toronto cyclists union

I Bike TO update: I've resolved some security issues that appeared on Monday. The website should be running smoothly and securely again.

I had published a poll on the proposed Toronto Cyclists Union name change. I decided to take it down since it was not going to provide an accurate sample of the bike union membership. It would do the opposite of just muddying the discussion. Website polls are blunt tools that can only tell us who is most eager to vote and not a representative sample of the population. The resulting numbers may look accurate enough but they won't mean much.

In this case the population is the bike union membership, so to know what they are thinking we would have to conduct a survey of a random sample of the membership. To be precise about 325 people would have to be surveyed. I used this handy sample size calculator based on a membership of 2100, confidence level of 95% and margin of error of +/- 5. For those interested in this survey methodology stuff, wikipedia does a good job of giving an overview. For everyone else, let's just keep conversing.

John Taranu, volunteer of the Bike Union, provides some tips in helping to reduce bike theft. John also introduces the isthisbikestolen.com app created at the Random Hacks of Kindness / Open Data Hackathon on December 5-6 in Toronto. It lets you check if the bike you're buying has been stolen.

More on fighting bike theft, see bikeunion.to/theft

How to find the serial number of a bike:

How to register a bike:

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.

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.

In politics there is usually compromise and negotiation. Politics is messy. In particular, the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting last month was messy. Cyclists were demoralized by some bad decisions to remove bike lanes on Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount that were unsupported by any evidence that they created traffic congestion. Traffic engineers be damned. Even while right wingers tried to create a justification for urban highways on residential streets like Jarvis, they recognized that Rob Ford's bikes-in-the-park "bike plan" wasn't going to fly and that there needed to be something for urban cyclists, and the one thing they were willing to allow were improvements on other bike lanes with protection and buffers from car traffic.

The Bikeway Network Report for 2011 came out yesterday. Overall it's a big letdown, though I'm happy to see that Sherbourne, Bloor Viaduct and Wellesley are proposed to get protected bike lanes. The Chair of Public Works was calling for something more ambitious, at least for the downtown, but the staff seem to prefer to cautiously "assess" and "study" Richmond and Adelaide instead of even proposing to removing any car traffic lanes or parking, safely stating that the Mayor will only support bike lanes that don't "impede" traffic. The report will also be asking the committee to make a decision on the Scarborough bike lanes on Pharmacy and Birchmount, which have been shown to have little negative effect on car traffic.

The bike union made this statement:

This report was released today and the Toronto Cyclists Union, representing over 1,100 members, is disappointed with the lack of progress in the report. It is not bold enough to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who ride bicycles. In fact, several of the recommendations outlined in the report set the City back on cycling progress. While other cities are moving forward at a great pace to improve conditions for cyclists as part of an overall transportation plan, Torontonians who ride bicycles are being left behind.

Read more to find out what we're facing, but please send out an email to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee to support the Bike Union's recommendations for improving it (see below for details).

Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who's ward includes Sherbourne, has been playing her cards closely. Today we learned that she at least agrees in principle to the separated bike lanes / cycle tracks plan for Sherbourne Street. On Twitter this morning Rob (@rmeynell) asked Councillor Kristyn Wong Tam:

Councillor McConnell is on board with separated bike lanes on Sherbourne, but @kristynwongtam is holding out. With respect, why? @bikeTO

Councillor Wong-Tam responded on Twitter:

@rmeynell @bikeTO Agreement in principle. Looking forward designs & community consultation. Same consideration for all public improvements.

It's possible that the meeting with the Bike Union and 3 major resident groups in her ward who support the network in principle; the Bay Cloverhill Residents Association, the ABC Residents Association and the Moore Park Residents Association (their letter), have helped to nudge her closer to the yes column. In an April email Wong-Tam sent a vague response, in which she dropped the old "I'm an avid cyclist" line (I've had people tell me to get out of their car's way and tell me they're an avid cyclist so Wong-Tam would be well advised to stay away from that phrase):

Thank you very much for your e-mail. There have been a number of constituents who have contacted us about this bicycle network and Councillor Wong-Tam has asked me to respond on her behalf.

I got the new Bike Union membership card in the mail. Membership now provides discounts at various Toronto businesses: Curbside Cycle, Cycle Solutions, Hoopdriver Bicycles, Urbane Cyclist, Autoshare, Spokes and Sports, Sweet Pete's, Mod Robes, Bikes on Wheels, Mari Cla Ro, and more coming.