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Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

nfitz said:
The Admiral referred to the section of Gerrard east of Parliament, past Regent Park to River. The rendering above is on Gerrard between Sherbourne and Seaton.

I would be surprised if the section from Parliament to River is even done next year, given it doesn't look like any of the Regent Park redevelopment along Gerrard will be completed at that time.

Ooh - I'd hope for some dedicated streetcar tracks along Gerrard near Parliament. There's a unique opportunity to widen the entire ROW from Parliament to River with the redevelopment, reducing the congestion at Parliament. Heck, they could probably do it all the way to Broadview given what's between River and Broadview.
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I has assumed he had meant the project running west from Parliament as that is indeed the only one happening in the near term.

Work further east is not contemplated in the near term.
 
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nfitz said:
Which is a shame - I don't see any reason they can't take this all the way to University eventually.
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Whoops, I had meant to type east.

In respect of the west, an upgraded version of the Gerrard cycletracks exists as far west as Yonge.

West of there, there will be some work at some point, but there are many challenges, including those super narrow sidewalks immediately west of Bay. There's not as much room to play with there, and priority will likely go to a wider sidewalk first.
 
Northern Light said:
In respect of the west, an upgraded version of the Gerrard cycletracks exists as far west as Yonge.
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Well yeah - if you want to cycle between parked cars and moving cars, with no barriers. A proper track would be nice.

Northern Light said:
West of there, there will be some work at some point, but there are many challenges, including those super narrow sidewalks immediately west of Bay. There's not as much room to play with there, and priority will likely go to a wider sidewalk first.
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I don't think that they need 4 car lanes. The worst spot is between Bay and Elizabeth - and there's already enough space there to put down barriers between the bike lane and the car lane.
 
Regarding Dundas from Parliament to River, I'd emailed the constituent office about the bike lanes being made permanent, and how upcoming TTC diversions will impact that work. I was forwarded this response from Becky Katz:

Thanks for passing along the feedback. We have heard similar concerns. We are working with TTC to upgrade all the streetcar stops to raised platforms (similar to Howard Park and Dundas ). We are nearing 100% design completion, but we have not yet sorted the construction timing. We are trying to determine if streetcar bus replacements will be needed or if they can be constructed without impacting the streetcar. I can provide more information later in the year. Also I will ask the team if we can create a public website. We don't always create pages for upgrades work, but we can do one for this project.

Also as mentioned in the Councillor briefing, we are also planning to improve the motor vehicle lane drop at Sackville, so people driving can't enter the bike lane there J

Best,
Becky
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ear2ear said:
Regarding Dundas from Parliament to River, I'd emailed the constituent office about the bike lanes being made permanent, and how upcoming TTC diversions will impact that work. I was forwarded this response from Becky Katz:
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Just looked it up, Cycle Tracks on Gerrard (permanent version), from Parliament to River is scheduled for 2028.

I should add here, that any date that isn't current year is not remotely a sure thing, but an intention, slippage can occur, but sometimes projects move up by a year or two as opportunities arise.
 
Admiral Beez said:
I hope they don't make the lanes as wide as they are on Dundas between Parliament and River, where the car-width lane encouraged vehicles to confuse it for a driving lane. I understand they wanted to discourage cars from thinking there were still two lanes in either direction for their use, but it would be better on Gerrard to widen the sidewalk and then install regular width bike lanes.
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This is one of my major beefs with a lot of the recently-installed (mostly ActiveTO, I think) infrastructure. Virtually every time I've ridden those Dundas lanes there's a car parked in them, and often see the same thing on Bloor through Yorkville and University. It would seem to me the easiest/cheapest immediate fix would be to put a flexi-post right in the middle of the bike lane. I imagine that would still leave enough width on either side of it for the bike lane snowplows to pass.

Permanent examples in NYC and London:

IMG_0247.jpeg


London (which doesn't have to worry about plow widths), does not eff around:
IMG_1245.JPG


EDIT: And, actually, had one that would work as a temporary solution in TO:

IMG_0649.jpeg
 
In all fairness, I would be wildly shocked if a car ever drove down the Hudson River Greenway. It’s incredibly obvious you shouldn’t be there, given that the Wet Side Highway is right beside it :)

I think Flexiposts may work if the city actually maintained them.
 
allengeorge said:
I knew that would be cited, but - presumably the post I was responding to was referencing the common use of those paths by cars, not someone who was actively out to kill people.
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Right, but the London-style barriers would help against that too, unlike the flexi-posts.

Moreover, as a pedestrian or person riding a bike, it is easy to get the impression that quite a few drivers in Toronto are "actively out to kill people"
 
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