Bullies on 4 Wheels

Following is a well-thought out essay from reader Kevin. Give him your thoughts:

I extend my left arm. It’s the morning rush, and I’m on a bicycle. There are cars all around me. I’m doing a good clip, and approaching a set of traffic lights. In the lane adjacent to the one I’m in, and riding a few metres back there is a black BMW. The lady driving the beamer, probably in her mid 40’s, holding a Starbucks mint mocha Frappuccino and clad in gym attire is initially surprised by my actions and slows. I begin to inch over to the other lane, preparing for my turn. Realizing my intentions, and seeing that her God-given right to catch the green before it turned yellow would soon be abolished, she puts her foot down. She guns it. The noise from the engine is as loud as a city bus at full acceleration. I retract my arm quickly and my handlebars miss the metal box by all of 10 centimetres. Any closer and I would have replaced the BMW hood ornament with my body.

As a full time cyclist, and sometimes as a pedestrian, I have to deal with cars and their drivers every day. I am disgusted by drivers of private motor vehicles. Their actions infuriate me. A very high percentage of the drivers I see on the roads of Toronto are dangerous and inconsiderate, impatient, and grossly undereducated. A world with fewer or no cars would be many steps forward in the right direction.

Drivers are often inconsiderate and create risky situations for other road users. It fascinates me how urban planners ever even conceived of mixing cars, pedestrians and cyclists all in the same space. 150 pound persons are forced to share the road with 2000+ pound automobiles travelling many times faster. In a collision, the car will always win. Yet some drivers simply ignore that truth. The onus is on the drivers of motor vehicles to ensure the safety of all other road traffic. Often, during my commutes by bicycle, I have been very closely tailgated by cars. If I were to suddenly brake, or spill, I could be seriously maimed or killed. On other occasions, I have been squeezed out into parked cars on residential streets by drivers who pass without due consideration to cyclists. Cyclists and pedestrians are the most vulnerable users of the road network; we deserve to be respected to the utmost degree.

Speaking of passing too closely, the Highway Traffic Act of Ontario (the HTA) states that “[bicycles] may occupy any part of a lane when [their] safety warrants it.” Many drivers don’t know this, and believe cyclists should stay well to the right of the road at all costs so that they can pass in the same lane. In fact, this is a very hazardous practice, and my number one gripe with concern to motorists. It’s as if some drivers don’t even acknowledge our presence. Many are just too impatient to spare 3 seconds of their commute to change lanes and ensure the life of someone on foot or on a bike. A few odd drivers have even come so far as to honk me off the road and order me to ride on sidewalk, which is illegal. Another driver decided to give me an earful of sound because I was walking across the street too slowly. I was crossing at the lights, and had the right of way.

Drivers are severely undereducated. The graduated licensing system employed here in Ontario doesn’t do enough to prevent inexperienced and/or careless drivers from using the road network. The Driver’s Handbook, which is required reading for the earning of a license, has limited information on how drivers should treat cyclists and pedestrians. Also, most drivers forget these rules within years of learning them, leaving only their best guesses, or common judgment to guide them – a lot of which is wrong. For example, the law states that drivers going in both directions on a road must stop when someone is crossing at a crosswalk, and can only continue when that person has made it safely to the other side, not simply past the median or yellow line. Drivers are also largely unaware of the safety hazard they present to cyclists when they carelessly fling open their car doors. The “door prize” is an accident that can be avoided if drivers check their mirrors before stepping out of their cars.

In today’s North American transportation climate the car is still king. The tides will change however – as gas prices rise, as congestion increases, and as more people adopt a more sustainable lifestyle, walking and cycling will be seen as very viable alternatives. But for now, being a pedestrian or especially a cyclist can be very intimidating. Drivers operate dangerous vehicles, are often inconsiderate towards the needs of others, are discourteous and impatient, and at times, oblivious. Drivers grind my gears. Now and then, while cycling, I dream about what a car-free world would look like. The next moment, my thoughts are interrupted by an idiot who is attempting to squeeze me off the road. I carry a pen and paper for instances like this. The police help me out.

herb : 15 years 9 months ago
Tags: essay, rant

Cycling versus parking on Dundas West

(Photo: Dundas West BIA)

Dundas West merchants really want their rush-hour parking, even as the new businesses readily admit they don't really need it. Their "NOPE" posters villifying Councillor Giambrone are still hanging in the windows of shops along Dundas West. Their campaign "Our Neighbourhoods are Destinations not Highways!" got a bit of press this last spring, and some renewed interest now. A few weeks ago I wanted to find out why the BIA is fighting to keep rush hour parking despite the needs of cyclists and transit users. What I found was a bunch of self-described progressive merchants, some of them even calling themselves cyclists. They are definitely a bunch of nice people, even if their rhetoric is disproportionate to the issue at hand. Lula Lounge's recent fundraiser, "Save the Dundas 71", is a case in point given that Lula isn't open until long after rush hour.

I bike this stretch all the time. I agree that cars drive fast on Dundas, particularly when there is no parking. That doesn't mean, however, that they're driving fast during rush hour when the traffic is backed up. It also doesn't mean that combining parked cars and cyclists is safer than moving cars and cyclists. In fact, being doored by a driver was the third highest collision type in 2008. Yet, cyclist safety continues to be one of the claims of the Dundas West BIA. One can be forgiven for thinking that cyclist safety is just a buffer in their argument for keeping parking. Given that the safety claim holds little water, let's see if their other claims hold up. They are claiming that Dundas West is being unfairly targeted, and that taking away parking hurts their business.

I sat down at the Brasil Bakery with Sylvia Fernandez, chair of the Dundas West BIA and owner of Progressive Accounting. She brought along a few other Dundas West merchants from Zoot's Cafe, Lula Lounge and West Side Stories. I was overwhelmed by the show for a lowly blogger. They're a surprisingly progressive, well-spoken bunch. The old Portuguese merchants probably wouldn't have made such a strong case to me.

So does the lack of rush hour parking hurt their business? Under 50% of people in the neighbourhood drive to work. In Trinity Spadina only 29% commute by car; while in Davenport (which stretches all the way to St. Clair) has only 47%. The neighbourhood is not all that different from the Annex where a recent study found that only a minority of customers arrived by car. Who should we prioritize? As Marcus Gee points out, this isn't Bellville, this is the big city. A business isn't going to stand or fall based solely on the existence of front door parking.

When confronted with their claim that they had proof that decreased store vacancy in the area was a result of the City's pilot off-side rush hour parking, Fernandez promptly withdrew her claim. No, there's no clear connection between the two: anything could have resulted in better business, including gentrification and even BIA promotion.

Not every business is affected the same way by parking. The irony was that the merchants that Fernandez invited are almost all newer businesses that have moved in as a result of gentrification. The merchants admitted that their own businesses relied little on car parking, let alone rush hour parking. Zoot's Cafe or West Side Stories Video have few customers who arrive by car. And Lula Lounge, whose owner, Jose Ortega designed the infamous poster spoofing the Obama posters but with Giambrone's with "NOPE" written below, doesn't even open until 7pm, long after rush hour. Jose told me that the lack of rush hour parking won't affect his business (yet they still make the claim to G&M that it could bankrupt their business).

So who needs the parking? The BIA claims that the traditional Portuguese merchants have many customers who travel great distances by car for their baked goods, morning coffee, or hardware. So long as there are cars there'll be a need for businesses to have some amount of parking. But just how much? And does this parking need to be directly in front of the store? The BIA didn't have a clear idea, but given that less than 50% of locals drive to work, it's probably less than they're willing to admit.

The BIA seemed open to doing the customer research when I asked, but need funds from the city to do that work. I can only agree that the City hasn't done it's job of showing the facts to merchants and making the case for making the street accessible and safer for all road users. They were quite insistent that they didn't have near enough bike parking. They also said they would be happy to get infrastructure similar to that planned for Roncesvalles, with their "bump outs" slowing down car traffic, making it safer for pedestrians to cross and still allowing for car parking and enough room for cyclists. But if it meant taking out parking for bike lanes they were much less keen.

Their claim that they're being unfairly targeted doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Giambrone is trying to take out rush hour city-wide (or so they claim). So, how is Dundas West unfairly targeted? Everyone is getting the same deal. Perhaps they should admit they've got an automobile bias.

If safety was indeed their first concern I'd expect a more positive response to bike lanes, that they'd be willing to sacrifice some parking to improve cyclist safety. Instead it seems that they're using cyclist safety as a ruse to keep all their parking.

You can't have it both ways. Which of your customers are you going to piss off?

herb : 15 years 9 months ago
Tags: bike lanes, commuting, politics, urban planning

Sharrows on Bloor a sign of times a-changing

Just when I was beginning to despair that the City has done all it can for downtown cyclists, that it has built all the bike lanes it has planned in the bike plan, chriskayTO snapped a photo of sharrows being installed on Bloor Street. Some may say this is a half-ass measure, and they'd be right, but that doesn't mean it's worse than nothing at all.

Small improvements to downtown are still coming. Our access to the waterfront is improving as the City unveils bike lanes and wider sidewalks on Yonge to the waterfront, to complement the new Simcoe underpass. But we are slowly reaching the end of all that the current bike plan has in store for central Toronto.

Paths on the city's outer edge are most lacking. Lanes planned for the downtown core have largely been installed, but the outer 416 is missing most of its promised lanes and trails.

It's great the outer 416 has the opportunity to get better lanes and trails, such as the $28.8 million to be spent on paths for the Finch and Gatineau corridors. But the needs of downtown cyclists are not being met with the loose network of installed lanes. If this is all there is in the plan, then we need a new plan. Luckily, City staff are thinking along the same lines. Back in May they introduced to Public Works a report on strategic directions. Part of that plan is to launch a public bikesharing system by next spring and to expand the downtown bikeways to support the bikesharing system.

The original bike plan chose routes that were about 2km apart, allowing equal access to bike routes throughout the city. Now that the downtown is almost done, that means almost all remaining routes to be built are in the suburbs where cycling is lowest. To keep building suburban bike lanes exclusively is surely to raise the ire of anti-bike councillors such as Doug Holiday. It makes political and practical sense to find new ways to improve downtown. The new strategic focus for downtown, according to the staff report, includes:

  • significantly expand the Bikeway Network in the Toronto East York District, with new bikeways not identified in the Bike Plan, to support the Public Bicycle System;
  • conduct pilot projects to implement and evaluate new bikeway design treatments, including: physically separated or buffered bicycle lanes, bike boxes, shared-use lane marking (sharrows), conflict zone markings, time-of-day bicycle lanes and intersection markings, with a goal of more widespread use of special markings and designs;

The best options for downtown bike routes include University / Queen's Park and Bloor / Danforth. Richmond and Adelaide are already in the bike plan, and will hopefully incorporate some sort of "bicycle highway" (some cyclists hope they will remain one-way so a protected bike highway can be installed).

As an aside, people don't realize how much work was accomplished within City Hall to streamline the process of implementing bicycle infrastructure. Staff can now group bike lane proposals and put them before Public Works instead of individually to the Community Councils where individual councillors would inevitably shoot them down. Much more funding was allocated, and more staff were assigned. Since then the City has been making progress in a number of areas, albeit mostly behind the scenes at this point.

herb : 15 years 9 months ago
Tags: advocacy, bike lanes, politics