Parking at Queen and Portland: is the city taking bike parking seriously?

The new Loblaws, Winners, Joe Fresh at Queen St West and Portland have been open for a few months. In the inscrutable ways of the City, the stores opened with absolutely zero bike parking. The sidewalk was finished, trees were installed out front but no one felt the need to install bike parking anywhere surrounding the building. I like trees but wouldn't it have been even more important to install bike parking? Now we've just got people slowly killing the trees by locking to the trees.

I followed up with planner Lisa Ing of Street Furniture at the City, the area which is now in charge of post and rings (you can email your bike parking request to them). They are still figuring out how they will deal with post and rings. Lisa Ing told me about this location by email:

The post-and-ring locations were approved as part of the Site Plan Control process for this development. Our staff are typically not involved in this process. However Forestry and Urban Design staff do take into consideration bike parking issues.

I do not know the reasons why post-and-rings were not identified on Queen Street West as part of the site plan process. I am presuming there may be other street elements proposed or it could have been for aesthetic reasons.

Anyways, we can list this location in our database for future review.

So it's not just Street Furniture making the siting decisions, Urban Design and Urban Forestry Services are also involved (I think that's what Ing means by her phrase "Forestry and Urban Design"). It leaves me wondering how the City determines bike parking needs and how they prioritize it with competing interests for space.

I also sent a note about this to Councillor Vaughan and the Queen West BIA. Jennifer Chan, assistant to Councillor Vaughan followed up and responded:

Hi Herb,

Thanks for your note. I've been looking into the issue of bike parking in the area.

The developer of the Queen and Portland building, Riocan, was required to provide on-site bike parking in their underground garage, so there are 13 bike posts located on two different levels, in addition to 23 spaces for condo residents on the residential parking level.

I spoke with the Street Furniture staff a couple of weeks ago as well and they are planning to add more bike parking around the new sidewalks, but this will not take place until the Spring as the contract for the company that installs bike rings for the City is complete for the season. I did a site visit this weekend and saw that there were markings on the sidewalk on Portland for future installations. The Queen St West BIA recently commissioned and installed a number of artist-designed bike rings in the area. A BIXI station was also recently moved to the corner of Queen and Portland to support demand in the area.

In the meantime we'll be looking to see if there can be some protective guards installed to prevent the young trees from being hurt.

Feel free to contact me with further questions.

All the best,
Jen Chan

Jennifer Chan
Constituency Assistant to
Toronto City Councillor Adam Vaughan

I should be thankful that bike parking has been / is being installed. But we've still got a ways to go. When walked around the building looking for bike parking I didn't see any evidence that there was parking indoors. Having bike parking far from the storefronts - on Richmond, Portland and inside - are poor substitutes for parking directly in front of the stores.

You may have heard about "desire lines" (or social trails), the worn paths that are the most desirous since they take the shortest or most easily navigable route between an origin and destination. Planners nowadays generally try to work with desire lines because people often find a way to subvert the official path by overcoming barriers to use the desire line again. Something similar happens with bike parking. If planners try to force people to park too distant from their destination they will instead just lock to anything nearby, whether it be tree trunks, guy wires and gas meters. In the meanwhile their unpopular bike parking will useful for gathering rusty, abandoned bikes. I'll call this concept desire parking.

Councillor Vaughan's office is working on getting some tree guards so there at least be some desire parking on Queen. According to Dandyhorse, on Roncesvalles the merchants are actually encouraging cyclists to lock to the tree guards. They look secure enough, if only it was legal.

herb : 13 years 5 months ago
Tags:

Mayor Ford ends the 'war on the car' and starts one against motorists

True words by Albert Koehl in Rabble of how Mayor Ford is doing more harm to drivers than good with his archaic, anti-city approach to moving people:

Don Cherry has a lesson to teach Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Cherry has spent a career promoting the hockey fighter, sometimes known as the enforcer or goon. The problem is that the science of brain injuries has caught up with (and passed) his assertion that the violence of these bare-knuckle encounters doesn't really hurt anyone, and helps the game. Indeed, the very fighters whose role Cherry has championed are increasingly turning out to be the game's victims.

The cause that Ford championed most loudly during the election was that of motorists. On taking office he declared that the war on the car was over. He eliminated a small vehicle registration tax, then moved forward on his congestion relief plan by getting transit out of the way of motorists. Two of three streetcar lines approved by the previous administration were shelved and a third line would go underground at significantly higher cost. He even promised to build a new subway line. Cyclists, too, were targeted. The council he leads voted to eliminate three bike lanes at a projected cost of $400,000.

Science, and experience, makes it clear that Ford's solutions won't work -- and the main victim will be the motorist.

First, our roads are not congested because of too much transit and cycling; they are congested because of too little of it. Putting 20-50 people in a streetcar or bus takes up far less road space than the same people in single-occupant cars. Cyclists take up only an invisible part of the street, or, on the two per cent of Toronto roads that have bike lanes, a fraction of a car lane. Blaming cyclists for congestion and expanding roads by gobbling up the slivers of roadway dedicated to them confirms that the car-based transport model is out of gas.

Ford's cancellation of the vehicle tax deluded motorists into thinking that they were being unfairly targeted. The truth is that motorists underpay for local roads, while people who travel by foot and bike overpay. As a homeowner paying property tax, I understand the math. My bike puts less strain on our roads, but I pay as much tax as my two car-owning neighbours.

Second, the cost of operating a car will continue to rise. The average motorist already pays over $9,000 per year in vehicle costs (capital, repairs, insurance, parking, gas, etc.). Gasoline prices will continue to rise -- the millions of people in China and India aspiring to car ownership will make sure of this. Without improved transit and safer cycling, motorists will be stuck in their cars.

Finally, motorists pay other significant costs. The lack of exercise makes them more prone to long-term health issues like diabetes. More importantly they remain, despite improved vehicle safety features, the most common victims of fatal road collisions.

Motorists, like hockey fighters, will come to learn that advocates like Ford who champion their cause aren't always doing them a favour. Ford may have ended the war on the car, but his war on the motorist is just beginning.

It's not too late Mayor Ford. By embracing citywide transit improvements including those in the previous administration's Transit City Plan and making roads safer for cyclists you can become a real champion of motorists.

Albert Koehl is a hockey fan and an environmental lawyer focusing on efficient transport.

herb : 13 years 6 months ago
Tags: city hall, motorists, politics, traffic, urban planning

Reducing bike theft

http://vimeo.com/32048115

John Taranu, volunteer of the Bike Union, provides some tips in helping to reduce bike theft. John also introduces the isthisbikestolen.com app created at the Random Hacks of Kindness / Open Data Hackathon on December 5-6 in Toronto. It lets you check if the bike you're buying has been stolen.

More on fighting bike theft, see bikeunion.to/theft

How to find the serial number of a bike:
http://vimeo.com/32049585

How to register a bike:
http://vimeo.com/32243783

herb : 13 years 6 months ago
Tags: app, bike theft, toronto cyclists union