How cycling activists saved contraflow bike lanes from purgatory

Strathcona contraflow lane

In 2008 and 2009, the City of Toronto approved the installation of 13 contraflow lanes, most as a part of the West End Bikeways consultation. The contraflow lanes, however, have been stalled for almost 5 years, because the City of Toronto legal department was concerned that the provincial Highway Traffic Act does not allow contraflow lanes on designated one-way streets. With last week's consultation of a contraflow lane on Shaw Street, we have finally overcome that bureaucratic hurdle.

This was a made-in-Toronto problem. The City of Ottawa interpreted the Highway Traffic Act differently and continued to install contraflow bike lanes. Meanwhile in Toronto, a staff person in Transportation Services made an issue of contraflow bike lanes, effectively stopping the project from the inside (that's how I heard the story at least). Funnily, Toronto has existing contraflow lanes on Montrose and Strathcona streets that weren't an issue for anyone, not in their respective communities nor for the City (photo at the top is of Strathcona). I assume that only someone who is full of bile and spite and thought this would somehow being their small life meaning would raise a stink about contraflow lanes.

We would still be stuck in the purgatory of approved-but-cannot-install bike lanes if it weren't for the hard work of Cycle Toronto volunteers and staff working with provincial and city allies. John Taranu of Ward 22, Laura Pin of Ward 14 and others campaigned successfully to get this changed. The Cycle Toronto volunteers reached out to Councillor Mike Layton, Dr. Eric Hoskin, MPP for St. Paul, and Jonah Schein, MPP for Davenport to push for a change in the law or a clarification that would enable Toronto to continue building contraflow lanes.

Finally, this last fall the Minister of Transportation, Bob Chiarelli, announced that provincial staff would meet with City staff to come to a legal resolution. The result of that meeting, in short, is that Toronto can now make streets two-ways for bicycles, but one-way for other vehicles. In practice, this won't change the way contraflow lanes look or work from existing ones. A glass half-empty look on this would declare that we're back to square one, but I prefer to think that being on a much surer legal footing is better than square zero.

Since the public will see no real difference on the ground, it's probably not interesting to most people on how the City and provincial staff came to a resolution. For those who are, here's the longer explanation that I received from the Cycling Unit on how they reached a convoluted agreement on reading the Highway Traffic Act. The streets will become two way, with one way restricted to bicycles, which municipalities are allowed to do. They are also allowed to use the existing signage to reduce confusion.

What we negotiate will allow us to install the same markings and signage we have used for the City's existing contra-flow bicycle lanes. The on-street installation will be the same, only the back end legislation will change. The legal mechanism used to do this is the provision that the municipality may place restrictions on individual lanes.

The bicycle lane will be restricted for the use of bicycles only.
Bicycles will be restricted to travelling in one-direction only in that bicycle-only lane.
The adjacent lane has no vehicle class restriction, and may be used by all road users, however this lane will have a lane restriction in it, to govern the direction of travel for that lane.
In effect what this means is that instead of having a one way street with an exception for bicycles, the street will be a two way street for bicycles, with lane restrictions in both directions so that only one-way use is possible for other vehicles.

A key issue for us was signage. In order for the general public to interpret and use the facility correctly, we felt it was critically important to NOT take down the one-way arrow signs on street where these types of facilities are installed.

The MTO agreed that we may maintain the one-way arrow signs to communicate that the general purpose lane is restricted for one-way use. A "bicycles excepted" tab may be used to further communicate that the although it is one-way for cars (or any road user other than a cyclist), the street is two ways for bicycles, as the cyclist may use the bicycle-only lane in the other direction.

We will have to send a housekeeping report to PWIC, to change over legislation of our existing Toronto "contra-flow" bicycle lanes, and can now start to program "contra-flow" bicycle lanes which have not yet been installed using this new legislative format.

herb : 12 years 3 months ago
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Post-snowpocalypse: Sherbourne cycle tracks cleared long before bike lanes

Snow cleared on Sherbourne

Sherbourne cycle tracks got cleared. Most of the painted bike lanes in the city? Not so much. (Credit: photos from Jared Kolb, Cycle Toronto)

For all the naysayers who figured that building cycle tracks meant lanes blocked with snow, take a good look at both photos. Just because a lane is painted doesn't mean the City is going to take it seriously. In fact, the reverse seems to be true. The City made a commitment to clear the Sherbourne cycle tracks and it has. Meanwhile it wasn't until a few days later that the City started to clear the bike lanes. And perhaps they'd still be blocked if it weren't for some tweets to 311Toronto reporting the blockage.

A side benefit of the snow bank on Sherbourne is that it's provided enough of a barrier to keep cars from parking in it, at least for the time being. I think we've learned that the cycle tracks need more substantial barriers like this to keep cars out.

herb : 12 years 3 months ago
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Ottawa study concludes one-way streets only way to accommodate cycle tracks for its downtown

A recent discussion paper (pdf) commissioned by the City of Ottawa for their Downtown Moves Project, produced by engineering firm Delcan, may provide clues of what the Richmond/Adelaide Environmental Assessment may discover about one-way to two-way street conversions. Surprisingly, despite a number of North American mid-sized cities converting their one-way streets to two-way (New York City is the big exception), there is a lack of quantitative evidence demonstrating the effects of the conversion from one-way to two-way operation. In fact, there are strong contra-factual examples where one-way streets have vibrant street life and businesses. Montreal and New York City are two important examples.

Given this lack of evidence and that Ottawa will want to maintain adequate sidewalk width and have dedicated bike lanes on some of these streets with an 18m wide right-of-way, the discussion paper concluded that it work much better to keep the streets as one-way.

The lesson for Toronto, and in particular for Richmond and Adelaide is that if the streets get converted to two-way it will be very difficult to get any sort of bike lanes. Richmond and Adelaide, like most downtown streets are categorized as having 20m rights of way, though the actual width fluctuates.

Highlights of the report

Capacity of one-way streets is higher than two-way:

...one way street can accommodate relatively high traffic volumes with only two (2) travel lanes, given that turning movements can happen from one lane or the other. By comparison, a two-way street will need a wider, three (3) lane cross-section to accommodate a turning lane.

The capacity of one‐way streets can be approximately 10% to 20% greater than that of two‐way streets. Increased capacity can translate into fewer lanes and fewer through streets within a one‐way grid system, or alternatively, the option to reprogram any surplus capacity/space for other purposes (i.e., dedicated parking lanes, bicycle lanes, wider sidewalks).

Though many cities have made the conversion, some notable cities haven't and the streetscape hasn't suffered:

...there are many examples of successful commercial and pedestrian environments within existing one-way street corridors, including in New York City and Montreal. These successes demonstrate that there are likely elements at play other than direction of traffic flow that characterize a successful street such as the width of the roadway, number of travel lanes, width of sidewalks, presence of on-street parking, cycling facilities, access to public transit, the quality of built form and streetscaping along the street, and market conditions.

New York City, NY features a road network that is almost exclusively one-way streets, and it is considered an extremely vibrant pedestrian environment (and New York City achieves the highest transit share in the US).

Also in Montreal, QC, Rue Sainte Catherine and Boulevard de Maisonneuve and others are one-way streets, and are considered very successful commercial streets within the downtown core of the City. In both of these cases, the width of the road, width of sidewalks, presence of on-street parking, access to public transit and most importantly, built form of the buildings on the street, each impact street life far greater than one-way traffic.

The corresponding conclusion is that, on downtown Ottawa 18m wide streets where a dedicated cycling facility is to be provided and sidewalks are to be of appropriate width, this can most readily be accomplished in a one-way vehicular arrangement.

The push for conversion to two-way is coming from an ambition of creating more livable streets downtown. It's an admirable ambition that is shared by the vast majority of people who bike. But it's not clear that two-way conversion is necessary, nor even a sufficient condition for turning Richmond and Adelaide into livable streets (or destinations in the parlance of Vaughan and company). NYC and Montreal are doing just fine with one-way streets. Toronto has plenty of two-way streets that are unfriendly, not just to cyclists, but to pedestrians as well. Dufferin, Jane, Bathurst, Kingston Road and so on.

herb : 12 years 4 months ago
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