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unimaginative2

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Council backs plan to put cycling in the fast lane

JOHN BARBER

jbarber@globeandmail.com

January 30, 2008

Once upon a time Toronto was well known as a good city for cyclists, and not just because it's flat. Mayor John Sewell demonstrated just how cycle-friendly the central city could be by going everywhere on two wheels 30 years ago. While other cities built recreational trails, Toronto pioneered the promotion of cycling as a viable mode of urban transportation.

As other cities struggled to catch up, the plaudits rolled into Toronto.

Then, suddenly, it all stopped. Amalgamation swept such quaint activities aside while empowering a new set of suburban politicians who, if they cared about it at all, were openly hostile toward cycling. While other cities laid on bike lanes in response to public demand, Toronto politicians snorted about alleged frills and feared inconvenience to drivers. Innovation moved elsewhere.

The city still has a cycling committee, and a budget, not to mention the usual award-winning plan. What Toronto lacks is the infrastructure other cities built while it dozed.

Today Councillor Adrian Heaps, new chair of the cycling committee, will promote winter cycling by leading a "Coldest Day of the Year Ride" downtown - just the sort of frontier activity Toronto once loved to encourage. But this time we're just catching up. Comparably frigid Ottawa and Montreal both have far more dedicated winter riders than Toronto.

The problem today is not lack of good intentions. Like so much else in the megacity, the bicycling failure is an operational issue. The money for more lanes is there, but every year it goes unspent. For years now the city has been unable to build even the minimum number of new bike lanes its own plans and budgets call for. Of the approximately 500 kilometres of new bicycle lanes that are supposed to be built by 2010, fewer than 100 have appeared.

Behind the scenes, the bureaucrats blame individual politicians and cumbersome processes for the failure. But they seem all too willing to live with the blockages. The increasingly large cycling committee planned well, protested much and accomplished little.

As of this week, though, that stands to change. Perhaps it needed a suburbanite to do it - an outsider unaffected by the old stalemate - but the Scarborough cyclist has quietly instituted two reforms that could easily double the number of new bike lanes the city builds every year.

Mr. Heaps's first smart move was to cut the membership of the sprawling committee by about two-thirds. More importantly, council quietly approved his proposal to reassert control over the lane-approval process yesterday, making it impossible for individual politicians to deny approvals at community council.

That change alone should help Toronto build as much as 50 kilometres of new bike lanes in 2008, according to Mr. Heaps, compared with seven or eight kilometres a year currently.

If individual politicians still complain about having bike lanes traverse the ward, Mr. Heaps won't waste time twisting arms. Rather than letting one pocket of resistance forestall entire new routes, he plans to build what he can, following what he calls "the path of least resistance."

There wasn't a word of protest when the last element of the new plan fell into place at council yesterday afternoon, which could be the most promising sign of all. With Markham, Mississauga and Calgary now routinely embarrassing us in such matters, even redneck Toronto is changing its colours.

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The biggest problem is that Toronto's bicycle paths, while relatively abundant, aren't very useful. The narrow little painted lanes on the road that routinely get obstructed by parked cars hardly do much to make cycling more pleasant. Toronto needs real bike routes like in Montreal or Europe, with a two-lane bike mini-roadway separated by a curb from the road and the sidewalk. It takes up the same amount of road width, but it's far, far safer.
 
Ottawa has excellent bike paths as well. It's one thing I miss.
 
There is no word in the article over whether they've found someone to paint the lines this year. Last year they claimed that no one was interested in getting the contract, which is an odd situation.
 
With Markham, Mississauga and Calgary now routinely embarrassing us in such matters, even redneck Toronto is changing its colours.

Mississauga doesn't have any dedicated bike paths and no one cycles. And also, the outer lanes of the roads are not extra-wide to give extra room for cyclists. I've been to Montreal and I think the bike paths there and in its suburbs and even the surrounding small-towns puts us to shame.
 
Mississauga has a few bike lanes, but they aren't on commuter routes - parts of Mississauga Road have them (more popular for recreational/road racing), and a few on a scattering of collector streets. Waterloo Region has a more comprehensive network of bike lanes, signed routes and off-street paths.

Quebec really puts us to shame. Vancouver has a good network as well, though it's based more on through side streets that parallel major roads where possible rather than bike lanes, but they have lights where they cross busier roads.
 
The suburbs do have the bike paths, but they don't generally lead anywhere besides the other end of the subdivision. That includes Toronto as well.
 
Well, it sounds promising and I'm the eternal optimist but I can't help but think we've heard this before. By the way, any casual or seasoned cyclist will tell you Toronto is not flat! In fact, it seems each spring hills and grades get higher, and higher...
 
Toronto shouldn't be looking towards Markham for answers to its bike path woes. From what I can see, most Markham bike routes are nothing but green signs with the bike symbol on top of the word 'ROUTE' posted on the side of streets that were clearly not built for biking.
 
Mississauga doesn't have any dedicated bike paths and no one cycles. And also, the outer lanes of the roads are not extra-wide to give extra room for cyclists. I've been to Montreal and I think the bike paths there and in its suburbs and even the surrounding small-towns puts us to shame.

The new bike lanes on Confederation from the Queensway to Eglinton that is to start this year will be the first of many for on road. They are supposed to be wider than most road lane that are rare in the city today.

We have bike paths next to sidewalks, but what good are they that you have to stop at each street that cross these paths.
 
Mississauga doesn't have any dedicated bike paths and no one cycles.
There's a good number of commuter cyclist on Lakeshore from about May to October. Their problems are more dealing with the buses than cars- the two seem to hate each other with a passion.
 
We have bike paths next to sidewalks, but what good are they that you have to stop at each street that cross these paths.

Those aren't dedicated bike paths though, they are general purpose recreational paths. That's the problem, they focus only on recreation because suburbanite will be fat if they don't exercise.
 
Heaps seems a smart cookie - he stayed off the Exec so he could stay apart from the Hive Mind and just found the City stashing money in no-interest accounts which now will bring in over a million dollars.
 
^ wow ! I've pulled some crazy stuff on my bike over the years (including cracking a 100km / h .... ) but that, I have never ever done, nor would I ever dare try it .... lol
 

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