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General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

steveintoronto said:
My eyes were immediately drawn to the old Austin or derivative travelling west. But you're right! That Citroen is a usable size, and a 'station wagon type' to boot, unlike the Austin. (There's a refurbished Austin Cambridge in supreme condition driving around Guelph)
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I think that actually might be a Fiat 1100.
 
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...ns-favour-bike-lanes-new-survey-suggests.html

Forum Research claims that 56% of people are in favour of Bloor Street bike lanes.

Not sure how accurate this is given this is a robo-poll and only a tiny fraction of people participate in these surveys.

Also the poll claims that 17% of people have actually ridden a bike in Bloor Street bike lanes, which I find hard to believe. This would imply that about 476000 Toronto residents have ridden on Bloor Street bike lanes in the last two months, which seems implausible if 6000 people a day use them on average. (My guess is that is the same 3000 people using them twice a day for the most part). I also find it a little hard to believe that 52% of people have driven along Bloor St since the bike lanes were added. Is this survey a representative sample of all Toronto residents (not just the local area)? I don't think most people living in Scarborough or Etobicoke have any reason to either drive or bike here.
 
If Forum is saying 56% are in favour, then it's more likely somewhere around the 75% mark.
 
PinkLucy said:
If Forum is saying 56% are in favour, then it's more likely somewhere around the 75% mark.
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56% was for support for Bloor Street bike lanes. Support for bike lanes in general according to the poll is 70%.

This was an "Interactive Voice Response" poll (a computer program dials phone numbers and administers the survey automatically), so take with a grain of salt. The response rates of these sort of surveys are very low, only a couple percent.
 
I always take Forum polls with a grain of salt, however, given the demographic they generally hit, this is quite a positive, surprising result. So in this case, the grain of salt is that the numbers are lower than they should be. But you and Stephen Holyday will never believe that bike lanes are a good thing. Of course, complete streets with proper bike separated bike infrastructure and promotion of alternative transportation and a culture shift away from cars in an urban setting such as is seen in Europe would be even better, but Toronto moves at the pace of a dinosaur, so we take what we can get.
 
PinkLucy said:
I always take Forum polls with a grain of salt, however, given the demographic they generally hit, this is quite a positive, surprising result. So in this case, the grain of salt is that the numbers are lower than they should be. But you and Stephen Holyday will never believe that bike lanes are a good thing. Of course, complete streets with proper bike separated bike infrastructure and promotion of alternative transportation and a culture shift away from cars in an urban setting such as is seen in Europe would be even better, but Toronto moves at the pace of a dinosaur, so we take what we can get.
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What leads to believe that Forum underestimates support for bike lanes?

I would have thought that it would overestimate, given that the estimate for number of people who have actually biked on Bloor in the last 2 months seems way too high.
 
andrewpmk said:
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...ns-favour-bike-lanes-new-survey-suggests.html

Forum Research claims that 56% of people are in favour of Bloor Street bike lanes.

Not sure how accurate this is given this is a robo-poll and only a tiny fraction of people participate in these surveys.

Also the poll claims that 17% of people have actually ridden a bike in Bloor Street bike lanes, which I find hard to believe. This would imply that about 476000 Toronto residents have ridden on Bloor Street bike lanes in the last two months, which seems implausible if 6000 people a day use them on average. (My guess is that is the same 3000 people using them twice a day for the most part). I also find it a little hard to believe that 52% of people have driven along Bloor St since the bike lanes were added. Is this survey a representative sample of all Toronto residents (not just the local area)? I don't think most people living in Scarborough or Etobicoke have any reason to either drive or bike here.
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It's 17% of those surveyed. The story doesn't extrapolate that finding across the entire population.
 
ADRM said:
It's 17% of those surveyed. The story doesn't extrapolate that finding across the entire population.
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These surveys are supposed to be a representative sample of Toronto's population, which doesn't seem to be the case here due to non-response bias.
 
andrewpmk said:
These surveys are supposed to be a representative sample of Toronto's population, which doesn't seem to be the case here due to non-response bias.
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That's broadly true, but the realities of limited resources come into play. If you want to ask questions of people who've used bike lanes, you may want to ensure a certain number of respondents have actually used them, which is easy enough to do in the respondent selection process.

In some cases (such as this), it will mean that it is not possible to extrapolate every individual data point to draw broader conclusions about a wider population. And that's fine, because that's not what's being claimed here with this poll, at least in the Star's reporting of it. It is not directly inferred in the article that 17% of Torontonians have used the Bloor bike lanes.
 
ADRM said:
That's broadly true, but the realities of limited resources come into play. If you want to ask questions of people who've used bike lanes, you may want to ensure a certain number of respondents have actually used them, which is easy enough to do in the respondent selection process.

In some cases (such as this), it will mean that it is not possible to extrapolate every individual data point to draw broader conclusions about a wider population. And that's fine, because that's not what's being claimed here with this poll, at least in the Star's reporting of it. It is not directly inferred in the article that 17% of Torontonians have used the Bloor bike lanes.
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I don't think that overrepresenting bicyclists in the sample is going to give accurate results.

The number of people who claim to support "bike lanes" in these surveys is far higher than the number of people who actually bike even occasionally, which means that either the surveys have an unrepresentative sample or that public support for "bike lanes" is really very weak.
 
andrewpmk said:
I don't think that overrepresenting bicyclists in the sample is going to give accurate results.

The number of people who claim to support "bike lanes" in these surveys is far higher than the number of people who actually bike even occasionally, which means that either the surveys have an unrepresentative sample or that public support for "bike lanes" is really very weak.
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You're equating "bicyclists" with "people who have used the Bloor bike lanes." Those are two different things.
 
About 2% of Toronto's population rides a bike to work. The number of people who ride bikes occasionally anywhere in the city (excluding people who only ride off road) might be somewhat higher, 10% seems plausible. The number of people who ride a bike on a single road (Bloor Street) must be a lot less than that. It is a few thousand people a day, not 17% of the population.
 
andrewpmk said:
About 2% of Toronto's population rides a bike to work. The number of people who ride bikes occasionally anywhere in the city (excluding people who only ride off road) might be somewhat higher, 10% seems plausible. The number of people who ride a bike on a single road (Bloor Street) must be a lot less than that. It is a few thousand people a day, not 17% of the population.
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I don't disagree with any of that. I'm taking umbrage with your statement that "...the poll claims that 17% of people have actually ridden a bike in Bloor Street bike lanes" because that is not claimed.
 
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