urban planning

City Transportation staff are developing a trails report and asking the public to review the proposed trail connections for Toronto before the report is submitted to Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. The open house will be in North York, 40 Orchard View Blvd (1 block north of Eglinton and west of Yonge), Monday February 6, 2012, 5:30 to 7:30pm) or comment via Facebook.

Our new mayor made the bike trails the primary focus of bicycle infrastructure. It's exciting that we might have more bike trails in our City! But let's not give the mayor too much credit. The vast majority of these connections were identified in the 2001 Bike Plan. What the mayor did was make these trails a priority over the rest of the bikeway network. In fact, the mayor has supposedly scrapped the Bike Plan because he claims that the roads are no place for bikes (or streetcars for that matter).

Tonight, Thursday, January 26, 2012 is the open house for "upgrading" the Sherbourne bike lanes to provide better separation between cars and bikes. Please drop by from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School, 444 Sherbourne Street (at Wellesley), to provide your feedback.

Back in 2010 Dutch cycling consultants came to our city for ThinkBike, to work with urban professionals to rethink our cycling infrastructure and promotion is done in Toronto. Luckily they chose Sherbourne as one example and one of the teams produced a presentation, which you'd do well to preview before providing your feedback tonight.

A couple thoughts in response to their online notes:

1. It would be good if they continued the separation north of Bloor. There is really no reason why not since as far as I recall there isn't any on-street parking for the first couple blocks. The first block is a bridge over Rosedale Valley which would benefit from better separation from cars, at least to prevent cars from parking in the bike lanes.
2. From Bloor to Gerrard (a good portion of Sherbourne), there is no major roadwork scheduled so staff have suggested that more temporary installation take place, including flexible bollards and painted buffers. Likewise the work from Front to Queens Quay will be figured out in 2013 to coincide with road reconstruction.

True words by Albert Koehl in Rabble of how Mayor Ford is doing more harm to drivers than good with his archaic, anti-city approach to moving people:

Don Cherry has a lesson to teach Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Cherry has spent a career promoting the hockey fighter, sometimes known as the enforcer or goon. The problem is that the science of brain injuries has caught up with (and passed) his assertion that the violence of these bare-knuckle encounters doesn't really hurt anyone, and helps the game. Indeed, the very fighters whose role Cherry has championed are increasingly turning out to be the game's victims.

The cause that Ford championed most loudly during the election was that of motorists. On taking office he declared that the war on the car was over. He eliminated a small vehicle registration tax, then moved forward on his congestion relief plan by getting transit out of the way of motorists. Two of three streetcar lines approved by the previous administration were shelved and a third line would go underground at significantly higher cost. He even promised to build a new subway line. Cyclists, too, were targeted. The council he leads voted to eliminate three bike lanes at a projected cost of $400,000.

Science, and experience, makes it clear that Ford's solutions won't work -- and the main victim will be the motorist.

Cyclists and BIXI users who dock at Union Station might be interested in the proposed changes to Front Street at Union Station meant to better accommodate growing pedestrian traffic. A second public meeting will be held Nov 3, 2011, 3-7 pm at Metro Hall, 55 John Street, Room 309 (here for more info). It will be the second and final public consultation event for this project.

Recommendations include the existing two travel lanes in each direction being reduced to one wider travel lane in each direction, marked with sharrows; expanded sidewalks, with lay-by parking for taxis, buses, etc.; new mid-block pedestrian crossing; and bike parking rings on the north side of Front Street (moved from the south side of street). The report also recommends that BIXI docking stations be placed immediately east of Bay Street and west of York Street on newly expanded sidewalks.

There is a Facebook group. And you can send comments to Jason Diceman at FrontStUnion@toronto.ca.

"Where the bike lane ends" by Tino

Toronto's Official Plan is a powerful policy instrument that can help improve a city wide bikeway network over time and deal with the gaps in the network. We still have until Oct. 17 to provide feedback and suggestions for the plan in the City's short survey. This is a good place for us to tell policy makers what is our priority for the city.

If you are wondering how you can provide useful suggestions for the Official Plan, one place to start would be to identify gaps in the Bikeway Network and think of how those gaps could be closed (hey, you could even suggest they put back in the recently-voted-to-be-removed Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount!).

Some examples of suggestions for the Official Plan:

The City is in the first stage of its new Official Plan Reviews and currently in the midst of the September Open Houses. Next week the Open Houses are at York Civic Centre on Sept 26 and at North York Civic Centre on Sept 27.

Open Houses run 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and include facilitated discussions. If you cycle regularly you may be interested in attending one of the open houses and provide some input on how the Official Plan can benefit active transportation and, in particular, cycling.

The Open House material (discussion guide, presentation and display boards) will be posted under the "Events and Meetings" tab on the Review website.

People can also take the fast feedback survey which runs to October 17. It can be good alternative if you can't make one of the open houses. I completed the survey and found that they are already aware that cycling is important to take account of in planning our cities and would like to know more of how we think the official plan can reflect that.

Why kill the Jarvis bike lanes and at the same time claim to be building a bikeway network?

Everyone with half a brain and who was honest enough to the traffic experts knows that Jarvis works with bike lanes. Car traffic volumes were the same before and after. Logically, putting back the fifth lane wouldn't change car traffic volumes either. With bottlenecks at the top and bottom of Jarvis, it doesn't matter how many lanes you install in between, only so many cars can squeeze through the pinch point during any period of time.

We also know that the number of vehicles entering downtown hasn't changed in the last 20 years - there is no traffic congestion problem downtown.

We also know that the original Jarvis Street Environmental Assessment always called for a reduction to four car lanes, whether it be for increased sidewalks or bike lanes. At the City Council meeting a number of councillors brought up the ghost of the EA as an argument for removing the bike lanes, yet they were all to willing to ignore it as Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong called for the re-installation of the fifth car lane.

We know that the city is in a budget crisis and yet a councillor's pet project would cost $200,000 that would have no significant positive impact for anyone. We also had a pretty good idea that most motorists who use Jarvis aren't even actually anti-bike lane, even on Jarvis. So why did the Jarvis bike lanes die?

The answer is Politics, claims Marcus Gee. And politics follows a different logic:

The Jarvis lanes were a red flag to motorists from the start. Jarvis is one of the few broad streets taking car commuters in and out of downtown. Removing the roadway’s reversing fifth lane to make room for bikes added minutes to that painful commute. Suburban councillors with car-commuting residents denounced the bike lanes. They were doomed from the moment Mayor Rob Ford took office on a pledge to end the “war on the car.”

Jarvis had to be sacrificed if the mayor and hostile councillors were ever going to back bike lanes elsewhere. It was an unspoken tradeoff: You can have your lost traffic lane on Jarvis back if we can take away space on other, less vital roads for bike lanes.

That will strike cycling zealots as the worst kind of appeasement. In their world, cycling is so virtuous and car commuting so ruinous that making any kind of concession amounts to surrender. They are vowing to fight on to save the Jarvis lanes during the 18-month reprieve they won for the lanes at Wednesday’s council meeting.

Daniel Egan, Cycling Infrastructure and Programs Manager, Transportation Services, has clarified the modifications to the Rogers Road bike lanes, stating that it does not mean, as some have thought, that drivers will be allowed to park in the bike lanes (Councillor Layton, in particular, had expressed his concern in a letter to Councillor Palacio and staff):

"It has come to my attention that there is a public perception that the proposed modifications to the Rogers Road bicycle lanes will allow drivers to park in the bicycle lanes. I want to clear up this misunderstanding.

For those who don't know Rogers Road, it currently has a wide painted centre median in the sections where there was left over space when the road was restriped with bicycle lanes. We're proposing changes at two locations to improve parking and/or traffic flow. Just west of Bronoco Avenue, we are removing the painted median and shifting the bicycle lane over so that we can provide some short term parking spaces in front of St. Nicholas Di Barri School. This change will enable parents a safe place to stop to pick-up or drop-off their kids without obstructing the bicycle lane. There will also be a short left turn lane added to facilitate turns onto Bronoco Ave.

At the second location, we are eliminating one parking space just west of McRoberts Ave and the painted centre median east of the intersection to provide a short left turn lane. In both locations the bicycle lanes are being maintained with minor adjustments. And parking will not be permitted in the bicycle lanes.