[amnesiajune]

I said "well-designed," so I'm not sure where having restricted rights of way came from.

What's your idea for a "well-designed" division of 12.2 meters (the width of Bloor)? Right now it's 1.5 meters for each bike lane, 60 cm for the parking-side buffer, 2 meters for parking and 3.3 meters for each car lane.

https://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Tor...et Bike Lanes Pilot Dec 2 2015 panels web.pdf

The minimum width for a car lane on streets with bike lanes is 2.8 meters, but Bloor requires 3.3 meter-wide lanes for buses to be able to use the street. 2 meters is a bare-minimum for parking lane width, since even a mid-size car is usually 185 cm wide. So are we getting a wider bike lane by putting the un-buffered bike lane closer to cars, or by making the buffered bike lane narrower?

https://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Tor...icle_Travel_Lane_Width_Guidelines_Jan2015.pdf

 

[Zach6668]

My comment, again, was a general one about well-designed bike lanes, not Bloor specifically. I don't think the Bloor lanes are all that well-designed. They have a number of issues. The solution is to just get rid of parking and cede the extra space to the bicycle lanes and the sidewalks as needed. It's situations like this that make me wish I still worked at the TPA so I could pull the usage data for the on-street metres and the off-street lots nearby to confirm what everyone keeps saying about excess the off-street supply that should be used. I suspect most are right and that there is excess off-street supply, but it will take a culture change in this town, where motorists don't feel entitled to park steps from their destination, and actually have to walk from centralized parking lots the same way that transit riders have to walk from stations and stops to their ultimate destination.

 

[Zach6668]

They don't have trouble giving adequate space in New York City, as an example. Yes it's a wide, one-way ROW, but they still managed to make safety the priority here. Just an example of what I might call a "well-designed" parking-protected bike lane. We've yet to design a bike lane as good as this in Toronto, and this is literally just the first image that comes up when I Google image search "New York parking protected bike lane".

 

[steveintoronto]

What's your idea for a "well-designed" division of 12.2 meters (the width of Bloor)? Right now it's 1.5 meters for each bike lane, 60 cm for the parking-side buffer, 2 meters for parking and 3.3 meters for each car lane.

https://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Toronto/Transportation Services/Cycling/Files/pdf/B/Bloor Street Bike Lanes Pilot Dec 2 2015 panels web.pdf

The minimum width for a car lane on streets with bike lanes is 2.8 meters, but Bloor requires 3.3 meter-wide lanes for buses to be able to use the street. 2 meters is a bare-minimum for parking lane width, since even a mid-size car is usually 185 cm wide. So are we getting a wider bike lane by putting the un-buffered bike lane closer to cars, or by making the buffered bike lane narrower?

https://www1.toronto.ca/City Of Toronto/Engineering and Construction Services/Standards and Specifications/Files/pdf/Road Design Guidelines/Vehicle_Travel_Lane_Width_Guidelines_Jan2015.pdf

You make a good point, and this has been discussed at length prior, there's not much room on Bloor, and the answer that I and others keep coming to is to eliminate parking altogether.

Bloor between Avenue and Sherbourne only has a few sporadic parking spots, outside of the road width envelope, and I find (as has been observed by Zach I believe it was) that it's better to ride with traffic in such situations than ride a tightrope in the gutter. Bloor as it crosses Yonge is an example of that. I feel safer riding through there with cars doing a choreographed dance with no cycle lane than I do being relegated to a constricted strip.

But if you stare at the diagram posted, another alternative becomes apparent:

Parking is now either one side of the street or the other. Who needs vehicle lanes as wide as provided? Only trucks, especially if the speed limit is further reduced. So the lane that isn't the parking side is made wider at the expense of the parking side, and trucks must enter and exit their parking spots in one direction only, along the side of the road with the wider lane.

*Assymetric lane widths*! This allows another six inches or so for the cycle lanes to be increased in width. Not much, but it addresses the "tightrope" affect.

I'll discuss in more detail later if need be.

Edit to Add: Assymetric vehicle lanes and one way sections for trucks along the wider width lane (it alternates sides) would allow a *bi-directional* bike lane one side of the street, ostensibly barrier protected, another idea to discuss.

 

[ADRM]

They don't have trouble giving adequate space in New York City, as an example. Yes it's a wide, one-way ROW, but they still managed to make safety the priority here. Just an example of what I might call a "well-designed" parking-protected bike lane. We've yet to design a bike lane as good as this in Toronto, and this is literally just the first image that comes up when I Google image search "New York parking protected bike lane".

Having lived for 5 years around the corner from those bike lanes, I can tell you that the other smart thing the NYC DOT did with their construction was place physical restrictions at the start of every block in the middle of the bike lane that prevents non-two-wheeled vehicles from intruding into/parking in/driving up the lane.

I used those lanes nearly every day and they're awesome despite the fact that parking is the only physical barrier (i.e. no bollards or curbs). It's all about design.

 

[amnesiajune]

They don't have trouble giving adequate space in New York City, as an example. Yes it's a wide, one-way ROW, but they still managed to make safety the priority here. Just an example of what I might call a "well-designed" parking-protected bike lane. We've yet to design a bike lane as good as this in Toronto, and this is literally just the first image that comes up when I Google image search "New York parking protected bike lane".

New York has one-way streets, which is why it works there. Over there a road like Bloor can have two lanes for traffic, one lane for parking and a wide buffer & bike lane. Toronto should have more one-way roads (just like any other big city in the world does), but streetcars and people's resistance to change makes that complicated.

But if you stare at the diagram posted, another alternative becomes apparent: Parking is now either one side of the street or the other. Who needs vehicle lanes as wide as provided? Only trucks, especially if the speed limit is further reduced. So the lane that isn't the parking side is made wider at the expense of the parking side, and trucks must enter and exit their parking spots in one direction only, along the side of the road with the wider lane.

Toronto road design standards require a minimum of 3.3 meter width for the right lane on roads that a TTC bus could use. Since there's a subway down there that closes every now and then, Bloor is obviously subject to that requirement.

Bi-directional bike lanes would be a great solution though, since it means the bike lane doesn't have to be as wide - you can have even more room for passing with a 2 meter or 2.5 meter bike lane than two 1.5 meter lanes, despite taking up less space. But, of course, bike lanes and cycle tracks can't possibly be anywhere except the right side of the road for whatever stupid reason.

 

[steveintoronto]

Bear in mind that many NYC examples are one-way streets, which drastically simplifies maximizing utilization. Analogies are Richmond and Adelaide.

Edit to Add: June's and my posts went up at the same time, but must comment on this:
[Toronto should have more one-way roads]
Disagree, and this has been studied comprehensively for decades, and still is, and the answer is 'no'.

In fact many cities are trying to undo exactly that. Hamilton is an excellent example.

ADRM states: "I can tell you that the other smart thing the NYC DOT did with their construction was place physical restrictions at the start of every block in the middle of the bike lane". It's little things like that that makes a huge difference, psychologically as well as physically.

 

[amnesiajune]

In fact many cities are trying to undo exactly that. Hamilton is an excellent example.

There's a difference between Hamilton and Toronto - Toronto is 5x larger. Is there any city of 2.5 million or larger trying to get rid of their one-way roads?

 

[ADRM]

Bear in mind that many NYC examples are one-way streets, which drastically simplifies maximizing utilization. Analogies are Richmond and Adelaide.

Edit to Add: June's and my posts went up at the same time, but must comment on this:
[Toronto should have more one-way roads]
Disagree, and this has been studied comprehensively for decades, and still is, and the answer is 'no'.

In fact many cities are trying to undo exactly that. Hamilton is an excellent example.

Yep, very true. Though, to both that and an earlier point you made, one thing that would enhance flexibility for our planners would be a city service-wide procurement assessment with the goal of decreasing the width of the service vehicles the city uses (fire trucks, garbage and recycling trucks, ambulances, buses, etc.).

That's actually a highly limiting factor in Toronto, and to @amnesiajune's point, it's especially acute on two-way streets like Bloor.

 

[salsa]

New York has one-way streets, which is why it works there.

Design of Richmond/Adelaide bike lane is nothing like New York. When will we do better?

 

[amnesiajune]

Design of Richmond/Adelaide bike lane is nothing like New York. When will we do better?

When we realize that the place bikes have been in the past isn't the place where they should be. The separated bike lanes should be on the left side of one-way roads, like they are in most other major cities.

 

[salsa]

When we realize that the place bikes have been in the past isn't the place where they should be. The separated bike lanes should be on the left side of one-way roads, like they are in most other major cities.

Isn't that part of my point? These lanes fall way short of best design practices like you see in that New York example, despite having all the right conditions to make this possible.

 

[steveintoronto]

Isn't that part of my point? These lanes fall way short of best design practices like you see in that New York example, despite having all the right conditions to make this possible.

Thanks for moving that forward, Salsa.

I've been digging on this subject, as it is an important one, and Toronto is going to have to up her game markedly on cycling safety and infrastructure. Toronto does have a few examples listed by posters here earlier that are far superior to the run of the mill painted lines on pavement, many of which are more dangerous than just no marked lane at all, but UT had a topic string on this:
http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/threads/the-case-against-one-way-streets.19478/ and some very good ideas were put forth there.

This rings really true!

I would like to add another idea. Make King and Queen one way streets ( opposite directions) and have one streetcar lane run express. This would move traffic and people through downtown and the transit infrastructure is already in place.

I'd go for that! Bloor has been looked at for one-way, but there is no contiguous counter direction parallel to it. For Bloor...and this is still an ongoing topic out of our hands: The solution is *no parking*. It's going to take the local merchants deciding on that, fingers crossed.

So if the one-way argument wins, it's for selected streets, and Queen and King are certainly candidates, with one huge proviso to Ackerman's point: Two way streetcars one side of the street for each road, and one-way vehicular the other with a barrier protected cycle lane. Cycling and transit both win, and businesses still get their vehicular access.

I've seen this work and work well in San Diego, and the 'trains' run all the way down to the Mexican border from the main streets in SD.

Interesting paper here:
http://www.uctc.net/access/41/access41-2way.pdf

 

[amnesiajune]

Two way streetcars one side of the street for each road, and one-way vehicular the other with a barrier protected cycle lane. Cycling and transit both win, and businesses still get their vehicular access.

Seriously? That would turn eight lanes of traffic into two. I think another good place to do this sorta setup is Bay Street and Church Street. Make each of those a one-way road from Front Street to where they intersect (at Bay & Davenport). Two or three lanes of traffic and a separated two-way bike lane on each of those.

 

[steveintoronto]

That would turn eight lanes of traffic into two.

lol...that's as naive as claiming Bloor is four lanes now. King and Queen, because of parking, are only *two lanes each*! That's exactly the problem...parking.

I think another good place to do this sorta setup is Bay Street and Church Street.

OK...as long as Yonge St is closed to vehicles, then I'd agree. And so would a lot of others. But Toronto won't do that. It's too progressive. Can't have that. That's for dirty, backward cities like Pittsburgh:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=pitt...Dg&imgrc=obtlnHhRPbWAwM#imgrc=obtlnHhRPbWAwM: