Cycling infrastructure (Separated bike lanes)

[steveintoronto]

Here's more detail on the Adelaide junction and a better schematic from the City:

[...]
A Necessary Safety Improvement
Cycle tracks were installed eastbound on Adelaide Street West from Bathurst Street to University Avenue in 2014. The Adelaide Street West intersection is offset at Bathurst Street so that the west leg is south of the east leg. The cycle track starts on the east leg of Adelaide Street. A short segment of southbound bike lane on Bathurst Street connects the westbound cycle track on Richmond Street to the Adelaide Street cycle track. Furthermore, the west leg of Adelaide Street is a suggested cycling route providing a connection from the cycling route on Shaw Street.

Observations have showed significant queuing of cyclists at this location during the morning peak hour. Upwards of fifty cyclists have been observed to be congregating at the west boulevard of the Bathurst Street and Adelaide Street intersection waiting during a red light signal. Upwards of approximately 500 eastbound cyclists use this intersection during the morning peak hour. The extent of queuing of cyclists at this location is a safety and operational concern because of potential conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians and cyclists and motorists.

To address these concerns an intersection improvement design to accommodate cyclists within the boulevard area on the west side of Bathurst Street and Adelaide Street West intersection has been prepared. The local Councillor and stakeholders, including St. Mary's Church and Cycle Toronto, have been consulted in developing the design.

Key Features

• A safe and dedicated space for the cyclists with green area marking to congregate on the west boulevard in front of the St Mary's church and continue to the Adelaide Cycle Tracks east of Bathurst Street
• Smooth connection of Adelaide Street cycling facilities east and west of Bathurst Street
• Guidance for cyclists through signage, pavement marking and a separate bike signal head
• Avoiding pedestrians and cyclists conflict through separated and dedicated facilities for both pedestrians and cyclists
• Accessible design features for visually impaired pedestrians, include tactile walking surface indicator plates and push buttons at all corners of the intersections

A First of Its Kind in the City
While the City already has a handful of indirect left-turn painted bike boxes at intersections on various cycling routes in the downtown, this type of physically separated lay-by is new for Toronto.

Similar designs are planned to be implemented at the Queen/Peter/Soho Street intersection on the north side of Queen Street, and at the O'Connor Drive and Woodbine Avenue intersection on the north side. Both of these projects are planned to be implemented in 2018.
[...]

https://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=9ec6b6f9fda0d410VgnVCM10000071d60f89RCRD

The curbed and channeled section from Adelaide east to Bathurst makes logical sense. The spoiler is the 'green' lay-by from the north within the intersection. The schematic pic actually adds to the confusion by showing an arrow to turn before attaining the marked cycle crossing sharrows.

So what is the purpose of the green lay-by? Is it to stack cyclists southbound intending to head east, and if so, for the numbers touted by the City, it appears inadequate in size, and also very indefinite as to where to channel them to cross, not to mention that by not having it as a channeled, curbed lane, it is technically part of the intersection, and you can't have traffic purposely back-up through an intersection.

The green lay-by is a very poor design, if not illegal, and it doesn't seem to offer any advantage over not having one there at all. In fact it promotes conflict with the northbound separate lane.

That green lay-by should be made a separated bike lane too (with curb, for safety and to bring it under City control, not HTA) and the potential conflict with the opposing separate bike-line studied again to see if sequential bike lane lights are needed. Something is.

Edit to Add: I've read this a number of times in case this is an awkward semantic:
"The Adelaide Street West intersection is offset at Bathurst Street so that the west leg is south of the east leg."

I've given up trying to make sense of that, it appears polar opposite, so I presume what's intended is:
(gist)"The Adelaide Street West intersection is offset at Bathurst Street so that the eastbound leg approaching Bathurst St is south of the eastbound leg departing from Bathurst Street."

 

[salsa]

Can we just wait for the darn thing to be built first before concluding that it doesn't work?

 

[steveintoronto]

Can we just wait for the darn thing to be built first before concluding that it doesn't work?

You certainly can, but that's exactly why so much planning in Toronto goes wrong. The time to address what's an obvious deficiency is now, and it would only take a relatively minor tweak.

I've been looking for a more informative web-page on the facets of design. Can't find any. The one linked talks of a "signal head". Anyone blindly supporting pushing ahead on this know of a better description or what that is exactly? And how many signal facets are there? And do cyclists get their own phase across that junction with vehicular traffic stopped both south and north on Bathurst?

There's also a serious fault with the planned and described Peter and Queen intersection. What do you propose? Building it and seeing if it works?

I'm astounded how no-one can describe the mechanics of the green lay-by, and yet put their blind faith in this. And btw, I'm not the first poster in this string to question it.

Edit to Add:

The rules of the Toronto bike lane are, let's face it, unclear. Most cyclists don't know which vehicles are legally allowed to be stopped or parked in the bike lane. Contrary to popular belief, even dedicated bike lanes aren't off-limits to all motorized vehicles.

The lack of clearly posted rules is coupled with a dearth of visible enforcement, but the biggest scofflaws — delivery van drivers and moving companies, judging from angry tweets — seem able to dodge enforcement officers with relative ease.

Coming straight from the City of Toronto bylaw, here are the rules of the Toronto bike lane. Note that the rules differ slightly for painted and separated bike lanes, like on Sherbourne and Wellesley. [...]

http://www.blogto.com/city/2014/06/what_exactly_are_the_rules_of_the_bike_lane_in_toronto/

That ambiguity is what makes the 'green lay-by' so problematic. It is not a dedicated physically defined cycle lane. And that creates a number of problems. Make it a *physically separated lane* and all the apparent deficiencies can be addressed before it goes wrong. Once installed, it won't get revisited anytime soon.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Can we get ebikes out of the bike lanes?

 

[Avenue]

Can we just wait for the darn thing to be built first before concluding that it doesn't work?

Well, criticizing a concept after it's been built would be... late.

 

[steveintoronto]

Can we get ebikes out of the bike lanes?

Yeah...they're a blight, doubtless, but unfortunately, Council fudged the issue, and getting back to the ambiguity in the Law, they are using lanes that come under the HTA. In parks and off-road trails, they are banned. Doesn't stop many of them from doing it. Quite a few use the West Toronto Railpath, not legal. And not legal on the Roncesvalles raised sections, Sherbourne, Waterfront and a few other instances of seemingly on-road trails, but by being physically separated, technically they are sidewalks, not roadways.

Enforcement on this is almost totally non-existent. In most cases, the e-Bikes are a menace being operated by persons who lost their licence to drive. There are a few legitimate users with a disability that dictates the need, but they're a minority, and unfortunately get thrown in with the bandits.

 

[ADRM]

Yeah...they're a blight, doubtless, but unfortunately, Council fudged the issue, and getting back to the ambiguity in the Law, they are using lanes that come under the HTA. In parks and off-road trails, they are banned. Doesn't stop many of them from doing it. Quite a few use the West Toronto Railpath, not legal. And not legal on the Roncesvalles raised sections, Sherbourne, Waterfront and a few other instances of seemingly on-road trails, but by being physically separated, technically they are sidewalks, not roadways.

Enforcement on this is almost totally non-existent. In most cases, the e-Bikes are a menace being operated by persons who lost their licence to drive. There are a few legitimate users with a disability that dictates the need, but they're a minority, and unfortunately get thrown in with the bandits.

I can't remember which official it was, but someone confirmed/asserted on Twitter last week that the delineation is that e-bikes are technically not permitted in cycle tracks but are in non-protected bike lanes. I hate them everywhere tbh.

 

[steveintoronto]

I can't remember which official it was, but someone confirmed/asserted on Twitter last week that the delineation is that e-bikes are technically not permitted in cycle tracks but are in non-protected bike lanes. I hate them everywhere tbh.

I share your disdain, and there's actually an amazing amount of discussion on this on-line. e-Bikers are reviled internationally in developed nations. Many e-Bikers can't understand why...lol.

THE major point is that they have no consideration on protocol or common-sense in using bike lanes. A well-functioning cycle lane is like a choreograph, you clearly see this in the Dutch and Danish videos, even in some of the US progressive cities. And e-Bikes fit into that choreograph like a pair of construction boots at a ballet class. Some considerate riders can and do, they are rare, and they unfairly get the flame meant for the miscreants.

Here's two forums discussing e-Bike 'incompatibility' with pedal bikes:

Never expected how much other bikers hate e-bikes
http://www.bikeforums.net/electric-...ected-how-much-other-bikers-hate-e-bikes.html

4 things to hate about e-bikes
http://cycle-space.com/4-things-to-hate-about-e-bikes/

 

[smuncky]

I can't remember which official it was, but someone confirmed/asserted on Twitter last week that the delineation is that e-bikes are technically not permitted in cycle tracks but are in non-protected bike lanes. I hate them everywhere tbh.

https://twitter.com/TPS_ParkingPal/status/906196581258584065

 

[W. K. Lis]

From Streetsblog, at this link:

Fort Collins Just Built Five Miles of Bikeway for Less Than $1 Million – Here’s the Trick

Fort Collins, Colorado, is the latest city to embrace America’s most underrated type of bike facility.

As it works to improve the low-stress biking network in the newer, car-oriented neighborhoods of its northwest, the city of 164,000 has used a tool that can be perfect for quickly, cheaply linking up the biking grid: a neighborhood bikeway.

The Pitkin Bikeway, as Fort Collins calls its first such project, turns five miles of ordinary lower-traffic local streets into what FC Bikes Program Manager Tessa Greegor calls a “five-mile east-west corridor that goes through the heart of Colorado State University.”

The city held an official ribbon-cutting on Friday.

“This is really the foundation of our low-stress network,” Greegor said in an interview. “An experience that is similar to riding on the trails.”

Here’s the biggest challenge to making biking on a side street like Pitkin Street feel like biking on an off-street path: making it much easier to cross the big streets.

“The problem is getting to an arterial or a major street where you have high speeds, high traffic volumes and not having a comfortable way to get across,” Greegor said. “At some of these intersections, especially the one at Shields and Springfield, you’d see people essentially trying to play Frogger trying to get across. … To be able to access signalized intersections, they’d have to travel two or three blocks out of their way.”

The obvious answer would be adding traffic signals. But installing a new four-way stoplight is expensive — maybe $150,000 in Fort Collins, which is (believe it or not) low by national standards.

Another downside of four-way traffic signals: They tend to attract traffic. If full stoplights led more people to turn onto the Pitkin Bikeway, that’d make biking, walking, and living on the bikeway less pleasant.

That’s how Fort Collins arrived at a compromise solution: the “toucan crossing.”

An easy crossing, at almost half the price

Named for the fact that “two can” cross simultaneously — someone walking and someone biking — each toucan costs just 60 to 70 percent as much as a full stoplight. (At one Fort Collins intersection, the price was cheaper still, because an existing pedestrian signal was already in place.)

Instead of rotating through red and green phases automatically, toucan crossings give red lights to the arterial street only when someone on the local street hits a button.

Someone on a bike, riding down the middle of the lane on the low-traffic street, crosses a toucan by pulling to the center island and pushing the bike-specific button there. It works like any sidewalk-activated button, except that the green light for crossing bike traffic doesn’t need to last quite as long as for a walking button.

“We’re giving bicyclists 12 seconds of green + 3 seconds of yellow change + 4 seconds of all red clearance for a total of 19 seconds to cross,” Greegor said in a July email. “We plan to watch them though and make adjustments as needed.”

Another feature of the toucan crossing: they function like a diagonal traffic diverter, indicating to people driving that the streets are now for right turns only. This has the effect of reducing auto traffic on the local streets — which had already carried fewer than 2,000 cars per day, Greegor said.

She said the city hasn’t heard many objections about this lost auto maneuverability, because it had already been hard for cars to cross or turn left at these corners.

“For the most part, detour routes are pretty available,” she said. “[And] if you really wanted to, you could make a left turn. There’s nothing beside some signage that would stop you from doing that.”

Alta Planning + Design, a consulting firm that worked with Fort Collins to design the facility, wrote more about why the city chose to use toucan crossings on its blog.

Alta’s project manager, Montana-based designer Joe Gilpin, said in an interview that neighborhood bikeways can be a particularly good way for smaller cities to rapidly expand low-stress bike networks. Not only are neighborhood bikeways cheaper per mile than protected bike lanes or off-street paths. They’re also easiest to install in less-dense areas, because the amount of auto traffic is naturally so low that diverters aren’t required.

“What’s great about small communities is they have less of a problem meeting speed and volume thresholds,” Gilpin said. “It’s easier to often get the characteristics that you want without having to do huge interventions.”

Neighborhood bikeways are about much more than bikes

The Pitkin Bikeway hosted Fort Collins Open Streets on Sunday, September 17.
The Pitkin Bikeway got a test ride on Sunday from thousands of people who turned out for the city’s annual Open Streets event — intended in part to show off the fact that by calming and reducing auto traffic, a bike route can also create better streets for walking, scooting, skating and generally having fun.

But it’s already a model for more streets around town.

“We’re designing a bunch of other intersections currently that would be installed with toucan crossings,” Greegor said.

Next up for Fort Collins are a handful of longtime trouble crossings around the city and the Hampshire Bikeway, a north-south corridor on the western side of town, including four arterial crossings.

Another feature of the forthcoming Hampshire Bikeway: intersecting with the Pitkin Bikeway. They’ll be the next two crosslinks in Fort Collins’s low-stress biking network, laced directly into its street grid.

“People are using it,” said Greegor. “That’s a great thing to see.”

 

[muller877]

Well then Mr Sensitive, study the picture, and add some input:

What will make cyclists stay in a rational stream when stacked up in the green space? Note the feeding lane opposing? It's north bound, and has a curb to channel cyclists to a very limited aperture to cross east to Richmond. How are the two flows, one from the south, the other from the north, going to meet and flow safely and controlled across that intersection without problems?

Note also an oncoming cyclist north to the intersection with a light in his favour to progress eastward across Bathurst. But there's the red-light runner headed south across his right of way.

Safe?

Over to you...

A bit confused at some of the questions:

- If you are going southbound and then turning left you go into the green box. Then you wait until the light changes and cross the street
- If you are going southbound and going straight you follow the bike lane. If there is a back-up of cyclists turning left you slow down/stop. If there is no cars you can signal with your hand and go into the traffic lane to go around the left hand turn lane.
- If you are coming from the north (from behind the church) you wait behind the pedestrian walkway. When it is free you can turn right to cross the boulevard.

Both sets of cyclists will merge when they cross the intersection. Note with the sharp turn the bikes should slow down. I don't really see the safety concern here for people that follow the rules. There will be those cyclists who try and run a red light and just like cars cyclists should be passive aggressive and not permit them back into the row of bikes. Force them to go to the back.

 

[ADRM]

I don't think we're gonna have a problem here; even before any of this is even close to complete, cyclists are already queueing up in a politely and orderly fashion around the construction:

 

[MisterF]

The separated bike lanes on Highway 7 between Town Centre and Sciberras are almost finished and I've ridden them a few times since they finished the paving work. The whole length is now rideable with a couple minor obstructions. I like the design for the most part; the lanes are separated from traffic by planting beds to create a relaxing riding atmosphere. At signalized intersections the lanes join the road to make cyclists more visible to drivers and less likely to be blocked by a turning vehicle.

At unsignalized intersections and driveways the bike lane doesn't join the road; it crosses the intersection like a sidewalk.

The advantages of the lanes re-joining the road are lost at these spots, and you end up seeing a lot of this:

The other thing I don't like about the bike lanes is that they're made of concrete instead of asphalt. The concrete is smooth for now, but asphalt is still a nicer surface to ride on. The road paint isn't all done yet so hopefully they'll add some clearer road markings at all intersections.

Suburbs around the GTA are making efforts to build cycling infrastructure but it's a mixed bag. Less experienced cyclists still tend to use sidewalks even where a street has bike lanes, because the bike lanes are still exposed to traffic. At the same time, serious road cyclists tend to use the road even where a roadside bike path exists. The multi-use paths can have pedestrians and badly designed intersections to deal with, and they're often rougher than the regular traffic lanes. So the design of bike lanes and paths still needs work. With much better designs being standardized in other areas, this isn't rocket science.

 

[innsertnamehere]

I fully expect you will see some nice green paint at crossings before that is done. York Region used green paint liberally on the earlier phases of the highway 7 lanes.

 

[Edward Skira]

The City of Toronto issued this news release through Canada News Wire on Saturday.

News Release

September 23, 2017

City of Toronto reopens the Lower Don Trail

Mayor John Tory, joined by Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32 Beaches-East York), Chair of the City's Parks and Environment Committee, Councillor Mary Fragedakis (Ward 29 Toronto-Danforth), Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale) and representatives from partners Evergreen and the Trans Canada Trail, reopened the Lower Don Trail this morning as part of Ravine Days, a weekend-long celebration of Toronto's unique ravine network.

"For many Torontonians this trail is a cherished escape and a chance to experience nature in the heart of the city," said Mayor Tory. "I'm delighted to see the improvements we've made and I'm proud of the innovative partnerships that have made it possible."

The reopened trail includes:
• a new trail bridge over the Don River at Pottery Road
• a wider, safer trail tunnel under the currently inactive Metrolinx rail line at the Belleville underpass
• new art installations in the Lower Don Parklands, in partnership with Evergreen
• a connection to the Bayview multi-use trail, including a connection to the Brick Works.

The City also launched the Parks and Trails Wayfinding Pilot today, with new signage along the trail.

Ravines define Toronto's landscape. Over 17 per cent of Toronto's total area is ravine land and 87 per cent of Toronto's Environmentally Significant Areas are found in ravines. Ravine Days coincide with the presentation of the Ravine Strategy to City Council's Executive Committee for approval on September 26and subsequently to City Council on October 2 to 4. The final strategy, centred around five themes: Protect, Invest, Connect, Partner and Celebrate, will build on the draft principles that were released for public feedback in June 2016. More Ravine Days activities are listed at http://www.toronto.ca/ravines.

This news release is also available on the City's website: http://ow.ly/B7Dv30foWgf.

Toronto is Canada's largest city, the fourth largest in North America, and home to a diverse population of about 2.8 million people. It is a global centre for business, finance, arts and culture and is consistently ranked one of the world's most livable cities. In 2017, Toronto is honouring Canada's 150th birthday with "TO Canada with Love," a year-long program of celebrations, commemorations and exhibitions. For information on non-emergency City services and programs, Toronto residents, businesses and visitors can visit http://www.toronto.ca, call 311, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/TorontoComms and on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/cityofto.

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