statistics

In this Globe and Mail produced interactive map of cyclists collisions from 1986 to 2010 there is a sea of pins representing reported collisions by cyclists and colour-coded for injury severity. It's a thing of beauty and nice to zoom in and out. But that soon gets old once you realize that there is little else that we can currently conclude from it. Can we tell if my route or neighbourhood is safer than another? Can we tell if cycling in Toronto has gotten safer over time? Not really. We are missing a key denominator - bike traffic. Not surprising since the City has only begun to collect this data in a more systematic manner. At the very least, the authors could try to explore some of the other interesting data in the dataset that they've hosted.

That doesn't seem to stop them from trying to reach some broad conclusions without all the information.

They claim: "Toronto falling behind pack in averting bicycle collisions, data reveals". Well, the data doesn't reveal that since you haven't compared the number of cyclists and bike trips over time and between cities. What are the cycling populations in each city? Have the number of bike trips grown or not?

I just received BIXI Toronto's July newsletter and these are the milestones they've reached in just over 2 months:

• Average time/trips (for members): 12 min. 54 sec.
• Average distance/trips (for members): 2.15 Km
• Number of persons who have tried the system so far: 17,903
• Busiest day: July 1st (with 2,907 trips made)
• Total distance travelled so far: 244 998 km (50 times the distance between Vancouver and Halifax!)
• Number of trips since launch (since May 3): over 100,000

I just got back from Montreal where BIXI was born. The bikes are a bit older, and some are a bit worse for wear, but they've stood up to some rigorous use. Montreal has some great separated bike lanes, which tonnes of bike traffic, but not every street is good for cycling. They too have many streets like Toronto's but with the large coverage of BIXI you see people biking even on the less friendly streets. In Toronto we've got fewer friendly bike lanes, but BIXI is just as popular and may reach its 1 millionth ride in less than one year. A big achievement in Rob Ford's Toronto.

The Public Works and Infrastructure Committee voted to take out Jarvis bike lanes in a surprise motion today, on top of the motion to take out lanes on Pharmacy and Birchmount. I don't think the councillors realize the blowback of Jarvis compared to Pharmacy/Birchmount (where removal is quite sad, but not much organized local opposition). Jarvis may yet prove to be a lightening rod around which cyclists will gather (to be energized?).

I've collected some choice tweets below. And please read Mez's great piece on why Jarvis is important and why we should defend it:

• goldsbie: Now heading out for a ride up and down the Jarvis bike lanes. Please feel free to join me... #bikeTO
• @meslin: Summary of today: Toronto's cyclists just got run over by amalgamation. Suburban councillors have declared a War on the Bike. #bikeTO
• @m_layton: The Public Works cmt has voted to remove 8km of bike lanes including Jarvis st. Thank Clr Parker, Grimes, Shiner and Minnan-Wong.
• @kristynwongtam: Cllr Parker moves motion to remove Jarvis bike lanes. As the local councillor I wasn't asked, nor was my community consulted.

Dave Meslin organized a bike count a couple days ago to find out if the John Street Corridor EA's 2% bike mode share claim was correct or not. I joined the effort. What we found out, and suspected, was that it was quite unlikely that 2% could be accurate. The EA claimed that cycling rates on John Street were a steady 2%, morning, afternoon, weekday and weekend. For our count during a 2 hour period from 7:30 to 9:30 am, the bike mode share was much higher (32% for southbound bike traffic at John and Richmond; 50% bike mode share for southbound bike traffic at John and Queen; and 38% bike mode share for both north and southbound at John and Queen). A lot higher.

In the Star today Vaughan responded that “The reality is that the traffic counts that were done by the professionals were done to the standards that are acceptable to the city’s engineering department. They are what they are and I’m not going to get into a quibble if he (Meslin) stood there for an hour one morning and saw 20 cyclists."

The Torontoist brought to our attention the City's release of 2010 data on pedestrian and cycling injuries and fatalities from collisions with motor vehicles (on the bottom of the Transportation Services page).

According to the presumption of fault by the police (which wouldn't be the same as the court's finding of fault), in only 33% of the collisions were the police able to determine that the motorists were driving "properly", with about 12% where the driving behaviour is unknown (for the average of the last 5 years).

If we can use the 2006 census as a reference for mode share, it appears as if cycling is twice as dangerous as walking in the city. While there were twice as many pedestrian/car collisions as cyclist/car collisions; there are about 4 times as many people walking to work as biking to work (1.7% bike mode share versus 7.1% walking mode share). A cyclist, it appears, is twice as likely to be in a minor or major collision compared to a pedestrian. While cycling is overall still a safe transportation mode, we could still do a lot to create better conditions for cyclists so they can at least reach the lesser risk levels of pedestrians.

Portland is tops for cycling in large North American cities, BikePortland.org reports on a new study, Analysis of Bicycling Trends and Policies in Large American Cities: Lessons for New York, by John Pucher of Rutgers University and Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech. Toronto, while still higher up in terms of percentage of cyclists commuting (especially in the core), it seems to be falling behind in other measures. Pucher and Buehler make comparisons among American cities on a number of different cycling statistics, including cycling levels, safety and policies. They then compared the data from the large American cities to three large Canadian cities, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Canada overall came out looking good in some areas. Even though cycling rates have been rising faster in the US, the percentage of bike commuters in Canada is still double that of the US.

The number of bike commuters in the USA rose by 64% from 1990 to 2009, and the bike share of commuters rose from 0.4% to 0.6%. Over the shorter period from 1996 to 2006, the number of bike commuters in Canada rose by 42%, and the bike share of commuters rose from 1.1% to 1.3%. From 1988 to 2008, cycling fatalities fell by 66% in Canada and by 21% in the USA; serious injuries fell by 40% in Canada and by 31% in the USA.

Photo by James Schwartz of The Urban Country.

In North America and the UK bike lanes and cycle tracks (separated bike lanes) have a history of being controversial, though less so now, thanks in part to more experience with installation and better research. In the rest of Europe they have been more or less a non-issue. Some countries like The Netherlands and Denmark have a long history of cycle tracks. In North America motorists tend to swing on either side of the issue: many motorists refuse to give up any asphalt for bike lanes, or even sidewalks. Other motorists just can't conceive of dealing with bikes in front or alongside them so hope for some separation. A minority of cyclists (who've usually called themselves vehicular cyclists) have adamantly opposed to most bike infrastructure. Their primary reason for opposing is that in the past municipalities have created particularly poor bike paths and have legislated cyclists to use them. Some of their concerns of the dangers are warranted but appear to apply mostly to poor implementations. New research has shown that cycle tracks may in fact reduce the risk of injury over either the road or the sidewalk. Most everyone else on bike likes the idea of getting some dedicated space, and won't really feel comfortable unless they have some separation where car speeds are high, or other calming measures where our society is willing to allow limitations on motorists.

Toronto cyclists face a dangerous combination of streetcar tracks and motorists, the Bicyclists' Injuries and the Cycling Environment Study (BICE study) has found in its preliminary results. The BICE study is coordinated by the Cycling in Cities program at the University of British Columbia, which interviewed 690 cyclists injured and admitted to hospital in Toronto and Vancouver in 2008 and 2009.

Injury by circumstance: preliminary results from BICE study at UBC

The initial analysis chose 150 interviews from each city and created a picture of the different environments each city's cyclists encounter. For downtown Toronto the researchers found that one-third of injuries involved streetcar tracks and a sizable portion of that involved cyclists falling because they are avoiding double-parked cars, cars moving out of parking spaces or drivers opening doors. The cyclists then slip or get their wheel stuck in the streetcar track.

The other big portion of downtown Toronto injuries involved "dooring" where the cyclists hit the car door because the motorist or passenger opened the door as the cyclists passed. This contrasts with Vancouver where most injuries involved car collisions.