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General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

Have Toronto’s Bike Lane Butchers Found Another Target?


June 6, 2012

By Angie Schmitt

Read More: http://streetsblog.net/2012/06/06/have-torontos-bike-lane-butchers-found-another-target/

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Toronto took the opposite tack of virtually every other city on the continent last summer when the city removed a bike lane from Jarvis Street, on one of the most important north-south thoroughfares. Now the city is threatening to take out another one, reports Jake Tobin Garrett at Network blog Spacing Toronto:

- According to a press release put out by Cycle Toronto today, the City will be creating an Options Report for Dupont Street that may include, with pressure from a certain councillor, the removal of the bike lanes. From the mouth of Cycle Toronto: “Cycle Toronto strongly disagrees with Councillor Palacio’s intention to remove cycling infrastructure on Dupont Street. The Dupont Street bike lanes provide a safe passage under the Weston railway bridge, a location where a cyclist was killed and several others injured in recent years.”

- According to Ben Spurr over at Now Toronto, Dan Egan, Manager of Cycling and Pedestrian Infrastructure, said that Transportation Services has not be directed to remove the Dupont bike lanes. However, given the current climate at City Hall and past actions that have seen councillors sneak in motions to remove bike lanes without public consultation (Jarvis, anyone?), cyclists can be forgiven for being a little jumpy on this issue. With the removal of the Pharmarcy and Birchmount bike lanes last year, Toronto actually had a negative amount of bike lanes installed in 2011. This is something that we cannot let continue in 2012. We have to move forward.

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RPJ_Mural_03.jpg
 
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M II A II R II K said:
Toronto took the opposite tack of virtually every other city on the continent last summer when the city removed a bike lane from Jarvis Street, on one of the most important north-south thoroughfares.
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I hadn't realised the lane was removed already ... I guess I don't walk up Jarvis north of King often enough. That's a shame.
 
There's another ride to support the Jarvis bike lanes next Wednesday (June 13th), 6pm & it starts at Allan Gardens.

Also, the westbound bike lane on College Street west of University over to about McCaul has been blocked for a good four weeks with streetcar tracks. I read yesterday that they'll be there until August or September. I remember this two summers ago on Bathurst south of Bloor down to almost Harbord St but it was a vehicular lane that they closed off to store the tracks which again, were changed out in the fall.
 
nfitz said:
I hadn't realised the lane was removed already ... I guess I don't walk up Jarvis north of King often enough. That's a shame.
Click to expand...

Ugh. While all the focus is on Jarvis (a road not originally slated for bike lanes anyway), bike lanes were removed from Pharmacy and Birchmount in Scarborough.
 
So Toronto is going the opposite direction of Mississauga, and probably the rest of the 905 for that matter. The Ford administration is so backwards, it is sad.
 
Marathons and street festivals will be targeted next. And there'll be a move to remove the median in University Avenue as well as the statues because that gets in the way of 2 more potential car lanes!
 
M II A II R II K said:
Have Toronto’s Bike Lane Butchers Found Another Target?


June 6, 2012

By Angie Schmitt
Now the city is threatening to take out another one, reports Jake Tobin Garrett at Network blog Spacing Toronto:[/B]

- According to a press release put out by Cycle Toronto today, the City will be creating an Options Report for Dupont Street that may include, with pressure from a certain councillor, the removal of the bike lanes. From the mouth of Cycle Toronto: “Cycle Toronto strongly disagrees with Councillor Palacio’s intention to remove cycling infrastructure on Dupont Street. The Dupont Street bike lanes provide a safe passage under the Weston railway bridge, a location where a cyclist was killed and several others injured in recent years.”

- According to Ben Spurr over at Now Toronto, Dan Egan, Manager of Cycling and Pedestrian Infrastructure, said that Transportation Services has not be directed to remove the Dupont bike lanes. However, given the current climate at City Hall and past actions that have seen councillors sneak in motions to remove bike lanes without public consultation (Jarvis, anyone?), cyclists can be forgiven for being a little jumpy on this issue. With the removal of the Pharmarcy and Birchmount bike lanes last year, Toronto actually had a negative amount of bike lanes installed in 2011. This is something that we cannot let continue in 2012. We have to move forward.
Click to expand...

There's no news here - we've known about this study for a while.

I for one would "trade" this bike lane for another one somewhere else. It's an unbelievably bad choke point for cars, and traffic on Dupont is much worse than it used to be. I don't know how anybody could argue otherwise.
 
I am starting to be convinced that Ford is in fact 50's Biff from Back to the Future with the same planning ideology they had back then..
 
k10ery said:
I for one would "trade" this bike lane for another one somewhere else. It's an unbelievably bad choke point for cars, and traffic on Dupont is much worse than it used to be. I don't know how anybody could argue otherwise.
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I really think that a lot of the congestion can be explained by the signal timings at Dundas Street. It's long overdue that they disconnect Old Weston Road from that intersection so that it can become a regular two-phase signal cycle rather than the current three-phase.
 
The way council has been bitch slapping Ford over and over since last fall, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided not to get rid of the bike lanes on Jarvis.
 
Towered said:
The way council has been bitch slapping Ford over and over since last fall, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided not to get rid of the bike lanes on Jarvis.
Click to expand...

At least that I would get behind. I drive down Jarvis to get to the Village and have never had a problem with the bike lanes, whereas I found the old reversible lane confusing.
 
From SF.Streetsblog.com:

Bikes Are Not Cars: Why California Needs an “Idaho Stop†Law

If you follow just about any major media coverage of street etiquette and safety, by now you’ve probably seen a piece vilifying people on bikes for “running†stop signs. But hop on a bike yourself, and you’ll start to see why safely rolling and yielding at stop signs makes sense.

The stop sign law in effect in almost every state has a fundamental flaw: It assumes that bicycles are just like cars, creating the unrealistic expectation that someone on a bike should make a full stop at every stop sign, even when there are plainly no cars or pedestrians nearby.

The problem with this is that it effectively criminalizes the way that people naturally negotiate stop sign intersections on a bike: by slowing, checking for traffic, and being prepared to yield to others. Try the experiment a million times, and you’ll get the same results: everyone, including SF police officers (and probably the lawmakers themselves), will negotiate this way.

The reason behind this is, basically, that operating a 30-pound bicycle is quite different from driving a multi-ton, motorized vehicle. A bicycle doesn’t encase the user in a bulky metal frame that hinders vision. Bicycles can also stop on a dime compared to cars. It’s for these reasons that when driving a car, the care needed to avoid a crash is drastically higher.

To reflect this reality, Idaho amended its stop sign law to allow bicycle riders to treat stop signs as yield signs. This means that while a bicycle rider still can’t blow through stop signs or violate anyone’s right-of-way — which is dangerous and should be enforced — they are allowed to slow down, check for traffic, and proceed legally. The law has clarified expectations between road users, and, as the above video (produced by Spencer Boomhower in support of an effort in Oregon to pass an Idaho-style law) notes, it has a 30-year track record.

Meanwhile, the current law in California and all other states leads to an unproductive fixation on this behavior. While more serious safety issues go neglected by SF’s police department, people on bikes are arbitrarily fined hundreds of dollars for using a safe, common practice that most people are used to, filling courts with frivolous cases. People are then discouraged from riding bikes at all, or castigated by reporters like KRON’s Stanley Roberts.

Bike advocates have pushed to change California’s law, but the hurdles are enormous. Instead, the SF Bicycle Coalition urges the SFPD to focus its limited resources “on those known areas where people are being hit and injured and the most dangerous behaviors, rather than reacting to media or political pressure,†said Executive Director Leah Shahum. “If the enforcement were based on the data of actual problems, we would see greater benefit to public safety for all road users.â€

While bicycle stop sign violations aren’t known to be a significant cause of crashes, 96 percent of the 899 pedestrians injured in 2011 were hit by car drivers. That’s about three a day. The most common cause of pedestrian injuries in San Francisco is failure to yield by motorists (42 percent of all cases). According to SFPD data, the intersections with the highest number of injuries to pedestrians and bicyclists in 2011 were, from highest to lowest: Market Street and Octavia Boulevard (a freeway ramp), Divisadero and Oak Streets, Market and Fifth Street, and Market and Valencia Street. Robert Yegge, the only bicycle rider killed this year, was struck by a truck driver who failed to yield at Oak and Franklin Streets.

But while bike stop sign violations aren’t even on the map as a frequent cause of crashes, you could be sure to find police officers stinging bicycle riders on the Wiggle this week to enforce a law they won’t even follow themselves.

“The reality is that the vast majority of people bicycling and driving are doing so responsibly,†said Shahum. “We do need a smarter, more data-driven strategy toward improving that bad behavior among some that garners so much public attention. And the city needs to update its enforcement strategy — along with policies and infrastructure — in order to actually encourage safe behavior.â€
Click to expand...

[video=youtube;uL0rkHqOK-4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL0rkHqOK-4[/video]

[video]http://vimeo.com/boomhower/idahostop[/video]
 
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