sidewalk cycling
   A pedestrian dies after colliding with a cyclist in North York. There is a strong call to crack down on cyclists yet the pedestrian's family say he was an avid cyclist and understood how bad cycling infrastructure is in the burbs. And where are the critics when a pedestrian is killed by a motorist?
3. Public Works committee votes to take out Jarvis bike lanes: total -8 km bike lanes this year
   The vote to take out the Jarvis bike lanes made international news. What big city in this era votes to take out bike lanes?

How can the intersection at Dundas and Sterling (and at Dundas and College for that matter) be made safer? People are thinking about this since Jenna Morrison was killed there recently. City staff have been to visit; The Urban Country and Mez have built a temporary "trash" bike lane and tested it with drivers; and Hamish Wilson has drawn his idea for improving the intersection:

Not so much driver/cyclist, nor the lack of sideguards, but how the City failed to do the intersection for cycling safety. This includes how the short bit of marked by centre line road at the intersection actually creates a pinch point at the rightwards curve, and this combines with normal practices of curve-cutting and then how trucks can kinda shift/occupy more space as they turn eg. signs that mark "Wide Right Turns" on some trucks.

I've put in to Councillor Layton and Bailao and some others this redesign idea for the intersection, ideally to be done this fall, with colour, and I didn't put in the concept of a marked sidewalk for the pedestrians, silly me. I believe there may be a motion arising for this Council meeting, but it won't necessarily be to add 12M of bike lane on the southbound lane, but focussing on sideguards is not the only prevention.

The Chief Coroner of Ontario, Dr. Andrew McCallum, announced this morning that his office would be investigating cycling deaths over the last four years to determine ways to prevent them, reports the Star and CBC (read the announcement). Ten to twenty cyclists die every year in Ontario as a result of injuries on Ontario streets. A coalition of cycling and senior groups - Toronto Cyclists Union, Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists and the United Senior Citizens of Ontario - wrote to the coroner requesting the inquest, and an opinion piece was written in the Star in August by lawyers Albert Koehl and Patrick Brown, along with former president of the United Senior Citizens of Ontario, Marie Smith, explaining why they wanted the inquest.

A similar review of 38 cycling deaths in the city of Toronto over an 11-year period was completed in 1998. That review led to a number of cycling initiatives in the city, including the Bike Plan, the city-wide network of cycling lanes, and the establishment of the cycling advisory committee, which was disbanded earlier this year.

Motorists who harass cyclists, by honking, yelling at us, or buzzing us have no excuse. They don't even have the lousy excuse that we hold them up, because we don't. Motorists who harass cyclists do it because they can. They have a steel cage to protect them from the consequences of their behaviour, and an engine to run away. Other people suffer the consequences; often the most vulnerable of road users. To see an example of this, take a look at the accompanying video.

NOW featured a letter by the daughter of the man hit and killed by a cyclist on the sidewalk this month. She felt people were quick to blame cyclists when in fact her own father loved cycling but found it hard to bike in the suburbs:

I want to thank Enzo DiMatteo for writing Dundas And Huron, A Complicated Corner (NOW Daily, July 11). Although my response comes almost two months after this article was published, DiMatteo’s insights are still current and appreciated.

My father passed away in the hospital after being hit by a sidewalk cyclist in the Jane and Finch area earlier this month. DiMatteo astutely illustrates the complicatedness of transportation issues. Cycling is an affordable mode of transportation for Jane and Finch residents. Unfortunately, the lack of bicycle lanes and the precarious traffic conditions along Finch West, and other inner suburban streets, for that matter, compel cyclists to ride on the sidewalk.

My father instilled a love for cycling in me since childhood. It is devastating for all of us to see his life being taken away by something we enjoy greatly. As a cycling advocate, I know the complicatedness of the situation that led to my father being killed by a cyclist. As DiMatteo points out, a situation like this in Rob Ford’s Toronto easily calls for blaming cyclists when the issues are far more complex and troubling. Thank you for the insightful journalism.

As an idea, you can't argue with it: cyclists shouldn't kill pedestrians. Moreover, cycling culture should take the obligation not to kill pedestrians very seriously indeed, and jurisdictions, from the city to the province, with responsibility for traffic safety should frame a comprehensive strategy to ensure the cyclists who do not understand our shared responsibilities get the message.

So how did the recent Globe and Mail editorial, which tried to make these simple points, do such a bad job? The answer partly lies in the atrocious phrasing the editorial claims cyclists should "know our place". And if we don't, do y'all have a rope, a tree and a bunch of good ole boys to teach us? Some phrases just bring up too many bad memories, and editorial writers should leave such phrases out of their tool boxes. Whoever wrote this particular editorial then added pomposity to their list of rhetorical blunders by writing this: "We do not occupy a planet where cyclist safety trumps all else." I get it: cyclists don't have a right to risk other people's lives to stay safe ourselves.