Show your support for protected bike lanes downtown and Bloor/Danforth bike lanes this Thursday morning at City Hall!

Where have all the proposed new bike lanes gone? For those interested in a safer cycling environment a City Bikeway Network report has just been released recommending Toronto's first physically separated bicycle lanes for a small part of downtown. Unfortunately, the recommended lanes is smaller than that supported by many area residents as well as the Chair of Public Works and Infrastructure. The report also unfortunately recommends stopping the study on bike lanes for Bloor/Danforth and removing bike lanes already installed or approved!

This is a call to come to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting on June 23rd, 9:30 am at City Hall, showing your visible support for the downtown protected bike lane network, the Bloor-Danforth Bikeway Study, and for bike lanes already approved and/or installed. And if you can't come send an email to the committee and your councillor.

A continuous network of physically separated bicycle lanes, far larger than that recommended by City Staff, is now supported by the Toronto Island Community Association, the South Rosedale Residents Association, Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Moore Park Residents Association, the Toronto Cyclists Union, the York Quay Neighbourhood Association, The U of T Graduate Student’s Union, the St Lawrence Neighbourhood Association, the ABC (Yorkville) Residents Association, the Palmerston Residents Association, the Bay Cloverhill Residents Association, the Parkdale Residents Association and the Oak Street Housing Coop Inc.

This network consists of two east west routes:

  1. Harbord - Wellesley from Parliament to Ossington;
  2. Richmond Street from Bathurst to Parliament.

And, two north south routes:
1. Starting at Prince Arthur on St George Beverley to John Street connecting to new bicycle lanes on Simcoe, via the Richmond Street bicycle lanes , to the Lake;
2. Sherbourne Street from Elm Avenue in Rosedale just north of Bloor all the way to Queens Quay.

Mayor Ford promised new bicycle lanes on streets where it "made sense" and where there was " community support".

The Chairman of the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee - Councillor Denzil Minnan Wong has committed to doing more than Staff is recommending in this report, including snow removal of bicycle lanes in this network.

With Councillor Minnan-Wong's support we have a strong ally at City Hall for this plan. Minnan-Wong is less keen in supporting bike lanes on Bloor/Danforth, since he understand there is more significant opposition to it. But even there we should express our support for the bike lanes since they make sense and are popular. It will be a longer-term struggle but it's important to keep the pressure on, ride Bells on Bloor, even if it takes years to see improvements. At least staff have proposed protected bike lanes on the Bloor Viaduct which will give us our very first taste!

I urge all cyclists to go to the meeting this Thursday with bicycle helmet displayed and show up at 9:30 am June 23rd even if for only 1/2 hour (at City Hall). If we are lucky there will be too many people there in support and you will get turned away. The members of the Committee, some of whom are Ford loyalists, need to know there are a lot of cyclists in this City and this initiative has broad public support.

If you can make it to the meeting or not send an email to pwic@toronto.ca, asking them to do more. Make sure you put your full name and address at the bottom. You can quote the Bike Union's 4 point recommendations:

  1. That City Council and PWIC re-establish the Bloor-Danforth Bikeway Environmental Assessment on the basis of significant community support.
  2. That City Council provide direction to City Staff to not remove the Pharmacy and Birchmount bike lanes on the grounds of public safety and respect for the taxpayer.
  3. That City Council and PWIC direct City staff to report to the September 2011 meeting of PWIC on a pilot project for separated bicycle lanes on Richmond Street and/or Adelaide Street to inform the larger overall transportation operations study of the area.
  4. That City Council and PWIC direct City staff to report to the September 2011 meeting of PWIC with an implementation plan for a connected network of protected bicycle lanes that includes two east-west routes and two north-south routes.

For more info:

herb : 13 years 11 months ago
Tags: bike infrastructure, bike lanes, politics, safety

A disappointing bikeway network report and things we can do to improve it.

The Bikeway Network Report for 2011 came out yesterday. Overall it's a big letdown, though I'm happy to see that Sherbourne, Bloor Viaduct and Wellesley are proposed to get protected bike lanes. The Chair of Public Works was calling for something more ambitious, at least for the downtown, but the staff seem to prefer to cautiously "assess" and "study" Richmond and Adelaide instead of even proposing to removing any car traffic lanes or parking, safely stating that the Mayor will only support bike lanes that don't "impede" traffic. The report will also be asking the committee to make a decision on the Scarborough bike lanes on Pharmacy and Birchmount, which have been shown to have little negative effect on car traffic.

The bike union made this statement:

This report was released today and the Toronto Cyclists Union, representing over 1,100 members, is disappointed with the lack of progress in the report. It is not bold enough to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who ride bicycles. In fact, several of the recommendations outlined in the report set the City back on cycling progress. While other cities are moving forward at a great pace to improve conditions for cyclists as part of an overall transportation plan, Torontonians who ride bicycles are being left behind.

Read more to find out what we're facing, but please send out an email to the Public Works and Infrastructure Committee to support the Bike Union's recommendations for improving it (see below for details).

The Star summarizes the disappointing report:

We’re disappointed with the lack of progress in the report,” said Andrea Garcia, spokeswoman for the Toronto Cyclists Union, referring to a staff report going to the public works committee next week.

“We don’t see it as bold enough to address the needs of hundreds of thousands of Torontonians who ride bicycles.”

Among the recommendations are:

• Install separated bike lanes on Bloor St. E. from Sherbourne St. to Broadview Ave. this year.
• Prepare a detailed design and consultation process for separated bike lanes on Sherbourne St. and Wellesley Sts. with a goal of building them in 2012.
• “Assess” putting a separated east-west lane on Adelaide or Richmond Sts. from Bathurst to Sherbourne St., and a separated north-south lane in “the most suitable route” within the corridor from Peter to Simcoe Sts.
• Install bike lanes on Dawes Rd. from Danforth to Victoria Park Aves.
• Consider removing bike lanes (as requested by Councillor Michelle Berardinetti) on Pharmacy Ave., from Denton Ave. to Alvinston Rd.; and on Birchmount Rd. from Kingston Rd. to St. Clair Ave. E.
• Halt an environmental assessment that could pave the way for a major Bloor-Danforth Bikeway and rescind approval for bike lanes on Bloor St. W.
• Endorse “the mayor’s bike plan” that would build 100 kilometres of bike trails in ravines, hydro corridors and other off-street routes.

There is something we can do, we can call or email our councillors, or send an email to the PWIC or request to speak at the committee meeting on June 23rd in support of the Bike Union's 4 recommendations. The committee meeting is on June 23rd 9:30am, City Hall, Committee Room 1. These are reasonable recommendations, I believe:

  1. That City Council and PWIC re-establish the Bloor-Danforth Bikeway Environmental Assessment on the basis of significant community support.
  2. That City Council provide direction to City Staff to not remove the Pharmacy and Birchmount bike lanes on the grounds of public safety and respect for the taxpayer.
  3. That City Council and PWIC direct City staff to report to the September 2011 meeting of PWIC on a pilot project for separated bicycle lanes on Richmond Street and/or Adelaide Street to inform the larger overall transportation operations study of the area.
  4. That City Council and PWIC direct City staff to report to the September 2011 meeting of PWIC with an implementation plan for a connected network of protected bicycle lanes that includes two east-west routes and two north-south routes.

If they won't do a proper bike count for John Street, we will

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."

Really? So why are our own counts corroborated by the City's Transportation Services separate bike counts (which also don't seem to have been taken into account by the EA from what we can tell)? In this pdf you can see that the number of cyclists fluctuates quite a bit over the day; it's highly unlikely that these numbers would equal 2% bike mode share at every hour in the day. To maintain 2% car and pedestrian traffic would have to fluctuate at the same rate from a low of 50 cars + peds an hour to a high of 6900 an hour! Or by the day it comes to 73,500 cars + pedestrians to 1500 bikes. That's just really hard to believe for such a minor street.

Stephen Schijns, the city’s head of infrastructure planning, said the study’s cycling figures were established through counts conducted at various seasons and times of day. He said the consistent 2 per cent figure was the result of averaging the numbers during the professional survey.

“It’s certainly not a plugged-in number,” Schijns said. “It could have perhaps been explained a little better.”

I believe that it's common for planners to estimate the capacity needed on a street by measuring its peak traffic, not an average over seasons or times of day. The US Federal Highway Administration measures road capacity using "peak lanes" (number of through lanes used in the peak period in the peak direction). It would make sense to me that in measuring the road capacity on John Street that they account for the peak traffic by mode. They need to measure the peak bike traffic, peak pedestrian traffic and peak car traffic. Only then can we approach a better way to "balance" the transportation modes for a street.

At any rate, it's unclear why they found it useful to obscure all regular fluctuations in the traffic volumes. It's no secret that bicycle traffic increases dramatically every sprint and dies down every late fall. The same could be said for pedestrian traffic. But I haven't heard anyone argue that we shouldn't put in sidewalks because they are not used as much in the depths of winter.

I understand that traffic engineering in general hasn't been the most attentive to the needs of cyclists and pedestrians, because it has tended to focus almost exclusively on peak automobile traffic and trying to optimize road capacity based on that number. The City of Toronto cycling department has already attempted to remedy that by conducting their downtown screenline count last fall. This project follows the protocol of the National Bicycle and Pedestrian Project (NBPP) of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in the U.S., which works towards providing consistent counting methods and analysis for cyclists and pedestrians.

How will that methodology be expanded to all transportation planning in the City?

On John Street we have an opportunity to shape the way we do urban planning and accommodate pedestrians and cyclists properly. So I think it would be great if Schijns would provide the raw data to the public, provide the reasoning for averaging out the seasons rather than focusing on the peak periods, and explain if their methodology complied with the NBPP.

herb : 13 years 11 months ago
Tags: bike lanes, John Street, politics, statistics, traffic, urban planning