This decision is being made on bad data. The form letter states that only 600 cyclists use Jarvis per day. This is garbage. It may have been true on a wet spring day but it's not true now. As well, the city insists on measuring bicycle usage by installing one strip on one block. Bicycle trips are often shorter than car trips, and if they choose the wrong block, they'll miss a lot of usage. They need to install about 3 strips between Bloor and King and then average the usage. I saw them measuring usage of the bike lanes on Sherbourne and they did the same thing, one strip in an area I rarely use.
Actually the letter states that only 600
additional cyclists use Jarvis. That is consistent with the numbers: 290 before, 890 after. However it is not consistent with Rob Ford's "promise" of "transparency". The letter is written with carefully deceitful wordings like that one, which send a message different than what they technically say. I expect that the vast majority of the people reading the letter will come to the conclusion that only 600 cyclists use Jarvis, and I'm absolutely certain that that was the intention.
As well, the letter states: "Over 15,000 commuters each day are suffering from longer travel times". Whoever wrote this letter (Ford is definitely not clever or eloquent enough to have done it) expects people to latch on to the "15000 commuters", and jump to the conclusion that 15000 people drive to work on Jarvis. By contrast, the actual report states "vehicle volumes remained approximately the same, averaging over 13,000 vehicles in both directions during this eight hour period.". The inconsistency between the report's and the letter's numbers could easily be claimed as a "typo". Even so, someone reading the letter would assume that 15000 drivers commute via Jarvis, when in fact it was 13000 car trips made during the "commuting period", which would be 6500 drivers assuming every single driver on Jarvis is driving to or from work during that 8hr period.
From then on, the letter refers to the "thousands" of commuters, encouraging readers to think back to the "15000 drivers" mentioned earlier. There are indeed thousands of drivers on Jarvis, but there is quite a difference between 6500 and 15000 of them, especially when one considers the actual number of bike trips (a figure notably covered up in the response letter), which was measured as nearly 1000, and is probably in excess of 1000 by now.
I would also comment on the sentence "Bike lanes were never intended to be installed on Jarvis Street." (What, a painter just dropped a bucket and they appeared?), but the explanation of what happened is followed, which is reasonable. All the aforementioned sentence does is let the reader know what conclusion should be drawn from the sentence explaining what happened. Notice that in my letter, I say the exact same thing, but through different wording I come to the opposite conclusion.
It's a good letter, but you'll just get the form response back from Ford. Also send it to Councillors Milczyn & Palacio as well, as they voted to install the lanes in 2009 and now may inexplicably vote to remove them, and also newbie Councillors Jaye Robinson & Gary Crawford.
I know I'll get a form letter. That's why my letter is just a reword of the form letter from a few post back.
