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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?

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.

Via the Bike-sharing blog, an animated video of "Boris Bikes" (as the BIXI bikes in London, UK have been nicknamed after Mayor Boris) by Dr. Martin Austwick at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis - University College London - being used in one day when the London tube was on strike.

As mass transit goes, one can see the expanded possibilities for short trips over a wide area.

And mapping from just one cyclist over 4 years, via OpenFile. James Redekop mapped his GPS recordings, showing the tracing of his every movement by recumbent for almost twelve thousand kilometres through Toronto's streets, paths, and trails from 2004 to 2009.

James looks like he's a downtown commuter, like many of us, combined with many far-reaching recreational rides up Toronto's river valleys, Beltline trails, waterfront trails and island jaunts.

The map geeks at the Toronto star have outdone themselves with this google map of Commuter cyclists by census tract (a small area as defined by Statistics Canada's census). It shows the breakdown of how people commute who live in that area. The census tracts with red boundaries are over 10%.

Politicians need to stop treating cyclists as if they are marginal. If you lived in an area with cycling at 13% and showed this data to your councillor maybe a lightbulb would go off in their head. It's still a minority but not one they can always safely ignore.

It doesn't address who commutes through the area. For instance, the area southwest of Dundas West and Dufferin has 11.5% of commutes by bicycle, yet there may be many people driving through from the suburbs which will water down that percentage on the road.

The highest percentage is on the Toronto Islands at 29%. This is unsurprising, since no cars are allowed. It's odd to think that 18% of them still drive to work - they must be parking cars downtown.

The second highest is in Parkdale at 14%! This area bounded by Dundas, Queen, Sorauren and Lansdowne has an above the Toronto average household income and is mostly detached houses with a few condos.

The core of the highest rates of bike commuting is in the Annex - bounded by Bloor, Dovercourt, Spadina and Dundas. Leslieville and East York aren't too far behind.

This is my third map mashup. It compares the share of commuters who are cyclists with the location of Toronto Cyclists Union membership. The map shows that the richest deposits of potential bike union members are where there are already a high number of cycling commuters.

Like bike shops and bike accidents these areas are located in downtown and west of downtown. These could be considered the easy picking areas for increasing bike union membership. It's possible that the bike union's current attempts to create ward captains in every ward of Toronto is actually slowing the growth of the bike union membership. A concerted effort to recruit members in the core might have a bigger impact on the bike union and provide more resources to recruit members in the suburbs later on. I'd be interested to see if there are alternative conclusions.

Bicycle Mode Share and Accidents in Toronto

This is a third look at the Bike Modal Share of Toronto. In this map I layered the Bike Accident map from Patrick Cain's Toronto Star blog on top of the Census 2006 bicycle modal share in Toronto. By graphically I mean that I just took the two images rotated them until they lined up and prettied them up. Not very sophisticated but the results speak for themselves.

Bicycle Mode Share and Bike Shops in Toronto

It may come as no surprise that bike shops are located where people bike.

I had previously posted the Census map of bicycle commuters in Toronto. I thought it would be interesting to overlay other information on top. So I created an old fashioned "mashup of the bike shop locations (source: Bike Union website) and the map of the Bicycle Modal Share in Toronto. Not having access to the original census data, I had to just take the image and rotate the bike shop map so it roughly fit the census map. You see the result above.

There seems to be a pretty high correlation between bike shops and commuter cyclists. In a previous post I had wondered why bike shops couldn't survive in the east end. The really low modal split for cyclists in Scarborough gives a pretty good indication, though it appears that there might not be such a big problem in East York and Leslieville.

If were going to open a bike shop I'd look at this map carefully. There are some darker blue spots with few to no bike shops, such as Etobicoke, Toronto Islands, the Portlands and Leaside (I think).

The City staff in planning has analyzed Census of Canada 2006 commuter information to give an update on the number of people cycling in Toronto.

Cycling is also more common among people who live closer to downtown. For example, the bicycle mode share for the census tract located at College St. and Bathurst St. is 17%, while most suburban areas of the city have a bicycle mode share of less than 1%.

In 2006 1.7% of Torontonians rode their bicycle to work. The average in Canada of 1.3% is higher than Toronto suburbs' and the Golden Horseshoe region's modal share of 0.5%. Why is that? There is the obvious answer that outside of urban centres cycling requires riding long-distances with high-speed traffic. But Hamilton is fairly urban. The other likely factors are that cycling infrastructure in these regions is not adequate and there is a weak cycling culture.

But we still need to have a sense of perspective that 1.7% is not that much higher than 0.5%, especially compared to locations with about 30% of all trips made by bike such as Denmark or The Netherlands. In Toronto the West-end and Toronto Islands are approaching those numbers. The Toronto Islands allow no personal cars so that makes sense. As for Toronto's west-end there's still a lot of work to make cyclists feel as if the City cares.