Roncesvalles is trying very hard to find the right balance as they re-prioritize their street for pedestrians, public transit, bikes, and delivery vehicles. Roncy is seeing all sorts of ideas being proposed to keep cyclists on the road whilst keeping the streetcar track clear [Ed: read more on the proposed elevated roadway "bump-outs" for streetcars that cyclists can ride over]. At the January meeting many people proposed removing all private motor traffic on Roncesvalles, except for delivery vehicles. Very progressive!
I briefly lived in Parkdale, but I moved to Mimico. And after seeing the difference in the attitudes towards city building, I kinda wished I hadn't.
As part of Transit City, it is proposed for Lakeshore's streetcar tracks to become part of the LRT network.
With any proposed change there will be opposition. What concerns me about this opposition, however, is not the usual arguments about losing on-street parking spaces (which there is way too much of), about the loss of business during construction (a temporary situation), dealing with the actual service problems on the route, the cost/benefit (all of a five minutes savings to downtown), or even that the opportunity for left turns will be reduced, or even that buses would be a better way to move people than streetcars. I am concerned about the opposition, and while the aforementioned arguments have to be addressed, my most pressing concerns are more specific than these usual objections to any public transit improvements.
The opposition have created a "Transit Survey" out to gauge opinion. And here's where where I get really upset.
One only has to glance at the survey to see it's bias against the project. And if that's not bad enough, they are trying to use bike lanes to Lakeshore to help in their fight for the status quo. Why this really upsets me is that these opponents to the transit improvements are the same people who can't bear to have the same parking removed for bike lanes. In other words, these people are not allies to cyclists but would want to "appear" as such if it helped their myopic cause.
As the Roncy example shows, we can find ways to keep transit and cyclists on the same street when we want to. That makes this argument nothing more than a red herring.
