winter

The Sherbourne cycle track is being plowed! In one sense this is banal and hardly anything to get excited over. But since cyclists are routinely ignored when it comes to city services, this could be viewed as an important step in terms of normalizing cycling infrastructure. Where Toronto's road services staff previously largely ignored bike lanes and paths, they now have specific equipment and directives to clear the Sherbourne cycle track. Because the City had started clearing the Martin Goodman Trail (started under Mayor Miller) and purchased plows that could fit the width of a trail, it meant that it became that much easier to start plowing the Sherbourne cycle track.

@larrylarry tweeted this photo of the freshly plowed Sherbourne cycle track, the day of the Christmas storm. Some people have pointed out problems. While these are valid issues with using the lane, I'm more interested in how the gears at City Hall are slowly shifting. And where we can best put pressure for further change.

It is rare to find a bike lane that is being properly plowed. Almost all of them suffer from either not being plowed at all, or where parked cars entering and leaving will push it full of snow again, making them largely unusable. Sherbourne cycle track suffers from some of that and a new problem of pedestrians using it instead of the unplowed sidewalk. But these are not problems inherent to a cycle track.

Sherbourne is a mixed bag - not everything is working well, particularly the issue of cars parking in the cycle track - but this isn't the end of the story. The City will tweak it and cycling advocates will push for improvements both on Sherbourne and for future cycle track plans. The major improvement is that the City is setting higher standards for cycling infrastructure and this will have bigger benefits down the road.

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.

Saturday night's Icycle 2011 saw a new winner for the men racing, an almost upset for the women racing, some bare chested men, superheros, some loose screws, and one tutu. All the photos below are from tocvos and Tino (click through the photos to see original).

The "Mental Oriental" pulls off an early upset over the repeat winner, Briana. (That's what was written on her Leaf's jersey folks.) Briana regains respect in the last race where she blows away the field.

The upset in the men's field. The masked man kicks butt. (I didn't stick around for the award ceremony so I don't have names and was too lazy to do proper research).

Organizer and Bike Joint owner Derek grandstands.

Rick the Number Guy displays the loop number on nice, newly laminated cards.

These sharp-looking tires are what you need to contend in this race.

Lots of exciting spills too!

It's time again for the annual article on tips for winter cycling in one of the mainstream newspapers and once again they go over the top in trying to provide the definitive guide to provide security against every contingency. I admire their earnest attempt to give some advice for those brave souls, but ends up with making the result look more like an astronaut on a wintery moon launch. To be fair last year the Star reported that the key thing for winter cycling are tissues, but this was only because Yvonne had tried to convince them winter cycling is easy:

Winter Astronaut: Toronto Star

But do we really need to start training for NASA to get through the winter? My proposal: think about what you'd wear if you were going for a long winter walk and wear it:

Look: warm clothes! Practical, but not particularly fashionable. (Photo by Tino)

This guy has a smart-looking, warm hat. (Photo by Xander)

Every Canadian knows the drill: warm jacket, mitts, boots, long underwear and toque. The only thing I would add as important are lights for the bike. That's it.

Or you can even try to be fashionable (from Xander) though it would be hard to wear long johns under tight jeans:

No, Holland is no land of unicorns and candy cane trees, despite being below sea level, and filled with tulips, bicycles, and people who don't stop cycling for any kind of weather (except maybe if the polders fill up with water). This is why their expertise is particularly useful as an export, as the following videos demonstrate well.

Then (1950s):

Bicycle Rush hour now:

Rain doesn't stop them:

Nor winter:

What's so special about the Dutch? Not much. They just happen to have lots of cycling infrastructure and have built up lots of cycling expertise over the last 100 hundred years. And I've been informed by folks at the City that they'll soon be coming to Toronto to share their experiences with planners here with the inaugural "Toronto ThinkBike Workshops":

The City of Toronto will be working with the Consulate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, to host Dutch bicycle planners on September 20th and 21st.

The Dutch have established themselves as world leaders, in the area of bicycle infrastructure design. Toronto and Dutch bicycle professionals will form two teams for this event. Each team will be given a Toronto problem to solve, with results unveiled at a free public event Tuesday September 21st, 6-8 pm. Which team will develop the most exciting design solution? Come watch the presentations and vote.

El Mocambo - 2nd floor, 464 Spadina Ave. Tuesday September 21, 2010, 6:00 -8:00 pm
Free admission. Cash bar

I've been informed that the two "Toronto problems to solve" will include the Sherbourne corridor in a conversion to separated bike facilities and the other will be in finding a preferred east-west corridor downtown - likely Richmond or Adelaide.

West Toronto Rail Path last night. Somehow I thought it might be free of ice or snow.

Wrong.

Well, it was a lot fun to ride. Kinda like mountain biking on sandy soil.

Nice to see other cyclists as well using the trail on such a nice winter's night.

Update: the URL was wrong. This corrected one will work.

From the desk of the bike union, there's a survey on the maintenance of the Martin Goodman Trail (waterfront trail) through this last winter. Fill in the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2YB5Jp2tFqQzWsyEj4aB...

Last fall, the Toronto Cyclists Union gave deputations in favour of a winter snow clearing pilot project for the Martin Goodman Trail. Once it was approved to go ahead, we agreed to help the Transportation department gather feedback from cyclists about how successful they felt the initiative was.

If you used the Martin Goodman Trail over the winter, now is your chance to let the City know what you thought of their winter trail maintenance efforts.

Transportation Services maintained the Martin Goodman Trail in wintertime from the north side of Northern Dancer Blvd to Sherbourne Street and Stadium Road to Windermere Avenue from January 2009 onwards, for the first time. If you used the Trail during that time, please complete this short survey (one survey per computer).

The ice race has come and gone. Enjoy the ice race videos from "arbyw", photos from Vic and photos from TorontoCranks. The following are photos from Vic.

Benny's gumption

Ice race fans

Derek Chadbourne - Ice race organizer

Winner of men's race

Winner of women's race

A valient fall (at least he tried, folks)

Storing bikes on ice