traffic

This is the third of three articles on Active Transportation by Toronto-to-Orillia blogger, tucorides. He's given us permission to reprint them from over at Orillia Gets Active.

Tucorides says, "After having looked at why North America became an automobile dependent society, and what problems this has resulted in, today's article will look at active transportation as a sustainable way forward for North American cities in general, and Orillia in particular."

If automobile use has caused a wide-array of problems in areas such as personal health, economic loss, and even planetary survival, and if it was never a well-considered transportation solution in the first place, what are we to do? Especially now that we’re running out of cheap oil and have designed our cities to be hostile towards anything BUT automobiles? Well, the best answer is to lace up your comfortable walking shoes and get your bike out of the garage. Active transportation (walking and biking) is one of the best solutions we have.

This is the second of three articles on Active Transportation by Toronto-to-Orillia blogger, tucorides. He's given us permission to reprint them from over at Orillia Gets Active.

Tucorides explains, "Article Two looks at the problems caused by North America's dependence on the automobile."

In a previous article, I argued that North American cities became dependent on the automobile not because it was a good idea, but because the automobile lobby did two very effective things: a) they convinced governments to redesign public space to be pro-automobile and anti-public transit, making people NEED cars (whether they liked it or not), and they used advertising to convince people who didn't need a car, WANT a car:

To be without an automobile was increasingly a form of public nakedness in which a man, as one commentator put it, “ran the risk of being singled out among his fellows, especially on Sundays and holidays, as either hopelessly poor or perversely out of the swim (McCarthy, 2007, p. 53).

This is the first of three articles on Active Transportation by Toronto-to-Orillia blogger, tucorides. He's given us permission to reprint them from over at Orillia Gets Active. We will be printing the second and third over the next two days.

He says 'Looking at North America's automobile dependent society, today's article will examine “How We Got Here”. Following articles will look at the problems caused by automobile dependence, and an overview of why active transportation – walking and cycling – provides a sustainable way forward for the 21st century.'

In his 2006 book Lives Per Gallon, Terry Tamminen asks the following hypothetical question – if you had the chance to wipe the slate clean, and redesign all the cities in the world, would you put the homes and the workplaces about 50km away from each other, connect them with concrete highways, and force people to travel in 3 ton steel containers which are fueled by one of the most precious resources on earth, and which burn it in the most environmentally damaging manner possible? (p. 165). Hopefully, we would answer his question by replying “No.” This leads to another question however, why did we design cities this way?

Toronto Police Services have a new 2008 Traffic Issues Survey online.

This questionnaire was designed to find out how you feel about traffic issues in Toronto, and the Toronto Police response to these issues. Your answers will be strictly confidential and your participation is appreciated.

The survey starts out by asking if you're primarily a motorist, passenger, transit user, cyclist or pedestrian. Let's get some cyclists to provide answers!

Bad Cabbie

Questions on this survey span various topics such as collisions, responses to collisions, what factors influence traffic flow, satisfaction with the police, neighbourhood issues, city-wide issues, and much more.

Please take a few moments to fill out the survey and let the Toronto Police know how cyclists feel while riding on city streets. You can answer it online until march 14th.

Clever advert for a the a popular box store in Germany.

From the original MyBikeLane New York:

By my reckoning, MyBikeLane is 1 year old today! Congratulations to the innovator of this pioneering open-source people's law enforcement site.

This van has it's hands spread wide open and is clapping for MyBikeLane . . . not.

But look at us! Toronto's MyBikeLane is number two after NY with 370 posts and 40 members. Unfortunately, we do have lots of opportunities for photos here in the T-dot, especially on Bay and College streets. Here is a pic added by Vic of one sadly typical infraction on College street, below.

Over at the Spacing Wire Matt Blackett has posted a street-level piece on Vancouver's cycling infrastructure. It's informative and inspiring!

VANCOUVER — I’m lucky enough to have a decent bike to ride for the duration of my stay here on the west coast. I ride almost daily in Toronto but the experience of riding daily in Vancouver is much different — it’s not just the hilly terrain, but there seems to be an understanding from both city officials and drivers that cycling is a viable transportation alternative to the car. Riding through Vancouver produced not only aching leg muscles, but a self-diagnosed case of serious cyclist envy.
...

You can read the entire post here.

Besides the brilliant idea of "bike waiting boxes" (pictured below) at major intersections, I like the idea of larger bikeway network route signs that are more akin to signs targetting motorists. Here in Toronto the bikeway signs are numbered and tiny. In Vancouver, they are large and use street names. Why not rename our bikeway routes in Toronto after famous or local people of prominence? I think it would be fun and make for wider recognition of the (now somewhat invisible) shared infrastructure.

Photos by Matt Blackett

The bicycle can be appreciated by all ages, as two stories demonstrate today.

Photo from Todd of Clever Cycles

I'll start with the heart warming story from Todd of Clever Cycles, and how he toured around Portland with his grandmother in a bakfiet (cargo bike).

But the next morning, against the protests of my wife, grandma and I hatched a plan to line the bak with pillows and a fleece or two, and try. I offered to lift her 110-lb form in and out, but she wanted to swing a leg in herself and work from there.
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We rang the bell a lot and waved; many people were too stunned to wave back. Others cheered. Another white-haired lady called out “Am I next?”

Read the whole story and have a look at the pictures in Grandma got bak.

In the Toronto section of the National Post today, as talked about earlier by Tammy, there's a piece from a 16 year old cyclist, Alex Nevitte, who's commuting to work by bike, asking for some respect from motorists. She makes excellent points that drivers need to hear more often.