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General cycling issues (Is Toronto bike friendly?)

Terrible news.

In better news; I noticed today that they is a lot of new asphalt for the Eglinton trail, from East Mall to just before Renforth.
 
Napoleon said:
This is 3 cyclists killed by drivers in 2 weeks. Not very good.
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Traffic engineers should be tasked to go to each accident site and investigate why these accidents happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

Blaming the driver for distracted driving shouldn't be the end-all conclusion. Distracted driving or not, the road and location proved to be a vulnerable position for the cyclist and should be examined to see how things can be redesigned to prevent fatalities in the future.
 
WislaHD said:
Traffic engineers should be tasked to go to each accident site and investigate why these accidents happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

Blaming the driver for distracted driving shouldn't be the end-all conclusion. Distracted driving or not, the road and location proved to be a vulnerable position for the cyclist and should be examined to see how things can be redesigned to prevent fatalities in the future.
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Re-examining the road design is part of what happens when there is a cyclist fatality in the Netherlands (in part because they don't happen often).

I'm not sure distraction is the issue here. The collision near York involved a driver under the influence. The driver on Avenue had passengers, whom the police are trying to identify/locate; alcohol might be a factor if there were witnesses who saw him before he was driving.
 
WislaHD said:
Traffic engineers should be tasked to go to each accident site and investigate why these accidents happened and how it can be prevented in the future.

Blaming the driver for distracted driving shouldn't be the end-all conclusion. Distracted driving or not, the road and location proved to be a vulnerable position for the cyclist and should be examined to see how things can be redesigned to prevent fatalities in the future.
Click to expand...

The Avenue & Davenport intersection is a fairly busy one. This unfortunate accident occurred around 11:20pm. I suspect the driver going northbound simply did not see or anticipate an oncoming cyclist making a turn in front of them. Impairment or distraction is certainly an external factor. At the same time, the cyclist may have misjudged the speed at which the driver was coming up Avenue Rd at. There is no dedicated left turn lane going southbound so the cyclist would've likely been riding in a lane with straight-moving cars, potentially reducing his visibility to the driver.

While I do agree that there are certain measures that can be implemented from a traffic design point of view, at the end of the day, both cyclist and driver have to take some responsibility in this tragic event.
 
James said:
While I do agree that there are certain measures that can be implemented from a traffic design point of view, at the end of the day, both cyclist and driver have to take some responsibility in this tragic event.
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The cyclist is dead. The driver fled the scene, was later arrested and charged, and the police still haven't examined the vehicle. Your post is unhelpful, James.
 
^ My apologies. Re-reading my post, I really should have separated this specific case from traffic/intersection design and driver/cyclist awareness at Avenue & Davenport and other busy intersections like it.

Regarding this specific case, a life was lost prematurely. As far as the driver is concerned, I'm glad they turned themselves in. Fleeing the scene of a fatal hit-and-run is a truly horrible thing to have done. I'm sure we'll read more about this story in the days ahead...
 
The Richmond/Adelaide cycling tracks are garbage. Garbage design and garbage execution. Couple that with lane closures due to construction and the expresses buses that swerve in and out of the lane, a cyclist will die.

No problem though. They ride on the sidewalks too if there's a car in it! I got clipped twice this summer. I love how cyclists want to be treated like cars yet the rules apparently don't apply to them!
 
Filip said:
The Richmond/Adelaide cycling tracks are garbage. Garbage design and garbage execution. Couple that with lane closures due to construction and the expresses buses that swerve in and out of the lane, a cyclist will die.

No problem though. They ride on the sidewalks too if there's a car in it! I got clipped twice this summer. I love how cyclists want to be treated like cars yet the rules apparently don't apply to them!
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I don't think they're quite that bad but I don't see why the city bothers with a 'pilot' project when it's abundantly clear that paint is not satisfactory separation. The bollards need to be more numerous, and studier, or better yet, replaced something cars can't drive over.

It doesn't happen often that a car is in the lane, but my first instinct in that case is to go left around the car, not onto the sidewalk. I don't actually want to be treated like a car (like a driver), just like a road user who is not invisible or disregarded.
 
On a less curmudgeonly note, today PWIC unanimously approved the extension of the Richmond and Adelaide cycle tracks east to Parliament. According to Mike Layton on Twitter, installation of planter boxes in the buffer zone will begin next week.
 
They're not perfect, but I think Richmond-Adelaide are the best bike lanes in the city. Wide enough that you can easily pass slower cyclists with lots of room to spare. Light timings that will give you a green wave from Yonge to Bathurst if you do 35km/h. And bollards to stop most motorists from parking in the lane. I can usually get from Yonge to Bathurst in 5 minutes on that thing.

I'm used to riding on the road though. I do 26km per day on Yonge Street, which is as bad as it gets.
 
There was a "die in" today to both commemorate the three cyclists that were killed in the past three weeks as well as to advocate for an increased cycling infrastructure.
20150619-bikedieinatcityhall590-10.jpg


More pictures at this link:
http://www.blogto.com/city/2015/06/this_is_what_a_bike_die-in_protest_looks_like_in_toronto/

I'll note that two of these were hit and runs.
 
spider said:
This is satire. Right?
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/brian-dexter-cyclists-get-on-the-sidewalks
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The article is not greatly written, and the author clearly doesn't understand that in the other places he mentions, people do not ride on sidewalks, but on separated infrastructure that is more connected to the sidewalk than the road. However, I do understand his point, and somewhat agree with it.

I am an avid and experienced cyclist. In Toronto, I ride on the roads. Occasionally I cycle outside of the city, in York, Durham, and Peel region, and for the most part I bike on the sidewalks. The author is right that the sidewalks there are well-separated from traffic, and there's very few people that use them. Why ride alongside car traffic that's doing 60 - 80 km/h with drivers that aren't used to driving around bikes when I already have a separated path? That being said, I always look out for pedestrians and give them the right-of-way, as well as being careful at intersections.

There doesn't have to be a blanket law that says cycling on sidewalks is okay now, but there should be some common sense judgements. In Toronto the sidewalks are busy for the most part, and the law makes sense. It can be relaxed in areas that don't have a high number of pedestrians. I believe areas like Mississauga and York Region already have plans to turn many sidewalks into multi-use paths (I could be wrong about that). It makes sense.
 
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